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Interview with Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA): U.S. Launches Deadly Strikes on ISIS Terrorists in Nigeria; Major Winter Storm to Bring Snow, Ice to Midwest and Northeast; Border Patrol Expands Training, Recruiting Under Trump. Aired 8-8:30a ET
Aired December 26, 2025 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:00]
VALERIA LEON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Putting the dogs first, Valeria Leon, CNN, Mexico City.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we begin with breaking news. The U.S. military carrying out, quote, powerful and deadly strikes against ISIS militants in Nigeria, why President Trump says he ordered the action.
Plus, relentless rain drenching California, causing mudslides, flooding, evacuations. We're watching the forecast and the impact on your after Christmas travel plans.
And slow down, Santa. How old Saint Nick almost landed himself on the naughty list.
John Berman is out today. I'm Sara Seider with Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get to the breaking news. We're standing by to learn more from the Pentagon about the deadly strike operation that President Trump ordered on Islamic State terrorists in Nigeria. That was released from the Department of Defense yesterday.
The U.S. military reports that multiple ISIS terrorists were killed in the attack, which the president first announced on social media. This comes after President Trump has warned for months that the United States could take action in the African nation, claiming that ISIS had been targeting Christians in the region. Here's what the president said just last month.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you envisage U.S. boots on the ground?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Maybe, could be. I mean, at lot of things I envisage for a lot of things. There killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria. They're killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We're not going to allow that to happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: And now the president and announcing these this strike operation writes this. "In part, I have previously warned these terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay. And tonight there was."
Nigeria confirms the two countries coordinated on the strikes. But one top Nigerian official is actually disputing somewhat how President Trump is characterizing this operation and the pretense for it, telling The Washington Post that the government, quote, "... considers the repeated emphasis on Christian killings as needless because firstly, terrorists don't target any particular religion. And secondly, the rhetoric will only feed into the desire of the terrorists to further create a broader crisis."
Joining me right now is Democratic Congresswoman Madeline Dean of Pennsylvania. She sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Thanks for coming in, Congresswoman. I appreciate your time. What is your reaction, first and foremost, to these strikes taking place on Christmas?
REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA), FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Well, good morning, Kate, and Merry Christmas to you and happy holidays. We just came from celebrating a beautiful Christmas with our children. So I'm waking up to the reporting that you are sharing right now, strikes, Christmastime strikes in Nigeria by the United States.
As you said, it seems to be in some coordination with the government. But the predicate for these strikes has not been established. So we have not been briefed on it yet.
I do sit on foreign affairs and appropriations, and I just -- I'm concerned about the president making strikes without consulting with Congress and just claiming this is ISIS terrorism. Also, the issue of whether or not it is singularly the killing of Christians is disputed. So again, without the facts, the United States has made these attacks and without briefing of Congress.
BOLDUAN: That's what I was actually going to ask you, because the foreign minister of Nigeria was on this morning and said that this is coordinated and it was collaborative and cooperative between the United States and Nigeria. But he did say when asked that this is not about religion, he said this is not a Christian or Muslim problem. It's a regional terrorism problem.
What do you do with that disconnect? And what does Congress -- what do you think in a traditional sense, even though there has been kind of a trend of less briefing of Congress rather than more, what should the Congress learn of this?
DEAN: Well, traditionally, we would have been told in advance and we would have been basing it on the facts. I'm thinking back to just, I guess, about 10 days ago when we had a classified by -- classified briefing by Secretary Rubio and Secretary Hegseth on the Venezuelan boat strikes. And while I can't tell you what they did brief us on, I can tell you what they didn't brief us on, which were the facts.
[08:05:00]
This is what's missing constantly with this administration. And it is extremely dangerous at a time, Christmas season, a time of joy, a time to try to give gifts to others. This administration is hell bent on making sure they sow chaos and distraction. They should be coming to Congress.
We have to demand better. And the American people have to demand better. I guess, frankly, the Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate must demand better.
It is something I have said to the speaker multiple times in private conversations. Surround this president. Tell him when he is out of line operating in an unconstitutional, unhinged way.
And then maybe we could get this on the right course.
BOLDUAN: On Ukraine, President Zelenskyy says he's going to be meeting with President Trump soon to discuss his latest proposals. Zelenskyy is kind of putting out there what he is calling a compromise on a key Russian demand that Kyiv give up territory in eastern Ukraine. He said -- Zelenskyy says, really showing for the first time he's open to withdrawing troops from eastern Ukraine to create a demilitarized zone in Russia -- a demilitarized zone there if Russia agrees to cede territory there as well.
Do you see this as a major compromise, a major opening?
DEAN: I won't get ahead of President Zelenskyy, and I hope our president takes this all very, very seriously. But there are multiple points of agreement that have to come. Security for Ukraine, a path for Ukraine, for rebuilding and for Russia to pay for it, and a consequence to Russia for what they have done.
Europe will demand it, and the United States will demand it. This is what I wish the president were focused on. Instead of taking additional strikes here and there around the world, how about focus on peace in Ukraine?
How about focusing on -- and I sent a letter to the president about this -- about making sure that the 20-point plan for Gaza is fulfilled, that humanitarian aid gets into Gaza? And how about we take up our role again as a leader in providing USAID to places like Africa?
BOLDUAN: Congresswoman, President Trump's Christmas evening message on social media last night was an airing of grievances where he even talked about Jeffrey Epstein. And on that, the Justice Department just revealed that it has found more than a million additional documents possibly related to the Epstein investigation than it had previously known. I mean, you're an attorney.
How do you just find a million documents that you didn't previously have in an investigation -- DEAN: You don't.
BOLDUAN: -- that's gotten this much scrutiny?
DEAN: You don't, unless you tried to bury them somewhere, hide them in a ballroom or a basement. I don't know. But it makes absolutely no sense.
That's what's the problem with so much of this. Look what happened. At the end of session, we left.
The American people are waiting for us to leave, waiting for us to deal with the economy and the cost of living, the economy in terms of their health care. Three hundred thousand Pennsylvanians are likely to lose their health care as a cause of this cliff. But what did the speaker of the House do when we got to the threshold number to push forward the ACA legislation to continue to make health care affordable to millions of Americans?
He sent us out of town because he didn't want to have to deal with Epstein. It makes no sense. It defies credulity for anybody to say we just found a million pages of documents.
They have known all along where the documents are. And there are -- there have to be hundreds of people who worked on these files who would be able to provide the expertise to get them out. The victims deserve no less.
And this is a painful way for this administration to continue this cover up. What is Mr. Trump afraid of that on Christmas night he's tweeting about Epstein? What is he afraid of?
BOLDUAN: Congresswoman, thank you so much for coming in. Happy holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.
DEAN: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: Sara.
SIDNER: All right, ahead, cars buried in mud, families forced to flee their homes during the holidays, dangerous storms causing chaos in California and the weather threat not over yet. We have the forecast ahead.
Plus, President Trump again goes after networks and late night TV shows saying one host should be, quote, put to sleep.
And it happened again. There's a risk. Radioactive shrimp may be sitting in your freezer.
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SIDNER: This morning, powerful storms slamming both coasts and potentially threatening your post Christmas travel. Sorry, guys. A state of emergency in parts of Southern California as millions brace for another round of heavy rain and potentially life threatening floods after record breaking storms caused that mess. Evacuation and shelter in place orders remain in effect for the devastated town of Wrightwood in San Bernardino County, where heavy rains triggered the mudslides you're seeing there that buried homes and cars and washed out roads.
We're also tracking another winter storm expected to bring freezing rain to the Midwest before slamming the Northeast with ice and snow later today. New York City could see up to 10 inches, and that has not happened in quite some time. CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar joining me now.
What are you seeing out there?
[08:15:00]
It's like a smorgasbord of bad weather.
ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, it looks like it's a whole bunch of different colors out here. We've got systems on two ends of the country. You've got this low pressure system out here in California that's going to be wrapping up later on today. The next system is going to make its way from the Midwest into the Northeast. As you said, the concern here is any kind of travel issues that it could incur.
Now, one thing let's start with here, because this is what's going to end sooner. You can see the live radar. We've still got some rain across portions of in the heaviest rain is really focused over northern California.
That's going to dive south later on this afternoon and into the evening. So that's where the focus becomes for a lot of the potential flooding is really going to be focused over much of southern California. Some of these areas could still pick up one to three inches of rain on top of what they've already seen.
Here you can see by late tonight, we've still got some rain and even some snow in the higher elevations to deal with. But by the time we fast forward this into tomorrow, take a look at that. Finally, some much needed dry weather for a lot of these locations in California, and they need it.
They need several days, maybe even weeks of dry weather to kind of clean up. One thing to note is California is one of the few spots where the temperatures are actually going to be at or below normal. Same thing into the northeast, because everywhere else in the center of the country is looking at temperatures well above average.
We're not just talking five degrees or 10 degrees. In some cases, you're looking at 20 to 30 degrees above average, which means we could end up having some records. All of these dots here represent a record, not just for possibly today, but even Saturday or even into Sunday. But there is quite a stark difference between the southern U.S. and the northeast. Take a look at this, 80s across the south and not even really making it above freezing mark, which is what's going to allow this system to bring us rain and ice as we go through the rest of the day.
SIDNER: And Allison, we need to get you some hot tea and rest. I know you are going through it. Everyone with your voice there. Thank you so much for being here with us this morning.
All right, our breaking news this morning, the U.S. military carrying out deadly strikes against militants, it says, in Nigeria. Details on the operation and who exactly was targeted and why.
Plus, CNN gets rare access inside a Border Patrol training program and the new policies changing how agents carry out arrests.
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BOLDUAN: A CNN exclusive now. The U.S. Border Patrol is undergoing major changes, not just to carry out President Trump's priorities of a second term and an aggressive immigration crackdown as the centerpiece. But the agency is also seeing a record number of recruits now moving through its training academy in New Mexico.
And CNN was granted rare access inside. Here's CNN's David Culver.
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DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So this is the morning inspection, and there's about 1,100 recruits.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You all are a tremendous part of national security, and we sincerely appreciate that you've taken the first step and that you've signed up.
CULVER (voice-over): After months of requests, we're granted rare access inside the U.S. Border Patrol Academy, where under President Donald Trump, the curriculum has changed.
CHIEF JARED ASHBY, U.S. BORDER PATROL: This is the fastest I've ever seen government move.
CULVER (voice-over): One of the biggest changes, a new pursuit policy.
ASHBY: Our last pursuit policy, we would let them go. So they knew that the Border Patrol would not pursue them. Execute.
CULVER (voice-over): That's no longer the case. They're also rolling out new firearms technology for better aim.
AGENT JEREMY DAVID, FIREARMS INSTRUCTOR: The new implementation is the MRDS, which is a miniature red dot sight.
CULVER: Is it a game changer, though, for you?
DAVID: 100 percent.
CULVER: Really?
DAVID: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got something going on this afternoon.
GROUP: We keep the order.
CULVER (voice-over): Many of the changes paid for, they say, by President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which also allocates funding for 3,000 new Border Patrol agents, on top of the more than 19,000 already on the job.
ASHBY: We'll grow this year to about 1,700, 1,800 students at any given time here.
CULVER: And that's going to be a record high.
ASHBY: That will be a record high.
CULVER (voice-over): Keeping those numbers up requires a major recruiting push.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have an incentive right now that if you graduate the academy, you get $10,000.
CULVER (voice-over): Customs and Border Protection says applications are up nearly 70 percent from a year ago.
CULVER: How old are you now?
JUAN PERALTA, BORDER PATROL RECRUIT: I'm 20.
CULVER: You're 20?
PERALTA: Yes.
CULVER: When you tell your friends back home, like, I'm joining Border Patrol, are some, like, surprised?
PERALTA: Yes. They're kind of like, wow, you're starting pretty young, or how do you feel about arresting your own kind?
CULVER: How do you answer that when you hear that?
PERALTA: They didn't come in the right way, so they aren't my kind.
CULVER: Juan's story may surprise you. Latino, the son of an immigrant, raised in a border town. But here, we find that's more common than you might think.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many of you are fluent in Spanish right now? Latinos. Good.
Most. CULVER (voice-over): CBP says more than half of their agents serving along the southern border are Hispanic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who was born and raised along the border? Yes. Good, good group.
CULVER (voice-over): To better understand what motivates them to join, we go to El Paso, Texas.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have friends who are, like, older siblings who are in Border Patrol, or, like, they're going into Border Patrol.
ANGIE PRADO, EL PASO RESIDENT: I have a cousin, actually, that's in Georgia, getting, like, doing the training to do Border Patrol, and then come back here.
CULVER (voice-over): Increasingly, Border Patrol agents are being pulled into ICE operations far from the border. Controversial, and at times, violent.
CULVER: Is that the Border Patrol you know? Is that what you're accustomed to here?
[08:25:00]
PRADO: From what I have seen on social media, that definitely doesn't look like something our Border Patrol would be doing, or how they would be behaving.
CULVER: And do you think most of them are motivated by it being a good career opportunity?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think so.
PRADO: For sure, for sure.
CULVER (voice-over): And just as they can see why some here sign up for Border Patrol, they also sympathize with migrants trying to do it the right way. Legally.
PRADO: And then you see people that are getting arrested --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who are going to cross in.
PRADO: -- at court because they're --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're going through the process going through the process of trying to get their citizenship and doing it the right way.
PRADO: And they still get detained.
CULVER (voice-over): We see that in the halls just outside of El Paso's immigration courtrooms, where volunteers prepare folks for their hearings. CULVER: So we're going to go see somebody just stepped out of court here. He might be detained by the federal agents, which is an ICE initiative, but we're told Border Patrol agents are supporting this.
CULVER (voice-over): You can hear one of the volunteers praying aloud. They took the son into custody, and then stepped back out, realizing his mother was also on their list.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see the cruelty. I think this is violent. Them just standing right here is violent.
CULVER: You really wonder, why are they doing this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I do get upset, and I just tell them, this mom, this family, they're not criminals.
AGENT CLAUDIO HERRERA, U.S. BORDER PATROL: I'm not going after my own kind, because my own kind will do it legally.
CULVER (voice-over): Born in Mexico, Agent Claudio Herrera first came to the U.S. as a student. He says it took him 11 years to become a citizen, and six years ago, he joined the Border Patrol.
HERRERA: I've been asked sometimes before in my past, aren't you ashamed of apprehending your own blood?
CULVER: What do you say to that? How do you answer that?
HERRERA: Of course not, because I'm protecting my community. My deepest advice to anybody that is coming from Mexico, we know that you want a better future for you and your family, but if you decide to do it illegally, you will only find jail, or you will only find death.
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BOLDUAN: David Culver, thank you so much for that report. Coming up still for us, we have new details about what led to the arrest of Melodee Buzzard, that little girl, Melodee Buzzard's mother, for what police are now calling a calculated killing.
And the feud between President Trump and late night TV is getting stranger. Jimmy Kimmel sharing this Christmas message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE AND COMEDIAN: Here in the United States, right now, we are both figuratively and literally tearing down the structures of our democracy, from the free press, to science, to medicine, to judicial independence, to the actual White House itself. We are a right mess, and we know this is also affecting you. And I just wanted to say, sorry.
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