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Man Arrested After Burning American Flag Outside White House; AI Hitting Early-Career Workers Much Harder Than Other Ages; How One Professor Got His Students' Attention Back. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 26, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Secret Service approached and handcuffed a man yesterday after he set fire to an American flag in front of the White House. Park Police later arrested him. CNN captured the moment that the man who identified himself as a 20-year combat veteran named Jay Carey used a lighter to set fire to the flag he had placed on the ground in Lafayette Park. Carey says he was doing it to protest Trump.

This followed Trump signing an executive order earlier in the day for stricter penalties for flag burning, a one-year prison sentence, quote, where there's evidence of criminal activity. Thing is, in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled flag burning is a protected form of speech under the First Amendment.

Trump acknowledged it was a decision by a, quote, sad Supreme Court and said the simple act of burning the flag is an incitement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we've never seen before. People go crazy in a way, both ways. There are some that are going crazy for doing it. There are others that are angry, angry about them doing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: But in the landmark 1989 case, the court addressed the issue of incitement. Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority, quote, The government cannot assume that every expression of a provocative idea will incite a riot but must look to the actual circumstances surrounding the expression. The flag burning on its own does not constitute fighting words, the court ruled.

Brennan, a liberal justice, was joined surprisingly by strident conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who spoke at length in 2012 about flag burning during an interview on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA, SUPREME COURT: If I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment, which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged. And it is addressed in particular to speech critical of the government.

I mean, that was the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress. Burning the flag is a form of expression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Congress, displeased by the Supreme Court's ruling, passed a law that tried to outlaw flag burning. But the court in 1990 quickly responded to Congress in a different case and reaffirmed that flag burning is protected speech. Still, the court's two decisions did not put the issue to rest on Capitol Hill.

In 2006, the Senate came within one vote of proposing a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. The vote required a two-thirds majority, usually 67 of 100 votes under the Constitution. The deciding vote to defeat the proposal, the Republicans' leader at the time, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

He defended his vote that same year, writing, I revere the American flag as a symbol of freedom. But behind it is something larger, the Constitution. The First Amendment, which protects our freedom of speech, is the most precious part of the Bill of Rights. As disgusting as the ideas expressed by those who would burn the flag are, they remain protected by the First Amendment.

Fast forward to today, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune has once again brought the issue up and called for passage of a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag burning. He may have backing in the court of public opinion.

In a 2021 poll from the Knight Foundation and Ipsos, it found that only 31 percent of Americans agreed that people should be allowed to burn the American flag. Still the decision lies with the high court. Will the justices give it another look?

How does the current makeup of the court view flag burning? Should the issue come up? President Trump seeming to make sure that it will.

Coming up, the impact of AI on entry-level jobs, what a new report says about the positions most at risk next.

[15:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Moments ago, President Trump weighed in on whether he'd send the National Guard to New York. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'd love to do it if she'd like. I get along with Kathy. If she'd like to do that, I would do it.

You see, New York has difficulty like and I don't want to make this bite. I want to make this like friendly. But the places we're talking about happen to be virtually all Democrat run. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Notably, they also are in states where the governors are Democrats, not Democratic cities that are in states where Republicans are governors, of which there are many that are high crime. We'll continue to follow this story -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A new study from Stanford highlights how artificial intelligence is impacting those just starting out in their careers. Researchers found workers ages 22 to 25 are the most AI exposed jobs went through a 13 percent decline in employment. Stanford also found other age groups in these AI exposed jobs actually experienced an increase in employment while young people went through a decline.

The study found that these jobs are the most exposed to automation. Operations managers, accountants, software developers and receptionists. Among the least exposed maintenance workers, nurses, truck drivers as well.

Let's discuss with former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. He is a co-founder of the Forward Party. Andrew, thanks so much for being with us.

[15:40:00]

You've been warning about automation for years. And now that we see certain tech jobs, especially that were thought of as future proof, being especially at risk. How do you think this changes the job market, the value of a college degree, and just the entire way that our economy is set up?

ANDREW YANG, (D) FORMER 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Boris, the best analogy I can draw is imagine if you were an assembly line worker in a factory in the 1980s or 1990s and then a bunch of robots got installed in that factory. The exact same thing is happening in the bowels of call centers, insurance companies, accounting firms, banks, tech firms, and on and on.

And a lot of the degrees that young people sought for their job security, like coding and computer science, are quickly becoming obsolete. And I hesitate to use that word, but it's true. And so you're going to see a wholesale transformation of the way these companies perform work. And it's going to have a direct impact first on recent college graduates.

SANCHEZ: And to that point, I mean, there are examples of AI helping younger workers improve their skills. But there are also cases where AI is just crushing entry level work. And if that disappears, what do those young people do to gain experience so that they can climb into more advanced positions over time?

I wonder if you think AI is just creating a generational divide in skills.

YANG: One term I've seen used by techies, Boris, is there's going to be a lost generation. And the ladders you're describing where a young person might show up to a firm and do entry level work for several years before getting promoted, they're getting promoted again, a lot of that's going to disappear. You're going to have entire departments that now are going to be serviced by primarily AI and then a small handful of individuals.

And these companies do not exist to train the next generation. They exist to return value for their shareholders. And I talked to insiders at these companies, and they say, look, their profitability is going to go up as their headcount goes down.

It's easiest to not hire a new worker. Layoffs are a little harder, though we're going to see a lot of those too. But the easiest thing to do is just stop putting up job hosting and stop hiring incoming grads.

SANCHEZ: You obviously campaigned on the idea of a universal basic income as a potential answer to some of the problems caused by AI. I do want to ask you about the ways that income doesn't solve some of the issues that AI creates in the sense that too many people are apparently not going to have a path to meaningful work. And that creates problems when it comes to developing identity, purpose, community, all sorts of issues.

I mean, obviously, the ramifications are going to be huge. How do you portend to address the issues that are created by AI beyond income?

YANG: This is the fundamental issue, Boris, and you've hit the nail on the head. A job isn't just income. It's structure, meaning, purpose, community, a reason to get up in the morning.

And one of the groups we should be focused on is young men in particular, who if they're left idle, tend to do more and more antisocial things with their time. If you look at the data, computer use goes up, substance abuse, gambling, those sorts of behaviors. And we're seeing signs of this already over the last number of years in New York.

But AI is going to supercharge it as more and more men in particular have a hard time finding jobs in this economy. I wish that we were adopting very dramatic measures. I championed a universal basic income when I ran for president in 2020.

And those are the kinds of big moves we should be making because I, for one, do not want to accept there being a lost generation of workers. And I think it's going to have incredibly negative effects on both the economy and society.

SANCHEZ: It does appear that we are hitting a sort of speed bump when it comes to progress with AI, though. There was a separate study done by researchers at MIT. It found something like 95 percent of generative AI programs that companies have launched are not actually generating any kind of revenue right now.

ChatGPT 5 was seen as a disappointment. I know that Meta is downsizing its AI division. There was another headline that stood out.

What if AI doesn't get much better than this?

Do you think there's an AI bubble that is on the precipice of bursting?

YANG: I think two things can be true at once, Boris. Is there a hype cycle? Are there people that are just playing follow the leader and investing in some of these companies because they have AI in the investment thesis? Completely yes.

But at the same time, are there companies that are finding ways to replace many, many workers with AI as the models improve? Also, 100 percent yes.

[15:45:00]

I talked to a partner at a law firm who said that AI models now can outperform a third year law school graduate. Think about that. So it's college, law school, then three years in the market, they can produce a legal brief -- AI can produce that legal brief in a matter of hours, and it would take that associate weeks and the work would be worse. So which would you use?

And the models double in computing power every seven months. So it is totally the case that a lot of these trials are not bearing fruit immediately. But all it takes is is one model that hits it out of the park. And then you pile into that application and you wind up getting rid of hundreds, even thousands of workers.

A lot of the work that Americans do -- and this isn't just Americans, this is this is worldwide -- can be done more quickly and efficiently by machines, even if the machines might take a little bit longer than some would like in terms of finding that that usefulness. But they're going to be much, much faster than any human at a lot of these jobs.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the future looking a bit dim. Andrew Yang, appreciate the perspective. Thanks so much for joining us.

YANG: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

A college professor says he received his best student reviews in more than a decade after he eliminated one thing from his classroom. We're going to hear from him in just moments.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: As school districts across the country grapple with how to get their students' attention away from their phones, our next guest took a drastic move and wrote about it in The New York Times. And the piece is called Here's What Happened When I Made My College Students Put Away Their Phones.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He advised both the Biden and Obama White Houses on health issues. And he's the author of Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care?

Fascinating piece that you wrote. And I think everyone should read it because it is great. Tell us about the reaction that you got from students when you said, no cell phones. I don't even want to see them. I want them put away.

DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL, VICE PROVOST OF GLOBAL INITIATIVE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Well, it's less that I didn't want to see them. I didn't want the students to see them because there's some evidence that just having the phone out is a distraction. Their mind is anxious about what they might be missing.

And so I made them turn the phones off and put them in their backpacks so they didn't see them and I didn't see them. And initially, I think they were somewhat skeptical, a little put out. But then it was quite clear that they were paying more attention. They were more keyed into what I was saying. And there's nothing forcing these students to come to class. They could just watch the videos and look at the transcripts that we create of the class.

But they all came. And I think at the end, they felt like it was a much better learning experience for them. And I think they really learned more because they didn't have the phones around.

KEILAR: The other thing that I found fascinating was that you had them take notes not on computers, but by hand. And this makes a lot of sense the way you explain how it allows them to process information as they're receiving it during class. Talk a little bit about that and how that changed their ability to connect with the coursework.

EMANUEL: So if you write -- if you type on the computer, you can get up to 90, 120 words a minute typing and a lot of students try to, you know, get a verbatim transcript of what a professor is saying. On the other hand, if you write, you cannot get anywhere near that fast.

And so you have to process and assess what is the information that's important? What should I put down? How do I summarize it in an effective way? And that forces the brain to analyze it better and to actually make connections about that information, which stay with the students.

So in the previous years, I had created what someone has called a computer ghetto. All the students who want to take notes by computer stay on the right. Last year, I just no, we're going to get rid of the computers. This data is convincing to me. And by the way, me and all my colleagues, we did pretty well in an era when there were no computers and we took notes by hand. We certainly learned the material.

I said, if you're using a stylus, like on a remarkable notepad, you can still use it. And this year, I'm actually getting rid of the iPads and any electronic device that can hook up to the Internet, because even with my exhortations, some students were doing they're scrolling on Instagram, they're shopping, they're looking at their e-mail. There is a distraction when you can get on the Internet.

And I want kids who -- I want students who are focused on the class. Their brain isn't somewhere else. It's not good for their learning and it's not good for my teaching.

And, you know, if the mission of a university is to educate students, to get them to think harder about the subjects they're learning about, having distractions like the Internet or like the phone is not going to augment their learning ability. And so a part of my proposal is what I did.

[15:55:49]

And by the way, I've heard from hundreds of faculty around the country now. Many faculty have done this. It should be the default mechanism. Universities should say no phones.

If a professor thinks there's a value to the phone, having it in class for some reason or the computer in class for some reason, they can allow it in. But the default, if you haven't thought about it, is no phones. And by the way, I think students would like it if they knew that all the other students also didn't have these electronic devices.

KEILAR: The research is so interesting and so is your article on this. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your experience.

EMANUEL: Thank you and thank you for taking an interest in what I think is a really important topic for our future generations.

KEILAR: Of course. And we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:00:00]

SANCHEZ: Back to the breaking news. Taylor Swift, Travis, Kelce getting hitched.

KEILAR: That's right. The power couple announcing their engagement on Instagram today. And man, are we here for it?

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: Especially you, Boris. You got so excited.

SANCHEZ: You got to sell it. And I'm happy for them. It's great. Am I going to think about this later? Probably not.

KEILAR: I probably am.

SANCHEZ: I will think about some weenies, though.

KEILAR: I'm cocktail weenies. Very important. And I'm going to think about "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt, which starts right now.

END