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Two Powerful Storms Threaten Travel; Explosion at Chemical Plant; New CNN Poll for 2020 Race; U.N. Report on Climate Change; New Hampshire Voter Suppression. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 27, 2019 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Of all the blowing snow.

The good news, though, is, most of the snow fell overnight. That meant the airport has normal operations so far. But, look, we've talked to so many people who are kind of worried about getting out because of the snow that was falling all across this country. We even talked to some pilots today who thought the visibility would be good enough for them to get out. But the concern here also, especially, is the roadway because you can see the ice here. It is still cold. You don't want to make sure people don't lose footing or driving traction as they're driving around. So concern so far, but just pack your patience, Jim. It is chilly, but not too bad for this time of year.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: That's a relief to hear.

Ryan Young in Minneapolis, thanks very much.

Meteorologist Chad Myers, he's in the Weather Center.

So I'm seeing a lot of blue up there, Chad. Tell me what this is going to do.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, an enormous amount of white in the mountains, too, Jim. Two storms. Number one here. Number two there. The second one will affect us on the way home on Sunday.

So, right now, yes, there's rain. There's rain in Atlanta. There's rain in Memphis. All the way up into the East Coast where it turns over to snow.

But the bigger storm is back out here in the west, making wind gusts in San Francisco to 40, 50 miles per hour, in the Sierra higher than that, with winter storm warnings expecting 40 inches of snow in the passes of the Sierra. And winds gusting here in Chicago to 50 miles per hour along with Detroit and Cleveland as well.

Move you ahead to later on today, the southeast clears out. Atlanta, the airport does very well. The only delay really we have right now is Minneapolis, they're deicing. Also about an hour delay on most flights. But the Northeast does dry out unless -- especially around 6:00 or 7:00 tonight. So look for the red dots, looking for the bouncing red ball. Here you

go, LaGuardia, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, all the way down to St. Louis and San Francisco, those would be the airports that would be the slowest. But at least for now, we're in good shape.

I'm even looking at the roads on Google Earth and roads are better than a normal Wednesday. Maybe people just put off moving, put off leaving. I'm not sure.

Let's go now to Sunday, on your way home. I want you home, Jim, on Saturday if you can because upstate New York, New England will be in a snowstorm by Sunday afternoon. Don't get caught in that. You know better now.

SCIUTTO: Thanks, Chad. We'll try to listen.

MYERS: OK.

SCIUTTO: Good info. Happy Thanksgiving to you.

MYERS: And to you.

SCIUTTO: Another story we're following, early this morning an explosion rocked a chemical plant in Port Neches, Texas. This about 90 miles east of Houston. At least three people hurt there. The blast so powerful, it damaged homes nearby, blowing out windows, garage doors. An evacuation order still in effect for the area around the site.

CNN correspondent Ed Lavandera following the story.

Ed, under control now? I mean the pictures just devastating overnight.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Not quite under control, Jim, but firefighters say they are making progress to get this chemical plant fire under control, which has been burning since just after 1:00 this morning. So we're approaching almost eight hours.

And, as you mentioned, the blast and the shockwave that came from this blast causing extensive damage in the neighborhoods around that chemical plant. Ceilings and walls buckled. Garage doors blown in. Doors blown open. Many front porch cameras captured the blast, which is -- have been extremely stunning to see as well. And as you mentioned, no one killed in all of this, which is the incredible news. Three workers there at the plant injured. We are told that two of those people suffered fractured bones, another person suffered burns in the explosion as well.

But right now their main concern is getting that fire under control. Crews and firefighters still working to do that. That could very well take the better part of the day to get this completely extinguished and fully under control.

And air quality concern is obviously something that many -- that they'll be worried about as well. The chemical that is burning there can cause eye irritation and throat irritation here if you're exposed to it for small periods of time. It could cause more serious health concerns if there is an extended and prolonged exposure to all of this. But that is the main concern for those crews working the scene right now.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Thankfully, no lives lost.

Ed Lavandera on the story, thanks very much.

The latest CNN poll numbers show the top four candidates far ahead of the rest of the Democratic pack. Will the field narrow as we head into the holiday season? How could that impact the frontrunners? We'll have more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:39:14]

SCIUTTO: A new CNN poll. Who's the leader again? Former Vice President Joe Biden. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren coming in, in the top three as well. Mayor Pete Buttigieg with the strongest showing so far, now hitting double digits.

Let's break it all down with Harry Enten, CNN's senior political writer and analyst.

I mean, listen, one headline from this is Biden remains the strong leader.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, Biden remains the strong leader.

So let me show you the trend line right here, Jim. I think this is rather important. Twenty-four percent, September, 34 percent, October, 28 percent, now. Again, all around 30 percent. He is the 30 percent man, as I call him, consistently around 30 percent.

I think another story here is Warren.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ENTEN: She's down to 14 percent. Normally I wouldn't make too much of this movement, 19 to 14, but other polls are showing it as well.

SCIUTTO: That show -- that bump that we saw just a few weeks ago seems to have cooled.

[09:40:00]

ENTEN: That's exactly right. And obviously, as you pointed out, Buttigieg up. His highest poll ever in a CNN national poll.

SCIUTTO: OK, let's talk about strength of support.

ENTEN: Yes. So one reason why I think Biden's so steady, as well as Bernie Sanders, right, is we broke it down by, do you definitely support that candidate that you're supporting right now, or might you change your mind? Among those who say they're definitely supporting that candidate, look at this, Biden at 37 percent, Sanders at 25 percent. Significantly higher than they were in the normal horse race.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ENTEN: While Warren and Buttigieg basically about where they are in the normal horse race. A lot more of their voters are saying that they might change their mind at this particular point and we see in that category that might change your mind. A much closer horse race. But that definitely support category --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ENTEN: Gives you the (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Biden over Warren there, a more than two to one ratio there.

ENTEN: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about Buttigieg. He's rising, but not among African-Americans.

ENTEN: I think that this is exactly right. So we broke it down by white and non-white. And this is rather key. What we saw in October was Buttigieg was at 9 percent among white voters. Now he's at 17 percent. Among non-whites, he only jumped by two points. That racial gap that is seeing his support is getting wider.

SCIUTTO: OK, there's been a lot of talk that is some of the further back candidates fall out of the race, that that might jumble the top four, the top tier. But these numbers don't show that.

ENTEN: Definitely not. So if your choice was the top four, Biden, Sanders, Warren or Buttigieg, what do we see here?

SCIUTTO: Consistent.

ENTEN: We see consistent, right? Biden still out ahead with 35 percent. If anything, his lead expands by a point. And, more than that, this relative top four stays the same. So the idea that Biden is somehow vulnerable if a lot of these other candidates drop out, it's just not true according to these numbers.

SCIUTTO: Final question. A worrisome number in here, is it not, for Democrats regarding public interest in the impeachment inquiry.

ENTEN: Yes. So, you know, if this idea that the impeachment inquiry, impeachment would bring Donald Trump down, at least in the voter's minds, this poll says, hold on, wait a second.

So we asked on these different issues, these eight different issues, is it extremely or very important in your 2020 vote? Look at this, impeachment inquiry, just 46 percent say it's extremely or very important in your 2020 vote. That is the lowest number of any of these issues tested. And among independents, those swing voters potentially, it's, again, the lowest at just 42 percent.

SCIUTTO: And in the midterms it was health care and immigration Democrats hit hard. They turned a lot of those swing districts.

ENTEN: That's the issue.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ENTEN: Health care. If I'm a Democrat, I run on health care.

SCIUTTO: Harry Enten, thanks, as always.

ENTEN: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Coming up, a stark warning from the United Nations. The countries of the world are not doing enough, not nearly enough, to stop the climate crisis. It's going to cost a massive amount of money to fix.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:47:07]

SCIUTTO: Well, folks, this is important. A new United Nations report warns that countries are running out of time to limit -- just limit, the climate crisis and that it could soon be too late to prevent temperatures around the world from rising to near catastrophic levels. This is real.

CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir joins me with more.

I mean it paints a bleak picture, not just because of the warming, but because of the time that we have as a race.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

SCIUTTO: To stop it, or not even stop it, slow it down is running out.

WEIR: Exactly.

SCIUTTO: Right.

WEIR: And they actually use the word bleak.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WEIR: And so the language coming from scientists who are by nature very conservative in how they describe this, each report that comes out is more bleak than the one before.

And if you're thinking about it in terms of a ski slope analogy, if humanity had acted when Exxon's own scientists were warning them in the '80s, it would be like a bunny slope, you know, to decarbonize. Now it's a double black diamond. The speed at which, you know, fossil fuels, heat-trapping gases are expanding about 1.5 percent a year, it needs to go down now 7.5 percent a year to hit these targets. SCIUTTO: And is anybody in the world making progress towards even a

fraction of that?

WEIR: There are countries like -- in terms of meeting their goals, small countries, developing countries like Tunisia --

SCIUTTO: Right.

WEIR: And Ghana and little countries that can do these benchmarks. But one of the great legacies of the Trump administration and, you know, long term might be the damage done to the relationship with China.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WEIR: Before the Paris Accords, the Obama administration, John Kerry, went in and worked out an agreement with the other big polluter on the block, and now they're going in the wrong direction as well. Of course, the Trump administration pulling out of Paris altogether.

But that could change with the next election. The day after the next election in 2020 is the deadline to full -- really pull out of the Paris Accords. And so now there's this consortium of governors and mayors and business leaders saying, look, we're committed to this. We'll fill the gap even if the U.S. federal government won't.

SCIUTTO: And, of course, China and the U.S. are the world's two biggest polluters as it happens.

WEIR: Yes, for sure.

SCIUTTO: Is there any doubt to the science? I mean, of course --

WEIR: No.

SCIUTTO: On other networks and from the president you'll hear, well, do we really know?

WEIR: No. But those are the talking points that have been fed into this by fossil fuel interests, much the way the tobacco companies did the same with the dangers of smoking.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WEIR: Deliberate misinformation campaigns.

So, yes, if you watch Fox, if you marinade in that, you think that there is some. But the latest analysis that just came out, it's no longer 97 percent of scientists agree, it's 100 percent. They re- evaluated the 3 percent --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WEIR: Of those papers and so now every year, as our phones get better, our science and our data gets better, it's the same with satellite technology and climate science technology. So they can see not only were there predictions of these hockey stick graphs as to where we're heading in temperatures were right on, they were conservative.

[09:50:01]

So not only should the conversation be about stopping the most pain, it should be about bracing for a whole new definition of life on earth as we know it.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes. And you see that in the storms, et cetera, a concentration --

WEIR: Right.

SCIUTTO: Power, strength.

What's interesting -- an interesting phenomenon here is the private sector.

WEIR: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Often will ahead of the government. Companies making a determination that it's in their interest and that, frankly, the politics are moving in the direction of doing something about that.

WEIR: Well, you can see it any time you watch a commercial for an oil company, they're not talking about oil, they're talking about how they can turning banana peels into fuel --

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.

WEIR: Or their big wind turbines and everything because that is where folks are. So everybody talks about, OK, I can scale back on how much I drive or fly or change my light bulbs, but this is such a systematic, huge problem at the policy level. The most effective things that folks can do when you're sitting around at Thanksgiving talking about it, is as a citizen, you know, laying on your elected leaders, but also as a consumer to lay on the brands you care about to say, hey, what are you doing about the pollution stream --

SCIUTTO: You have economic impacts.

WEIR: Yes, exactly.

SCIUTTO: And companies, as you say, in the commercials, they're aware of that.

Bill Weir, great to have you on. Thanks so much.

WEIR: Happy Thanksgiving, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family as well.

WEIR: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Well, the next president of the United States could be decide by young voters, but critics say a controversial new law in a state is making it more difficult for college students to cast their vote. And it's not just happening in one state. We'll have more

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:56:05]

SCIUTTO: Well, young people across the country turned out in historic numbers to vote in the 2018 midterm elections and now all eyes are on that demographic to possibly make an impact in 2020. But in New Hampshire, critics say a Republican backed law there is discouraging college age voters from heading to the polls. And there are similar changes in states such as Michigan and elsewhere. What will the ultimate impact be on the youth vote? Would it have political consequences?

CNN's Jason Carroll has more from Dartmouth College.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. Hello.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you guys registered to vote?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): For years, college-aged voters have been called apathetic or unreliable when it comes to turning up at the polls. But the 2018 midterm elections changed some of that perspective. Young people, including those in college, voted in historic numbers.

MAGGIE FLAHERTY, JUNIOR, DARTMOUTH UNIVERSITY: I think we've seen young people in my generation really start to become more politically engaged in these past several years.

CARROLL: Maggie Flaherty is a junior at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire, a state with the highest per-capita rate of college students than any other state in the country. Flaherty says she and many of her friends are eager to vote in 2020, but she fears a controversial state law will discourage other students from getting to the polls.

FLAHERTY: It's not that they're taking away our right to vote, it's that they're making it more difficult and confusing for us to vote.

CARROLL: It's called HB-1264. It's a Republican-backed law that changed the definition of residency and automatically makes anyone who registers to vote a resident of New Hampshire. Critics of the law say it requires out of state students who drive to pay fees for new state driver's licenses and car registrations just so they can vote.

Flaherty is one of two Dartmouth students represented by the ACLU who filed suit against state officials calling the law unconstitutional.

HENRY KLEMENTOWICZ, STAFF ATTORNEY, ACLU OF NEW HAMPSHIRE: We believe these people were targeted with this law to put these burdens and confusion on them to discourage them from voting. CARROLL: Those who support HB-1264 say it is not an election law.

ANNE EDWARDS, NEW HAMPSHIRE ASSOCIATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: The argument that this is an attempt at voter suppression by the state is an unfair argument and it's an incorrect argument.

CARROLL: Regardless, the law is already having a chilling effect. Aliza Gallant (ph) and Miles Brown run campus voter registration drives at Dartmouth.

CARROLL (on camera): What are some of the things that some of your peers are saying?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're saying like, oh, I don't think I can vote in New Hampshire.

MILES BROWN, FRESHMAN, DARTMOUTH UNIVERSITY: I think they're definitely trying to take advantage of college aged students who probably, if they have to put in a ton of effort to figure out how to vote, will be less likely to.

CARROLL (voice over): Pollsters also getting an earful from students, not just in New Hampshire, but from across the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're concerned about access to our democracy.

CARROLL: Other states, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin, with varying laws, also facing similar claims of trying to suppress the youth vote. College aged voters, 18 to 24-year-olds, historically lean Democrat. No surprise, Democratic lawmakers speaking out about what they say are efforts to suppress those votes.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I don't think that it's a secret that the Republican Party has been engaged in very questionable behavior when it comes to voter suppression.

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-IN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What you see happening with the effort to suppress the student vote here in New Hampshire is really a strike against democracy.

CARROLL: Maggie Flaherty says the lawsuit is one way to strike back.

FLAHERTY: Hopefully there will be some clarity soon and hopefully there will be answers soon, but right now we're in the fight.

CARROLL: Jason Carroll, CNN, Hanover, New Hampshire.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: A very good morning to you. Happy Thanksgiving. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York. Poppy Harlow has the day off.

Follow the timeline, the facts, and then you can see where it diverges from the White House line on impeachment. Here it is, July 25th, the now infamous phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky.

[10:00:03]

Now we know that same day an order came down from the White House, their first official action to withhold --

[10:00:00]