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Lindsay Clancy Jury Ends for the Day Amid Deadlock; Interview with Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO): Army Secretary Resigns Amid Clashes with Pete Hegseth; Driscoll Warned Trump Administration About Hegseth's Change to Army; CDC Isn't Counting Two Measles-Related Deaths in Pennsylvania; Glacier Collapse Risk Remains Near Flood Zone in Nepal and China. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 01, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, we are tracking the Lindsay Clancy trial, where jurors have been deliberating for well over 20 hours at this point, and had indicated this morning that they were deadlocked, could not reach a consensus. And the judge is actually letting us know that that at least continues to be sort of the case.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, he asked them this morning to continue deliberations, citing the over 80 witnesses, hundreds of pieces of evidence that were examined during the trial. He just made the announcement that the jury has asked for more time in the deliberations. They've asked to be dismissed for the day.

Here's Judge William Sullivan from the courtroom in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE WILLIAM SULLIVAN, MASSACHUSETTS SUPERIOR COURT: Members of the jury, so my understanding is that you would request to be excused till tomorrow at 9 o'clock, so I'm going to excuse you till then. I just want to thank you for all your hard work and commitment so far in this case, and you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to remind you.

You've come this far. Do not read anything. Don't listen to anything.

Don't talk about this case. And we'll come in tomorrow morning. We'll bring you all in.

I'll ask you the same questions I've been asking you for weeks now, and we'll get you right back out to resume deliberations.

[15:35:00]

All right? Thank you again for all your work.

Thank you. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Court, all rise. Court is adjourned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: That is Judge Sullivan giving instructions to the jury to keep it to themselves as they go home for yet another day, because remember, they had Thursday night, they had Friday night, they had Saturday and Sunday, and now they're going to have tonight. At the heart of this trial, though, of course, is whether these jurors believe what the defense is saying, that when Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children in 2023, she was doing so because she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and jurors are weighing multiple options for a verdict, from first degree murder all the way to her not being criminally responsible, given the circumstances that the defense laid out. Let's go to Jean Casarez, who's been watching this case very closely. And Jean, we have some producers inside the room.

What are you hearing about how the jury looked as we try to interpret any sign from them of how this is going in their deliberations?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, here's what we know right now, Boris. One juror was rubbing his eyes after they came in and were standing, waiting for all the jurors to get in. Another one was clasping and unclasping their hands back and forth as they were sitting -- as they were standing, waiting for everyone to come in.

And one female juror gave a very weak smile to the judge when he said, we'll see you back here tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. So obviously, these outward reactions right here show the stress and strain conceivably of what this jury is going through, rubbing your eyes as you're walking in, clasping and unclasping your hands, another juror. One juror glanced at the gallery very quickly and glanced back, no looking at the defendant at all or the prosecution table.

But these are the outward manifestations that the jury is giving in that courtroom to the judge. And they wanted to go home right now. So this is 3:30.

This is even earlier than yesterday, because yesterday it was about four o'clock. They can't deliberate until 4:30. So now, an hour before they can leave, they have asked to be excused for the day.

SANCHEZ: Difficult to interpret if that means that there was progress or perhaps more deadlock.

KEILAR: Exactly. And in this case, Jean, there could be, you know, informally, the judge has sent them back.

SANCHEZ: Right.

KEILAR: Right. To try to discuss more. But eventually, as this goes on, what happens as we're now staring down the possibility of a hung jury?

CASAREZ: What they're waiting for is another note. The jury did not send out another note since 10 o'clock this morning. They did not say a second time. We cannot reach a verdict here. We cannot be unanimous. So, so long as they want to deliberate, the judge will just allow them to deliberate.

Now, tomorrow, we have to see if a note comes down. What happens? Will they progress toward a verdict?

Will they send a note saying we still -- we have tried and we cannot reach a unanimous verdict in this case? So it is tomorrow. They'll sleep on it.

They'll go home. They'll come hopefully refreshed and we will see what happens.

KEILAR: All right, we will. Jean, thank you so much.

SANCHEZ: We are continuing to follow the breaking news now on the U.S. launching new strikes against Iran this afternoon, more than six months into this war. The Army is searching for a new secretary. Sources tell CNN that Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation to President Trump.

Driscoll reportedly has been at odds with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a number of issues. A source familiar with the matter says that Driscoll brought up concerns with the administration surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth blocking those efforts specifically by firing generals who were responsible.

Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado joins us now live from Capitol Hill. He's a member of the House Armed Services Committee, as well as a former Army Ranger. Congressman, thanks so much for being with us. Have you or someone from your office communicated with Driscoll since he resigned?

And would you want him to appear before the Armed Services Committee?

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Well, let me start by saying this is bad for the Army. This is bad for the entire military. You know, I've had policy disagreements with Secretary Driscoll, but he's a good person.

He's a serious person. He knows his stuff. He was taking modernization seriously, transformation seriously, and making really hard decisions to bring the Army into the 21st century.

This is not easy work. He was doing it. And I was working with him as the chair of the Army Caucus, as a combat veteran, an Army veteran myself.

I was working with him to do the right thing, and it's bad that he's leaving the service.

[15:40:00]

And as yet another civil servant who is not a sycophant, not a loyalist, not somebody who's just bowing down to Pete Hegseth, who's been drummed out of the service. And this is a bad day as a result of it. So you know, I've reached out, I've expressed my appreciation to Secretary Driscoll for his service and the work that he's done and pledged to work with him and hopefully his successor to continue his work. Although I'm not holding my breath that his successor is going to be better than Secretary Driscoll.

SANCHEZ: Given your concerns about the Army as a whole, saying that this is negative for the institution, the Army now has no Senate confirmed top general, no confirmed general in charge of operations, no confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. How is that going to impact the nearly half a million active duty soldiers that are deployed around the world?

CROW: What already is impacting the military. We have no time to waste. Our adversaries are moving fast.

They're transforming, they're modernizing. The future of warfare is what we're seeing play out on the battlefields of Ukraine right now. Things are moving so, so much faster than anything I've ever seen in my lifetime.

Drone warfare, electronic warfare, the innovation cycle, as we call it, is weeks long, not years long. So every passing week, every passing month where we don't have leadership, we don't have people making tough decisions and driving relentlessly towards that goal of transformation and modernization is time lost that we do not have to lose.

SANCHEZ: According to the Atlantic, their reporters through sources learned that Driscoll told President Trump in a meeting at the White House last week that the Army can't transform itself while its leadership ranks are hollowed out. The President apparently expressed some concern over that turnover. What is your message to President Trump on this as the chief executive?

CROW: It's clear I've delivered this message to Donald Trump, not personally, but over TV and over Armed Services Committee hearings. Pete Hegseth has got to go. Pete Hegseth is not serving your interests.

He's not serving anybody's interests, right? I use the example of Pete Hegseth's personal advisor, Tim Parlatory, who used to be one of Donald Trump's lawyers until he had a falling out with Donald Trump. He was kicked out of Trump World, was called a liar by Donald Trump and his senior advisors.

Well, Pete Hegseth snatched this guy up, hid him, appointed him as the senior advisor, and did so in a way that bypassed the presidential personnel office, bypassed Senate confirmation. This is a man who tells you what you want to hear to your face, kisses your ring, looks good out of central casting, but behind the doors or behind your back is doing everything but what he's telling you he's doing. So it's a danger to our service members.

And if Donald Trump or anybody in the White House is listening, Pete Hegseth is not serving you, despite what he might let you know. The man has got to go, and we have to change direction quickly. SANCHEZ: The administration is asking for $1.5 trillion in next year's Pentagon budget. Are you committed to voting for that funding if you have these concerns about Secretary Hegseth and the way that he's running the Pentagon?

CROW: Well, I've already said since day one, I'm a hell no to one and a half trillion dollars for a lot of reasons. Number one, the corruption of this administration and Pete Hegseth knows no bounds, right? We just found out that they're now investing Pentagon money in a Venezuelan oil company, right?

That's crazy. There are no shortage of examples of corruption, of fraud, of waste, of abuse under this failed leadership of Pete Hegseth. That's one.

Number two, is there in an endless conflict in Iran that's not serving the interest of the American people. They spent over $100 billion on that conflict alone. That conflict needs to stop and end yesterday.

I'm not going to fund that. And number three, as I talked about before with Ukraine, the future of warfare actually isn't as expensive, right? For pennies on the dollar, we are seeing our adversaries and our allies, Ukraine and others, invest in commercial technology, cheaper, more nimble technology that is far less expensive than a lot of the things that we're fielding, that we're sending out to the field right now.

And I simply am not going to throw good money after bad, taxpayer money, to fund a system that is not meeting the moment, especially when my constituents are losing their health care, losing their homes. We're not investing in our school systems. We're not investing in our infrastructure.

That money needs to come home and be spent in our communities to help Americans, and we can make us safer and more secure for cheaper.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Jason Crow, we have to leave the conversation there. Always appreciate you sharing your perspective.

CROW: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Coming up, why isn't the CDC counting two measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania? We're digging into that when we come back.

[15:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: A highly unusual move by the CDC. It's not including two measles-related deaths reported in Pennsylvania last week in its official count. The CDC is saying, quote, "At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles."

Now, this dispute comes as we're seeing the highly contagious virus spreading across the country. We're joined now by Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. He's a former director of the CDC Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

He resigned over concerns about RFK Jr. Doctor, thanks for being with us. Talk to us a little bit about your reaction to what the CDC is saying here, but also this kind of discrepancy in the different categorizations here, whether measles causing deaths, contributing to the deaths or dying from other causes while infected with measles.

DR. DEMETRE DASKALAKIS, CDC OFFICIAL WHO RESIGNED OVER CONCERNS ABOUT RFK JR.: Yes, thanks so much for having me on and for the question. So, you know, the what I'm seeing from CDC is actually a lot of really poor communication, which is creating a deeper vacuum where people are able to make assumptions, and we can see more miscommunication and misinformation. Generally speaking, if a state decides that a death is attributable to measles, it reports that death to CDC and then CDC posts that death in their epidemiological data.

And so it is atypical to dispute with the state if it's gone through its normal process with the state epidemiologist, with the Department of Health and is then sent to CDC as a death.

[15:50:00]

So, I mean, ultimately, it's the analogy would be if somebody has a heart attack and has underlying diabetes, they may have died of the heart attack, but the diabetes is a mitigating event. And this is how measles works.

Measles causes the immune system to not be as strong. Measles can be something that can cause premature birth. And so I think that what you're seeing is a distortion of information, a distortion of data in a way to serve the goal of trying to say that measles is no big deal.

It is a big deal.

KEILAR: Do you have any doubt as to whether these deaths would have occurred if measles were not present?

DASKALAKIS: So I don't have the full information on either case, but I do -- I've read some of the coverage, including the coverage from the parents of one of the deaths that recounts a tale of the mother having a very severe case of measles and having a premature birth. And so that is caused by measles.

Therefore, you know, I think it's really hard to say that measles wasn't a prime contributor in that death. And I know that there is a debate about whether there's a second or even third death right now because of the communication coming from Lancaster County. But ultimately, you know, the decision on how to categorize a death ultimately falls to the clinicians that declare what the cause of the death is and then ultimately to the state to report it nationally.

KEILAR: The new CDC director, Erica Schwartz, Dr. Erica Schwartz, has really sided with RFK Jr. here. How do you view that? And has your view of her changed since her confirmation because of that? DASKALAKIS: So my view hasn't changed since the confirmation hearing because I actually thought that the way that she answered most of her questions in confirmation made me feel that she was already landing at CDC as someone who was compromised and who would only be able to really appease RFK Jr. and others. So I'm actually not surprised by this outcome based on her performance at the confirmation hearings. It is upsetting because I think she has some great background.

But at the end of the day, you know, this feels like distortion. And I'll say the other part is, where is she? You know, I think we're hearing statements from spokespeople at HHS.

But if this is such a big, important thing, which it is, I think it's necessary for us to actually hear from the CDC director, who is really the doctor for the country. And so this silence really allows people to make assumptions that potentially are true. So the way to fix that is to allow her to speak.

KEILAR: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, thank you so much for being with us.

DASKALAKIS: Thank you so much for having me, Brianna. Have a great day.

KEILAR: You too.

Still ahead, as officials search for the missing in Nepal, scientists are warning about future disasters like this one.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Officials in Nepal now say more than 1,000 people have died and as many as 4,400 others are unaccounted for after those catastrophic floods.

SANCHEZ: And as rescuers search for the missing, Chinese officials warn that the risk of another catastrophic flood still remains. Earlier, scientists revealed in a new report that there were warning signs just days before the glacier collapsed last week. Nepal's prime minister saying, quote, "There is no doubt that climate change is a factor behind this disaster."

We're joined now by CNN's Bill Weir. Bill, first, what can you tell us about these reported warning signs?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a report from a consortium of high mountain experts, Boris, eight of them, and we're just digesting it now. They say that that particular glacier retreated about four and a half football fields, 450 yards since 1990. The temperatures were, the month before the collapse, were higher than normal there.

And there were some warning signs. Some meltwater had turned brown that was coming out of the glacier. That's a warning sign. Some cracks in the bedrock as well. But they said that even if an early warning system, which is actually under construction between China and Nepal there, if it had been in effect, it would not have saved people at that border crossing. We've seen the footage get completely buried there.

It would have saved lives further down valley, ten minutes away. But because that wave was moving so fast, 120 miles an hour, you know, within seven minutes of that, they say it would not really have made much a difference. But the recommendation is much more cooperation across borders to talk about the warnings of these other glaciers that may be weakening or these glacial lakes that are forming by temporary landslides.

It's sort of a dripping time bomb.

KEILAR: Have scientists been warning about this for a while?

WEIR: Yes. Yes, they have, for generations. The UN, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been talking about the loss of ice, going back several decades. But the most recent one was in 2023, very specifically saying, "Every increment of warming will multiply and intensify future hazards from the cryosphere regions." That's the frozen spots, "floods, landslides, freshwater shortages from glacier retreat and snow loss pose a serious threat to mountain regions across the world." That's just the one from 2023.

There are several more before that. But the ice on this planet, under a blanket of fossil fuel pollution, is only going one way. It's getting smaller.

It's getting less stable. It is melting from the ice sheet floats up in the Arctic, from the big ice sheets down in the Antarctic that make us worry about sea level rise to inland threats like this. It's directly connected to what's happening in the Colorado River system.

Not enough snow and ice in the Rockies means not enough drinking water for 40 million people in the American Southwest. It is all connected to our overheating planet. And every, as this warning said, every increment, every tenth of a degree matters to the 50,000 glaciers in the Himalayas and all the rest everywhere.

SANCHEZ: Alarming, and especially when you look at that footage and imagine it repeating itself perhaps in other places. Bill Weir, thank you so much for that reporting.

Thank you so much for sharing your afternoon with us. A lot of news to follow. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

END