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Life-Threatening Flood Warnings Issued in Texas ; Sister of Late Lindsey Graham to Take His Place in Senate; Justices Kagan & Barrett Go Before Senate for More Security Funding; Sources Say ICE Pausing Most Traffic Stops After Two Fatal Shootings; U.S. Military Set to Reimpose Blockade of Iranian Ports at 4 P.M. ET; President Teases Big Announcement on Elections in Prime-time Speech. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired July 14, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: -- six inches to potentially upwards of 10 to 20 additional inches of rainfall in localized areas. That's why the National Weather Service is using words like significant to locally catastrophic flash flooding possible tonight once the rain starts to ramp up again.

We've got a very rare high risk of flash flooding across that area and this is part of a multi-day flood threat that is going to impact much of western Texas. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right, we'll be keeping our eye on that. Derek, thank you.

And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": First up, appeals court. In a rare appearance on Capitol Hill, two Supreme Court justices pleading with Congress asking for more funding for security and discussing threats against them and their families.

Plus, reversing course. Immigration enforcement agents pausing most traffic stops after deadly shootings in Maine and Texas, and as families demand answers from ICE about what happened to two slain men.

And this hour the sister of the late Lindsey Graham will be sworn in to take his place in the Senate. We'll bring that to you live as we follow these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

We begin this hour with a Supreme Court plea for safety. In a rare appearance on Capitol Hill, two justices are making their case for more security funding as threats against federal judges across the nation are on the rise.

Right now, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett are set to speak to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee. Just a few hours ago, the justices opened up to House members about the personal impact some increased threats have had. Let's go live to Capitol Hill with CNN's Joan Biskupic.

Joan, what are you expecting to hear from these justices as they speak to Senators?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Good to see you, Boris, and we've got a nice preview because this morning, they were before House members, making their pitch for more security, explaining the kinds of needs they have both for more officers at their residence, more officers at the Supreme Court, a better screening system for people who are going into the court, visitors, and then also cybersecurity.

You know, of course, we know that there have been some leaks from the court, but they're very much worried about what kind of cybersecurity risks they have right now. And I have to say, a very compelling moment came early in the hearing when Justice Barrett, who was up there with Justice Kagan, talked personally about what the security threats have meant to her and her family.

Let's listen to what she said when she talked about bringing home a bulletproof vest in 2022 after the leak of the Dobbs abortion rights case and all the threats to her and other justices.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT, SUPREME COURT: When threats to my life were particularly intense a few years ago, around the time of the Dobbs leak, my security detail sent me home with a bulletproof vest and I carried it into my house, put it into my bedroom, dropped it down on a table, turned around and my 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom and he wanted to know what it was and why I had it. And I didn't know how to respond because maybe I lack imagination, but I didn't expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BISKUPIC: Pretty raw testimony there, Boris. She also talked about just a few weeks ago, her family was the victim of a swatting incident where another son had gone out to the front porch and saw all these police officers there because there had been a false call into police. But, you know, Boris, the hearing covered many other issues having to do with the shadow docket, the emergency docket that justice has been hearing more and more cases on, questions of ethics and accountability and that produced an interesting exchange too.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, to that point about questions of ethics, there's been an ongoing controversy about some of the gifts that justices have received in the past including luxury trips. Justices Kagan and Barrett were asked about that. Talk to us about that exchange.

BISKUPIC: Sure, and we'll hear from Justice Kagan who herself has definitely supported the new ethics policy they have, but she's criticized her colleagues sometimes for not having a method of enforcing it. And some of the House members questioned maybe the legislative branch or the executive branch should come in to enforce it, and here's how she responded to that, Boris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN, SUPREME COURT: Right now, the mechanism has no enforceability system. I will say that that's an extremely difficult question for a pretty obvious reason I think, which is that I don't think that you would want an enforcement system that was controlled by the executive branch or by the legislature. And this is because of what you said in your opening statement about the importance of judicial independence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:05:00]

BISKUPIC: Yes, Boris, a lot of a lot of questions and no easy answers, but this was part one and this afternoon we'll hear what they have to say to Senators. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Yeah, we look forward to more. Joan Biskupic, live on Capitol Hill for us, thank you so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: Now to Breaking News in the wake of two ICE involved fatal shootings. A source telling CNN that ICE agents are now being directed to largely suspend traffic stops until further notice. This directive marks a major reversal in recent tactics and it comes one day after 26-year-old Colombian national, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, was fatally shot while driving in Maine. A week ago, an ICE agent killed 52-year- old Mexican national, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was driving in Houston.

Officials say neither of these men was the target of an immigration enforcement operation and in both cases, agents were not wearing body cameras. We're joined now by Deborah Fleischaker, who was formerly Executive Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and former Acting Chief of Staff at ICE.

How are you viewing this move to suspend vehicle stops?

DEBORAH FLEISCHAKER, FORMER ICE ACTING CHIEF OF STAFF: I think it is good for what it is, but it's a real first step and it shouldn't have taken two deaths to get here. I think they're addressing the imminent cause of these two deaths but they're not getting at the real problem which is the mass deportation campaign and its attempt to deport, you know, millions of people.

KEILAR: And in this Maine shooting, DHS says an ICE officer fired his weapon fearing for public safety as the victim in the vehicle attempted to flee the scene. They don't specify why they thought the driver was a threat though. How much information should DHS be providing publicly about what led to this?

FLEISCHAKER: They should be providing a lot more information about what led to this. That's not the standard for a use of deadly force, so that statement raises more questions for me than it answers. I think that DHS has a lot to answer for and they have not proven to be particularly forthcoming.

I will also say that the lack of body cameras creates another problem. In the shooting in Texas, it's pretty clear they weren't wearing body cameras at all. The shooting in Maine, they may have been wearing body cameras but it's not clear that they had them on. Both of those are real problems.

KEILAR: So they're at an address, right, which is where they are intentionally trying to target. And a person leaves the address for a vehicle as we understand it, right, those are the facts as we know it in Maine. Take us through, with the facts that we know, and the point where officers may or may not usually pursue someone and they end up pursuing someone who isn't actually the person it sounds like that they mean to pursue. At what point is the opportunity to get this right missed?

FLEISCHAKER: They missed a lot of opportunities to get this right and they got this tragically wrong. Look, the department and ICE were doing high-profile surges in cities. They only stopped when there were multiple deaths.

They were now doing sort of dangerous vehicle chases. They've now temporarily stopped when there were two deaths. It shouldn't take deaths to cause the department -- to make the department be careful about how it does its enforcement activities.

Look, I'm glad that they were targeting people, but targeting people doesn't count for anything if you're shooting and killing people who aren't the targets, right? I mean there's something going wrong here. I don't know if they failed to confirm who he was when -- in the Maine shooting, who he was when he left the house.

Maybe there was a real target they were going after. I think that's part of what we really need to understand more about, but the reality is that they didn't have to chase him. They didn't have to shoot him. Fleeing is not an appropriate -- somebody running from people in unmarked cars with no uniforms, it's not clear he even knew he was running from ICE.

KEILAR: Yeah, one agent has his hand on the driver's side door. We see that in the video after Guerrero's car enters an intersection and is slowly moving in circles. You eventually see agents use one of their vehicles to stop the car. What are you seeing there?

FLEISCHAKER: I mean, look, I'm going be totally honest. I can't even tell when the -- exactly when the shooting occurred. Maybe he was going in circles because he was already slumped over the wheel and had already been shot. Those are parts of the things that I don't know.

KEILAR: This is the information you're missing at this point?

FLEISCHAKER: Right. There's huge, huge gaps in the information.

KEILAR: How much does the pressure to hit numbers contribute to mistakes like this? FLEISCHAKER: I think it contributes enormously. I know that the department has temporarily halted vehicle stops but I don't think it's vehicle stops that are the real problem. It's part of the problem. The real problem is the pressure for them to make more arrests more quickly and when there's that kind of unending pressure to do more, more, more, more, agents make mistakes and here we are seeing two tragic ones.

[14:10:00]

KEILAR: You mentioned the body cams. I think that is something that really stands out to a lot of people who have been watching this story because after what happened in Minnesota and promises that were made by DHS, I think the expectation was that, by now, you would have officers wearing body cams. And yet, in both Texas and in Maine, that's not the case. How do they need to be ramping this up more quickly?

FLEISCHAKER: They just need the will to ramp it up more quickly.

KEILAR: That's all it is to you? There's no other excuse?

FLEISCHAKER: There is absolutely no other excuse. First of all, the Boston field office, which is where the agents from Maine came from, have body cameras. Whether they were turned on or not is a different question. But they have them. They should have been used.

In Texas, I'm not clear that they had them yet. The department has been given billions and billions of dollars, well more than its normal budget, in the two reconciliation bills that passed Congress over the past year and a half.

There's plenty of money in there should the department want to prioritize body cameras to fully fund and implement them. They haven't wanted to.

KEILAR: Deborah Fleischaker, thank you so much. Really appreciate your perspective.

FLEISCHAKER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come, the U.S. naval blockade on Iran is set to resume as President Trump backs off a plan to toll cargo ships. We have the latest on the Middle East.

Plus, President Trump is teasing what he calls a very big announcement about U.S. elections, what we're learning about his prime-time address.

And then later, it will be a clash between some of the world's biggest soccer stars, France and Spain, facing off in the first World Cup semifinal. We have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:16:34] KEILAR: Breaking News. In less than two hours, the U.S. military will officially resume its blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday, President Trump announced that he's restarting the blockade and that the U.S. would impose a 20 percent cargo charge for protecting ships in the critical waterway. But then earlier today, the president said he was dropping his plan to charge a reimbursement fee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the Strait or for any other Strait relationship in terms of other sections of the world. I don't think anybody should be really in that position. But we were doing it as a reimbursement. The Gulf States are going to invest a tremendous amount of money into the United States. And that was very satisfactory to me. I think it's actually much better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's go to the White House now and CNN's Kevin Liptak.

Kevin, what's the latest?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, and the president is framing this reversal on the fee for vessels transiting the Strait as coming from the Gulf countries. He said that they had suggested this alternative arrangement whereby they would invest in the United States as part of the reimbursement for American protection. You know, in reality, behind the scenes, this did cause shock in the Gulf.

The president, yes, he had raised this publicly in the past, but there was a belief that he wouldn't follow through on it because there was some opposition both from the allies, but also from American officials who worried that it might increase the cost of energy, but also essentially validate Iran's own tolls that it was charging in the Strait. And the president is saying today that after discussions with "kings and emirs", he had come up with this new plan.

Now, whether this is new investments on the part of these countries or part of the investments that they had already pledged, you know, to the tune of $2 trillion, remains to be seen. But the president, I think, in this back and forth, you know, this 24-hour reversal, I think showing that he is casting about for some ideas to try and break the impasse when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz.

You also have the blockade that's now set to go into effect in two hours' time. That will be an enormous undertaking on the part of the U.S. military, which will have to patrol the Arabian Sea for these vessels that are heading into Iranian ports.

It's not clear at this point how the blockade now, this time around, will accomplish what it was not able to accomplish when it was imposed earlier in the war, namely getting Iran to the negotiating table to make concessions both on the Strait of Hormuz and on the nuclear program. And I think this just all shows that the president is at something of a strategic crossroads. You know, he doesn't want to go back to full-scale war because of the economic costs that might impose, the political costs that that could inflict on him.

But at the same time, he seems very down on the prospect that negotiations will resolve all of this. And so he is left in this position where he is striking Iran almost nightly, but without a clear path forward. He has not articulated how he expects the U.S. to extricate itself from this conflict.

And so listening to him in the Oval Office today, it was clear that the president is very down on the idea that Iran will come back to the negotiating table, but still insistent that these strikes will wear them down and get to a place where the U.S. can pull out.

[14:20:00]

And so, I think a very complicated situation for the president and one that he has not necessarily said how he will find an ultimate resolution for.

KEILAR: All right. Kevin Liptak, live for us at the White House, thank you. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Any moment now, the sister of the late Senator, Lindsey Graham, will take the oath of office to temporarily fill his seat. South Carolina's governor chose Darline Graham to serve out the rest of the late lawmaker's term after he died suddenly over the weekend.

The selection comes with strong support from President Trump, who says it will be a "fabulous tribute" to Lindsey who loved her dearly. Let's go live to Capitol Hill with CNN's Lauren Fox.

Lauren, what should we expect from the swearing-in ceremony?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean, this could ultimately be a bipartisan affair, given the fact that so many lawmakers have wanted to show respect for the late Senator, Lindsey Graham, a colleague, a friend, someone who had worked across the aisle with them on issues, including U.S.' role around the globe, as well as immigration and other issues.

But certainly, this is a really emotional moment, given the fact it was just days ago that her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, died. And there is really, at this moment, just this feeling on Capitol Hill that she's going to be stepping into his shoes, fulfilling his legacy, trying to fight for the same issues that he wanted to pass here in the United States Senate. I'm thinking, namely, of a major sanctions bill that he worked for years on that would put stiffer penalties on Russia.

And it was something that just last week, he got the administration's buy-in on. So that is going to be a key issue here. But obviously, you can just imagine the fact that this has now just been a couple of days. She is stepping into this role. She is ultimately going to be sworn in. And I think that it is just going to be a really emotional moment here, given the fact that she and Senator Graham had a really unique relationship for two siblings.

He was someone who had always taken great care of her. Their parents worked really long hours in their bar, and she spoke back in 2015 to our own Dana Bash about their special relationship. He also ultimately ended up adopting her after their parents died in order to ensure that she could share his military benefits.

He often went home and visited her back when he was in college. And I just think it is really a unique relationship and something that you can expect to be highlighted in the Senate as she moves forward with stepping into this seat, obviously very unexpectedly, and as she and her family are still really grieving from her brother's loss.

SANCHEZ: And we will bring you the swearing-in ceremony live as it happens right here on CNN. Lauren Fox, thank you so much for that preview.

Still ahead, in the latest push to reshape elections, the White House removed the leadership of the Election Assistance Commission. One of those ousted commissioners will join us after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:42]

KEILAR: President Trump is promising a "very big announcement" on elections this Thursday in a prime-time address at 9 p.m. Eastern. Democrats have increasingly been sounding the alarm that they expect the president to influence this November's midterm elections. And last Thursday, the White House fired the leadership of the federal agency that provides funding and security guidance to election officials. That's according to sources familiar with the matter and an email reviewed by CNN.

One of those former commissioners is with us now, Thomas Hicks, who served on the Election Assistance Commission and was fired from that position by President Trump. Thomas, thank you so much for being with us.

THOMAS HICKS, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSIONER FIRED BY TRUMP: Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: First, I mean on your firing, were you given a reason?

HICKS: Not a reason at all, and as I've said to many people before, this actually happened on the fifth anniversary of my dad's passing.

KEILAR: OK, so this has been incredibly personally traumatic for you. This has been very alarming for a lot of people who are watching this happen. What does it mean to not have this commission in place going into this election?

HICKS: We don't run elections, so I want to assure the American people that they can still go out, cast their votes, and if they want to vote by mail, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that two weeks ago. What it does mean is that moving forward, we are going to not be able to adjust the voluntary voting system guidelines that the states have, that they go for voting machines in terms of certification and other aspects of it.

We can't have meetings to talk about these issues, so if there are issues that come out in November, there's no one to talk about these issues, and there's other aspects as well. So if this had happened in Russia, Cuba, there would be an alarm being set, but it's happening in America and there should be more people outraged.

KEILAR: You said you have not had one contact with the Trump administration since it came back into office.

HICKS: Correct.

KEILAR: Is that atypical? What would the contact normally be like with an administration?

HICKS: Well, I've been here since Obama's administration, so they would call and tell us what they feel what you should be doing, and we would either take that or not take that because we were an independent agency. And so we did that with the Obama administration. The first Trump administration contacted us. The Biden administration contacted us, and then this current administration has not.

They might have contacted my Republican colleagues, but not me.

KEILAR: The commission certainly was a target of the president's, right, from the very --