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Artemis II Astronauts Set to Hold Press Conference; Virginia Murder-Suicide Investigation; RFK Jr. Grilled on Capitol Hill; Israel- Lebanon Cease-Fire Deal?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 16, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: The White House announcing a new cease-fire. President Trump says that Israel has a deal in place with Lebanon. Meantime, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is warning Iran to choose wisely in its own negotiations with the U.S.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: RFK Jr. on the Hill and on the hot seat. Lawmakers questioning the health and human services secretary for the first time in seven months, Kennedy asked about everything from vaccines to that workout with Kid Rock.

And they watched and the world watched as they made history. Now the Artemis II astronauts will tell us all about it. They're gearing up for a press conference just moments from now.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: We have breaking news in the war with Iran, President Trump announcing that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10-day cease-fire that he says we will begin four hours from now.

Israel as recently as this morning was striking targets inside Lebanon in its fight against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed proxy group. Iran has said that a cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel is necessary for the regime to reach a peace deal with the United States.

Let's go now live with the White House with CNN's Alayna Treene.

Alayna, what more are you learning?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look, Boris, I mean, the U.S. had been pressing really for a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon behind the scenes for several days now.

There were concerns that the continued attacks of Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon could really threaten the fragile cease-fire that the United States has with Iranians, of course, that is set to expire next week. But I think the through line through all this is that this agreement,

this declaration of a 10-day cease-fire that the president announced on social media could really mark an important step in the right direction for some of the talks that Washington is having with Tehran and really trying to solidify what they're hoping will be a lasting peace agreement before that cease-fire expires.

And I do want to get into a little bit of what we heard from the president. One thing we knew and we -- actually, our colleagues had reported earlier this morning that the president had spoken directly with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, kind of pressing again for him to agree to a cease-fire with Lebanon.

Then he later got on the phone with the president of Lebanon. And then, of course, we're seeing that he is now announcing this 10-day cease-fire. He's also invited both of those leaders to the White House to try and have them work through what he argues will hopefully be a longer agreement to cease this fighting for a much longer time than just the 10 days the cease-fire is initially set at.

All to say, though, I think one of the key question is whether or not Iran is going to really see this as a gesture of goodwill on the behalf of the Trump administration for really getting involved in this, because, again, as you mentioned, Boris, this was something from the get-go that had really threatened that cease-fire between Washington and Tehran, with the Iranians essentially saying that this was a violation of the cease-fire, having Israel, of course, a prominent ally of the United States, continuing to attack Lebanon.

So, we will have to see what this does for furthering this, what we know that they're working toward, the Trump administration, which is a second round of talks in person with the Iranians. We will have to wait and see what that reaction is.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

Alayna Treene live for us at the White House, thank you so much for the update -- Jessica.

DEAN: And let's go now to CNN's Jeremy Diamond, who's in Jerusalem.

And, Jeremy, I know you're learning the Israeli Security Cabinet was actually meeting when President Trump made this announcement. What more can you tell us about that?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's exactly right, Jessica.

The Israeli Security Cabinet had not yet voted on this cease-fire agreement by the time President Trump announced it, announcing that it will take effect four hours from right this moment. And, in fact, as of this moment, we still haven't heard from the Israeli government officially about this cease-fire agreement we don't yet know whether that Cabinet has actually voted on this agreement.

And we also, of course, have not yet heard officially from Hezbollah. So it's important to note that, despite the president's announcement there, we haven't yet heard from either of the two parties that will actually have to cease the fire in order for this to go through.

That being said, this announcement from the president comes amid a lot of pressure that has been building up from President Trump directly on Prime Minister Netanyahu. And it does seem like one of those situations where the toothpaste is going to be very hard to put right back in the tube.

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And so what we are looking at here is a cease-fire that could potentially last 10 days, according to President Trump, and thereby be extended further, as long as we see negotiations actually continuing between Israel and Lebanon.

We have seen President Trump focus on this notion of a cease-fire in Lebanon, initially by urging Israel to simply scale back some of its strikes in Lebanon. But it seems like that wasn't enough, wasn't enough in terms of Lebanon in order to engage in proper negotiations with Israel about disarming Hezbollah.

But, critically, it also didn't seem to be enough for Iran. And it seems like, ultimately, the calculus here from the United States is pressuring Israel to agree to this cease-fire in Lebanon in order to avoid risking jeopardizing the broader U.S.-Iran cease-fire agreements and the diplomacy that we are still very much seeing at work.

Now, there's no indication that this temporary 10-day cease-fire is going to lead to the withdrawal of Israeli forces, who are inside of Lebanon, as deep as 10 kilometers into Lebanese territory, thousands of Israeli troops.

The other question here is, will we actually see the broader peace negotiations between Israel and Lebanon that President Trump very much wants to kick-start here, as he has said that he has invited the Israeli prime minister and the Lebanese president to the White House to pursue those peace talks?

Again, we haven't heard from either Netanyahu or Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on that.

DEAN: All right, more to come.

Jeremy Diamond with the very latest, though, in Jerusalem, thank you so much for that.

And still to come here: a tragic murder-suicide in Virginia, where police say the state's former lieutenant governor killed his wife and then himself as the couple's children were at home. We have the latest from officials there.

Plus, we're waiting to hear from the crew of Artemis II, the astronauts preparing to hold a post-mission press conference.

And they're not regular moms. They're cannamoms. Meet the mothers challenging the stigma around women and weed.

We have that and much more coming up here on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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DEAN: RFK Jr. makes a house call, the health and human services secretary returning to the Hill for the first time in months. Not exactly a warm welcome from Democrats, lawmakers blasting key health policies and taking issue with a recent online ad that Kennedy did with Kid Rock.

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REP. LINDA SANCHEZ (D-CA): You suspended this pro-vaccine messaging campaign, but somehow you're spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock. And somehow you think that's a better public health message than informing the public about the importance of vaccines?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your time has expired by a minute. Gentlelady's time...

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DEAN: CNN's Meg Tirrell is here. She's been following the hearing all day.

Obviously,this has been ongoing for many hours. What more did he have to say?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, this started at 9:00 a.m. today. It is still going.

DEAN: Wow.

TIRRELL: Just about to finish up, because he has another hearing to start at 2:00 today, and another one tomorrow morning, and four more next week.

Ostensibly, these are about the president's budget proposal for HHS, where he has proposed more budget cuts to things like scientific research, but, of course, Kennedy getting a lot of questions about vaccine policy, how they have responded to the measles outbreak.

Just now, before I came up to join you guys, there was a very heated exchange with one congressman over toxins and policy in that way, where RFK Jr. actually told the congressman to calm down. The congressman yelled back at him, "Do not tell me to calm down."

I mean, this was a very heated moment. And it's really been like that all day. Another question that he got this morning was the number of vacancies that we are seeing in health agencies right now. There's no permanent CDC director. Currently, the NIH director is leading both agencies. There is no head of vaccines at the FDA. The current person is outgoing. They haven't nominated his

replacement. The surgeon general nominee has not yet had her vote scheduled, Dr. Casey Means. And so there is concern about all of this turmoil in the health agencies.

And one congressman asked about it this morning and had this to say about why that's a concern.

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REP. JIMMY PANETTA (D-CA): Without leadership at DHS, if there is a crisis, if there is an outbreak, we lose surveillance. There's delayed recognition of problems. There's low response times. There's mixed messaging and a loss of real-time guidance. These vacancies hurt America's health and they make Americans less safe.

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TIRRELL: And so what we have been seeing is RFK Jr. kind of trying to stay on the messaging we have been hearing about from the White House, focusing on nutrition, focusing on bringing down drug prices.

Democrats really trying to keep him on vaccines, measles, health policy, things that certainly have not been big political winners for the Trump administration, and those tensions are bound to continue.

DEAN: Yes. And they're clearly aware of that, wanting him to stay on these other topics.

Meg Tirrell, thank you so much. Good to see you -- Boris.

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SANCHEZ: We're following a tragic story out of Virginia. Police say that former Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife and then himself inside their home in suburban Washington. They say the couple's two teenage kids were there when it happened, that one of them placed the 911 call.

CNN correspondent Brian Todd is at the scene in Annandale, Virginia.

And, Brian, we have also learned that the couple's cameras inside their home were rolling at the time of the incident.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Boris. And that was kind of a jarring detail given to us by the Fairfax County police chief, Kevin Davis, a short time ago, Kevin Davis saying that, in fact, there were several cameras placed inside this house behind me that were there as part of the divorce proceedings between the couple.

And from those cameras, according to the police chief, they were able to piece together details of how this incident unfolded, the police chief saying that it appeared that Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife, Cerina Fairfax, in the basement of their home, shot her several times, according to the police chief.

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Then, according to the chief, he ran upstairs to a primary bedroom and shot and killed himself. Their two teenage children, according to the chief, were in the house at the time of the shooting, and the son called 911.

We were here a short time ago when the two bodies were removed from the home, Fairfax County police and medical examiners, officials taking them out in body bags on stretchers earlier today, and we caught some footage of that.

But, as far as the 911 call, we have some additional detail there. We have a clip of the audio of the Fairfax County 911 dispatcher describing the incident. We're going to play that in just a second.

We do have to warn viewers that some of this audio could be disturbing to some viewers, but take a listen to the 911 dispatch audio.

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EMERGENCY DISPATCHER: Caller stating that his dad might have stabbed his mom, saying that she's laying on the ground bleeding, can see holes in her shirt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to look like an obvious DOA. I don't have a pulse. Alpha, we got another subject down in the bedroom upstairs. I think this is going to be our subject. He's got a firearm with self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

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TODD: Now, the Fairfax County police chief, Kevin Davis, told us that, in January, Justin Fairfax had called police to report that his wife had sexual -- excuse me -- had assaulted him, but that they were not -- never able to corroborate that report, and the police chief said we believe that actual incident did not occur.

The children, we're being told, are being cared for by their grandparents and by other relatives, with assistance from the Fairfax County Victim Services Division.

In addition, Boris, our producer Dugald McConnell recovered some information from the divorce court proceedings at Fairfax County Court, where the judge kind of in the case, in the divorce case, detailed some incidents of Justin Fairfax's mental and emotional state really deteriorating, first in 2013 after he lost a race for Virginia's attorney general, but then, after 2019, when he was accused by two different women of sexually assaulting them.

Those accusations allegedly go back to the early 2000s. But, according to the judge in the divorce case, Justin Fairfax really kind of went downhill emotionally and mentally since those allegations came out. We also learned from court records, Boris, that Justin Fairfax was ordered by the judge to leave this home by April 30, two weeks from today.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

Brian Todd, thank you so much for the latest on that story.

Still ahead, we're standing by to hear from the Artemis II astronauts as they detail their historic moon mission and life after microgravity in a post-flight news conference.

Stay with CNN.

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DEAN: One hour from now, we're going to hear from the historymaking Artemis II crew from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The four astronauts are expected to share new details about their nearly 10-day journey around the moon and back.

They traveled more than 252,000 miles from Earth, going deeper into space than any humans have ever gone before.

And CNN's Ed Lavandera is joining us now.

Ed, over the weekend, the Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific after completing that mission. They had some brief comments on Saturday, but what can we expect today?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are still a lot of questions about exactly what this journey was like, a lot of questions about how that capsule held up, especially during the reentry, and what kind of condition those heat shields were -- was under and what kind of strain it was under, and how they felt about all of that.

I mean, this was really an incredibly dangerous mission, so there's still a lot to learn, that NASA officials and these NASA teams from the Artemis teams have been continuing to pore over the data that they have received. So there's a lot of questions on that.

But, right now, this is a crew that has just really kind of captivated so many people around the country and around the world. You saw a hero's welcome for Victor Glover when he got back to his neighborhood there in the Houston area, hundreds of people turning out to greet him. You saw Christina Koch putting out videos of her dog welcoming her home, playing on the beach in Galveston, and so all of these moments that have just been so special to watch over the last week.

And now we really get to hear from this crew a little bit more beyond what we heard on Saturday. And this is a little bit of what they said a few days ago, as we prepare to hear more from them.

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JEREMY HANSEN, ARTEMIS II CREW MEMBER: We have a term in our crew that we coined a long time ago, the joy train. And you saw -- I think you saw -- sounds like you saw a lot of joy up there. There was a lot of joy.

CHRISTINA KOCH, ARTEMIS II CREW MEMBER: Honestly, what struck me wasn't necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.

REID WISEMAN, ARTEMIS II COMMANDER: It's a special thing to be a human and it's a special thing to be on planet Earth.

VICTOR GLOVER, ARTEMIS II PILOT, NASA: I want to thank God again, because even bigger than my challenge trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did and being with who I was with, it's too big to just be in one body.

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LAVANDERA: And, Jessica, now that this crew has had a week to recover from their journey and get some rest, I would suspect we're going to be seeing a lot more of them.

They have essentially become these initial ambassador astronauts for the Artemis program. Expect to see them making the rounds in interviews over the course of the next few weeks, because we are still in the very early stages of NASA's Artemis program. The teams are preparing for Artemis II, which would be in orbit with the lunar aircraft around the Earth, and then the next mission is projected to land, put astronauts on the moon.

So, a great deal of interest in where this Artemis program goes from here, and it'll be really also captivating to hear -- until now, the astronauts have really kind of struggled to put into words what this whole experience has meant to them.

Now that they have had some -- a week almost to reflect on all of this, it'll be really fascinating to hear what they have to say about what all of this means to them, how they have been able to process the magnitude of what they endured, what they lived, and what they -- what the entire world has witnessed. So it'll be really fascinating to listen to them as they talk here in the next hour.

DEAN: Certainly.

All right, Ed Lavandera, with the latest, thank you.

Meantime, a top energy official warns, Europe has roughly six weeks of jet fuel left, as the Iran war keeps the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed.

That's next.

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