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More Information on the Minneapolis School Shooting; Amy Maxmen is Interviewed about CDC Turmoil; Catelin Drey is Interviewed about Winning in Iowa. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 29, 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]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Lives at risk.

Plus, a horse on the lam. The new video this morning, wild video, of the chase as a group of officers try to coral a horse running through an Indiana neighborhood.

Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner are out. I'm Erica Hill, along with John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we do have new details this morning about the two children who were killed in Minnesota. The families of ten- year-old Harper Moyski and eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel, they are speaking out.

This is Harper Moyski. Her parents say Harper was a loving big sister whose, quote, "laughter, kindness and spirit touched everyone who knew her."

Eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel's father says his son loved his family, friends, fishing, cooking and any sport that he was allowed to play. Sounds like my own boys.

Investigators are poring through hundreds of pages of writings from the shooter, who one official says was, quote, "obsessed" with the idea of killing children.

We're also hearing directly from some of the children who survived and helped others.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIBBY PASSA, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: A little preschooler came up to me and I was like, do you know where, like, my mommy is? Like, I don't know what's happening? Can you help me? So, she sat on my lap and I just, like, held her tightly and stuff like that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's great that you did that.

PASSA: And then when we were going out, I, like, was holding her hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: All right, with us now, CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller.

John, obviously, the investigation continues. They continue to pore through these writings. So much to read and see. What's the latest you think on what's being learned? What stands out?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, a couple of things.

One, the volume of material. This is something we've seen before, by the way. You know, if you take a look at the -- the Nashville covenant school shooting, also at a religious school, also by a former student, the similarities here are highly aligned. It's -- it's entirely likely that -- that this offender studied that shooter extensively.

But what we're learning now, from all of this writing, is only part of the picture because it is literally what the shooter wanted us to learn, wanted us to find, wanted us to read. What they're doing now with these subpoenas into the computers, into the phones, interviews with friends and associates, attempts to interview family members, like his mother, is to go through, what are the layers behind the screen he created? Because a lot of this active shooter culture is about rewriting your life story. They're looking for the hidden parts now, because there's going to be a lot more to learn about the background. Did he give hints? Did he do more than that? Did he tell people? Did he have any help? They'll go through all of that.

BERMAN: That's such a good point, because the shooter shouldn't get to be the ones who write the history here. It's so important. It's another reason why you have to investigate so hard, even though it's, quote/unquote, all over, to make sure that the reality is known, and not just the history that they want people to see.

I did read this morning, and I think it was probably known before, the church doors were locked. Maybe meaning the shooter could not get in. So different than Uvalde there. But -- but what does that tell you? And also, you know, what are the challenges that are unique to religious institutions?

MILLER: Well, religious institutions, and this is a giant underlining for this conundrum, face this challenge. They live and operate on the principle of, we are open to all. It's a guiding principle.

I remember, you might also, in the days where churches were open 24 hours a day --

BERMAN: Sure.

MILLER: Because even if the priest wasn't there, you could still go in, you know, at midnight or 1:00 in the morning and pray and leave. Because of theft and vandalism, all that's changed. But in the post active shooter world, what you see is much different security. So, that church would have been open, except once the mass started and the children were inside, they went to their regular security procedures, which is, they lock the outside doors, and people could be let in through the front doors, but the side doors were -- were shut down.

That leads to the theory that the shooter had been in the church. He'd been there to visit. He'd done his walk through. This was part of -- of the reconnaissance that the shooter conducted, which is likely where that detailed diagram, the hand drawn one, that she created, came from. So investigators theorize that when the shooter got there and found the doors locked, after blocking the exit doors for people who might try to flee, that she had to improvise by shooting through the narrow church windows and shooting in the blind, not able to see the targets, but spraying through the windows, hoping to hit, and hitting, as many people as she could from that angle.

[09:05:16]

But think about it. Had the plan gone as the shooter likely planned it, we would be talking about something that is already unspeakably terrible, being actually much worse.

BERMAN: Again, it shows you what locked doors can do. And the reason why so many institutions take protocols now.

John Miller, thanks so much for being with us.

MILLER: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Erica.

HILL: There are new questions this morning about just who is in charge at the CDC and what this means for your health. This follows an exodus of key leaders at the agency. Current and former CDC employees outside the headquarters there in Atlanta cheering and saluting a number of those officials who had resigned as they walked out on Thursday afternoon. The officials had quit in protest after the CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez, was fired. Sources say she was repeatedly clashing with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his vaccine policy and the demand that she fire some agency leaders. A number of those who resigned in protest also speaking out yesterday about why they are choosing to step down.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's get the politics out of public health. Let's get back to the objectivity and let the science lead us, because that's how we get to the best decisions for public health.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Amy Maxmen is a public health correspondent for KFF Health News.

Amy, it's good to have you with us.

So, what we heard, some of the accusations from those officials in their resignation letters, also -- and these are people with decades of experience -- they talked about the current administration, the leadership at HHS. And one of the things that they pointed to is that there is a focus, not on the science and the facts, but more on the politics and the concern. Is that what you have found in your reporting?

AMY MAXMEN, PUBLIC HEALTH CORRESPONDENT, KFF HEALTH NEWS: Yes. And this frustration has been building up for months. So, you know, we had recently where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced the vaccine experts on the advisory committee with people, including those who have said, you know, false anti-vaccine sort of statements. That's one of the things.

But I found in my reporting that this has taken place, you know, really since Donald Trump took office. If you go back to February, in the kind of first weeks, the first month of his presidency, and when RFK Jr. assumed his role as health secretary, the administration was asking the CDC to pull down data from websites, it was halting scientific reports on the bird flu, on influenza amid kind of outbreaks of both of those, and dozens of staff were being laid off, even in February. And what I found, you know, I was really looking into this measles outbreak. And what I found is, that affects their operations. If you think about it, the CDC is really most critically an emergency response organization. And that can be a cluster of cancer cases or a measles outbreak or a Covid outbreak or a salmonella outbreak. You can't just put them on ice and sort of have a lot of subtle, scientific -- subtle sort of political meddling, which has been happening, go on in the background. It will have an effect.

HILL: Right. It's a machine that is working constantly, right, to be ready to prepare, also to brief, to let people know where things stand when it comes to different outbreaks and diseases. And I was struck, one of the people who resigned, telling my colleague, Kaitlan Collins, that they were no longer giving briefings when it comes to things like Covid and measles. Just put it in perspective for us, why are those briefings from CDC officials not only, a, so important, but typically how frequent, how common are they?

MAXMEN: Yes. When you have an outbreak, especially, you know, we had this biggest outbreak in 30 years in Texas of measles, those briefings to journalists and also the CDC is supposed to be briefing Congress and especially the health secretary about their job is to respond to emergencies and really paint a picture of what's happening right now in the United States with health. And in one of the resignation letters, one of the top CDC officials said they still hadn't, in seven months, been asked to brief the health secretary. Which is really astounding.

And what I really looked at was, you know, what does this look like on the ground? And so, I was interested in this big measles outbreak that took place in Texas. And so, the CDC wasn't giving any press briefings, but also, on the ground, I obtained hundreds of emails from the local health department in west Texas. And you see them, the local health officials, sounding the alarm, saying, this is probably much larger than we know. It's going to be very hard to control because of higher rates of children not being vaccinated. And over and over again in the emails she's asking to speak with CDC scientists. And the CDC scientists weren't able to contact her directly for an entire month. During that month, a child died of measles. [09:10:05]

HILL: When you say, and I know so much of your reporting -- I know you actually filed a FOIA request, a Freedom of Information request, to get access to some of this. So, when you're saying they weren't speaking to local officials, had they -- had they actually been told they were not allowed to speak with those officials, were not allowed to help them?

MAXMEN: So, it's hard to tell. So, for that part of the reporting, I was able to reach several scientists within the CDC. And I wasn't able to use their names because I agreed not to because they fear retaliation for speaking out. But what they told me is they were essentially -- they were essentially muzzled. They weren't given a green light from HHS to speak as they normally would, just be able to speak with health officials on the ground who are asking questions amid this urgent outbreak. And there was a lot of chaos. This is in February. There was, like I mentioned, you know, the data being pulled down. Lots of firings. There was no director at that time. So, when you don't have directors, as we might see now, people don't know who to turn to, to ask for permission to speak. And so, they were afraid to speak out.

And at the same time, we had Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was saying parents can get vaccinated or parents can have their children vaccinated, but he was also saying, a lot of misinformation about vaccines. He was saying vaccines -- measles vaccines have fetus debris in them. They don't have fetus debris in the vaccines. He was saying measles vaccines cause all the same problems as measles, like encephalitis. Measles vaccines don't cause encephalitis. So, he's giving this -- these reasons to be afraid of vaccines that weren't true. And he was suggesting that vitamin a is a treatment that staves off all of measles worst outcomes. That might be true in places in sub-Saharan African countries where malnutrition is really high, but it hasn't been shown to be very effective in the U.S. because vitamin a deficiency is very, very rare. And so the CDC scientists I spoke with said, they were having to walk this really fine line between trying to protect the public's health and also not contradict, you know, the high up bosses.

HILL: Yes. It is -- it is really something. And it is such important reporting. Thank you for that reporting and also for this critical context, Amy. Appreciate it.

John.

BERMAN: All right, very shortly, a hearing in Washington on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook's lawsuit to block the Trump administration's efforts to fire her. President Trump said that he was dismissing Cook over an allegation that she committed mortgage fraud. A new criminal referral made by President Trump's housing director alleges that Cook identified a property in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a second home on official documents, but instead used it as an investment property. Cook has not been charged with anything, and says the move to fire her is illegal. New this morning, Americans who love to shop online for cheap goods

from overseas could be seeing higher prices. The Trump administration has eliminated a decades old waiver on tariffs from imported packages valued at less than $800. The so-called de minimis exemption made shopping at places like Temu and Shein a bargain. But that waiver has now expired, and President Trump says it is gone for good. This means shoppers and small businesses who order from other countries will now pay more for products. Dozens of countries have suspended U.S. bound parcel deliveries because of confusion over the change.

All right, a rare bright spot for Democrats in a state where they've not been winning lately. Can the win provide a roadmap for Democrats ahead of the midterms?

And the official end of summer is here. Actually, it's not the official end of summer. The official end of summer is September 20th. So, the unofficial end of summer is here. And if you're traveling, it will be packed as millions of Americans get ready to enjoy the long holiday weekend. What you should and should not do as you get ready to hit the roads.

And the Kennedy Center's iconic rainbow medals have been made by the same Washington, D.C. family for 47 years, until now. How the Kennedy Center will be going in a different direction this year.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:15]

BERMAN: Congress returns to work next week as first Republicans tried to redraw or are redrawing congressional lines in several states. Now, Democrats, trying to do the same.

Just moments ago I asked House Speaker Mike Johnson about it all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): I'm not involved in it. The Speaker of the House has no control over some national redistricting strategy. It's the resolve and the decision of the individual states. But I will say there's a big difference between what happened in Texas and California.

Gavin Newsom's gambit, which is what it is, is going to disenfranchise millions of California voters because they all supported their redistricting commission, the Citizens Redistricting Commission. He has to traverse and trample upon or shred his state constitution to do this. There is --

BERMAN: Well, they get to vote on it. They're going to vote on it.

JOHNSON: They're -- they are. But the way he set that up, the way he's going about it --

BERMAN: It's not disenfranchising if they can vote on it. JOHNSON: Well, it is because, listen, 43 percent of the electorate in

California is Republican, 14 percent of their delegation to Congress is Republican. They've already disenfranchised people. They've already gerrymandered. And it's interesting to me that Democrats who have been playing politics with redistricting for decades are now trying to lecture the red states or Republicans who are simply following state and federal law. That's what they did in Texas. There's a big difference between what's happening in those states.

BERMAN: You cited the Republicans in California. You know, in Wisconsin, every year it's 50-50 for presidential elections. Two out of eight representatives are Democrats, so 25 percent. In Utah, 37 percent. About the same that voters will --

JOHNSON: You want to go state for state because the blue states have eliminated entirely Republican representatives --

BERMAN: Well, so I'm saying -- but -- but that's what I'm saying, where does it stop? I'm asking -- I think it's ridiculous. I want to know where it stops.

JOHNSON: Well, I don't know. I mean, I -- I -- I have a limited scope of authority over these things, and I don't -- I don't control the governors. If I could get them all on a conference call, I'd say, resolve it, gentlemen and ladies, but they don't. And so, we'll see where it goes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: What I told him, if only the speaker of the House was a position of power in the United States.

[09:20:01]

All right, this morning a Democratic victory in Iowa is giving that party a glimpse of hope, maybe a rare glimpse of hope, as the country moves toward the midterms. Democrat Catelin Drey won the Iowa Senate one special election, breaking the Republican supermajority in Iowa. Drey won the seat by 10 points and it's notable because Donald Trump won the same district by 11 points in November.

With us now is state senator-elect Catelin Drey. Senator-elect, congratulations. Thank you for being with us. How'd you do it?

CATELIN DREY (D-IA) STATE SENATOR-ELECT: Thank you for having me. Well, we spent a lot of time talking to voters. We ran a really aggressive ground game. We knocked on over 17,000 doors. We made almost 30,000 phone calls and we took a message that resonates with Senate District 1, that everyone in this district should have an opportunity to have a good life that they can afford and that's everything from housing to health care to child care and those issues resonate with voters.

BERMAN: I want to come back to affordability in just a second there, but what is it you think, you know, Democrats had a rough go of it in 2024 and there's been some gloom and doom there. What is it that you think that Democrats had been doing wrong?

DREY: Well, I can't speak for all Democrats, but I can speak for myself and truly I think that reaching people where they are is what will make the difference. I wanted to prioritize online communication. Folks get their information in different ways now and so again, reaching people where they are via social media.

We prioritize Spanish language communication. We had, you know, get out the vote messaging in Spanish. The full website was available in Spanish. That was really important to me.

I studied Spanish in college and have lost some of those language skills, but I'm dangerous enough on the doors to -- to have a conversation and say, you know, how can I help you in English and in Spanish? And truly, I think we have to get back to policies and messaging that resonate with the working class.

BERMAN: So, affordability is one you brought up. I just was speaking with House Speaker Mike Johnson. I understand you're in a state Senate seat, not running for federal office there. But the speaker told me from what he's been hearing, he thinks that the huge legislation with the president was calling the big, beautiful bill, he thinks is wildly popular, even though the polls show it's the least popular piece of big legislation since 1990. What did you hear when you were knocking on all those doors?

DREY: I heard frustration. Overwhelmingly, people in my area are concerned about their Social Security benefits. They're concerned about what happens even if they're not utilizing Medicaid.

What happens when Medicaid is defunded to our rural and -- and semi- rural hospitals like the ones in my area? We have the only major medical center for 90 miles in any direction. And when you're -- when those funds go away, that affects everyone in the community, whether or not they're utilizing, you know, government programs for -- for health insurance. And that frustration is deep. And that frustration cuts very clearly across political lines.

BERMAN: What about crime? And I don't know. I don't know your district well enough to know what the situation is with crime there. But again, at the national level is something that the president is now very focused on. Republicans want to shift the focus, maybe even from tariffs, inflation, the economy to crime. So, how do you think Democrats should handle that?

DREY: I think that's a distraction, and we have to continue having the conversation about the -- the policies that affect people's everyday lives. Yes, we can certainly be diligent with our law enforcement officers and making sure that we're keeping our community safe. But if we're talking about crime and violence, we have to look at what is happening with gun violence in our country.

We saw just this week, Minneapolis, another devastating event at a school. And so, talking about crime in the way that that Republicans are doing that at the national level right now dismisses what is actually happening. BERMAN: State Senator-Elect Catelin Drey. I got a feeling you're going to be getting a lot of phone calls from Democrats running around the country. They're going to be asking the same first question I did. How do you do it? How do you do it? So, get ready to talk on the phone quite a bit. Thanks for being with us.

If you're heading out for the long holiday weekend, you're in luck, gas prices have not been this low in years. We'll tell you where it is and where it's going.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:29:19]

HILL: In the wake of the Minnesota school shooting this week, Vice President J.D. Vance says the Trump administration will focus on mental health.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We really do have, I think, a mental health crisis in the United States of America. We take way more psychiatric medication than any other nation on earth. And I think it's time for us to start asking some very hard questions about the root causes of this violence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Those comments coming hours after HHS Secretary RFK Jr. said this about selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI, and other medications which are used to treat mental health issues.

[09:29:57]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: At NIH, we're launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of.