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News Helicopter Crashes in Los Angeles, Killing Three People; Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close After F**king Crazy Trump Call; Federal Reserve Expected to Hike Interest Rates. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 16, 2026 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news overnight, a news helicopter crashes in Los Angeles. The news crew and a bystander on the ground killed. What we know about this tragedy so far this morning.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Quote, it was effing crazy. That was the description from one person after President Trump lashed out in a meeting with the Kennedy Center board as he threatens to keep the arts mecca closed unless his name goes back on it.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And new video captures the moment police say a suspect launched fireworks out of the back of a moving truck aiming it at passing drivers and igniting a deadly wildfire.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: Let's start with that breaking news, the tragedy in California. At least three people are dead after a news helicopter crashes in the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth. The pilot and the reporter on board killed. The person on the ground also died. The crew was in the air along with other news helicopters at that time covering a bus crash that had happened earlier, and their camera captured the moment that the chopper went down.

A warning, this is hard to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can now confirm that the chopper that went down in Chatsworth tonight, about two hours ago, was in fact News Chopper 4. We've been telling you that we've been piecing it together here. We knew it was a news chopper. We knew we'd lost contact with our people out there, and we've just received the confirmation that, in fact, News Chopper 4 went down just before 7:00 tonight in Chatsworth.

And we're going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process, and to regroup.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: That is actually the moment that the crew, the anchor team announced this on air. And you see this is the distressing video we were talking about. The video is on the scene, and then very abruptly pulls back, and then the helicopter just descends rapidly, and that is when the feed cuts out.

The pilot and the journalist on board, they were working for NBC 4 and Telemundo 52, and I just played for you that moment when the anchor team had to announce that it was their chopper that went down. The station identified the crew as journalists Eliana Moreno and George Marciniw.

It's still unclear, of course, what caused this, but you can see in the aftermath, there were really just bits and pieces of that helicopter on the ground after impact. NTSB investigators are expected to arrive on the scene today.

Let's get now to CNN Transportation Analyst Mary Schiavo, former inspector general at the Department of Transportation, for more on this. Mary, I want to play in full so you can also hear just the very -- what -- a little bit of what is happening in the helicopter at the time when something clearly goes wrong. Let's play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pull. Can you pull? You can't pull up?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: You can't pull up, she asks. What are you looking at when you hear and see this?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, the sounds, there are two different distinct sounds. First, we hear the engine spool up, in other words, increase the RPMs. And then they get an overspeed warning, which is the beep, beep, beep. Then you hear, very quickly after that, then you hear the engine spooling down or the RPMs decreasing, and we get a long beep. And that's another overspeed, or in this case RPMs spooling down speed protection warning, and that was the long beep.

So, the investigators will start with the very clues that this crew left for them to follow up with.

[07:05:01]

They had an engine overspeed and then spooling down, and they were unable to pull up. And so those are very important clues. You know, it could be a lot of things, and the investigators will look at them all, a compressor stall, a problem with the rotor control. The rotor -- the helicopters are so different from fixed wings. If you don't have the right loading and fuel consumption on that rotor, then you can have a problem where you have to change the pitch or it will -- the engine will shut down under certain circumstances.

So, the investigators have a lot to go on because of these two warnings in this broadcast. So, it was very good that they were able to get that out.

BOLDUAN: It is so scary just how quickly it appears to -- on the video to go from everything is fine to they're descending and then the feed cuts out.

The FAA had said this is a single engine helicopter. Was there anything in a loss of power situation that can be done here?

SCHIAVO: Well, it -- and it depends your altitude and where you are. Now, you know, we've had -- you know, we've worked on many accidents here and most people think of the thousand foot rule. You've got to be a thousand feet above population or congested areas. That doesn't apply to helicopters. Helicopters are allowed to operate lower than that, you know, 500 feet. The Federal Aviation Regulations say -- only say that if you can operate at that level and if you have you know, space to maneuver in case you have an emergency, I'm paraphrasing, and so they were much lower.

Now, a lot of times when you have a helicopter accident, particularly if you have a compressor stall or a problem with the control of the rotor, or there's many things it could be, lots of people will say, well, you can just auto rotate down. I can tell you, I have worked dozens of helicopter cases, accident cases, and very rarely is it possible to actually auto rotate down without an accident or damage.

So, it is quite possible that after the initial warning, they were trying to set that up, but didn't have time or altitude.

BOLDUAN: Mary, thank you so much for coming on this morning. Clearly, so many questions still, and a tragedy unfolding really on live T.V. John?

BERMAN: All right. Put his name back on the Kennedy Center or it will stay closed. That's the new threat from President Trump, and we've got new details this morning from inside this chaotic call he had with his handpicked board, a call one source says was, quote, effing crazy and ended with the board voting to shut down completely for renovations.

A federal judge has now twice blocked the board from putting Trump's name on the building, ruling only Congress can do that. The center is now appealing that ruling, and the president says renovations will not move forward unless he wins and gets his name.

Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is behind the lawsuit keeping his name off the building. Sources say Trump screamed at her on the call at one point, threatening to hold her personally responsible if the ceiling caved in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOYCE BEATTY (D-OH): The president threw a tantrum.

I was not going to let him tell me that he thought I was incompetent, so I responded by telling him I knew he was incompetent. He wanted to blame me if someone died, if something happened, if the ceiling fell in, and I reminded him, he has us at war and people are dying. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Let's get right to CNN's Alayna Treene at the White House this morning for the very latest on where the White House sees this going now.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John, I mean, this has been such a bitter back and forth fight between this administration, Kennedy Board officials and this judge in the case, wrapped up in the courts for so long now, and nothing is as true as seeing that bitterness on display yesterday.

I'm going to read again that quote that you mentioned. This one source told us, it was effing crazy. That is how they described this Kennedy Center board meeting when they voted to close the building for two years for renovations, and we know the president himself had called in.

Now, we're told that the president, as you mentioned, got into this really bitter back and forth with the congresswoman, Joyce Beatty. Her lawsuit is the one is that that has prevented the president from adding his name to the front of the Kennedy Center building.

Now, the president, according to this source, screamed at the congresswoman, berated her for getting the courts involved, and also blamed her for the decline of the Kennedy Center. Beatty, meanwhile argued that the president -- she said she told the president that he had put the Kennedy Center into deeper debt.

Now, all of this came, this very tense call and exchange between the president and the congresswoman, came just moments after the federal judge who's been very involved in this case, the U.S. district judge, Casey Cooper dealt a big blow to the president and Kennedy Board officials, essentially ruling to stop these renovations and any additions of the president's -- re-additions I should say, of the president's name back to the Kennedy Center building from moving forward.

[07:10:00]

This is what Cooper said. She said the -- or he said, the proposal to add an inscription thanking the president for renovating and restoring the institution's edifice bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted. Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress' blessing.

Now, before fully shutting down the center as the board had voted yesterday to do, they are going to need to secure a ruling reversing this latest order from the judge. We know the Justice Department is expected to file that on Friday.

So, a lot of twists and turns here, a lot of angerness that has been coming out in here. We know this has been a huge fixation of the president's. And as you mentioned, he says that if the renovations -- or, excuse me, he says that if his name cannot be added to the building, once again, these renovations will not move forward. We're also hearing from Beatty saying that she's going to continue to keep pushing this in the courts. John?

BERMAN: Standoff over a day. Alayna Treene at the White House, thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, will everything from mortgages to car loans become even more expensive? The Federal Reserve expected to announce whether it will hike interest rates today. It will be the first time, if it does, in three years if that's happened.

And is Ed Sheeran's tour in trouble, falling apart? Multiple opening acts dropping out after rapper Macklemore was dropped over, quote, pro-Palestinian comments. So what now?

And terrifying images from inside a flight, the plane violently shaking before the ceiling collapses.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

SIDNER: New this morning, we're standing by for a critical announcement by the Federal Reserve chairman, Kevin Warsh, on interest rates today. Warsh was handpicked by President Trump, who has consistently demanded the Fed lower interest rates, but that is not what the central bank is expected to do today.

CNN's Matt Egan is in Washington for us this morning ahead of this decision. Give us some sense of what you're expecting and why.

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Sara, it does look like an interest rate hike is imminent. Everyone I talk to, investors, economists, Fed watchers, they are expecting the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates today. The market is pricing in about a 93 percent chance of a rate hike, 7 percent chance that the Fed does nothing, and virtually no chance of an interest rate cut.

Now, this would be a big deal because, yes, this would be the first rate hike in three years, and it would be the first hike of the Warsh era. And that's notable because Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh, he, of course, was nominated by President Trump, who has been pounding the table for dramatically lower interest rates for nearly two years now. But the irony here is that his handpicked Fed chairman could be about to do the opposite.

And this has a significant impact on the cost of borrowing, especially for those carrying a credit card balance and for home equity lines of credit. But the problem for the Fed is that inflation, it's just too high right now. When the president took office, the Fed's preferred inflation metric was just around 2.5 percent, but because of a variety of factors, including tariffs, the war with Iran, and the AI boom, inflation's been going in the wrong direction. The Cleveland Fed is penciling in 3.8 percent inflation for August and nearly 4 percent for this month. That's almost twice the Fed's goal. And so that's why the Fed is seriously considering an interest rate hike here. Now, I talked to Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been fiercely critical of Kevin Warsh. She's argued in the past that he doesn't have enough independence from the White House. She's even described him as the president's sock puppet. And I asked her if whether or not an interest rate hike today from Kevin Warsh would change her perception of him, and she said it takes a long time to change someone's reputation, and she's argued that the president's policies have really put the Fed in a tough spot. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Donald Trump's economic policies have backed Kevin Warsh into a corner, and he's going to have to make a decision whether to bow down to Donald Trump and not do anything on interest rates or to say to Wall Street that he is committed to bringing inflation under control.

But I want to underscore, either way he does, it's the American people who are paying the price. There is no happy solution at this moment based on interest rates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: And so Warsh faces this delicate balance today, right? He's got to show the nervous bond market that he's willing to back up tough talk on inflation with real action. But he also doesn't want investors to get ahead of themselves and start pricing in too many interest rate hikes. This is not going to be easy. But, look, this is a big moment for the Fed and a big test for whether or not the Warsh-led Fed is willing to go against the president's wishes.

Sara, back to you.

SIDNER: Matt Egan, all of this will be affecting consumers one way or another. We will all be waiting to see what happens here. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Ed Sheeran's North American tour is in trouble this morning. All of his opening acts have dropped out all over Macklemore getting kicked off the tour over what he said on stage. So, what is Ed Sheeran saying today? We've got that.

And the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania, another death confirmed, meaning it is now seeing the most deaths in the west from this disease in decades. Why the governor is pointing the blame and the finger at HHS secretary.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: This morning, a political crisis threatening to engulf one of the world's biggest music stars, Ed Sheeran. Four opening acts have quit Sheeran's latest tour. The mass exit is in solidarity with rapper Macklemore, who was dropped following pro-Palestinian comments he made on stage. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MACKLEMORE, RAPPER: I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart, free Palestine.

I said free Palestine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: CNN's Lisa Respers France is here with the latest on this. So, what's going on, and what's Sheeran saying?

LISA RESPERS FRANCE, CNN SENIOR ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: Well, Ed Sheeran is trying to blunt some of the criticism and the heat that he's taken because Finneas, who is the producer and also Billie Eilish's brother, as well as the Irish acts, with the criticism and the heat that he's taken because Finneas, who is the prod- producer and also Billie Eilish's brother, as well as the Irish acts, singer- songwriter, Aaron Rowe, Beoga, which is a Irish band, and then the Danish band, Lukas Graham, have all pulled out in solidarity with Macklemore for Macklemore being put off the tour.

Now, Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, he also owns the Gillette Stadium, let it be known that he was not going to welcome the show at his stadium because he said he felt like it crossed the line for the Jewish community with what Macklemore said.

Now, a lot of people initially were like, you know, why isn't Ed Sheeran saying something? You know, they were already upset with the fact that they felt like Ed Sheeran wasn't supporting Palestine, but then they wanted him to speak out about what was happening, and he did. We have a bit of his statement in which he starts off by -- you know, part of the statement is pointing the finger at the promoters.

And what he says in the statement is, Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter's decision. It was not mine. Macklemore's contract for the tour was with the promoter, not me. He also said, I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn't mean I don't have them and it doesn't mean I don't care, nor does it mean I don't support causes in my own personal way.

Now, that statement in and of itself has like stirred some controversy as well because people feel like, you know, he's kind of trying to shy away from this, whereas people like Finneas are saying this is bigger than just the tour. In his statement, Finneas said that artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed. And so he explained that he has decided to withdraw from the tour dates that he had with Ed Sheeran, saying that he -- I stand with Palestine and the people.

Aaron Rowe, the Irish singer, tied it into his culture and being a citizen of Ireland, and he said -- we have a bit of his statement. He said, as Irish people, we know all too well about genocide, forced famine, and violent occupation. I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children. I would lose all respect for myself to carry on as normal.

So, as you can see, John, there are a lot of really passionate feelings about this, and a lot of people say this goes well beyond music and being a star and being a celebrity. And if anything, people want Ed Sheeran and stars like him to pick a side and speak out. And Ed Sheeran has simply said, you know, via his statement that just because he doesn't speak out on these things doesn't mean that, you know, he's not supportive of the Palestinians. So, you know, that's where we are at this moment, John.

BERMAN: All right. That concert up in Foxborough in Massachusetts a little more than a week from now. Be interesting to see what happens there.

Lisa Respers France, thanks so much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, breaking overnight, the E.U. is opening the door for Canada to become a member. How the U.S. is responding in an already seriously frayed relationship President Trump created.

And Kim Kardashian calls it the most terrifying experience of her life after being bound and robbed in Paris. The surprising amount she will receive in damages in this case.

Those stories and more ahead./cb

[07:30:00]