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Health Officials Worldwide Scramble To Track Deadly Hantavirus; Fiery Protests After Tennessee Republicans Pass New Congressional Map; Campuses Rethink Phone Use As Students Crave IRL Connection. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired May 08, 2026 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:30:30]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. The breaking news this morning, right now the cruise ship hit by that deadly hantavirus outbreak is on its way to Spain's Canary Islands. Health officials around the globe, including here in the United States, are racing to track, contain, and monitor the virus. More than 140 people are still aboard that ship, including 17 Americans. When they arrive, they'll disembark and most will be flown home from there.

Now, joining us now is epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm. He is also the director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Osterholm, the president is promising a report today on the U.S. involvement in dealing with this. Do you have any sense of what the involvement has been so far and what normally happens when an outbreak like this one occurs, especially involving more than a dozen Americans?

DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA (via Webex by Cisco): Well, first of all, let's look at what it would have looked like if before this administration and the major cuts were made at CDC. We would have had a much more active part of the investigation with our experts because we have some of the world's experts on hantavirus infection. That didn't occur.

However, what has occurred in the past several days is that the CDC is now having daily discussions with the World Health Organization. The CDC has now stood up its emergency operations center.

And I would say rather than characterizing this as we're racing, it's a very controlled, very thoughtful approach in terms of following up all the individuals who are on the ship to make sure that they don't come down with actual clinical illness. Remember, one is not infectious with this virus until you become clinically ill. So if we can monitor people at home, having them take their temperature twice a day, checking with them, we are in good shape with that in terms of stopping any future transmission. SIDNER: Look, a lot of people see this and they remember terrifyingly

about the pandemic and what that did to the whole world, never mind, you know, on a personal level.

Is this something that could turn into that or is this something that can really be quite contained because of how it spreads?

OSTERHOLM: Yeah. First of all, most people who are actually infected with this particular strain of hantavirus do not transmit the virus to anyone. We have numerous examples of people who were not recognized who had hantavirus and have lots of contact with people -- long airplane rides home, et cetera -- and have no evidence of transmission.

We surely do have some. There was an outbreak in Argentina a few years ago in which a person-to-person transmission -- breathing one's air actually caused a transmission to occur. But generally, that is not very common.

And I would say a good test of that is actually what happened on the ship. Remember, this was a ship that was in cold water.

SIDNER: Right.

OSTERHOLM: It was in the Antarctic area. These are not people who were outside in their bathing suits with lots of outdoor air with windows open. And so if any location would have enhanced transmission, it would have been this ship.

And we're talking about maybe six -- maybe six people who have contracted hantavirus infection from what l believe was two individuals who brought it on board out of over 150. That says that even in that condition of that ship transmission was still very, very limited. And I would expect that going forward we may not see any additional cases or we may just see a couple.

But I'm confident that this is under control. This is not anything like COVID, you know. I don't want people who are a part of it to feel as if we don't think this is very important. But for the rest of the world this is really not a major public health issue.

SIDNER: It's really helpful to hear that and you give a good example of the ship itself -- how many people were on it and how many people contracted it. But, of course, it frightened a lot of people because of -- there were deaths on that ship as well and people leaving the ship and being monitored.

Dr. Osterholm, it is good to have you here to kind of give us a sense of what we're dealing --

OSTERHOLM: Thank you.

SIDNER: -- with, with this virus. I really appreciate it -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Sara. Thanks so much. As of this moment, oil prices are -- they are -- we have a graphic. Oil prices are -- there we go. You can see Brent crude up a tick. West Texas basically flat. This is after U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged fire yesterday. The UAE says it's dealing with incoming missiles. The oil, not a big move frankly with all the activity over the last 24 hours indicating maybe the oil traders did not see it escalating further.

With us now CNN national and political analyst David Sanger. He's also a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Also here, former major staff director for the House Intelligence committee, Michael Allen.

[07:35:00]

David, I just want to start with you on the situation we have seen over the last 24 hours. We see U.S. strikes, right, on Iranian targets here and here in the Gulf. And we've seen, really, overnight the UAE saying they're dealing with incoming missiles somewhere off the coast here.

This doesn't feel much like a ceasefire with all the firing.

DAVID SANGER, CNN NATIONAL AND POLITICAL ANALYST, WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES (via Webex by Cisco): It sure doesn't. And, you know, John, you heard the president last night say that it was just a trifle at one point. He said the U.S. response, which was somewhat vigorous, when the Iranians attacked understandably was just a love tap.

He is doing everything that he can to keep some kind of an agreement from going off the rails and the reason is pretty clear. Not only has this now gone on for 10 weeks or so, but he leaves on Tuesday to go to China. And China is really -- that trip has really been the bookmark for him for what he hopes would be the end of the war. He wanted to show up there having vanquished the Iranians and gotten them to give up their nuclear program and, of course, reopen the strait which supplies 30 percent or so of all the oil and gas flowing into China.

He's going to show up right now, at least on current evidence unless things turn in the next few days, with none of that accomplished.

BERMAN: Look Michael, let me just ask you since David brought it up. The president is going to China on this visit. How do the Chinese view the United States and view this situation now? David's paper, The New York Times, had a great headline today basically quoting a Chinese official saying they see the U.S. as a superpower with a limp.

MICHAEL ALLEN, FORMER MAJOR STAFF DIRECTOR, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Yeah. I think the Chinese are probably looking at us struggle a bit and are wondering what the United States' plan is to get of out this.

You know, I agree with what David said. I think the president is going out of his way to make sure that hostilities don't resume in a large way. Of course, there are some that they define as under the threshold.

But honestly, I don't see how the president gets Iran to even discuss meaningful compromises unless he holds out the credible use of force and restores the safe passage mission that successfully got two ships through the straits earlier this week. It wasn't without cost and it would still be a great risk, but it was the first direct attempt to negate the Iranian leverage that they have over us and the world by controlling the straits. And I think ultimately, that's going to be the only way out of this.

BERMAN: You know, David, Michael there is talking about this operation called Project Freedom, which was designed to get, you know, vessels out of the straits. Two -- a grand total of two were able to pass through there.

But the costs seem to have been --

SANGER: Right.

BERMAN: -- and we're just learning this over the last 24 hours, David, a diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia and with Kuwait, which didn't want any part of it.

What does that tell you? Now apparently, they are more amendable to the whole idea. But the fact that they didn't have them on board in the beginning, David, where does that leave things?

SANGER: Well, the first thing it tells you is that the administration is having a hard time learning the lessons from even the beginning of this war.

You'll remember that the Saudis and the UAE were not given notice about when the war was going to begin. And the next thing they knew the Iranians were taking it out on them, right, launching missiles at their sites and their bases, and their oil fields, their oil production facilities.

So he started in on this Project Freedom -- which as Michael says, you know, is a much needed effort to get this open -- but again didn't do full consultation it appears on what this would be. How they might all participate. Certainly, how they'd prepare for it. And all of a sudden, they pulled the plug on it and the president came up with another excuse for halting it.

Those two ships -- just to put it in perspective, before the war about 140 ships transited the strait each day.

BERMAN: Um-hum.

SANGER: So it tells you how little is getting out. And the president is in a position right now where I think he needs to show that he is somewhat in control of that strait. Because as we heard from Secretary Rubio the other day, the situation that they're aiming for is getting back to making it a free international waterway, which means no tolls and no control by Iran. BERMAN: Meanwhile, we're waiting to hear from Iran -- their response to this one-page peace plan. We'll see what they say if they say anything, which would be telling as well.

[07:40:05]

David Sanger, Michael Allen, great to see you both. Thank you -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. And very much related, economic warning signs. This week multiple top CEOs have been sending a message -- a pretty clear one about what they think of the state of the U.S. economy right now. And spoiler alert, it is not good.

Many of them are sounding the alarm over dramatic drops in consumer spending, sending their stocks plummeting. One CEO even called it "recession-level" drops in demand. Tariffs, inflation, and of course, the war in Iran all making things worse.

CNN's David Goldman is here with more on that. Tell us -- what are you seeing --

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: -- and what are they saying?

GOLDMAN: Well, they are saying consumers are struggling, right? I mean, this is something that we're seeing across a number of consumer companies.

Planet Fitness said that they just can't raise prices the way that they wanted to because people won't pay for it. You saw Whirlpool saying that we are at a recession level event for our industry. And then the CEO --

BOLDUAN: Whirlpool hit so many different --

GOLDMAN: Well, this is the thing. And if you don't move then you're not buying appliances -- and no one's moving right now because the housing market is struggling.

The one that really got me was this Wall Street Journal comment that the CEO Kraft Heinz made where he said that "Consumers are running out of money" at the end of the month.

So these aren't the only companies that are saying this. I mean, McDonald's, Shake Shack. Papa Johns said that people are buying smaller pizzas with fewer toppings.

Now, all of this --

BOLDUAN: So that is so interesting and telling how the -- how it's popping up in different ways in different industries.

GOLDMAN: That's --

BOLDUAN: Like, fewer toppings. You know that, you know, you add sausage it's a -- it's a dollar-plus, right? Like --

GOLDMAN: That's exactly right. People are making those kind of changes right now because they're saying well, if I'm paying this much more in gas I have this much left, and I want a pizza; I just can't afford the deluxe pizza that I like.

All of this is having an impact on the overall economy.

Now let's be clear. The economy is fine, right? It's like climate change where people say save the earth. The earth is still going to be here; it's the people on it that we have to be worried about. The same thing for the economy.

The economy overall is going to do just fine. But the people in it who have to pay every day for the stuff that they want; those are the ones who we have to worry about. Because if you're paying at the gas pump, you're not paying for your pizza, you're not paying for your macaroni and cheese, you're not paying for the gym, and that has an impact.

BOLDUAN: I was going to say, David, the way you just made that connection and that comparison I think is really important for people because people often hear a warning sign and say but wait, wait, wait, wait. All of -- both of these things can be true at the same time.

GOLDMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: The context of who is really being hurt and -- is very important here. That comparison is very helpful I think for a lot of people.

GOLDMAN: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

GOLDMAN: But -- of course, that's what we do.

BOLDUAN: Again, culminating today's Dave talk.

GOLDMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Sara.

SIDNER: It was --

BOLDUAN: I think we've got a new thing. We've figured out a new thing, Sara.

SIDNER: I like it. I do.

BOLDUAN: The Dave talk.

SIDNER: It's very smart. We should have David on -- he should do this for a living.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, I know. Like, what are you doing tomorrow?

SIDNER: He's pretty good.

GOLDMAN: Tomorrow I'm not here.

(Laughing)

BOLDUAN: We'll change that, David Goldman.

GOLDMAN: Leave me alone.

BOLDUAN: We'll change that.

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, data center blowback. The growing frustration in neighborhoods across America over these emerging massive data centers. What happened in Utah? We'll talk about it.

And the new trend on college campuses -- no phones. And now schools are getting creative.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Selfie. Having so much fun with my New York bestie.

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[07:48:35]

BOLDUAN: So Tennessee just became the next state to move on new congressional maps and the first state to redraw them since last week's Supreme Court decision, and it got rowdy.

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Protesters at Tennessee State Capitol.

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BOLDUAN: That just some of the scene inside the Tennessee State House as Republicans pushed through the new map that now carves up the state's only majority-Black district. It's the 9th Congressional District which essentially the move now splits Memphis and Shelby County, the last remaining Democratic stronghold, into three districts.

The whole point of Republicans doing this is to give Republicans more advantage to win seats come November.

The Republican governor called the special session. The Republican majorities acted then the governor quickly signed it -- quickly.

And here is how Democrats reacted to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. GLORIA JOHNSON, (D) KNOXVILLE: This is not a special session; this is a white power rally and a white power grab. Vote yes, you're telling everyone you're a racist.

JUSTIN PEARSON, (D) TENNESSEE STATE SENATE: These maps are racist tools of white supremacy at the behest of the most powerful white supremacist in the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.

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BOLDUAN: Democrats, as you saw there in the chamber. We're going to play for you what Republicans said about the reality of the moment.

[07:50:00]

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REP. JASON ZACHARY, (R) KNOXVILLE: It was absolutely drafted on politics. This gives us a unique opportunity to -- for the first time in history to have an all-Republican delegation sent from Tennessee to Washington, D.C. to represent conservative values.

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BOLDUAN: Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina are also looking to do the same. Democratic-led states, as we know and have covered, have pushed similar partisan maps but with now fewer opportunities ahead of the midterm elections -- Sara.

SIDNER: We're going from that protest to another one over a massive AI infrastructure project that's set to break ground in rural Utah. It is being hailed by investors as one of the world's premier AI data centers but many of the residents in the area don't want it and made that really clear to their county commissioners. Still this week, Box Elder's county commissioners did approve the Stratos project, a proposed 40,000-acre data center campus backed by "SHARK TANK" investor Kevin O'Leary.

Now since the product's -- project's introduction residents have filed more than 2,000 public comments. Hundreds of people packed a heated public meeting to try and raise concerns about many things, including water use, air pollution, and the project's enormous energy demands.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you be quiet and let our citizens hear what needs to be said, please?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This was our one opportunity to hopefully get our voices heard and we were kind of shut down.

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SIDNER: Well, CNN's Clare Duffy is joining me here to talk all about it. Give us some sense of this project because it is a very large area that it's going to be taking over, correct?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yeah, it's massive. As you said, 40,000 acres are being set aside for this. This is in rural Box Elder County, Utah. This is an area that's mostly agricultural. They've got ranches and farms. It's also a sanctuary for migratory birds and the Great Salt Lake Basin, which I'm told is already an ecologically very fragile area.

This 40,000 acres would have a 9-gigawatt AI hyperscale data center and also a natural gas power plant to power that data center. Part of the idea there is so that the data center wouldn't be drawing on the energy grid and potentially raising prices for local electricity customers. But that also raises the concerns around the environmental impact of this project.

The proponents of this project, including investor Kevin O'Leary, say that it will provide 2,000 permanent jobs once it's -- once it's fully constructed. Tax revenue for both the county and the state. And they're also framing this as a national security priority, saying that this was part of the AI raise with China.

But locals, I'm told, felt blindsided by this. They found out about it sort of at the last minute ahead of that Monday meeting. They are really concerned about the environmental impact of it in this already rural, fragile area.

The water use, as you mentioned. The developers are saying they're going to use a sort of new approach to cooling in these data centers that would use less water. Residents are sort of unsure about what that looks like.

Also the energy use. Nine gigawatts of energy is more than the entire state of Utah already uses.

And what I'm told is that many of those hundreds of people at that Monday meeting really just want more information. They want a little bit more time to understand this project and potentially an independent environmental review to understand how this is going to impact this area.

I spoke with Robert Davies, who is a physics professor at Utah State University. He was there on Monday. He's also an expert in environmental change. And this is how he sort of described the concern to me.

He said, "The question is: Will the jobs be worth the cost? And the cost, of course, is multi-generational here. One needs to think about what kind of community do I want my children and grandchildren in 30 years from now, 50 years from now? Because this thing in as described, and running it for 30 years, will utterly transform this valley."

And so people really just want more information here. They're not necessarily opposed to this on principle.

SIDNER: So this is a little bit of an issue of somehow this got very far along before the residents even found out about it. DUFFY: That's exactly right, and part of that is because again, both

the state and the developers are framing this as a national security priority, saying that they need to move very quickly to increase America's computing capacity.

Kevin O'Leary, the investor behind this, also talked about the fact that he is aware of the environmental concerns in an Instagram post this week. Take a listen to that.

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KEVIN O'LEARY, DATA CENTER DEVELOPER: Well, I'm actually the only developer of data centers on earth that graduated in environmental studies. So I'm pretty aware of what these concerns are. They are around air, water use, heat, noise, pollution. Um, so sustainability is at the heart of what we do in terms of all these proposals.

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DUFFY: He also claimed in that video that many of the protesters on Monday were paid protesters. That is something the locals are very much denying and pushing back on.

But I think the problem here is that they just want more information. They would like to be able to trust what Kevin O'Leary is saying there but they need more independent information in order to do that.

SIDNER: All right, Clare Duffy. Thank you. It's a really interesting story that is not going away anytime soon.

[07:55:00]

DUFFY: Yes.

SIDNER: John.

BERMAN: All right. Breaking this morning chaos for millions of college students, including my own. Hackers took down Canvas. This is the online class management system used by 30 million students across the country. Now it's finals week for a lot of colleges. Students -- some are locked out of notes, study materials, and even quizzes.

The group claiming responsibility is called "ShinyHunters." They're a well-known hacking group. They're demanding ransom. This is actually their second attack on Canvas this month.

Now, Canvas does say most users and systems are back online, but it really isn't all at this point.

A deadly volcanic eruption in Indonesia killed at least three people and a new search and rescue operation is underway to find several missing hikers. Mount Dukono sent thick ash and heavy smoke some six miles into the air. You can see it right there. It's erupted nearly 200 times in the past month, and authorities are warning to expect more today -- Kate. BOLDUAN: So more schools across the country are cracking down on cellphones trying to cut out distractions and promote more human connection. And it's not just the K-12 programs like we've been reporting on so much. Some college campuses are also pushing for screen-free spaces.

At UC Berkeley, students have created a class limiting technology use, even starting a club that hosts phone-free hikes and events. One student who helps organize these events told The Washington Post this about it all. "Actually connecting with people or allowing yourself to sit with your own thoughts, doing things that were normal is an act of defiance now."

NYU, New York University, has launched what it calls "In Real Life" spaces or "NYU IRL" where students can connect face-to-face without the phone.

Check out this promo for it.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Selfie. Having so much fun with my New York bestie.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have an oat milk latte for Steve.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Raises hand).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wait, your name is Steve?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: NYU's president says that students attached to their phones are missing -- here's the quote from them -- "...spontaneity, and the opportunity of the collisions that happen in college that are so fundamental, whether you're going to meet your life partner or you're going to change your mind about something."

Joining me right now is Colleen Kinder, a writer and instructor who leads a Yale summer session that prides itself in getting her students to unplug from their phones. Thank you so much for being here.

You run this monthlong summer course in France where you have now for years experimented with requiring students to go completely offline.

What do you think of this, I don't know, movement now among some campuses to not necessarily require students to put down phone but somehow try to make it the new cool thing?

COLLEEN KINDER, WRITER AND LECTURER, YALE SUMMER SESSION (via Webex by Cisco): Kate, I love hearing about it. It absolutely thrills me that we're at some sort of inflection point where the students themselves are demanding this of their instructors, their educators, and starting to create movements.

I know there's a student at Stanford who is trying to lead the way to create a -- an offline dorm for students who are just tired of this. And like you said a moment ago, just to be with their own thoughts and have a chance to socialize in real life.

So frankly, it thrills me.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. Inflection points, I think a really interesting way of putting it because I'm kind of wondering if that's what we're -- that's what we're kind of reacting to now.

You had written, I believe it was last year, about your course and your experience and about it you wrote, "You might think enforcing a technology ban gets harder with each passing year. In fact, it's gotten easier." And you wrote, "By 2025, any resistance had faded away. My students hungered for an absolute disconnect."

Can you -- what are the lessons in this that you kind of gathered in your own research if you will over the years, and what this has meant and what the lessons are maybe for all of us and schools?

KINDER: Sure, yeah. I would say that I noticed the most stark difference post-pandemic. My students in, like, around 2017-2018 -- you know, I really had to cajole some of them to hand over their phones. Sometimes I only got their sim cards. My course is a month long, so I was requiring them to be offline for a month while they were in France with me writing.

And after the pandemic students were pretty much throwing their phones at me and saying, "Get this away from me. I am so exhausted by it."

And the degree of self-awareness about how their own study habits and concentration had been degraded by technology was really moving to me. I expected them to need more policing whereas they were just so ready. They were all in.