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Hurricane Erin Creates Life-Threatening Conditions Along East Coast; North Carolina's Outer Banks Bracing for Four-Foot Storm Surge; Texas Dems Vow to Take Fight to Courts Over New Congressional Map; Unsealed Video Reveals TikTok Employees Warned Internally About App's Impact on Teenagers; Study Lays Out Dramatic Decline in Americans Reading Books. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 21, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: As well, I mean, with the tragic ending of him and his wife. It's just a really -- it's been a really good, it's been a really enjoyable series to watch.

Paul, it's also good to see you and see this side of you. Our Capitol Hill Billy. We love it. Thank you, Paul.

Be sure to tune in to the final episode of the CNN Original Series, "AMERICAN PRINCE: JFK JR." It airs Saturday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. New this morning, life-threatening surf conditions, a key highway at risk of being cut in half. Hurricane Erin bears down on the East Coast.

The battle over congressional districts in Texas goes all the way to the bathroom. And newly unsealed video shows TikTok employees raising the alarm on just how addictive the app can be, especially for teenagers.

Sara is out. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan, and this is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

BERMAN: And new images just in showing flooding on the highway in North Carolina as hurricane batter -- Hurricane Erin batters the coastline there. The issue here is this is the one highway on the outer banks. If this gets severed, there's just no way to move along that area.

A state of emergency in effect. These hours some of the dangerous there. Erin making its closest approach to the U.S. We have a brand- new forecast from the National Hurricane Center. It shows Erin as a category 2 storm. Maximum sustained winds of 105 miles per hour. It is producing flooding, large waves of 20 feet or higher. And that life- threatening surf and rip currents. We've been seeing rough seas off Virginia Beach. That's a live look at

Virginia Beach. You can see a lot of white there, right? The rough seas go out, you know, 20, 30, 40 yards there. Authorities are pleading with people to stay out of the water. Most of the beaches along the East Coast are shut down today.

We spoke to the director of Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue in North Carolina, telling us that they're seeing rip currents two and a half blocks wide.

Dianne Gallagher is at the Oregon Inlet at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, along North Carolina's outer banks.

Maybe a risky place to be given it's hard to get in and out, Dianne. What are you seeing right now?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So we are basically as far as we can go down on that highway, NC 12, before it is closed for 50 plus miles along the outer banks. And look, you can see I'm going to step out of the way a bit. There's a couple people trying to experience the winds of the hurricane right now. As Erin passes by, I just spoke with Finn. He's on the skim board there. He's from Manteo, says he's never really seen anything like this especially with the hurricane that isn't actually making landfall.

Said that he is not going to swim today, which is good because there is a no swimming ban at this point. There is an advisory asking people not to because of those dangerous rip currents that are persisting through the day. You can see the wind is continuing to sort of gust through this morning. This is not anything we experienced yesterday or even overnight to be honest. And we're overcast. We haven't had rain yet. It's kind of nice.

It's cool at this point as far as the weather goes but those seas are angry and they have been washing over the road, which, again, talking to people here in the outer banks. That has been the main concern for them because there is one way on, one way off when you're in a car for the most part. They had mandatory evacuations in Ocracoke and Hatteras, and the Department of Transportation says that there is major over wash of NC 12 in both of those areas right now.

This road continues to be closed, which means we can't get to them. They cannot get off those islands. We've been reaching out to some of the people in Rodanthe that we spoke with over the last couple of days to see how they fared in the area. Again, we're seeing some over wash. We're seeing something from that storm surge here, and it's still an active event. This is what we're going to continue, John, in a safe way, to make sure that we can see how the impact as the hurricane sort of drifts away from us at this point.

BERMAN: All right, well, stay safe. Stay off the roads that you shouldn't be on.

Dianne Gallagher there out on the beach. Appreciate it. Thank you. Kate. BOLDUAN: Let's get the latest. Joining us right now is Drew Pearson,

the emergency management director in Dare County, North Carolina. Dare County is home to much of the outer banks, covers about two-thirds of the North Carolina coastline.

Thanks for being here. How is it going? Where is your biggest focus and concern this morning?

DREW PEARSON, DIRECTOR OF DARE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Yes. Good morning, Kate. Thanks for having me and thanks for sharing the information with the public on what's going on here in Dare County. People need to stay out of the ocean. I can't emphasize that enough. We have a swimming prohibition in place. Stay out of the ocean.

[09:05:04]

With regard to Hatteras Island and NC 12, we've gone through two high tide cycles so far. There's still more to come. The good news is, is our NCDOT pros are out there doing their best to clear it and open it up. Keep it -- keep it clear, keep it going. But while it's closed, people need to stay off the road. We're doing our best to take care of the people on Hatteras Island overnight. We didn't have any calls for assistance, which is a good thing.

People have sheltered in place and are taking care of themselves, but people need to stay off the roads and give our NCDOT pros the time to take care of the road, and hopefully we'll get it open as quickly as possible. But we're not out of it yet. We got another high tide coming this evening.

BOLDUAN: So that -- and that's the important part about it, right? People do get comfortable thinking that it's -- thinking as daylight comes up and hours have passed, that things are -- things are going away. But as you said, there's another high tide cycle coming in.

I actually spoke with the owners of the Atlantic Inn on Hatteras Island earlier this morning, which for everyone out there is in Dare County, and they had decided -- they stayed behind. They did not evacuate. Let me -- let me play for you why they said they did not.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOLLY ANDRZEJEWSKI, OWNS THE ATLANTIC INN IN HATTERAS, NORTH CAROLINA: We knew this wasn't -- it was going to be a bad storm, and we were hopeful that it wasn't going to be the worst. So it's just a chance that you take, I guess, when you live down here, whether or not to evacuate. And we just decided to stay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: She said a lot of people -- Holly said a lot of people did decided to stay the same. I saw that you said ahead of the storm that while many on the island often do and think they can ride out the storm, Hurricane Erin is different.

What do you -- are you seeing that this morning?

PEARSON: Well, Erin is different. It's an open ocean storm with distant impacts coming to us. You know, they decided to stay and take the chance. We understand that, you know. So far, we haven't had to tell them we couldn't come and help them if they made a call to 911. That's a good thing that people are -- we have a very resilient community on Hatteras Island. They know the weather. They know what's around them.

And they know that if they are at risk and we can't get to them, they're on their own. But we're so glad that our visitors got up and left and cleared the island and went home. And we can't wait to open up Hatteras Island and get them all back so they can come back and enjoy our beautiful community.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. I mean, this is such a peak time for that just this week and next, especially. This is the first hurricane of what's expected to be in predicted to be a busy hurricane season. How are you preparing for this? What is -- what have you been -- what have the conversations been like?

PEARSON: Oh, we prepare for every hurricane season. Doesn't matter if it's predicted to be high or low. It only takes one storm. We held community engagement forums with the National Weather Service partners we have out here. They come to our community, they talk to us about what to expect. We talk about preparedness. We share information. We get people signed up for our alerting system.

And we make sure everybody is ready from the government to people to everybody. And we're going to keep that going. We're just getting started. We're getting near the peak of hurricane season. We're not getting let up.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And again, communication. And thank you for coming on because that communication aspect of it is so key.

The emergency management director of Dare County, Drew Pearson, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. John.

BERMAN: All right. Let's get the latest forecast with CNN's Derek Van Dam at the Weather Center.

What are you seeing, Derek.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: All right, John, so we're tracking Hurricane Erin. It is lumbering around just off the coast of Cape Hatteras, about 200 miles to the east. It's a significant storm in terms of its size. And there was a buoy that it just moved over off the Eastern Seaboard. It measured 40-foot waves on the open ocean. That is incredible. 85-mile-per-hour wind gusts as well.

Still a category two with the storm, but you can see the bulk of the storm staying offshore. Of course, we have our outer rain bands causing the tropical storm force conditions on the ground.

Check out this video from NASA's Global Precipitation Monitoring. This is a three dimensional scan. You can see this was the moment when the hurricane actually went under rapid intensification. We're talking about earlier this week, just north of the Leeward Islands. But what's really fascinating about this is that we actually overlaid this imagery, take note of where it is, and checked out the sea surface temperatures and what it did to the ocean was astounding.

We mapped it out. Here it is as it progresses and goes through that rapid intensification. But what you're looking at is the anomalies of the ocean temperatures. It actually cooled the waters right where it intensified and moved through some of this what was extremely warm bathwater for this hurricane and allowed it to strengthen. But the fact that it's cooled it off is actually a positive for any potential future development of another system that moves through this very area.

[09:10:00]

Cold water does not mesh well with developing and strengthening tropical systems so interesting to take note of that.

One thing is for sure, it's a large storm, 550-mile diameter in terms of those tropical storm force winds. That's equivalent of Atlanta to D.C. It's huge and is pushing up massive waves. Here's a look at the current storm surge. We're talking about just two feet above normally dry ground. That is going to cost over wash issues. We've seen the videos coming from our affiliates and our reporters on the ground there -- John.

BERMAN: Which is why people need to be careful up and down the East Coast.

Derek van Dam, thank you very much for that. Kate.

BOLDUAN: So the Texas state Senate is expected to take a final vote as soon as today on the new congressional map that has been at the center of so much debate, controversy and protest. Statehouse lawmakers voted yesterday to approve that same plan. President Trump applauded it overnight, writing this on social media.

"Big win for the great state of Texas. On our way to five more congressional seats. Florida, Indiana and others are looking to do the same."

The final passage expected today, comes after more than two week standoff, as you'll remember, with state Democrats who had left the state in order to stop, block the bill, stop the bill, pause the bill from being able to be voted on. They are now vowing to take the fight to court.

Let's get over to CNN's Arlette Saenz, who's in Austin.

I mean, you've been tracking this from every moment, especially since they returned, Arlette. What's going to happen today?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, Texas Republicans are one step closer to making these congressional maps a reality. It passed the House last night along a party line vote, and now will head over to the Senate. There will actually be a committee meeting in just about an hour, where the senators will take up this map to consider, and then they refer it to a Senate with that vote potentially happening tonight.

But this ended a more than two-week standoff between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats had fled the state to try to block this bill. And when they returned, they were under 24 hour police escort. Really leading to some tense moments. Democrats have argued that these maps are racist, that they would disempower black and Latino voters. But Republicans say that they are on solid legal ground to pass these maps based on partisanship. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TODD HUNTER (R), TEXAS STATE HOUSE: What's wrong with Republicans standing up and Republicans stepping up and Republicans being honest with you don't like which is Supreme Court says we can use political and partisanship to do congressional redistricting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, there are quite a few tense moments on the House floor. Yesterday, Democrats angry about this bill while Republicans have been frustrated by Democrats' efforts to stall this. One of those tension points played out on a DNC press call. State Representatives Nicole Collier had gone into a bathroom to do this phone call, and someone told her that that would be committing a felony and she needed to jump off the call.

She later told CNN last night that it was some GOP women, female lawmakers who took issue with it, though there's still some questions about what exactly the rules are relating to interviews in the bathroom off the House floor. You can't do interviews on the House floor while the session is ongoing, but that really just speaks to some of the tense moments that we've seen play out as Democrats have tried to put up a stand to stop this redistricting bill, but really, they had no legislative tools left, and it is expected to sail through the Senate later this evening.

BOLDUAN: All right, Arlette, thank you so much for the update. John.

BERMAN: All right. In just a few hours, the Menendez brothers will get their first chance at freedom in 35 years. Erik Menendez, his parole hearing is scheduled for today. His brother Lyle's is tomorrow. The brothers have been serving a life sentence for life sentences for the 1989 murders of their parents. After getting new sentences, they're now eligible for parole.

Their case is granted new traction after -- gained new traction after being featured in a Netflix documentary which highlighted the abuse the brothers say they suffered from their father in the years leading up to the murders. Even if they are granted parole, they will not get free just yet. Governor Gavin Newsom has the final say on these decisions, So the algorithm is so good that children will stay on it at the

expense of, quote, "sleep and eating and moving around the room. Newly unsealed videos presented as evidence from a lawsuit against TikTok that shows employees raising concerns about their own company.

On that note, if you think more Americans are spending time reading, think again. Surprising new data that concerns authors everywhere. And is a window seat a window seat if it is window less?

[09:15:01]

The new allegations and new lawsuits against some airlines.

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BERMAN: Newly unsealed video evidence in a lawsuit against TikTok offers a surprising window into internal conversations at the company. Clips from internal meetings with employees raising concerns about the app's impact on mental health, especially among teenagers. A TikTok executive has heard admitting the goal is to make people, quote, "never want to leave the app."

CNN's Clare Duffy is here.

What are some of the things that we're hearing?

[09:20:03]

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so this comes from a North Carolina lawsuit that was filed against the company last year, accusing TikTok of being designed to be, quote, "highly addictive to kids," and then accusing the company of essentially deceiving parents and children about the safety of the platform. And this is a really striking, you know, sort of window, as you said, into the employee conversations that are happening in the company around the app's safety.

I want to play for you a clip of a few of these current and former employees so that you can hear directly from them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRETT PETERS, TIKTOK GLOBAL HEAD OF CREATOR ADVOCACY AND REPUTATION: We all have these really lofty goals of getting people to be on the app longer, like literally, like, that's like why we're all here is to help continue to diversify the content ecosystem, to make TikTok a place where you can get so much different types of content that you never want to leave.

NICHOLAS CHING, FORMER TIKTOK ISSUES PROGRAM MANAGER: Unfortunately, some of the stuff that people find interesting are not always the most healthy. So I think we do have -- we do in a way encourage some of this content being put up.

ALLY MANN, TIKTOK MARKETING PROFESSIONAL: We obviously wanted people to spend as much time as possible on TikTok which is -- can be in contrast to what is best for your mental health.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DUFFY: Now, look, I think it's worth noting that it's not obvious what time frame these conversations happened in, and it's also not totally unusual for internal safety teams to have conversations about how to improve a platform. But North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said he thinks this underscores the point, the argument that they're making in their lawsuit. He said, "These videos prove what we've argued in court. Social media companies are keeping kids hooked to maximize profits, even at the expense of their health."

And this, of course, comes as there are a number of similar lawsuits against TikTok making their way through the courts right now.

BERMAN: What's TikTok saying about this?

DUFFY: So TikTok has previously pushed back on this lawsuit, calling it misleading and a spokesperson sort of reiterated those arguments in a comment about this video, saying, "The AG's sizzle reel is a shameful attempt to distort and open internal conversation about making the platform safer when TikTok was just beginning five years ago. This manipulation relies on conversations taken out of context with the sole purpose of misleading the public and grandstanding."

Also drew attention to some of these youth safety features that TikTok has rolled out in recent years, things like parental oversight tools, a recent meditation feature that tries to get kids to scroll less. But I do think this could add more fuel to the fire in terms of TikTok's critics that the app hasn't done enough to keep kids safe.

BERMAN: All right, Clare Duffy, pretty, pretty startlingly blunt statements that were played as evidence there. Thank you very much. Kate.

BOLDUAN: And possibly related here, guys, to that is there's data proving that people may be spending much more time on their phones than with a good book. A new study out laying out just how much reading for pleasure has fallen off dramatically.

CNN's Harry Enten, a lover of all books, joins me now.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: That's true. Read, children, read.

BOLDUAN: You're a child, Harry. How much less are we reading?

ENTEN: Yes, that's why I have the beard here with a little bit white going on. I'm trying to age myself. Take a look here. Read for leisure in a given day in 2004, look at this. We're talking 28 percent of us were reading for leisure in a given day. But look at where that number has dropped down to just 16 percent in 2024. Now of course I do my reading, although sometimes perhaps it's not necessarily a book, but I will point out that this trend is being driven in large part, or at least big part, by younger people reading less. And this is looking at adults. I was looking at the stats with

children as well, 13-year-olds, and those numbers have absolutely fallen through the floor.

BOLDUAN: And this is all types of reading. But what specifically about books? How much has that been affected?

ENTEN: Yes. OK. So, look, maybe you're into reading SparkNotes. This don't count with this particular slide, right? There's no cheating going on here. Read a book for leisure this year. Look at 1992. It was the majority of us, 61 percent, 2002, 57 percent. You can see the trend going on here. 2012, 55 percent. And then in the latest reading, look at this. Less than 50 percent.

The majority of Americans now are not, in fact, reading a book for leisure in a given year. I can recall my father had books upon books upon books on his nightstand right next to the bed. That is no longer the case. Most Americans don't even have a single book on their nightstand. They, simply put, are no longer reading books for leisure.

BOLDUAN: Wow. That hasn't -- didn't read a book for leisure this year.

ENTEN: 51 percent.

BOLDUAN: Wow.

ENTEN: 51 percent.

BOLDUAN: What are we doing instead?

ENTEN: What are we doing instead? Well, I'm going to unbutton my jacket here. Uh-oh, uh-oh.

BOLDUAN: I'm so scared.

ENTEN: I'm going to pull out my ancient phone right here. You can see it.

BOLDUAN: No, don't --

ENTEN: There we go. There we go. Kate, off on the side. What are we doing instead? Hours playing games or on the computer for pleasure. Look at this. Since 2003, up 97 percent. We are looking at our screens. We are playing video games.

[09:25:01]

We are on our computers for leisure. We are no longer reading books. Whether or not that's a good thing, I'll leave it to the audience, but based upon some of the mental health statistics, I would argue it's a bad thing. As I've said at the beginning of this segment, read, people, read. It's good for the soul. It's good for the mind.

BOLDUAN: I wonder what changes the trend. Like, you know, pendulum swings all the time. I wonder what could swing this.

ENTEN: I don't -- you know, that's the beautiful thing about the future. You never know.

BOLDUAN: Oh, jeez. Thank you, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: I know you should keep your clothes on when you're doing segments.

All right. For the first time in 50 or first, before I get to that, Hurricane Erin, we are watching this storm. There's the map right there. You can see it moving up the East Coast. The concern is for the waves and surf beaches closed like pretty much over the entire East Coast. And for the first time in 50 years, Cracker Barrel is changing its logo. What's missing? What's missing in this one that you see here?

Here's a test. What do you see in this that you don't see in this? We'll give you the answer when we come back.

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