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CNN Projects Republican Matt Van Epps Will Win Tennessee Special Election; White House and Hegseth Shift Responsibility for Double-Tap Strike; DHS Launches Immigration Crackdown Operation in New Orleans. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired December 03, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And searching his bags for roughly 20 minutes without giving a Miranda warning.

[08:30:05]

Mangione's defense team argues this violates his constitutional rights. It's all part of a pretrial hearing, as prosecutors and Mangione's defense team spar over which evidence can be used in his upcoming murder trial.

The 27-year-old is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York. Court will resume tomorrow.

All right, new this morning, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is now banned for life from the American Economic Association over his ties to the late convicted Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein, the prestigious economic group said it accepted Summer's voluntary resignation and prohibited him attending, speaking, or otherwise participating in any of its sponsored events or activities.

Summers has stepped away from teaching at Harvard while the university investigates his relationship with Epstein after emails between the two men surfaced. He also resigned from the board of OpenAI. John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Overnight, there was a special election for an open House seat in the state of Tennessee, and the Republican candidate won, and a win is a win, right? Well, still, Democrats seem to be smiling this morning. Why? Because the margin of defeat was much slimmer than Republicans have been doing in that district.

With us now, CNN Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten. Let's talk about the numbers.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA REPORTER: Let's talk about the numbers. Republicans should be running for the hills this morning because the blue wave is building, my dear friend, Mr. Berman. What are we talking about here? Well, Van Epps, Matt Van Epps, the Republican candidate, he won it by 9, but this is a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points, 15 points, 17 points. This is a 13-point gain for the Democrats in terms of the margin. And excuse time for Republicans is over because I hear all about these special elections, all the turnout's so low, it's not representative of what happened in the midterm election. The turnout last night in Tennessee's seventh district was equal to the turnout in the 2022 midterm election. So, the blue wave, it seems to be building right out of center of Tennessee.

BERMAN: Interesting. So, in terms of the numbers, the turnout looked like a regular midterm election, not a special election.

ENTEN: Exactly right, exactly right. And, of course, we have a midterm, what, about 11 months from now?

BERMAN: All right. What have we seen in terms of trends in all the special elections the last year?

ENTEN: Okay. You know, I wouldn't necessarily give a who to hollering about one special election in Tennessee. I love the people in Central Tennessee, but Central Tennessee is nothing special compared to the rest of the country. But what we see happening is, take a look here, okay, 2025 U.S. House special elections, Dems outrunning Kamala Harris. A lot of blue here, a lot of blue, which is what I think the nation might look like a year from now if these results hold. Arizona, 7, you see a 17 over outperformance of Kamala Harris, 23 points in Florida 1, 16 points in Florida 6, 13 points in Tennessee 7, 28 points in Texas 28, and then 17 points in Virginia 11.

So, we've seen it throughout the nation, whether you go from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., all the way to Southwest, to the Southwest in Arizona, whether you're looking at Texas, whether you're looking at Tennessee, whether you go down to Florida, we have seen the Democratic outperformance of Kamala Harris happening across the political map. What happened last night in Tennessee ain't just staying in Tennessee. It is spreading itself throughout the nation. As I said to me, looking at these results, it looks like a blue wave is building.

BERMAN: And it's not just that it's blue, it's that it's double digit blue in this cases.

ENTEN: It is double, exactly right. It's double digit blue. I will note, I looked at the stats, if in fact you had a 13-point shift like we saw in Tennessee and you apply that to the 2024 presidential map, we are talking about a gain for Democrats of north of 40 seats.

BERMAN: All right. In terms of the history, what does this mean as we project forward?

ENTEN: Okay. You know, so we're looking at these special elections, you know, we're sort of applying these hypothetical numbers, right, in terms of, oh, Democrats would gain north to 40 seats if, you know, you moved everything over, you know, 13 points from the 2024 presidential result. But we actually have history to show that what happens in special elections doesn't just stay in special elections. It spills over to the midterm results, special elections and midterm results. I just keep going to this. When a party outperformed in special elections since 2005, five out of five times, they went on to win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

What happened last night in Tennessee is a very, very bad omen for Republicans and a very, very good omen for Democrats.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Joining us right now to discuss this and much more is Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. She sits on House Armed Services and the Intelligence Committee. It's good to see you.

[08:30:00]

So, everyone has a takeaway from last night's special election. How much are you reading into this election result looking ahead to next year?

REP. CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA): I think your commentary is spot on. The fact that in Tennessee, a place that has been significantly gerrymandered to benefit the Republicans, you saw such an enormous swing with such a good turnout is a good indicator of what will happen in the next election cycle. And I think that's because Democrats are speaking to the American people about the things that matter, things like affordability, which is a really important word, and also things like accountability, which is something that we probably will be talking about later as well.

BOLDUAN: Both of those things actually we will get to. Let's talk about one of the things that has now just popped up about the video that you and other Democrats released saying that troops should not obey any illegal orders. The White House has accused you of sedition for saying that.

There is now video that CNN has found of the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, saying the very same before he was defense secretary, but back in 2016. Let me play this for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That's why the military said it won't follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There's a standard, there's an ethos. There's a belief that we are above what so many things that our enemies or others would do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Congresswoman, especially in light of what you all have faced, what do you think of that? HOULAHAN: Well, Secretary Hegseth has yet again proved my point. We all have a set of standards that we adhere to and that we're weaned on as men and women in the military and in the intelligence services, and we understand what those standards and what that ethical code is. He understands it clearly.

But he also has been rather schizophrenic, if I have to say, about how he sees this. He has, on the one hand, said what you just said about our code of conduct, but he has also been incredibly dismissive of the JAG and the people who are helping us to understand and interpret those laws and those obligations.

And so he is a huge liability and has been a liability since the moment that he was confirmed with a tie vote that was broken by the vice president. And this is what I think is helpful in this building right now, is that finally, finally the Republican Party, the majority has discovered that as well.

BOLDUAN: Are you happy with what you've seen so far? And do you, in terms of the Republican chair of, well, both of the committees you serve on, that they are seeking information about the -- when you're talking about the double-tap, are you comfortable and satisfied with what you're hearing from the chairman?

HOULAHAN: I am grateful. I very much respect the chairman and the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee and I'm grateful that they apparently will be having a conversation with Admiral Bradley at some point. I'm disappointed that it's not enough, in my opinion. I'd like to see the full committee have that information and I'd like to make sure that we are asking for the appropriate back information, whether it's videos or audio or any other sort of accompanying information. We demand that. We need that. It's part of our constitutional obligation to oversee this kind of a very concerning offense, if it's true, of the double-tap that we're all talking about.

BOLDUAN: Speaking of Armed Services, the Pentagon I.G., inspector general, investigation into Pete Hegseth's use of the messaging app, Signal, is done. CNN is told the classified findings have been delivered to your committee for review, and the declassified version is set to be released tomorrow to the public. What can you tell us about it?

HOULAHAN: I also have heard that they've been delivered. I also have been told that I will have a time and date that certain that we are able to go ahead and review both the classified and unclassified version. But, again, this is the drip, drip, drip of the liability of Secretary Hegseth. At what point will the president recognize that he has to remove Secretary Hegseth from responsibility? He is harming the good order and discipline of the people in the military, he is harming the safety and national security of America, and he's harming the safety and security of the world.

BOLDUAN: So, you yourself have not seen that declassified report yet -- that classified report yet?

HOULAHAN: No. It has just been delivered to the Armed Services and Intel Committee.

BOLDUAN: Okay, good to know.

You talked about it -- you mentioned affordability. I did want to ask you about this. The president took a new approach yesterday in talking about the issue of affordability. Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: There's this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about, affordability. They just say the word. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. They just say it, affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything. The word, affordability, is a con job by the Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Congresswoman, are you going to be using that in your reelection campaign?

HOULAHAN: I will absolutely be using the word, affordability, talking about affordability and talking about that this tried and tired play of the president to sort of twist and turn the narrative to his benefit is just -- it's just standard business as usual for him.

[08:40:14]

The fact that we need to talk about affordability is because he has been in charge of this government now for nearly a year and nothing has changed. If anything has changed, the prices have gone up. I just paid an enormous amount of money for the turkeys that I needed in Thanksgiving, and even his narrative about Thanksgiving is untrue.

So, I think this is absolutely something that the Democrats and the Republicans frankly should be talking about. It's what we do for the American people.

BOLDUAN: Congresswoman Christy Houlahan, thank you for coming on. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. New this morning, it's been 54 days since the ceasefire went into effect in Gaza. And since that time, the Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 350 Palestinians have been killed, including two young boys who were killed by an Israeli drone strike. Their family says it happened while they were gathering firewood.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is in Jerusalem for us. Jeremy, what are you learning about this particular strike and what happened there?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, this took place over the weekend, but, unfortunately, it is not an isolated incident. We have seen dozens of incidents in which Palestinians who crossed that invisible, in many cases, yellow line inside of Gaza have been fired upon by the Israeli military. In this case, it was an eight-year-old boy named Fadi (ph), his ten-year-old brother named Jama (ph), who were out seeking to gather firewood for their family when an Israeli drone strike struck them where they were and killed them on the spot.

Their father was actually wheelchair-bound. That's why he wasn't able to go himself. His legs had actually been broken by Hamas militants, he said, after he joined desperate crowds getting aid from trucks inside the Gaza Strip. And for that reason, these two young boys went out to help their family survive and go out to get this firewood.

And, you know, not long after they went out to get this firewood near that yellow line, their father heard an airstrike come in. He was then told that children had been killed in the strike, and it was only soon thereafter that he learned that those two children who were killed were, in fact, his sons.

He said that he was only able to really identify one of his sons due to the gruesome nature of the impact of that drone strike that effectively blew one of his children's heads off. He described seeing his children as a horrific site and he and his family are, of course, just the latest to mourn family members in Gaza.

Throughout the course of this ceasefire, more than 350 people have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. We have seen 33 incidents according to the IDF of individuals who've been fired upon after crossing that yellow line. In this particular incident, the Israeli military described these two children as suspects, saying that they were conducting suspicious activities on the ground and that they posed a threat to troops. Very hard to see how an eight and a ten-year-old boy could pose such a threat to Israeli troops on the ground. Sara?

SIDNER: Yes, horrifying what that family is going through. Jeremy Diamond, thank you so much for your good reporting there from Jerusalem. I do appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Breaking just moments ago, there's new data out showing that hiring dropped off significantly in the private sector last month.

CNN's Matt Egan has the data just in. He's here with us now. What are you learning about this? Tell us.

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, Kate. This was an ugly report, right? This is really our first look at the November job market, and it is not looking good at all. So, ADP says that the U.S private sector lost 32,000 jobs in November.

Now, not only is that much worse than the forecast, which was for a gain of 40,000, this is the biggest monthly job loss in the ADP report in two and a half years. You got to go back to March of 2023.

Now, when you look at the trend here, the good news, I guess, is that October was revised higher, but only slightly. What we do see is that, according to ADP, private payrolls, they fell in June, they fell in August, they fell in September and now November. So, that means the private sector has actually shed jobs in four out of the last six months. Obviously, that's never a good sign.

Now, when we look at the sectors, it's not all bad news, right? Some sectors, including healthcare, which has been a major source of demand for workers, continue to add workers, right, another 33,000 last month, leisure and hospitality also gaining some jobs as well. However, other parts of the service sector, including finance and information, lost jobs, significant amount of jobs, and then goods producing lost jobs as well, 9,000 jobs shed in construction.

[08:45:01]

They've been hit by tariffs and immigration.

BOLDUAN: I mean, this is the exact opposite direction, when you're talking about the whole goal of the trade war.

EGAN: Yes. And this continues a trend that we've seen, right? Manufacturing has lost jobs, according to the official government reports month after month after month, which, to your point, is the exact opposite of those tariffs.

One last point here, look, normally, investors put less weight on this ADP report because it kind of has a mixed track record at predicting those more important official government reports, but we're not getting that because of the government shutdown, right? We're not getting the complete October jobs report at all. We're not getting the November report until after the Fed meets next week. So, this is really all Fed officials have to go by.

And we know Fed officials have been divided, but I got to say, if you were on the fence about cutting interest rates, this report was weak enough where it's probably going to make more Fed officials be in favor of cutting interest rates because it's just not painting a very nice picture at all.

BOLDUAN: Also it's just like not a clear picture, right, I mean, just in general, but not a good one.

EGAN: Right.

BOLDUAN: What we do see.

It's great to see. Thank you so much.

EGAN: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Sara?

SIDNER: All right. He's the goat of Christmas. Take a look at this guy, a little bit more on exactly what he's doing to raise money for those who need it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:50:00] BERMAN: Breaking this morning, the Department of Homeland Security revealed it has now launched a new immigration crackdown in New Orleans. Federal authorities previously said they aim to arrest up to 5,000 people there.

With us now is Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs. Tricia, great to see you this morning.

What are the contours of this operation in New Orleans, what will it look like?

TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, DHS: John, thank you so much for having me. So, kind of a little crunch, which we are launching today down in New Orleans, we're, first and foremost, really focusing on those worst of the worst criminals, those criminals who have previously been locked up by local authorities. But then because New Orleans functions as a sanctuary city, those individuals were not released to ICE. They were instead released back onto New Orleans streets. So, we're talking about child pedophiles who are on our list of targets, burglars, gang members, rapists, those individuals we are highly targeting and we will continue, whether it be 5,000 arrests or beyond.

BERMAN: So, the president yesterday spoke extensively about his feelings about security and immigration and asylum in different parts of the country. He said he does not want people from Somalia here. He called them garbage. The Wall Street Journal estimates there are some 40,000 people from Somalia, born in Somalia, living in Minnesota right now. How many of them, how many of the 40,000 people born in Somalia living in Minnesota do you consider to be garbage?

MCLAUGHLIN: John, we're really looking at the data, the analysis here, particularly out of Minneapolis and other parts of the country where we're seeing Somalia. There's widespread fraud, particularly marriage fraud when it comes to immigration. We're looking at criminality here. Homeland Security has very reliable data here and analysis that we can go after these individuals and make sure that they're not at public charge on our communities, and they're also not a public threat to the American people.

BERMAN: My question is all of them? The president says he doesn't want them here. He called them garbage. Do you consider that to be all of the 40,000 people born in Somalia now living in Minnesota?

MCLAUGHLIN: John, this is not about politics. This is about public safety. We saw what just happened last week with the terrorist attack against us here in our nation's capital, where one of our great heroes, Sarah Beckstrom, was killed. That's what the precipice of this was. That's why we have to give back to base camp and make sure we are prioritizing the American people's safety.

It cannot be overstated the position the Biden administration put us in when it came to vetting, letting some of these individuals under these parole programs where there was little to no vetting, no biometric data, no criminal background history, no cyber, no financial crime history. They were really relying on people to vouch for these individuals and say they should be in the country.

When it comes to asylum claims as well, they were not interviewing these people on a yearly basis as expected by USCIS. That's why these people can -- Go ahead, John.

BERMAN: I'm so sorry. The individual who came to the United States suspected of killing so tragically that National Guard member came to the United States during the Biden administration, was granted asylum in April during the Trump administration. What reviews have you done? What have you found about how asylum was granted in April by the Trump administration?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, we certainly inherited a 1.5 million docket of asylum applications, which is absolutely absurd. We were seeing that the Biden administration was not doing a yearly check-in with these individuals. They were not screening for social media --

BERMAN: But in April --

MCLAUGHLIN: -- as they should have been.

BERMAN: In April. I'm asking what you guys did.

MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, and so we went back. We had to review what the Biden administration's package was for this asylum claim. Like we said before, this individual came in under the Biden administration. These individuals should be coming in as refugees, not as asylees, which is a totally different process. It's actually a bastardization of the process because you are letting these individuals in by parole instead of as refugees where there is a cap on those individuals, John.

BERMAN: Finally, the president pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been sentenced to 45 years for conspiracy to traffic cocaine. The judge who sentenced in that case, Judge Kevin Castel said of President Hernandez, he knew and understood the violence that accompanies drug trafficking and in facilitating trafficking, he knowingly facilitated the violence.

[08:55:00]

Now, Homeland Security oversees obviously the border, drugs flow over the border. I'm wondering what message does it send to would-be drug traffickers trying to cross the border when they see a pardon of someone who is convicted of such serious crimes?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, John, fortunately, for the American people, crossings of fentanyl and trafficking of fentanyl is down 54 percent. The cartels are getting starved of these profits, and so they're trying to go through our maritime borders where we're seeing 80 percent of drug trafficking is happening because our borders are secure. Then we're seeing, of course, these strikes from the Department of War that's further preventing those trafficking from coming into our country.

So, it's very clear the message President Trump and Secretary Noem are telling their cartels and telling these drug traffickers is, you're not welcome in the United States of America. We're done with it and you will be held to the highest standard of the law. You will not be bringing your drugs, your deadly drugs into our communities.

BERMAN: I will say there are those, including Republicans who question whether former President Hernandez was held to the highest standard of the law by being pardoned, but thank you for being with us.

Tricia McLaughlin, thank you so much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: On our radar this morning, as authorities in Florida put it, how many deputies does it take to evict a 14-foot gator? The answer appears to be seven, yes, seven deputies. They're talking about a 600- pound alligator that had made its way to a neighborhood in Sarasota, Florida, before being wrangled by this whole team. At one point, the gator was even photographed posting up on someone's front doorstep.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get on a leg. Get on a leg. Everybody get on a leg. Get on a leg. Everybody -- I need -- Sarge, I need someone on that leg right there. No. Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: I mean, that thing is enormous. The alligator was eventually lifted into a truck and released to an alligator farm.

A daring rescue is caught on camera in snowy West Virginia. First responders utilizing ropes and a whole system, just look at that, while it's still snowing, as you can see, to reach the driver of a tractor trailer that was left dangling off a bridge after a crash. Look at the semi. Look at the cab of that truck. The driver was actually hanging there for about five hours before being pulled to safety.

Fire officials say the driver refused medical treatment, but thankfully got out of that cab safely. Sara?

SIDNER: Terrifying.

All right, new this morning, the A.I. boom is influencing campuses in many ways. The latest is not worried about the use of A.I. by students but it's that students can now get a degree in artificial intelligence. A new program, for example, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, is called Artificial Intelligence and Decision-Making. The degree is soaring in popularity. And they're not alone.

Joining me now, Samuel Madden, he is a distinguished professor at MIT's College of Computing. Thank you so much for being here.

Everyone is talking about A.I. almost all the time, both the good, bad, and ugly of it. Why does A.I. deserve to be its own field of study and having its own degree versus just having a computer science degree, for example?

SAMUEL MADDEN, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, MIT COLLEGE OF COMPUTING: Hi, Sara. It's great to be here. Yes, I think A.I. as a degree, I mean, it's a little bit not surprising the students are very excited about this. I would say, it's this -- everybody here, everybody talking about artificial intelligence all the time. You see that some of these eye-popping numbers about the job offers that people are getting.

And I think we created this degree because we felt that there were -- while A.I. has some overlap with computing and computer science, students who study A.I. still learn how to program, they still take math classes, we recognize that there were a set of skills that were required to use A.I. effectively that were a little bit different from computing.

So, we teach students, for example, how to work with really big datasets, how to in build these predictive models on top of them that can do analysis with the data and then also how to sort of treat these A.I. models responsibly. Think about the societal impacts of the work that they do. So, we felt that it was important to create this sort of separate major from computer science.

SIDNER: Yes, it's really interesting and, of course, students are interested and a lot of people are because it is a new tool that is being used all over the place. And I guess the question it begs is there's been a lot of talk about the fact that A.I. is going to replace jobs. What would the students be learning about things like ethics when it comes to this? Will that be a part of what they are learning as they look at how A.I. is impacting the country?

MADDEN: Absolutely. So, one of the things that we've created as a part of this A.I., this initiative, is a new -- as a part of this degree, is a new initiative called the Social and Ethical Responsibilities in Computing, and the idea is to infuse ideas around ethics into our curriculum and our courses.

[09:00:09]

So, everybody who majors in this new A.I. major has to take -- has to fulfill a social and ethical responsibilities requirement, a SERR requirement, as we call it. And there's a list of classes that they can take to do that and these include things about the broader impact of A.I., like, for example, how A.I. might be being used in law or real estate or medicine, and what are the sort of ethical concerns around using it in places like that. And, these classes tend to be very discussion-focused, very -- you know, having students think critically about the use of A.I. in these settings.

SIDNER: It is fascinating. Do you think A.I. is basically just going to become part of the way that everyone learns and everyone teaches at some point? There are discussions about whether or not it should be used by students as they're trying to learn some of these things. Of course, they would be using it in this particular course.

MADDEN: Sure. I mean, I think, in some sense, the cat is out of the bag in terms of people using A.I. in their studies. You see these results of the surveys about the number of high school and college students who routinely use these chat agents for their work, you know? And so I think we're going to have to evolve the way that we teach and practice education in order to infuse A.I. and teach students how to use A.I. responsibly.

I think also, you know, one of the things that you see a lot of people asking is, well, why -- you know, if A.I. can write fluently or if A.I. can program fluently, why are we bothering to teach students these things? And I think from the point of view of MIT, we feel like it's really important to teach people skills, like, for example, how to be a good writer. Because being a good writer is how you learn to think critically, how you learn to formulate arguments. And so if we outsource that to A.I., we feel like that's really problematic.

And so we're really working hard to create courses and curriculum that, you know, teach -- still teach students these skills that we feel are essential.

SIDNER: Critical thinking, all important.

Samuel Madden, thank you so much for walking us through that. I appreciate it.

A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.