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Iran Expected to Respond to U.S. Proposal Today; Rubio Meets with Pope Leo; Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-CA) is Interviewed about Iran; Tracing the Origins of the Deadly Hantavirus Infections; Phil Weiser is Interviewed about the DOJ suing Colorado. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 07, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

EVA LONGORIA, HOST, "SEARCHING FOR FRANCE": Is really a privilege. We should sit and enjoy your meals, which is something I think we could do more of here is just sit, have a nice, long lunch. Drink some wine. Go back to work.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: If all my meals -- if all my meals were like this in the middle of a work day, I would -- I would take some more time.

To France.

LONGORIA: To France. Vive la France.

BERMAN: Vive la France.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That was a tough work day.

Be sure to tune in. New episodes of "Eva Longoria: Searching for France" airs Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on CNN.

And a brand-new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A brand-new hour, a brand-new, well, level of crazy on this show. Here we go.

The big question this hour, what is Iran going to say? We are standing by for Iran's response to the latest U.S. proposal, expected any time.

And we are getting new details on what Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pope Leo talked about during their meeting today. A meeting set against the backdrop of President Trump's insults and attacks on the American-born pope.

Plus, a sentence only Florida can produce. Alligators start brawling inside a home just feet away from a sleeping baby. You're welcome.

I'm Kate Bolduan, with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking this morning, Iran's

president says he has met with the country's new supreme leader, as we await Iran's response to the latest U.S. peace proposal. That is according to local media. It's not clear when the reported 2.5 hour meeting took place. The new supreme leader has not been seen in public since the opening attacks of the war that killed his father and has reportedly left him injured.

New images this morning from pro-regime rallies in Tehran. A source telling CNN that Iran is expected to deliver its reply today to that new peace framework, that one-page framework that the U.S. has put the table. We are told there is this one-page memo that would declare the conflict over and then trigger a 30-day negotiating period to resolve all of the really serious sticking points, which includes nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, according to President Trump, the U.S. has, quote, "very good talks" with Iran over the last 24 hours. But the word from Iran has been mixed.

CNN's Alayna Treene is live this morning at the White House.

What are you learning as the time sort of ticks to when Iran is going to actually respond to this?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, the expectation is this, according to conversations we've been having with people in the region, Sara, is that the Iranians are going to file their response to this latest U.S. proposal that was delivered to them on Sunday at some point today.

Now, we have been hearing that it should be somewhat positive. But I do think, of course, you have to keep in mind what is positive for the Iranians is not always positive for everything else. The big question, of course, being, does what they send back line up, even if not completely, at least to the point where Trump officials believe that they can move forward with kind of hashing out the final sticking points and trying to get closer to a compromise.

The feelings and really the vibes that I've been getting from my conversations with people in that building behind me is this cautious optimism. I think even more so you're hearing that optimism from the words from the president himself. That is something that we have heard repeatedly over this several weeks that this ceasefire has been happening. A lot of positive language only for talks to fall apart.

I have several people, several Trump administration officials I've spoken with who are a little bit more skeptical of what could happen. Again, pointing to the fact that things seemed really good to be going in a good direction just for things to kind of peter out and shift things back backward a few steps. And so, we're really waiting to see what the Iranians have to stay here.

I do think a key question, of course, though, is, one of the biggest sticking points is something the president brought up himself, telling PBS News yesterday that a core goal of his is to try and get the highly enriched uranium from Iran and bring it to the U.S. That has been a red line for the Iranians throughout this entire process. And so, we're going to have to see where that leads as well.

But I think one thing is very much clear is that the president does not want all-out war, major combat military operations to continue. It's not good for the Iranians either. He's also been growing increasingly frustrated with this closer in the Strait of Hormuz, something, of course, that was not a problem for the U.S. or the world, really, before this war began.

And so there is a lot of, I think, impatience with how slow this process has been. Very much a strong desire by the Trump people to hopefully have this proposal and have it lead to real substantial negotiations to try to end this war.

[09:05:00]

As you mentioned, that 30-day memo -- or, excuse me, that one-page memo that's being floated, hoping to trigger a 30-day period to try and hash out all of that. We'll see if they're able to get there.

SIDNER: Yes, it should be noted, it took the Obama administration two years just to get a nuclear deal that didn't include other weapons. So, we will have to see. But there wasn't a war going on at that time.

Alayna Treene, we will be waiting for the answer to this proposal from the U.S., from Iran, which hopefully will come soon.

John.

BERMAN: All right, so just moments ago, the State Department provided a readout of the meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pope Leo. They say the men discussed the situation in the Middle East. We're also seeing new video of this sit down.

So, let's get to outside this meeting. CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb standing by, checking his sources there for what happened inside.

Chris, what are you hearing?

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, I think, at the moment, we still only got the very briefest of details. The State Department saying that the meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the holy sea and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity.

Now, of course, peace is something that Pope Leo has been speaking out on strongly. And it's something that has irked President Trump, who has launched these extraordinary attacks against him, primarily because Pope Leo has been so outspoken against the war in Iran.

Now, we are expecting a statement from the Vatican. But clearly Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in there for a long time, meeting with the pope and with Vatican officials. So, they were substantive meetings and discussions.

And from the Vatican's point of view, this will be a welcome development because, of course, the Vatican is more used to doing behind the scenes, old fashioned diplomacy. They're not used to having a president from the United States publicly attacking a pope, not least the first pope from the United States in the Catholic Church's 2,000-year history. So, you know, clearly from the U.S. State Department's side, an attempt to say that this has been about improving diplomatic ties between the U.S. and the holy sea.

But we haven't heard yet from the Vatican what was discussed. And, of course, that will also give us some insight into how they are seeing this. But, of course, we'll also stand by to see if President Trump says anything else against Pope Leo. He has been recently criticizing the pope, saying that Leo is happy for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, something that Leo has hit back at saying that, you know, the Catholic Church has long opposed nuclear arms.

So, we're still waiting for details. But the early signs are saying that this was a diplomatically productive meeting.

BERMAN: We saw some of the video released from the meeting, the traditional exchange of gifts. And it appeared that the secretary of state was presenting the pope with some kind of glass football. The secretary of state, a Miami fan. Presumably, the pope, a Chicago Bears fan, although more of a baseball fan as far as we know.

Chris Lamb, great to see you. Thank you very much for your reporting.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, John.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Gil Cisneros of California. He's a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a Navy veteran.

I will talk a little bit about and ask you about what's happening there at the Vatican with that meeting. But first, let's talk about Iran, because we are waiting for a response from Iran in this negotiation over this one-page memo that has been put out there to try and end this war. Iran has responded earlier, saying, "Operation Trust Me Bro failed." Now we're hearing from Iranian officials that they have spoken with the ayatollah. We've also heard from Donald Trump saying that -- to Fox News the same night that Iran responded that the war will be wrapped up in a week.

As a veteran and a member of Congress, what do you think must happen now?

REP. GIL CISNEROS (D-CA): Well, I think the war just needs to end. It should never have started in the first place. You know, this is something that Donald Trump took upon himself and only -- I don't know why he decided to do this, but, you know, the situation he created, it's self-imposed. He created this whole thing with the stoppage of the Strait and the rising gas prices and the, you know, the soon -- prices of everything are rising because of his actions.

And so, he needs to -- he's -- right now he's just trying to figure out a way. And every time the price of oil goes up, he seems to make a statement about how we're close to a deal, we're close to a deal.

Look, the JCPOA is something that he has said he didn't like. That it was a horrible deal.

[09:10:01]

OK, fine. You should have been negotiating when you were in your first term to make a better one if you didn't like that current deal. And right now he didn't do that. And so we're in this situation now.

SIDNER: And you're speaking about the Obama-led deal that took a couple of years that was focused on Iran's nuclear program, stopping them from being able to go forward with a nuclear weapon.

I do want to ask you about Congress' role here. A former Democratic congresswoman who you would know from California, Jane Harman, says Congress has basically given up their powers. And as she called them, they are CACO, which stands for Congress Always Chickens Out, when it comes to dealing with the president, including his war with Iran. Is she right?

CISNEROS: Well, look, this Republican-led Congress has, I agree, has done that. This is why this election coming up in November is so important. We need Democratic control to take back over the House, and then you will have a Congress that stands up to the president, that has oversight over the administration.

But right now, Republicans are just too afraid to stand up to the president because they're worried that he's going to go after them and find somebody else to run against them. I mean you just saw what happened in Indiana in their state elections. You know, five state senators that opposed him and didn't want to draw new lines. He found people to run against them. And they lost their election. You know, members of Congress, Republican members of Congress don't want that to happen to them, so they refuse to speak up. And it has led to this administration taking action and really kind of not, you know, giving away our constitutional powers, you know, as a House of Representatives, we've given them up and just basically let the president do whatever he wants, which isn't -- it shouldn't be that way.

SIDNER: Let me ask you about what we just saw earlier, which is Marco Rubio meeting with the pope. As a Catholic and a lawmaker, what do you hope comes out of this meeting between the first U.S. pontiff, Pope Leo, and the secretary of state, after what could only be called an unprecedented verbal attack by the president on the pope and the pope responding to that.

CISNEROS: Look, the pope does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, as the president said. You know, they have always been against war. They're always going to speak out against war. They're going to speak out against nuclear weapons. And so I think the president kind of needs to understand where the church is coming from, where the pope is coming from, that they are always going to, you know, push for peace and never take military action.

And so, it's unfortunate that the president has attacked the pope. And I hope, you know, hopefully the secretary of state has kind of been able to, you know, create some kind of goodwill there to kind of show that, hey, we need to get back to good relations with the holy sea and good relations with the pope. And, you know, we should be championing this -- our first American pope. We should be -- have a good relationship with him. And it's unfortunate that the president has not done that.

SIDNER: Now, let me take you to your state where you're -- I think you're in Covina right now. California has been run by a large Democratic majority, I think since 2008, nearly two decades. Do you think it's a bit lazy of the gubernatorial candidates to constantly bring up Trump, instead of recognizing and trying to find solutions to the problems specific to California, which happened under Democrats?

CISNEROS: Well, look, the president is causing a lot of our problems right now, right? The fact that gas prices have risen is because of what the president is doing right now in the Middle East, and his actions with Iran. That's what's causing gas prices to go up. His tariffs are causing to be things more expensive. I was at a small business yesterday that said, you know, the prices of the items that they are trying to sell have gone up. They have to add that tariff cost onto their prices. And it's unfortunate for them that people are not now buying their products.

So, these actions are being caused by the president. So, I think they are well within their rights. And what they should be saying, right, is that the president has caused this. And so, yes, it is the president's fault and they should be attacking him.

SIDNER: You don't think that Democrats have any skin in the game for some of the other issues, like homelessness and the sort of deficits that they're seeing with their state finances. They had a surplus and now a deficit.

CISNEROS: I mean, look, I think our state government always has to do better and strive to do better. And yes, I think as Democrats in charge they -- they should be working towards, you know, having a surplus. But, you know, California is still, you know, the fourth largest economy in the world.

[09:15:01]

You know, can we do better at homelessness? Yes, we do. We need to find -- get people into shelters. We need to ensure that people get the treatment they need for whether it be for drug or alcohol. But, you know, too, what this is doing, the rising cost of health care, the rising cost of goods, the rising cost of gasoline is all because of this administration. And it's unfortunate that we have to do it, not only here in California, but across the nation are having to deal with that because of what the president's actions.

SIDNER: Congressman Gil Cisneros, thank you so much for joining us this morning from California.

John.

BERMAN: All right, breaking just moments ago, we're learning that suspected cases of hantavirus have now been found in five countries. The cruise ship where the passengers died of the virus is now on the move. But will passengers actually be allowed to get off when it docks?

And the Justice Department suing Colorado over its ban on assault weapons. Actually on high-capacity magazines.

And an adult woman arrested and accused of posing as a teenager to enroll in high school. How the school principal got her to reveal her true identity.

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[09:20:46]

SIDNER: The race is on to contain the deadly hantavirus outbreak, as health officials in at least five countries trace infections and suspected cases. Confirmed patients are being treated in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland. Two British citizens back in the U.K. and several Americans here in the U.S. are being closely monitored. We're also standing by this morning as the World Health Organization gets ready to release some more information.

CNN's Melissa Bell is tracking all of this.

What are you learning this morning, Melissa?

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, really the World Health Organization, from whom we expect to hear more shortly, has really been insisting on the fact that this is not a virus. The Andes strain of the hantavirus now identified as being -- as being at the heart of this outbreak on this particular ship. It is not, they say, as contagious as the flu, as contagious as Covid, and therefore people should not be alarmed.

And yet, when you look at the measures being taken, being put in place, that the difficulty this ship has had in finding a port that would take it, you understand that the fear is real. And there have, of course, been, tragically, these three deaths already, five more confirmed cases. And all of that contact tracing that's now happening in countries from South Africa, to Switzerland, to United Kingdom because what we now know is that some 40 passengers got off before it was known that this virus was at the heart of this but after the first Dutch passenger had died at St. Helena and traveled on.

There is contact tracing going on, for instance, on the flight that the wife of the man took to go to South Africa, arriving on South African soil before collapsing herself and dying. Now the question is whether Tenerife, which looks set to be the final destination of this ship that's been struggling to find anywhere that would take it for the last couple of weeks, even there, Sara, and up until now, there are this -- there's this wrangling going on between local authorities, dock workers who are threatening a strike on Saturday when the ship's due to arrive, and Tenerife leaders arguing back and forth with Madrid about the safety procedures being put in place.

It's going to be a very complicated procedure, getting these 147 passengers who are now quarantining aboard the ship off the ship and onto the hospitals where they can be treated or the places where they can be monitored. And I think one of the most difficult things about this particular strain is that it has an eight-week incubation period. So, that gives you an idea of just how complex this operation is going to be, Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, and how long people will have to be out of work, for example, perhaps, or away from family potentially. It's concerning. But as you said, the WHO, we're expecting to hear a little bit more from them. But they're warning, this is not like the flu or coronavirus. We will see what happens next.

Melissa Bell, thank you so much for your reporting this morning for us.

All right, still to come this morning, cleanup is underway after tornadoes ripped through parts of Mississippi, destroying homes and injuring several people there.

Also, the legal battle between Senator Mark Kelly and Pete Hegseth escalating today as the Pentagon pushes to punish Kelly and dock his pension.

Those stories and more ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:28:35]

BERMAN: So, a new legal battle over guns between the Trump administration and the state of Colorado. The Justice Department is suing over the state's ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines. The law, passed in the wake of the deadly 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, bans magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. Now, the Department of Justice says those magazines are not actually large capacity and claims that the law violates the Second Amendment. It comes after the DOJ filed suit against the city of Denver over its ban on semiautomatic weapons. Now, the state and the city both vowing to fight back.

With us now is the attorney general of Colorado, Phil Weiser.

Attorney General, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

The Department of Justice called your ban on the magazines "political virtue signaling at the expense of American's constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

How do you respond to that? PHIL WEISER (D), COLORADO ATTORNEY GENERAL: John, this is an

outrageous claim on multiple levels. As you noted, in Aurora, we lost the lives of so many people who were watching a movie because someone had access to a large capacity magazine, and you are able to kill people like you're in war. And Colorado said, enough is enough.

We believe in gun safety for people who use weapons for self-defense, for hunting. You do not need some of these weapons that are so deadly.

[09:30:02]

That's why we passed this law. We defended this law at the Colorado Supreme Court that said it passed constitutional muster.