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"MAHA" Influencers Warn Voters "Have Vanished" Over "Betrayal"; NYT, WSJ: Spirit Airlines Prepares To Shut Down; Trump: Iran Options Are Either A Deal Or "Blast The Hell Out of Them. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired May 01, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROSIE HOFFMAN, INDEPENDENT VOTER: He is supporting the things that I align with and that in the health and wellness space. And they probably have my vote.

ALEX CLARK, HOST, "CULTURE APOTHECARY" PODCAST: This is do or die. This is sink or swim. This is the Titanic is going down. Hundreds of thousands of free votes that fell out of thin air in 2024 have vanished.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Our thanks to Meena Duerson for that report. A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR: A turbulent summer travel season could get a whole lot bumpier. Low cost carrier Spirit Airlines reportedly preparing to shut down. We're going to take a closer look at what this all means for you. Plus, President Trump says he's not satisfied with the latest peace proposal from Iran. Still ahead, what he had to say about the future of that war.

And the Pentagon inks a deal with seven major tech firms to use their AI tools. But there's one company that was notably left out. We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

We start with breaking news. The future of Spirit Airlines literally up in the air. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both say the low fare airline right now preparing to shut down the company has been seeking a $500 million federal bailout as the war with Iran has added to its already troubling economic situation. Just a short time ago, President Trump said he's given Spirit his best and final offer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you decide against bailing out Spirit Airlines?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, I guess we're looking at it. If we could do it, we'd do it, but only if it's a good deal. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just waiting that they're preparing to shut down this weekend because they haven't gotten with you.

TRUMP: Well, we'll looking at it. But if we can't make a good deal, no institution's been able to do it. I said I'd like to save the jobs, but we'll have an announcement sometime today. We gave them. We gave them a final proposal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN business editor at large Richard Quest is with us now. Richard, there's several questions all around this. Can Spirit stay afloat with anything less than $500 million? And is it the U.S. government's responsibility to bail them out?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: One's a financial question, the other is a philosophical question and depends on where you sit. There are those that say that Spirit should be allowed to go simply by the fact of if you can't in this environment, I mean, Spirits had problems, but for many years, it's not shown a profit since 2019. So, let's not shed too many tears about it.

The airline has gradually shrunk its flying schedule from 21,000 to 12,000 flights. You've got to put it into context. Spirit, under its current structure cannot make money. It's been in chapter 11 twice in recent years.

It's going to need 500 million, maybe. Who knows what the final number would be. Whether the governments will -- whether it's the U.S. government's job to bail it out is a philosophical question where some people say absolutely not, throwing good money after bad.

Others say, save the jobs, it's good. Don't forget one other cruise. There you go. Look at that. Look at that.

Don't forget. In 2024, a judge blocked the JetBlue merger. That's just exactly what I was going to say. So Spirit is by no means in good financial health.

What's interesting now is the way this plays out. Because the moment you have a report that an airline is going to stop flying, nobody books it. It's the story out today is de facto the kiss of death for Spirit Airlines. Unless the government comes out this afternoon and says we are prepared to stand behind it. Otherwise, Spirit is gone.

KEILAR: That is such a great point because for consumers out there watching, they don't want to take a chance on not being able to, you know, get on an airplane. And how so -- so beyond that, how does this potentially impact the industry and especially the low fare competitors?

QUEST: It doesn't. It doesn't. As long as you've got someone like Spirit in the market dragging down prices, then everybody else has to follow. That's always, always been the problem with an airline in chapter 11. It drags everybody else's margins into the toilet. The issue for Spirit is if it goes out of business, it's not so huge as to be dramatically effective, but it will allow others to remove capacity. And by the way, showing me, showing that those, you know, this is recognizing that 14,000 people could and will lose their jobs. And the tragedy of that, United's already said it'll pick up some of the flights and will rescue the passengers. There's a reason why airlines never telegraph they're going to go out of business, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[14:05:05]

Normally most airlines just announced, if you look back at the history, one morning they just stopped flying. Well, in this case we've had the leak of the report to the Journal and the Times. My guess is unless by close of business tonight, the U.S. government has come out and said, we are standing by Spirit.

We will provide the money. We guarantee their flights. Spirit is finished.

KEILAR: And Richard, does this mean anything for other airlines? Are there any other airlines that would suffer a similar fate or is this unique to how what Spirit has done is doing?

QUEST: You know, I've got to be so careful and when I answer this question, because there's no -- there's not another airline that's in the parlor state of Spirit. Are there airlines, for example, like JetBlue that are in financial difficulties, let's say with a capital with, you know, vertex commas around it? Yes, but, but JetBlue CEO has already come out and said specifically that JetBlue is not going into bankruptcy this year. However, JetBlue does need a longer-term solution.

You have other low-cost carriers, but of the major three, United, American and Delta, now all of them are absolutely rock solid in the sense that they, you know, there's no issues with any of them. There's questions about how profitable they might be, how well they're run, what might happen in the future. But as to their survival? No, absolutely not.

You're talking about a few airlines that are on dodgy ground and Spirit is just about to get pushed over the edge.

KEILAR: All right, Richard Quest, great. Great to see you. Thank you so much for that. Boris.

SANCHEZ: Iran has a new peace proposal to end the war with the United States. But President Trump says he's not satisfied with their offer. And a short time ago he signaled what might come next if negotiations continue to falter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: What other options. I mean, do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish him forever or do we want to try and make a deal? I mean, those are the options. On a human basis, I prefer not. But that's the option.

Do we want to go in there heavy and just blast them away or do we want to do something?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's get the latest from CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid, who is also a global affairs correspondent for Axios. Barack, thank you so much for joining us. What is the latest that you're hearing about what is actually in this proposal that Iran sent over?

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: So this proposal is actually a response to U.S. amendments that were delivered to Iran by White House envoy Steve Witkoff on Monday. What Witkoff sent the Iranians is basically trying to insert again into the draft agreement issues related to Iran's nuclear program. Issues that the Iranians tried to take out of the deal and focus it only on the Strait of Hormuz. Witkoff asked to put them back in the deal.

The Iranians last night sent their response about those amendments. As far as I understand the Iranians went, even went further, closer to the U.S. amendments but did not accept them. And I think therefore President Trump said that he was not satisfied with the Iranian response. That still did not, was not really in line with what the U.S. wanted.

SANCHEZ: President Trump today also said that there are three positions, potentially even four factions within Tehran that are not in total alignment over what a deal with the United States reward and offer for the United States to broker peace might actually look like. What is the administration's understanding of who's actually in charge in Tehran? Because we haven't seen or heard directly from the Ayatollah, just written statements.

RAVID: So I think that's part of it because obviously there are several groups. I'm not sure it's they're at each other's throats as some people might try to portray it, but there are disagreements on the way forward between different parts of the Iranian regime. The problem is that at the moment the supreme leader, much to Mojtaba Khamenei, is isolated with a small group of aids and the people that are engaged in the negotiations, I mean the day-to-day management of the country don't have full access to him. And therefore, every time it takes between 48 to 72 hours to get his response to this or that proposal, to this or that decision.

And when the response comes, it's basically an order that comes from the top and says, okay, I agree or I disagree or you do this or you do that. There's not a real discussion that leads to some sort of decision making. But I think that one of the interesting things is that the Iranian response last night was delivered to the U.S. an hour or so after President Trump huddled with his top national security team to discuss several options for military strikes and against Iran. If diplomacy fails, if it exhausted and the president decides that, well, there's not going to be a deal. We need to find some other way to rock this boat and to get out of the current status quo. [14:10:40]

And I think what was interesting in what Trump said today is that he basically said that he's not sure Iran will ever be able to get a deal. And if that's the case, I think it really raises the possibility of another U.S. military action against Iran.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we'll have to watch that closely. Barak Ravid, thank you so much for the reporting.

RAVID: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Still to come, the redistricting war is heating up again after this week's Supreme Court decision. Republicans in red states now scrambling to drop new maps ahead of the midterms.

Plus, the Pentagon striking an AI deal with top tech giants. But one major company was left out. We'll break that story down when

we come back.

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[14:15:40]

SANCHEZ: An election shakeup is playing out in Louisiana just as early voting begins tomorrow. Louisiana Republicans are now delaying the May 16th primaries for U.S. House races, but the primaries for other races will still move forward. This follows the Supreme Court's decision Wednesday that further weakened the Voting Rights Act. The justices invalidated Louisiana's congressional map, calling it an unconstitutional gerrymander. They also made it harder to prove racial discrimination in redistricted maps.

Joining us now is Alanah Odoms, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. Alanah, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us. So, at this point, do you think that redrawing Louisiana's maps would be illegal?

ALANAH ODOMS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACLU LOUISIANA: So thank you so much for having me. Importantly, I'll start by saying that yesterday the United States Supreme Court threw a Molotov cocktail at the Voting Rights Act, and today Governor Landry threw that Molotov cocktail at the voters of the state of Louisiana. This election is already underway in this state. And importantly, this ballot has a black candidate from a majority black district on the ballot, and it is the only race that is being targeted.

As you mentioned, we do not believe that is lawful. We actually believe that is a strategy, a maneuver that is consistent only with what we've seen in history around Reconstruction, around attempting to eliminate black participation while an election is underway that is simply unprecedented.

SANCHEZ: So what do you think the course of action should be if the Supreme Court ruled this map unconstitutional, doesn't that mean that any election that's held on it based on this map would be contested? ODOMS: Yes, that is correct. It would be contested. But importantly, under the United States Supreme Court Rule 44, the Rehearing Period for this particular case in Calais would not expire until May 24th. That's eight days after this election.

And so there is a procedure that happens. Importantly, the Supreme Court only issued an opinion. An opinion is not an order. That order has to be finalized, and that timeline has to take place.

And then the jurisdiction gets vested back in the Western District and then the state would have to articulate how it intended to comply with the new standard under Louisiana Calais. They would have to submit that to the federal court. All of that takes time.

What this governor attempted to do is attempting to do is unlawful because it subverts all, all of those timelines and it attempts to prevent Louisiana voters from voting, especially those primarily who've already cast their votes, which are thousands of people who've already cast votes. Those are elderly voters. Those are military veterans. Those are folks who are students in our state. That is unlawful.

Contest whatever you'd like to contest, but follow the rules, particularly the Supreme Court's rules.

SANCHEZ: CNN affiliate WFAB reported that later today, Louisiana's Democratic Party is holding a news conference. I imagine there will be some legal challenge mounted here. Is that what you're anticipating we'll hear?

ODOMS: Absolutely. The ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, my organization, and also the LDF are going to be imminently filing an action to halt the governor from stopping the elections in the state. We are going to be arguing, as I discussed, about the fact that thousands of voters have already cast ballots in this state. There have already been many people participating, and we believe that it is unlawful to, and frankly, unprecedented, unless in some kind of very significant emergency to do this.

It is really important to say that there is no court in this nation that has ordered the governor of Louisiana to stop an election midway. That is not what the Supreme Court ordered. What the Supreme Court did, unfortunately, is greenlit. The kind of nefarious and, we believe unlawful conduct that is happening in the state of Louisiana.

And we believe that is the same kind of nefarious, unconstitutional and illegal conduct that will go on across this country. We've already seen movement happen. We see in Tennessee that they will likely try to gerrymander the black Memphis district within Mississippi. We see some very similar behaviors. New maps being drawn to limit black participation.

[14:20:13]

ODOMS: The same thing happening in Florida. This is a part of a playbook. If you don't know Reconstruction history, you are learning it in present day. All of the states in the former Confederacy of the American south will use what the Supreme Court did to empower them to change elections, to change policies to eliminate black participation and the participation of other ethnic minorities. Hispanics, Asians, indigenous people will start to see it state by state.

SANCHEZ: Alanah Odoms, thank you so much for sharing your point of view.

ODOMS: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course. So tech giants are teaming up with the Pentagon to use AI. But one company notably missing from this deal. It's after a quick break.

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[14:25:38]

KEILAR: The Pentagon just inked a deal with several big tech companies to use their AI tools, seven in all, including Microsoft, to Open Air, Google and Space X, but not looped into that deal, Anthropic. It's been blacklisted by the Trump administration over the company's demand for the Pentagon to include certain safety guardrails when using AI in warfare.

Let's get more now from CNN AI correspondent Hadas Gold and Hadas, look, this is a very obvious leaving out of Anthropic. Tell us more about this deal.

HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So until recently, Anthropic Claude was the only AI model that could be used on Pentagon's classified system. A lot of the other companies had deals for unclassified systems. Anthropic was the only one that could be used on classified systems.

Then they had their disagreement over AI safety guardrails. Anthropic wanted guardrails around AI being used in autonomous weapons and in the mass surveillance of American citizens. They had this disagreement with the Pentagon. The Pentagon then labeled them a supply chain risk.

They are fighting it out in court right now. And so the Pentagon had to replace Anthropic's Claude with something else on their classified system. They started with OpenAI's model and now they've announced these deals with seven other tech companies. Some of them are very well known, like Microsoft, like Amazon.

Reflection is a smaller AI company. It's open source. And they're trying to bring in all these companies that's, you know, good. You want as many tools as possible for the Pentagon to be able to use.

But I wanted to point out that there's a bit of cognitive dissonance coming from the Trump administration when it comes to what they're doing with Anthropic. Because on one end of the administration you have the Pentagon, which has declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, saying that they are essentially a dangerous company and nobody who does work with the military can use their products. But on the other end of that, you have the White House, which recently

had a meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei. Meeting with Susan, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, the White House calling this meeting productive.

I know that just this past week or just this week, Anthropic was at the White House again to have a meeting about cyber and AI. Axios is now reporting that the White House is actually working on guidance that would allow agencies to get around the supply chain risk designation and onboard their new model.

So, is this company so dangerous that it's a supply chain risk or was this about politics and a disagreement publicly? And I'm sure these issues will come up in court and the reason behind this is just Anthropic makes really good models. They're one of the top AI companies and I think a lot of parts of the administration are recognizing that, especially when it comes to cybersecurity and the risks that are posed by AI powered cyber models. You want the best possible tools available to you. And I think that's why you're seeing a bit of this cognitive dissonance.

These other companies, as far as we know, they have agreed to for their AI models to be used for all lawful purposes. It seems as though that might have included the issues that Anthropic was worried about. Maybe they didn't have those same guardrails. And we've seen some pushback from some of their employees, including Google. Hundreds of Google employees signed an open letter trying to argue that their executives should not sign this deal.

One of them even publicly calling it shameful. But Google has said that they're proud to sign this deal and they are going to be working with the Pentagon on this.

KEILAR: Okay, more to come on this. Hadas Gold, thank you so much for your reporting and we do have some breaking news.

We have exclusive new reporting about what a judge privately told prosecutors during yesterday's hearing at the White House correspondents in the White House correspondents dinner shooting case. Because Hook will have that for you next.

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