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Republican Divisions?; Deadly Earthquakes Rock Venezuela; Supreme Court Rules on Immigration. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired June 25, 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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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Venezuela rocked by the worst earthquakes the country has experienced in a century, and at least 164 people are confirmed dead, but officials fear the final death toll will be much higher.

Mending fences. House Speaker Mike Johnson heading to the White House. Frustration growing at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue over what Congress can and cannot do before summer recess.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And two big wins for President Trump at the Supreme Court both on immigration, both opening the door for the White House to continue its crackdown.

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

KEILAR: We have breaking news out of Venezuela. Rescuers are digging through mountains of rubble. They're in a desperate search for survivors after two catastrophic earthquakes hit just seconds apart.

Authorities confirm more than 160 people have been killed and about 1,000 more have been injured, and officials are fearing that the numbers are going to get much worse. Terrifying video capturing the moment that a building collapsed as the ground shook violently.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SCREAMING)

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KEILAR: These were back-to-back earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5. The second was the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century, according to the country's acting president, entire city blocks reduced to rubble you see here in the hardest hit city of La Guaira, which is just north of Caracas.

And you can take a look at the country's main airport as well, the ceiling crumbling, debris falling, as panicked passengers were scrambling for safety.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. has already sent rescue teams to Venezuela and will deploy assets to that airport.

Journalist Mary Triny Mena is near the airport, where a rescue is under way.

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MARY TRINY MENA, JOURNALIST: I'm at Playa Grande.

This is one of the areas most devastated by the two earthquakes that took place Wednesday in Venezuela. Here, there's an active survivor rescue, and there are neighbors and rescue teams trying to locate the people that are still inside of this building like this.

(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Carlo Vaes (ph).

MENA: But Carlos is a neighbor, and he's trying to get in touch with a lady that is in that building. He is waving at us.

Every time Carlos talk to her, she's trying to wave their hand with the red cloth.

(CROSSTALK)

MENA: So many people, they are trapped from yesterday, are trying to get the sense of the time that they are being stopped there and trying to make the efforts to bring more rescue team, more people to this area that is still with many people alive.

And they want, of course, that they are out of this situation as soon as possible.

La Guaira, as I said, is one of the areas most devastated in Venezuela, especially the international airport of Caracas that is located here. As you can see, there's a lot of rubble and debris in these buildings that I'm in right now.

And an entire complex of buildings are devastated.

For CNN, Mary Triny Mena.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: All right, terrible scenes, obviously, that we're seeing there out of Venezuela.

We're joined now by Jeffrey Park. He's a seismologist and professor of earth and planetary sciences at Yale University.

Jeffrey, thank you for being with us.

I mean, these pictures are terrible here. Give us a sense of what we're talking about, because these are two earthquakes back to back, really a one-two punch.

And we're talking about 7.2 and 7.5, but because of the way that scale goes, the second quake was actually about twice as strong as the first one. Is this a normal kind of occurrence?

JEFFREY PARK, PROFESSOR OF EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES, YALE UNIVERSITY: No, no.

Actually, an earthquake like this would probably have ruptured continuously, and we would have recognized it as a single earthquake. It's quite common for large earthquakes of this type for different patches of the fault to rupture sequentially.

[13:05:02]

This was -- just happened to be a case in which the deeper segment ruptured and then stopped, and then there was a short delay before the upper part did. Now, the upper part had the larger earthquake size and more energy being released, but because it was so shallow, it caused much more intense shaking at the surface and far more damage.

KEILAR: OK, so you're really seeing this as not two quakes, but as one quake kind of happening sequentially and building.

One American who's visiting Venezuela walked six miles back to his hotel in Caracas. He said throughout the night he could still feel aftershocks. He woke up a couple times with the room shaking. What is Venezuela looking at? I mean, how long does that kind of risk continue?

PARK: Well, we're going to have aftershocks for days and weeks, and some of those aftershocks may be quite large. You could have easily a couple of magnitude 6 to 6.5 earthquakes in that region over the next few weeks.

Those -- that would not cause the same extensive damage that occurred yesterday, but it could cause local damage and some falling debris.

KEILAR: Talk to us about the casualties here, more than 160, about 1,000 people injured. That's the early count. They're expecting it to grow. How are you expecting that number to change?

PARK: I would not be surprised if there -- if we're not in the thousands or maybe even 10,000. I have seen video of completely collapsed apartment buildings.

KEILAR: I mean, that's incredible.

And I also think, some of these buildings, we think about the code, that they would be -- some of the buildings obviously held up a lot better than others. But looking at the pictures coming out of the airport, what does that say to you?

As you're looking at how these buildings are responded -- what are you -- responding, what are you seeing in that? PARK: Well, in an earthquake with a great deal of shaking, I mean,

it's never going to feel good to be inside of any building, even one that is relatively safe and will stay up at the end of the shaking.

But there's -- the complete collapse of some of these apartment buildings suggests that they were not constructed very well to withstand the type of shaking that could have been predicted by the -- by the seismology -- seismologists in the region.

You see, this is not a -- there's not been an earthquake of this size in a century, but this is an active plate boundary between the Caribbean plate and the South American plate. So, earthquakes in this size range are expected in the coastal regions of South America along the Caribbean coast.

KEILAR: It's expected, but not maybe so often.

You mentioned the depth, right? This -- I mean, this is a very rare occurrence here, but you mentioned the depth as you were talking about seeing this quake kind of happening more as one quake. Can you talk to us about why that matters, what -- the kind of depth we might be talking about here?

PARK: Well, normally, if you have an earthquake that's inside of the crust, the continental crust -- this is common is -- what's happening in this in this region -- is that it will be in the middle crust where it starts to nucleate.

The rupture begins about 20 kilometers down. That's what the first earthquake, its depth has been detected as, at 20 kilometers depth. The second earthquake is far shallower. About 10 kilometers is estimated to be its depth.

And that, it suggests that the upper crust was quite brittle and then and then was loaded for a rupture, and probably has been for some time and with -- got triggered by what had happened below.

KEILAR: Jeffrey Park, we really appreciate your expertise here in helping us understand what we are watching in Venezuela. Thanks for being with us.

PARK: Thank you. Bye.

KEILAR: Boris.

SANCHEZ: Back in the United States, just moments from now, House Speaker Mike Johnson will head to the White House. He's looking to smooth things over with President Trump amid an intraparty feud, the speaker sending the House home early today.Still unclear if they will return next week.

Just yesterday, the president got into a shouting match with Republican senators, abruptly canceling a signing ceremony for a popular bipartisan housing bill. He's now demanding that the Senate force an election overhaul measure, the SAVE America Act, before he signs off on the housing legislation. That's leaving Republicans in a tight spot. The SAVE America Act

simply doesn't have the votes in the Senate, lacking unanimous Republican support, but some hard-liners are threatening to block it -- rather, to block all other legislation until that passes.

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Let's go live to Capitol Hill with CNN's Lauren Fox.

So, Lauren, where does all of this go from here?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, that is the question, Boris, in part because the House is scheduled to leave, like you said, after this next vote series, in part because they cannot do anything else on the floor, given the fact that some of those conservatives are saying that they are going to hold up the entire business of the House of Representatives until they see their Senate Republican colleagues pass the SAVE America Act.

As you noted, that bill does not have the votes to pass in the Senate, in part because you would need 60 votes. No Democrats are planning to support it. And even if they were somehow able to do this with just Republican votes, there's not support within the GOP Conference in the Senate to pass it.

That means that this entire legislative process may be in a standstill until either conservatives relent in the House of Representatives or perhaps, in a couple of hours, Speaker Mike Johnson can convince Donald Trump to try and help unstick the floor in the House.

But, as you noted, earlier this week, the president declined to sign a housing bill that had broad bipartisan support, got more than 80 votes in the United States Senate, because he is so committed to trying to move forward with this voting bill.

I talked to Senator Thom Tillis earlier today. And he just expressed frustration over the fact that he said not only is the president holding up other important legislation, like the housing bill, that would allow his colleagues to go out and campaign on affordability issues, but the president also doesn't understand that this voting bill doesn't actually have any funding in it to implement it in just five months before the midterm elections.

In Thom Tillis' view, that argument means that perhaps the Senate or House would pass it, and then it's not clear exactly how this would move forward with just a short time until the midterm elections. And we should remind people a lot of voters start voting earlier, before November.

SANCHEZ: An important point.

Lauren Fox, live for us on the Hill, thanks so much.

Still ahead: the Supreme Court handing the Trump administration major wins on a pair of immigration cases. The decisions leading to a rare and pointed exchange between two of the justices. We have the latest from the court.

Plus, new numbers showing inflation hit its highest level in three years. We will explain why some experts think the worst may be over when it comes to rising prices.

And, later: meth, weapons, and drones. New details on a huge bust of contraband being flown into federal prisons.

That and much more coming your way on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: Today, the Supreme Court delivering two big wins for President Trump's immigration crackdown. In back to back 6-3 rulings, the court saying the Trump administration can end temporary protected status for people in the U.S. from countries like Haiti and Syria, clearing the way for potentially hundreds of thousands of deportations.

The court also ruled that people seeking asylum in the U.S. can be turned away at the border.

KEILAR: A lot of emphasis in this case being put on the word arrive.

In the majority opinion, Justice Alito writes: "Arrive does not mean attempting to arrive."

But in a scathing dissent, Justice Sotomayor saying the consequences are predictable. Her words: "More people will die."

CNN chief Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic and CNN correspondent Priscilla Alvarez are with us now.

And, Joan, first, on this asylum case, you were in the room when the opinion was read. Tell us more.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Yes, it really -- tensions in this 6-3 conservative majority, supermajority court, have really been boiling up this session, and they just overflowed in plain sight.

Usually, when the justices have countering views, you don't see how angry they are at each other in a personal way, the way Justice Alito claimed he had been blindsided, in effect, by Justice Sotomayor in her dissent.

Let's first lay out kind of their dueling points of view. Justice Alito, as he spoke for the majority, explained the definition of arrive, as you just said, Boris. He said: "We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not arrive in the United States by attempting and failing to set foot in this country. An alien arrives in the United States only when he crosses the border."

Now, Justice Sotomayor first wanted to explain the consequences. She says by holding that, the court is essentially circumventing all these immigration procedures that would allow someone to come in. And she says -- she notes that immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from studying a foot onto U.S. soil.

"They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of the port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance to the country."

So they lay that out. And then, when Justice Alito finishes, he pauses, but you're not sure if he's about to give the second ruling on the temporary protected status. And Justice Sotomayor says: "I have a dissent to read."

And then she goes in, and instead of just starting with how -- I explained the part about immigration officers blocking people from coming, she goes all the way back to the 1930s and Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust and what happened to them when they came on a ship and first went to Cuba and were turned away, then came to the U.S. and were turned away.

And she's talking about the moral imperative of taking in people who are legitimately seeking refuge from terrible persecution. And so she gives this really dramatic rendering and then also talks about how the way the majority has narrowly read the terms arrive that it just circumvents sort of the standards that are already in place.

[13:20:15]

Then it's time for Justice Alito to pick up with his other ruling that he was going to announce in immigration. And he first says, if I had known that was going to happen, if I had known that the dissent was going to say that, I would have said more in my opinion.

He was obviously bitter that she was able to -- she took up a lot of time as she unspooled her dissent and talked about how unfair it would be and how, as I said, it hearkens back to history and just what had happened during the Holocaust, when those people were turned away, and then many of them perished in Nazi Germany.

So then he went on to read the Temporary Protected Status, one that we can talk about too.

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: Dramatic moments in the courtroom.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right.

SANCHEZ: But what now happens, Priscilla, practically speaking, at the border.

ALVAREZ: So, this essentially gives a lot of latitude to this administration, but importantly to future administrations, in how they process asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border.

And, even more specifically -- and I would say this is another critical part of this decision -- at the port of entry. So when an asylum seeker is trying to present to a border authority at a legal port of entry, there was so-called metering, which was basically a wait-list of people who wanted to make or request those protections.

So this is going to give a lot of room to this administration to avoid them, to block that, or for future administrations to also limit who is allowed to make those at these legal ports of entry. However, there is an unintended consequence here, which is that that may lead to people crossing unlawfully to try to make those claims to the border authorities that are along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ultimately, however, I will say numbers at the U.S.-Mexico border are very, very low. There are restrictions in place. But when I talk to officials about this, they ultimately like these policies to keep in their back pocket. In the event that there is a surge, they can reach in and use this to again -- quote, unquote -- "meter," as it's often called, at these ports of entry.

KEILAR: And, Joan, what happened with the TPS decision?

BISKUPIC: OK, and this -- in some ways, this is -- this one is a little more urgent because it has to do some with something that's going on right now, where people from Syria and from Haiti suddenly are having their Temporary Protected Status lifted.

Just to remind people when that comes into effect, it comes into effect when this country feels that those people should be given some protection here because of terrible conflict in their country. The Haitian one came after the earthquake of 2010, Syria because of all sorts of violence and armed conflict there.

And what the justices said, as a threshold matter, is that courts do not have power to review the administration's decision on Temporary Protected Status, lifting it. And that's what's happened with the Trump administration, is lifting it.

But then there was this other slice that's important that provoked the liberal dissenters in that one too. The challengers from Haiti were saying it's not just that we're seeking review by a court. We also have a constitutional claim.

And that constitutional claim is that there was racial animus, discrimination behind the Trump administration decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Haiti. And they brought up things that President Trump while he was campaigning had said about Haiti and the rumors about -- that he put on the forefront during debate with Vice...

KEILAR: Yes, unproven rumors about eating pets and such.

BISKUPIC: Yes. Yes.

And Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented...

KEILAR: Disproven, I should say. BISKUPIC: ... in that case, really went into all the things that President Trump had said and that others in the administration had claimed.

But Justice Alito, again, writing the majority there, said, can't make out a claim with that. That's not sufficient. And Elena Kagan, very hot dissent there, but she did not take the time to dissent from the bench. I think we have had enough.

SANCHEZ: So does this mean we will see immediate deportations of these folks?

ALVAREZ: So, simply put, there are hundreds of thousands who will be eligible for deportation.

Building on what Joan was saying, this is about those already in the United States who are protected by this form of humanitarian relief, who will have those protections stripped and then could make them eligible for deportation.

To bring this to today, think about the Venezuela earthquakes and Venezuelans in the United States. I am told by a U.S. official there are not plans right now to extend TPS or bring that back to life for those Venezuelans in the United States. That means that they could be deported back to this country which just suffered this natural disaster.

KEILAR: And just real quickly, besides Haiti and Syria, people have TPS from other countries as well.

ALVAREZ: From various countries, yes.

KEILAR: So this affects them.

ALVAREZ: Yes.

KEILAR: All right.

ALVAREZ: This is expected to affect all of them.

KEILAR: And, Joan, let's talk about the outstanding cases here, a lot of major decisions, they're still pending.

BISKUPIC: Yes.

KEILAR: There's even more.

BISKUPIC: There's more.

KEILAR: You're welcome, Joan.

(LAUGHTER)

BISKUPIC: Right.

[13:25:00] And the one that so many people are talking about today, because it's in the immigration realm too, is that President Trump on his first day back in office on January 20 issued an executive order that would end the historic birthright citizenship.

The Constitution says and federal laws have said and court cases have said that, if you are born on U.S. soil, you automatically become an American citizen, irrespective of your parents' immigrant status. Now he's trying to roll that back and say people who aren't citizens or have certain permanent status here, that those children could not claim U.S. citizenship, which would be a major overhaul of our understanding of U.S. identity and interpretations of the Constitution.

I actually think he will lose that one, but that's so far, such an extreme measure that he took, that I just cannot see this court, no matter how conservative it is, to grant that one.

And then if we have got time, I can mention a couple others. It's -- we have got the transgender...

KEILAR: We haven't had any time cues, so take it away.

(LAUGHTER)

BISKUPIC: OK, all right, we got time, folks.

(LAUGHTER)

BISKUPIC: OK, this is a big one for anybody who have children who play sports...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

BISKUPIC: ... and that two states, West Virginia and Idaho, have banned trans females, trans girls from playing on women's sports teams, and this is a big deal whether states can do it.

And you have about half the states. It's a big red state versus blue state issue. Can they ban trans girls and women from playing in organized sports? So that's a major one.

And then one that's really important for the election is, the justices are considering whether absentee ballots that are sent in can be received and counted after Election Day. You know, there's a grace period in so many states that allows ballots to be counted after Election Day.

And this court during oral argument seemed very seriously ready to consider ending that kind of grace period, which would really affect the elections coming up and in the future.

KEILAR: Thank you to you both.

Joan here -- this is the World Cup for Joan...

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: ... the end of the Supreme Court term, where there's so much still happening here.

SANCHEZ: And so -- yes.

KEILAR: Priscilla, thank you so much. Really important cases here, and we appreciate your insights.

Some new data showing another measure of inflation jumped to its highest level in three years. Coming up, what it means for interest rates and your wallet.

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