Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Dangerous Heat Wave; Status of U.S.-Iran Talks?; Supreme Court Issues Major Rulings. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired June 29, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:50]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Split decision. The Supreme Court rules that President Trump can fire officials at agencies such as the FTC, but blocks him from doing the same at the Federal Reserve. Justices also ruled in a key case involving mail-in ballots.

Glimmers of hope in Venezuela, teams lifted by the rescue of an infant and a woman trapped for more than three days, while officials hope a surge of foreign aid will help the nation after last week's awful earthquakes. At least 1,400 people have died.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: And the countdown is on to a sizzling Fourth, as a heat wave rolls across the U.S., punishing temperatures on deck for millions.

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

SCIUTTO: We begin with the breaking news, lots of it, from the Supreme Court today, and, for the president, a mixed bag for him of wins and losses.

The first loss concerning elections. The justices in a narrow 5-4 decision ruled that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. The chief justice, John Roberts, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with liberals.

HILL: Justice Barrett, in the majority opinion, writing -- quote -- "The Election Day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose."

Justice Alito in his dissent is saying the decision -- quote -- "creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections."

CNN chief Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic and CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig are with us now.

So, Joan, first, let's start off with this mail-in ballot ruling. We were talking briefly in the break about whether it was surprising or not. What is the main takeaway for it?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: This one was a close call. First of all, it's 5-4, literally a one-vote decision.

But during oral arguments, the justices gave off some signals that suggested they might actually say you can't have a grace period after an election. And at the center of this was a Mississippi law that said that ballots could be counted five days after the Election Day if they had been postmarked and were legitimate before then.

And the -- during arguments, there was a lot of talk about fraud, exactly what in this sense Sam Alito ended up with. But Justice Barrett took a very literal reading of what the Election Day statutes are. You know, typically, states have control in the time and place, manner of their elections, but there's a federal statute that says that Election Day is going to be the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

And what she said was, election in that statute and other federal requirements goes to the choice, when you make that choice of who you're going to vote for. That's the key thing, not when it's actually received by someone.

So she said that the textual grounding for what Mississippi and, frankly, many other states allow, a grace period, that that should hold. And you see that the fraud overlay did not sway her. She said there might be some historical considerations, there might be policy issues, but we have to go with what the statute says.

SCIUTTO: Elie, I thought that both precedent in general and that this conservative court in particular gave states an enormous amount of leeway to write election laws, that that would have then given direction. I mean, was that what won the day?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, ultimately, if you look at the Constitution, it says states shall choose the time, place, and manner of their elections, unless Congress legislates to the contrary, in which case Congress overrides it.

And so you have about 30 states, Mississippi being one of them, that does allow this grace period, allows mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day to be counted. The question was, when Congress passed the law creating capital E Election Day, that Tuesday in November, did that mean everything has to end by that day?

And the court looked at it and said -- the majority, the 5-4 majority said, no, it does not mean everything has to end by that Tuesday. It just means that is the day of the choosing. But if there has to be counting after, now, under this ruling, if states want to allow extra time, they can do that.

HILL: And that's up to the states.

HONIG: Right.

HILL: So we had another couple of really, really important -- a win and a loss for President Trump. So let's start off first with the win for President Trump.

[13:05:05]

BISKUPIC: OK.

The win for President Trump is actually the biggest. Even though there's so much attention on the Federal Reserve, and rightly so on the independence of the Federal Reserve, which he has tried to undermine, the bigger thing that he got was now the power to remove the heads of independent agencies, like the Federal Trade Commission and all sorts of regulatory groups that are out there protecting consumer finances, protecting -- overseeing nuclear waste, chemical spills, all these things that you want a head -- or at least Congress -- Congress had said we want someone in there who will not be pressured.

So all these laws set up the requirements for someone who would be the head of these individual independent agencies, gave them specific terms and tenures and said they could not be removed unless for cause, some sort of malfeasance.

And Donald Trump challenged that in a case involving the Federal Trade Commission and a commissioner by the name of Rebecca Slaughter. And, today the Supreme Court, in an opinion by John Roberts that he read from the bench, and then I will tell you what Sonia Sotomayor said in dissent, said, no, this is something that for separation of powers and what he read as the kind of constitutional history of the power of the president, the president should be able to not just appoint people, but remove them any time he wants.

SCIUTTO: So, Elie, almost a similar question I asked last time.

HONIG: Yes.

SCIUTTO: The precedent was such that for 90-some-odd years it had stood that these were independent commissions and they were designed by Congress to be independent. Precedent seemed to point in the other direction, but also this is a Supreme Court who I thought the conservative court gave a lot of deference to Congress.

They often say, let Congress decide. Congress did decide, but did they not in effect overrule?

HONIG: This is a sea change.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.

HONIG: This is a massive expansion of executive branch power. And by the way, just to get a sense here, there are about two dozen of these agencies like the FTC and the NLRB and all these acronym that -- the Fed is the only one that's sort of carved out.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HONIG: But now the rule is, even though there's a law on this, even though there's a case that goes back 90 years saying the president can only fire the heads of those agencies for cause, if they do something bad, now the Supreme Court has agreed with Trump's position that you're the head of the executive branch, Mr. President, whoever it may be in the future or now, and hence nobody can tell you what you can do with these executives within the executive branch.

If you want to fire them for any reason or no reason whatsoever, you can do that. You will hear sometimes the phrase the unitary executive theory.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HONIG: OK, this is a longstanding conservative belief that has sort of risen dramatically in the last several years. This is a triumph of the unitary executive theory.

BISKUPIC: And of John Roberts, who's been working on this since the '80s, when he worked in the Reagan administration.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BISKUPIC: And what Justice Sotomayor said from the bench today in a rare oral dissent was, this could give -- this will give more accountability to the president, perhaps, because he's the one elected, but it could also bring about huge chaos.

What do you think will happen? She says...

(LAUGHTER)

SCIUTTO: Based on recent experiences, yes. Yes.

BISKUPIC: Yes.

HILL: Exactly.

Real quickly, there was also a loss. I mean, we're talking about whether we're singling out the Federal Reserve.

BISKUPIC: Oh, yes, for Lisa Cook. Exactly.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: Exactly.

It's important to note that we went a different direction here.

BISKUPIC: Right, who President Trump had tried to remove, saying that she had -- that she actually had engaged in some mortgage fraud, which she disputes on the face of it.

HILL: Yes.

BISKUPIC: And what they did was they ruled for her that she can stay in her position...

HILL: For now.

HONIG: For now. BISKUPIC: ... while the case -- yes, exactly, while the case progresses.

HONIG: Yes. This one's not over yet. It's going to go back to the lower court. They're going to have to litigate, is there cause? Is there enough process and reason to believe she did or did not commit mortgage fraud?

(CROSSTALK)

HONIG: For now, she's protected, but that one's going to remain ongoing.

SCIUTTO: Imagine that. These cases drag on.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: We haven't seen that before, have we?

(LAUGHTER)

HILL: No, not once.

And there's more to come tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the last day of decisions, including birthright citizenship. So we will be watching for all of those.

(CROSSTALK)

BISKUPIC: Right. Right.

HILL: Thank you both.

SCIUTTO: Joan, Elie, thanks so much.

A source tells CNN that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now preparing to brief House lawmakers on the tentative agreement with Iran ahead of a new round of talks set to take place in Qatar tomorrow. President Trump announced that meeting today, but Iran has yet to confirm any talks, a pattern we have seen before.

In fact, their chief negotiator says no meetings are scheduled for this week.

HILL: So all of these developments coming after a Trump administration official says that the U.S. and Iran agreed to stand down for now, this after a weekend of flare-ups near the Strait of Hormuz, both sides exchanging fire, the U.S. striking Iran's military infrastructure, Iran targeting U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain. A U.S. official says no Iranian drones or missiles hit their intended targets.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is in Tel Aviv for us.

So, Jeremy, what are we expecting tomorrow?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're going to have to see.

I mean, a senior U.S. official is still insisting that the technical talks are still on track despite the exchange of fire that we saw over the weekend.

[13:10:00]

President Trump suggesting that this is going to be a very high-level meeting because Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, his special envoys on this matter, will be traveling to Doha in order to engage in these negotiations, although, as you noted, the Iranians yet to confirm that they are actually going to be -- that this negotiation is actually taking place.

What the Iranians are claiming is that there are billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets held in Qatar that are set to be released to Iran. The U.S. is discounting that. And, of course, we have seen this repeatedly over the course of these negotiations, different -- the U.S. and Iran saying different things sometimes about the very same notions of whether there is an agreement or not.

So we put aside a lot of the noise oftentimes and see what actually comes of the substance of these negotiations, but there's no question that there will be a lot to discuss, everything from those exchanges of fire that began with Iran seemingly firing on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz once again, the United States retaliating with strikes on Iranian military targets.

And, in addition to that, there's, of course, what's been happening in Lebanon, not only the agreement between the Israeli and Lebanese governments, which has been rejected by Iran's proxy in the region, Hezbollah, but also the fact that, despite that agreement, we are continuing to see Israeli strikes in Southern Lebanon, multiple drone strikes taking place over the course of this weekend.

There was also even some close-quarters combat between Israeli troops and at least one Hezbollah militant that resulted in the death of an Israeli soldier. We have seen in the past that Iran has put quite a premium on the cease-fire extending to Lebanon as well in order to -- as a kind of broader notion for this cease-fire agreement.

And so what happens in Lebanon can also affect the broader negotiations as well. So, as you can hear just from this kind of varied discussion here, the number of issues that are going to be brought to the table here are quite substantial. And we don't know yet whether or not Iran is in fact going to be attending these talks, but certainly there's a lot to discuss between these two sides.

HILL: Yes, absolutely. Jeremy, appreciate it. Thank you.

Still ahead here: survivors pulled from the rubble in Venezuela days after the earthquakes, offering hope to rescue teams. We're going to be joined by one of the Americans who's helping in those search-and- rescue efforts.

SCIUTTO: And, later: A former NFL star reveals his ALS diagnosis at just 39 years old. What wants people to know about what is, sadly, an incurable disease.

That and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:16:49]

HILL: Search teams right now are racing to pull survivors from the rubble five days after devastating earthquakes in Venezuela. The official death toll has now surpassed 1,400 people, but that count is likely to rise.

Tens of thousands remain unaccounted for. And, today, those search- and-rescue efforts also are being dealt another blow, aftershocks rattling the region, which are also fueling intense desperation, despair, understandably, for families anxious to find their loved ones.

There have been, though, important glimmers of hope. Just this morning, rescuers saved a 21-year-old from a collapsed building. Over the weekend, a number of rescues, including a mother and her 18-day- old son. They were pulled from the destruction. Both, we're told, are now in stable condition. A 60-year-old woman was also found after being trapped for more than three days.

And help has been pouring into Venezuela from across the globe, including response teams from the United States.

Joining us now from Venezuela, Captain Mike Eddy with the Fairfax County, Virginia, Urban Search and Rescue Team.

Captain Eddy, it's good to have you with us.

I mean, your team we often speak to in moments like this because you tend to be among the first to deploy, knowing how to deal with these situations. Can you walk us through what you found there and what you're seeing on the ground in Venezuela?

CAPT. MIKE EDDY, FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA, URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE: Yes, thank you very much, Erica.

Yes, so on the 24th of June, Venezuela suffered a massive earthquake. By Friday, the 27th, we were on -- boots were on the ground. And on the 28th, we were able to successfully rescue both a mother and a child from the wreckage.

It is quite a bit of destruction in the area. And working with the local government and Venezuela, we're able to provide the best hope possible.

HILL: Just in reading different accounts, speaking with folks at other aid organizations, I have heard a lot about the challenges getting in, right? So we know that there's an issue with the airport, mountainous regions, obviously after an earthquake. It is impassable in some areas.

There's also the added issue of some of the construction in the area. Has that hampered your efforts at all?

EDDY: So, fortunately, we have been able to hook up with the state and the military for air assets, so they have been able to move some of the assets into inaccessible areas.

So, we have been able to do that, but we have also been ground-based, moving teams around. It does take a little bit of time to get to the sites. Sometimes, it takes up to two hours to get to areas where we need to be.

But, fortunately, with the military coming in and assisting us with air assets, we have been able to move the teams quickly.

HILL: And have you found that -- I don't know what the right word is, if it's easy, but has it been fairly easy for you to provide what you're there to do? Has there been any resistance for you?

EDDY: No, there hasn't been much resistance. We have been able to get out.

We have been working with our -- the Lima -- or the Venezuela, and been able to get to sites. So, as soon as we get the information in, we deploy a team headed that way. Again, it may take a little bit of time, just due to some traffic or some construction, but we're able to get to the sites.

[13:20:05]

HILL: There was, I know, more aftershocks this morning. Can you put into context for us, given the magnitude of both of these quakes, the aftershocks that we're seeing, how does this compare in your experience when you're walking into this particular search-and-rescue operation?

EDDY: So, a lot of the buildings that we run into, yes, some of the buildings are on the ground, but the buildings next to it or adjacent to it, those buildings are on the verge of collapsing.

So it is a very big safety concern for us. So we have engineers on the team. Again, we bring 79 members on the team with six canines. So all of us come together for one common goal, and that's to rescue those that are trapped.

HILL: I can only imagine what it is like in those moments. You mentioned the rescue that you were there for, the hope that it provides, not only for people who are waiting for word of their loved ones, but also for all of you. That has to really help fuel what you do there on the ground and why you're there.

EDDY: Yes, it's been super motivating for the team members. Again, within 12 hours of being on the ground, getting into the area, we were able to successfully rescue a mother and a child within 12 hours.

And USA-01 has successfully been able to rescue five people, five victims from Venezuela. So we're working closely with our other counterpart from USA-02 and also two other teams from Florida. HILL: I know no one's given up hope right now. How long do you

anticipate that your team will be there assisting with these efforts?

EDDY: It's -- yes, I think we're going to be here for quite some time, but we're here until Venezuela is no longer in need, and then we will start working on going back.

But, right now, we're still in the search-and-rescue mission, so we're still moving straight ahead, and we're actually working active sites now.

HILL: Captain Mike Eddy, really appreciate your time. Thank you.

EDDY: Awesome. Thank you very much, Erica. Happy to be with you.

HILL: Jim.

SCIUTTO: We're also learning more about the victims, which now include the wife and children of an Argentine soccer player for the Venezuelan team.

Lucas Trejo was at a team training camp in the capital, Caracas, when the earthquakes struck last week. He immediately rushed to where his family was, but found his home destroyed. After spending days searching through the rubble and pleading for heavy machinery, Trejo discovered the remains of his wife and their two children. Just awful.

If you would like to help the victims of this Venezuela earthquake, go to CNN.com/Impact or text Quake to 707070. You can also scan the Q.R. code at the bottom of the screen there right now. So many people who need help.

Coming up next: Millions of people across the country are set to face a record-setting heat wave over the next several days. What you need to know to stay safe, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:27:25]

SCIUTTO: The death toll from just soaring temperatures across Europe is skyrocketing. France's public health agency says there were more than 1,000 deaths in just a two-day period last week because of that stifling heat.

Here in the U.S., a dangerous, record-breaking heat wave is coming to most of the Eastern half of the country ahead of the July 4 weekend. And a fire weather risk has prompted Utah to restrict fireworks celebrations there.

CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam is in the CNN Weather Center.

And, Derek, I have been looking at the temperatures here in D.C. We're going to get later this week 101, 103, 104. I mean, this is not just run-of-the-mill summer stuff. It's dangerous. DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, I will be there joining you on

the National Mall this weekend come -- celebrating the 250th anniversary of our country.

But this heat, especially coinciding with all the outdoor activities planned through the lead-up and into Fourth of July, is just so ill- timed, right? We do not want to see this, but we have got to take it seriously, because this heat wave is going to be different than other heat waves.

It is going to set records. And it is going to really be substantial for a large population density on the East Coast of the U.S. as the heat spreads eastward. So when we're gauging how extreme it could be, this is a map from NOAA that shows you where the heat will spread, from the Ohio River Valley to the mid-Atlantic and portions of the East Coast.

That dark purple there, that's a level four of four. And that means that all age groups really are vulnerable to the heat that is coming. Now, you look at the heat alerts that are already in place, this encapsulates more than 30 states east of the Rockies, one in three Americans under some sort of heat alert right now.

So we have heat warnings in place for places like Chicago and Minneapolis southward of St. Louis. That's for now into tomorrow. But look what's building along the East Coast. That is a heat watch, right, an excessive heat watch.

And that will likely expand along the I-95 Corridor. Now, I'm showing you a forecast, and I want to take you through the holiday weekend, because this is so important. When you factor in the temperature and the humidity levels, this is what it will feel like on your exposed skin outside.

Any time we have these triple-digit heat indices, this means business. And that means you want to get adequate cooling available to yourself, drink plenty of water, take shade, breaks in shade, if you have the potential to do that. This is the reason why we have such excessive heat. It's this heat dome, this graphic we have used so many times, but it's the best way to kind of visualize what's happening under the hood here, right?

It is trapping the air near the surface. And that is going to set off a flurry of record temperatures along the I-95 Corridor. And, Jim, you know it just as much as I do. It is that high humidity, high dew point that makes it unbearable, if not dangerous.