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Fed Chair Speaks Out; Trump Visits NASA; Nepal Flood Survivors Speak Out; Jury Deliberates in Lindsay Clancy Trial. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 28, 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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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're following a second day of deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. Her fate now lies in the hands of the nine women and three men on the jury, who today posed questions to the court. We will bring you the latest from inside the courtroom.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Plus: trick player. Investigators say a man posed as an NFL star and defrauded dozens of women out of more than a million dollars.

And, Houston, we have a celebration. President Trump awards the Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor after their historic mission around the moon.

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

SANCHEZ: Breaking news in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial.

Right now, a jury of nine women and three men are deliberating Clancy's fate over the deaths of her three young kids. They're weighing whether or not postpartum psychosis drove her to kill them.

Just a short time ago, Clancy heading back into court, as jurors asked about two specific pieces of evidence.

Let's go live to CNN's Jean Casarez, who's outside the courtroom in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

So, Jean, what did jurors want to know? What do they want to see?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They wanted to see medication pill bottles, and they wanted to see the knife.

Now, Boris, there are several hundred exhibits in this case of evidence, and the jury can look at whatever they want to look at. This is what they were focusing on. And we don't know if it's one juror, if it's all of them. But let's talk about, first of all, the pill bottles.

All right, obviously, this case, the brunt of it has been the many medications that she was prescribed, Lindsay Clancy, when she first went to a provider in September, saying, I have anxiety and I'm depressed. That was the initial.

And then it kept going, and she would talk about what she was feeling. She was feeling flat. She had no energy. She just didn't see the world the way she used to see it. She even said to many providers, I feel sometimes like I want to take my life.

And protocol has, we learned in this trial that the next question is, do you have a plan? And when she said she didn't have a plan, they moved on from that. But they did prescribe lots of medications, different providers. But she didn't take them all, because she was a nurse.

And, some, she just took a couple of pills. Others, she would take a little bit more. She would stop them when she wanted to. But they want to see these pills.

And we do know that Kevin Reddington, even in his closing arguments, and it came out in evidence, he took out the drawer from the nightstand in the bedroom and held up to the jury the plastic bag of pills and that law enforcement had never collected it. And he talked about it yesterday.

But it also went into evidence. So the second thing is the knife, which is interesting, because both sides agree that she took a knife out of the kitchen and went upstairs and cut her wrists and slashed her throat. Now, all of the medical professionals, first responders, said they were superficial wounds. Defense pushes back on that.

But both sides are also saying that this was a very serious suicide attempt. I think the question with the knife is actually when she got the knife. The defense is saying she was in the kitchen fixing dinner when her husband called her from the CVS.

The prosecution is saying, no, she had already killed the children, went into the kitchen and got the knife to go upstairs. But that's really a nonissue when it comes to the knife. The knife conceivably has blood on it. There's a lot of blood in that bedroom. There was.

But, for some reason, and we don't know why, it's something they wanted to look at for themselves.

SANCHEZ: Yes, a lot of ways to interpret that request from the jury, Jean.

Do we know if they decided to work through lunch? Because that may indicate where they are in deliberations, right?

CASAREZ: Excellent question, because the judge said yesterday, he told the jury, if you want to deliberate through lunch, you can. If you do not want to deliberate through lunch, you don't have to. But, remember, whenever you do deliberate through lunch, everybody has to be right there.

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So we do not know. And, many times, that is something that is not told to the public. What we do know is, this is their first day of deliberation. They are focused. They already want to see some evidence, because that's what this is. And the day is in the afternoon. I mean, it's Friday, but we will just have to see, because this was a long trial, and, as I said, several hundred exhibits.

Jean Casarez, thank you so much for the update. We will continue watching the case and bring you the latest as we get it -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Today, we are getting firsthand accounts from American survivors of that just catastrophic flood in Nepal and China.

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ANJANA RAJA, NEPAL FLOOD SURVIVOR: So the way it came, it came just like a tsunami. It just came going all the way up. And just like a tsunami, the -- how it sweeps, going like a roll. It just took the buses, the lands...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Houses.

RAJA: People, everything.

(CROSSTALK)

RAJA: We saw people just getting sucked in the water. It was so traumatizing to see that. People are screaming, but, of course, water doesn't hear anything. It just going to suck them in.

I don't know if they were thrown away somewhere in the shore, but then this happened, it was just a span of 30 minutes. In 30 minutes, everything was swept and gone. It was -- there was no water after that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The death toll is now up to almost 600, and the number of missing has jumped dramatically to more than 1,900, and the State Department is saying that 90 of those are American citizens.

To give you an idea of just how big of a challenge rescuers are facing here, a reminder of this horrific video showing the moment that a six- story building -- that was six stories -- and it was hit in this video by this fast-moving wall of water, mud and debris.

And new satellite images reveal what is left, that more-than-60-foot- tall building now sandwiched under several feet of debris-filled mud, much of that area just swept away. We're also now getting to see what likely started this catastrophe.

New video shows the moment that a 2,000-foot chunk of a glacier collapsed, and that caused an avalanche and landslide that sent a deadly wave of water rushing downstream.

We're joined now by CNN senior national security analyst former Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem.

And, Juliette, the State Department says, as I mentioned, that 90 Americans are still missing here. What should the U.S. government be doing to try to locate them?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, we have a solemn duty to take care of our own.

The State Department has done a minimal contribution of just a half-a- million to the rescue efforts. So, what we're seeing, and I think we have seen it in a lot of these testimonies and anecdotes, is that Americans are able to get out by themselves or with the help of the Nepal or Chinese governments.

But we don't -- because of the end of USAID, we don't really have a footprint there now in terms of global relief efforts. That's what USAID did. It would -- during a global disaster, it would deploy resources. Their primary focus was to help all, but they had a very specific focus on Americans.

Most Americans there, our understanding is, were there for Buddhist pilgrimages, and their family members, we hear them all throughout the United States, are looking for them.

KEILAR: Yes, I spoke last night with two daughters who have not been able to contact their parents.

KAYYEM: Yes.

KEILAR: They were on a pilgrimage and near the port city. They were trying to make their way back from that pilgrimage.

Do you have faith that the State Department has a handle on just exactly who is missing and how many are missing?

KAYYEM: Well, the only way the State Department would know what Americans were there -- were there is, there is a process by which Americans who go abroad can sign in to the relevant consulate and the relevant area to say that, we're present here.

I don't know if -- how that was done or if that was done by the Americans that were in that area. A lot of them are hikers or gone for long periods of time. Maybe they don't know their itineraries. So what they're having to do now is go backwards, right, in terms of, they're going to hear family members in the United States say, look, my parents were there, my brother and sister were there. We can't -- we don't know where they are now.

And then the State Department should be working with local authorities to try to identify, look, is anyone that you're seeing in one of the shelters American, or, as days go on, we just have to accept this, or are you unable to identify any of the bodies or someone -- does someone have a wallet or identification that would say they're American?

So it's going to be a very difficult and labor-intensive identification system.

KEILAR: And, as you mentioned, the U.S. is sending $500,000 in aid committed at this point.

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The U.K. has pledged almost $7 million, the E.U. providing $2.3 million.

KAYYEM: Yes.

KEILAR: So that just really puts things into perspective here.

Let's talk about disaster response and prevention, the warning, the seconds. And you have talked about this. You talked about it in your Substack. Seconds can mean the difference between life or death, and there really was no warning here.

KAYYEM: Yes.

KEILAR: It seems like these flash flood systems maybe weren't prepared for what this particular disaster was.

KAYYEM: Right.

This is a unique disaster. It's what we call a black swan in disaster management, because the way we measure flash flood floods and the -- is through rain. Is the rain downpour excessive, so that you would be worried about flash flooding? And there's early alert or early warning systems to give downstream communities time to know what is going on.

To their credit -- and, unfortunately, on the very day of this disaster, China and Nepal had signed an agreement to strengthen those downstream identifications, but they were based on rainfall. So, in other words, if China was experiencing massive rain, they would say, well, I would worry. Downstream, get ready.

That's what an alert system is for. It gets low -- downstream communities ready. That didn't happen. I'm looking at and talking to people involved in and looking at some of the early reporting from us and other news agencies.

There's a gap that's going to be -- have to be explained between when China clearly recognized the problem, because the glacial fell, and then is now in -- is -- parts of it are in China now heading downstream, and when those communities were notified; 15 minutes is a lot of time to save a lot of people.

And I think you're starting to see a commitment by the local communities and local governments to figure out what went wrong. But they need to get these early alert systems actually globally to adapt to these kinds of changes in our climate that are not -- that aren't what we would usually expect. We usually expect rain. This is -- this was a glacial -- but the glacier melted or broke,

likely because of warmer air and warmer temperatures.

KEILAR: Yes, it's clear from the video that so many folks had no warning. The only warning they had was people on higher ground yelling to them.

KAYYEM: Yes.

KEILAR: And they did not have a shot.

KAYYEM: Yes.

KEILAR: Juliette, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

Still to come: We're following the president's trip to Texas, where he's signing an order to create a U.S. Space Academy. We're headed live to Houston right after this.

Plus, we're following reports that the U.S. is close to striking what's described as a massive deal involving Venezuelan oil.

And then, later: Federal prosecutors say an alleged fraudster fooled dozens of women into believing that he played in the NFL, and then he scammed them out of more than a million dollars.

We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: Moments ago, President Trump recognized the NASA crew that achieved a feat no human has before, going farther into space than any person before them, as they traveled to the far side of the moon.

The Artemis II crew just received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

CNN's Steve Contorno is there at the event in Texas.

And, Steve, the president just signed an executive order.

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: He did.

He basically established what is going to be the West Point for Space Force. It'll be called the U.S. Space Academy. And he signed it just behind me on stage moments ago at an event that was to celebrate the recent accomplishments of the NASA and the Artemis space program, but also the future of the program.

He handed the Medal of Congressional -- the Space Medal of Honor to the four crew members of that ship, but then also spoke about what's coming next, a trip, return trip to the moon that will establish a permanent presence there and potentially a journey to Mars. Actually, we're only just a couple football fields away from a

warehouse where there are people going through simulations of living on Mars. They have been in isolation for months on months on end. So there's so much happening in the space arena, particularly here in Houston.

But, also, we're 67 days out from the election, and you cannot escape the subtext and the politics of this visit. Donald Trump is coming to a state that was not expected to be a big battleground in these midterm elections, but he is coming to here, and he says he will be here often to help his friend and ally Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, who is in a much tougher contest for U.S. Senate than anyone anticipated against lawmaker James Talarico.

So this will be the first of many visits to Texas in the weeks ahead as we get closer and closer to November, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Steve Contorno, live for us at Johnson Space Center, thank you.

Next: The new chair of the Fed just addressed inflation, remarks that Wall Street is watching very closely. We will take a look at what he said right after this.

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SANCHEZ: In his first keynote address as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh broke tradition, keeping quiet about interest rates. He did express concern, though, about the nation's rising inflation, describing it as the biggest problem the Central Bank is facing.

He also had a word of caution for Wall Street investors constantly looking to the Fed for financial forecasting.

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KEVIN WARSH, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: We should not indulge a regime in which market participants are looking primarily to the Fed for their next trade.

The economic literature has long described the distorting effects, what it called the hall of mirrors problem. If markets rely materially on the Fed's guidance, and the Fed relies on market prices, we're more likely to be blinded to new developments, more likely to be caught unprepared, and more likely to commit errors in policymaking.

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SANCHEZ: CNN senior reporter Matt Egan is here with more on Warsh's remarks.

Matt, what did financial experts learn today about his management style, what he might be thinking too in terms of interest rates? MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Boris, Kevin Warsh, he kind of doubled down on his less-is-more communications strategy. In that clip you just showed, he was using this hall of mirrors metaphor to show why he worries that Fed officials, investors, and the public, they could get confused if the Fed talks.

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So I'm not shocked that Warsh kind of dug in his heels on that. It does seem to be a core belief of his. And yet he did peel back the curtain just a bit when it comes to his views on the economy.

First off, he sounded pretty bullish, right? He was raving about business spending, upbeat on the artificial intelligence boom. He seemed to upgrade his views on the job market a bit, saying that he thinks the economy is at full employment.

That's notable because that suggests the economy can handle higher interest rates to fight inflation without doing too much damage to the job market. However, when it comes to inflation, he did sound a bit more worried, right? He said that he's more -- he said that some of the inflation indicators are -- quote -- "more concerning."

He downplayed some of the better-than-expected inflation readings. Take a listen to what Warsh said about inflation.

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WARSH: We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do. That's our job, that's our mandate, and that's our charge to keep.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: Now, Wall Street is reading that phrase, "We have work to do,' as code, code for interest rate hikes that could potentially be on the way; 24 hours ago, the market was pricing in just about a one-in-three chance of an interest rate hike at the next meeting in September.

But now the market has upgraded those odds to about a 60 percent chance of an interest rate hike. And when we look at the trend for inflation, you could understand why there is speculation about interest rate hikes.

When President Trump, he started his second term, inflation was hovering at or just below 3 percent. However, as you can see from that line chart, it is going in the wrong direction. Today, it's just above 3 percent. It's been driven up by a number of different factors, including the A.I. boom, the president's tariffs, the war with Iran.

No matter the cause, this matters, of course, to consumers because inflation is shrinking their paychecks and how far those paychecks go. Moody's Analytics has calculated that the typical household has to spend each month $324 more than when President Trump started his second term. That's to buy the same goods and services. When you spread that out

over the course of a year, that's almost $4,000 per year more. And, again, they're not necessarily getting more stuff. They're just paying higher prices for the same stuff.

So, the question now, Boris, is whether or not Kevin Warsh is going to back up his tough talk today on inflation with action, namely, interest rate hikes, and also how a potential interest rate hike from Warsh, a Trump appointee, will go over with a president who clearly prefers lower interest rates -- back to you.

SANCHEZ: Yes, let's see how he balances what President Trump wants with what's best for the economy and inflation.

Matt Egan, thank you so much for that reporting.

Up next: A new report says the U.S. is close to striking a -- quote -- "massive deal" that could more than double U.S. oil reserves. I will speak to the reporter who broke that story after a quick break.

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