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Pennsylvania Supreme Court Dismisses Another Election Case; Trump's Legal Losses Pile Up; Trump Rhetoric Could Backfire in Georgia Runoffs; Americans Ignore Rising COVID-19 Cases; Iran Accuses Israel of Killing of Top Nuclear Scientist; Stores Desperate for Holiday Sales; Biden Administration Faces Economic Challenges; Anti-Lockdown Protests in London; Conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray Region; Family Hit by COVID-19 Raising Awareness. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired November 29, 2020 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Michael Holmes and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
Coming up, from a car bomb to gunfire, a top Iranian nuclear scientist's killing. Live report from Tehran.
Long lines and food banks and millions out of work. President-Elect Biden, how will he handle the economic crisis on top of the pandemic?
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CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON, COVID-19 SURVIVOR: God kept me here for my boys and got me through this.
HOLMES (voice-over): A family devastated by coronavirus, thankful to be alive this holiday season. Now they're on a mission to spread awareness of the dangers of COVID.
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HOLMES: Welcome, everyone.
Three keywords in play right now in the U.S.: disease, desperation and denial. Let's start with disease: COVID-19 blowing up all across the country. The number of infections since the pandemic began, well, north of 13 million. That's 14 million in November alone.
For 26 straight days, the U.S. reported more than 100,000 new cases. Saturday, the largest number of hospitalizations was reported. Experts warn a surge of infections could be coming.
Now the desperation: small businesses are getting hit at a time of year where they should be making money. Some of the busiest places, food banks, as many Americans are forced to seek help for basic needs. Things could get more desperate next month.
Now to the denial part of this. While all of this is happening, President Trump is working on his golf game again. He has done so one out of every five days he has been president; by CNN's count, 20 percent of his time as president.
He's still denying, by the way, that he lost the infection, spreading more conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
In Wisconsin, President-Elect Joe Biden picked up more votes in the recount that was requested by the Trump campaign. Trump paying $3 million for a bigger loss.
Yet another car on the Trump train of denial has derailed in court. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court tossed a lawsuit from Republicans seeking to invalidate absentee voting and block vote certification.
So it is increasingly clear that the mulligan President Trump wants for the election is not going to happen. But his attacks on the system, well, they rage on. CNN's Jeremy Diamond with more from Washington.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: When he wasn't on the golf course, President Trump on Saturday continuing to make baseless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. The president's focusing his ire this time on the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two key battleground states that President-Elect Joe Biden recaptured from President Trump in this latest election.
But the president's continued allegations of widespread voter fraud and his conspiracy theories that he's been spreading, they now come against a mounting legal backdrop that is disproving the president's case.
More than 30 cases now brought forward by the president's campaign or their allies have been dismissed in state and federal courts or withdrawn by those legal teams.
The latest blow is coming from a Trump-appointed judge, Judge Stephanos Bibas, writing for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, denying the campaign's appeal to try and decertify the results of the Pennsylvania election, essentially trying to throw out millions of legally cast ballots in that key battleground state.
Judge Bibas wrote, quote, "Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The campaign's claims have no merit."
The president is also running into roadblocks on the recount front. After his campaign paid $3 million to have two key counties in the state of Wisconsin conduct recounts, one of those counties, Milwaukee County, certified the results of its election on Friday. And the results of that recount actually found more votes for Joe Biden.
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DIAMOND: Joe Biden coming up with a 132-vote gain in Milwaukee County after that recount went through. The state of Wisconsin is expected to certify the results of its election Tuesday.
The question is how much longer does the president keep this up?
We know that privately he and his advisers recognize that it is almost impossible for him to overturn the results of this election. But the president has been charging ahead, trying to at least delegitimize this legitimate victory by President-Elect Joe Biden.
One key date that the president's advisers are looking at, that is December 14th. That's when the Electoral College will actually vote for the next President of the United States, locking in President- Elect Joe Biden's victory -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, the White House.
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HOLMES: While Donald Trump refuses to concede, President-Elect Joe Biden's transition is well underway. Biden will receive his first presidential daily brief on Monday. MJ Lee has details.
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MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's been a relatively quiet weekend here in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where President-Elect Joe Biden has been spending his Thanksgiving weekend.
But the Biden transition team did announce some additional members serving on its COVID-19 advisory board. One name is Jill Jim, a member of the Navajo Nation, who also serves as the executive director of the Navajo Nation's Department of Health.
One of the reasons this stands out and is so noteworthy is because this is a community that has been especially hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Look at the numbers. Some 6 -- 8,000, rather, 600 cases for every 100,000 people in that community.
This is a community that has had to go on lockdown through around December 6th. Now I will also note that we do expect a pretty busy week coming ahead for the Biden transition team.
On Monday we expect Biden to receive his first presidential daily briefing since he became president-elect. These are classified briefings that have been on hold until the GSA could formally ascertain he had won the election.
We also expect Biden to announce some members of his economic team. One of those names could be Janet Yellen, who is expected to serve as his Treasury Secretary if she is confirmed. We are also expecting some other key appointments, including who's going to be Joe Biden's CIA director and Defense Secretary. Those are more announcements that could be coming in the weeks to come -- MJ Lee, CNN, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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HOLMES: Voters in the state of Georgia find themselves at ground zero in another election, the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. Republican strategists and state leaders are getting increasingly worried that Georgia's GOP supporters might not turn out to vote in the January 5th runoffs.
It's specifically because of the party's own baseless attacks on election integrity. President Trump on Twitter trying to find a workaround, telling his supporters they must show up to vote for the Republican candidates, even though he insists the presidential election was, quote, "a total scam."
Now of course, that isn't true. Ryan Nobles was in Atlanta.
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RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Winning at least one of these races in Georgia is crucial for Republicans. They need to do that if they want to retain the majority in the United States Senate.
But things are off to a bit of a rocky start. On Saturday, the Republican chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, was in Marietta, Georgia. Her goal was to fire up Republicans to get behind David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two candidates running for reelection.
Instead she was peppered for about 20 minutes by Trump supporters demanding that she do more to help Donald Trump overturn the results of the election, not only across the country but specifically here in Georgia. Listen to an exchange during that event.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How are we going to use money and work when it's already decided?
RONNA MCDANIEL, CHAIRWOMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: It's not decided. This is the key --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know?
MCDANIEL: It's not decided.
If you lose your faith and you don't vote and people walk away, that will decide it. So we have to work hard, trust us, we're fighting, we're looking at every legal avenue.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, we have to get that word out, because people are losing here.
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NOBLES: You hear that supporter say, "Why should I vote if the election's already been decided?"
McDaniel pleading with these Trump supporters that it hasn't and it's important for them to get out.
But it shows the tightrope Republicans are walking here. They desperately need these Trump supporters to support their candidates. But at the same time, they can't make it seem as though they're not 100 percent behind Donald Trump.
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NOBLES (voice-over): Even while he works to sow discord and distrust in the election system in Georgia.
Republicans hope, when the voting actually comes around on January 5th, that they will come home and support the Republican candidates. The demographics have changed a lot here in Georgia, as evidenced by the fact that Joe Biden was able to win in November.
The Republicans are hoping that they still have the edge going into the runoff election -- Ryan Nobles, CNN, Atlanta.
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HOLMES: Hundreds of thousands of Americans will be passing through busy airports this weekend, as the Thanksgiving holiday winds down. U.S. health experts fear many will bring the coronavirus home with them.
As we mentioned earlier, 13.2 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 since March. Nearly one-third of those cases, more than 4 million people have been this month. The number of new cases is rapidly approaching 200,000 a day with no sign of slowing down.
U.S. medical facilities are treating more COVID patients than ever. A record 91,000 people are in hospital with COVID as of Saturday. Health experts in the U.S. are warning we will see dramatic increases in coronavirus infections and deaths in the coming weeks. Miguel Marquez tells us where the country stands right now.
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MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in New York City and testing sites across the country, people are still being tested. But those lines and the length of time it takes to get tested is going down because we're in the middle of a long holiday weekend.
This is something that epidemiologists expected during the weekends, the numbers sort of go down. The number of cases, the number of deaths, the number of people getting tests, those all go down.
But during the week, they all go up. They expect that same pattern with the long holiday weekend we're in right now.
It is stunning to consider that the U.S., in the last week, has added over a million cases of coronavirus. That is something that used to take weeks, if not months, to get to, not only here in New York when it was horrible in the spring. The numbers are rising, not as fast as South Dakota or Iowa or Texas.
But they are rising and rising everywhere. Doctors and nurses working so hard and epidemiologists who follow this disease fear that Christmas is going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons -- back to you.
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HOLMES: Marina del Rios Rivera is a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She joins me from Chicago.
Doctor, thank you so much for being with us; 90,000 Americans, more, are in the hospital right now with COVID. It's hard to get your head around that.
Are you worried many Americans still don't understand the risk and, post Thanksgiving, what do you see coming?
DR. MARINA DEL RIOS RIVERA, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO: I really worry that people have just not gotten a complete handle of how serious this is. Yes, I worry that, two weeks from now, our hospitals are going to be more than full to capacity and I worry about the ability of our staff taking care of patients.
HOLMES: I'm curious how you and your colleagues are coping with the mental and physical strain.
How do you prepare yourself for what you're doing now, let alone the next several weeks?
RIVERA: Well, we call each other a lot, try to give each other support. I, for myself, I'm very lucky that I have a very supportive family. My husband is very good at equitable division of labor, because I have to admit, after shifts, I'm often just exhausted.
It's not only just the physical exhaustion of being on your feet all the time and running from room to room but also the mental exhaustion of having to deal with people who are so sick all the time.
HOLMES: Exactly. I was talking to an ICU doctor a couple of weeks ago on this program and he spoke of the frustration of what he was seeing, people dying and then going out and seeing people in close quarters in bars and so forth.
You said you're not the front line, you're the last line of defense. I thought that was very salient.
Does it frustrate you to see so many people acting like it's no big deal?
RIVERA: Yes. It's very frustrating. It's caused strains in my personal relationships. There are people I just can't talk to because it's difficult to understand. They've heard me complain of how difficult this job is becoming.
They've heard me with my concerns for, you know, patients that are just so sick and I can't do anything about them and yet, you know, they're still choosing to gather in big groups, to go out to bars, to be in close quarters and to complain because there's mandates for mask wearing and for distancing.
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HOLMES: Meanwhile you're wearing a mask 10, 12 hours a day?
RIVERA: Yes, at least a good 10 hours. For my own protection, I've decided that the wise thing to do -- and the hospital has it as policy now -- just wear a mask for every patient encounter regardless of whether we think this person has COVID or not.
We've learned that the percent is so high of positivity. One in 15 people in Chicago is estimated to have COVID right now. So it's better to just be safe and assume everyone might be infected, even if they're asymptomatic.
HOLMES: I've covered wars for half of my career and I'm trying to get my head around the mental stress that you endure every day. You're in a place that has COVID patients. You just don't know when you're going to get it. At the same time, you're watching people die. I mean, that's got to take a toll.
RIVERA: Yes. I have to say, this wave has been difficult because, in the first one, we didn't know what we were dealing with, right, so I think we were still learning how to protect ourselves, how to protect our communities.
Now we know how to protect each other, how we can reduce the spread, the fact that we haven't learned our lesson is -- it really is a cause of a lot of concern and of mental exhaustion. It's more exhausting to deal with that than it is to deal with the sick patient in front of me.
HOLMES: That's well put. One thing about a vaccine, it's not like flicking a switch. It's more of a dimmer.
Are you concerned that the politicization of the pandemic and vaccines will leave people skeptical, reluctant to be vaccinated?
What would you say?
RIVERA: What I worry about is we've had already anti-vaccine rhetoric before COVID.
How many parents are choosing not to immunize their children or even people that are adults already that are refusing to get booster shots for tetanus or for the flu every year?
And so I worry about, just the fact that we have an effective vaccine is not enough. You really have to fight against this anti-vaccine rhetoric that, unfortunately, is part of the culture of American life. With that, also ensuring we're distributing the vaccine equitably and
making sure our most marginalized and most affected population are receiving the vaccine.
HOLMES: Powerful messages, eloquently put. Dr. Marina del Rios Rivera, thank you so much for what you do and thank you for speaking with us.
RIVERA: Thanks for giving me the time. And I appreciate your work, too.
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HOLMES: The brazen killing of a top nuclear scientist is fueling outrage in Iran. We'll go live to Tehran.
Also, millions of people unemployed, hungry, no stimulus bill in sight. The economic challenges Joe Biden will face, even worse. We'll discuss.
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HOLMES: Welcome back.
Iran's semi official Fars News Agency says the funeral for the country's top nuclear scientist will take place on Monday. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed on Friday east of Tehran. He was considered one of the masterminds of Iran's nuclear program. He was reportedly targeted by gunfire and an explosion. CNN's Alex Marquardt with more.
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ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Iran is saying it will avenge the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and is pointing the finger squarely at Israel for carrying out this attack.
A list of actors who could mount such a brazen, well-coordinated killing of one of Iran's biggest scientific figures in broad daylight is quite short. Israel is neither confirming nor denying any role.
The Trump administration for its part is being very quiet. The question now is how or whether Iran responds.
That the attackers were able to reach into Iran and take out the country's senior-most nuclear scientist is very embarrassing for them. It comes almost 11 months after the United States killed Iran's most famous military commander, Qasem Soleimani, in an airstrike.
There's been no major reaction to that either. So there is pressure on them to respond. If Iran were to respond in a significant way against U.S. or Israeli targets in the region, for example, it could set something off.
At the same time, Iran knows Joe Biden is about to become president and he wants to engage with them. He wants the U.S. to get back into the nuclear deal, to ease sanctions and the maximum pressure campaign of the Trump administration. So Iran could hold off. Meanwhile,
Israeli president prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees the clock ticking down on the Trump administration and knows that he will have less leeway with a President Biden when he's sworn in.
Biden is not eager to inherit a war with Iran and is almost certainly hoping things will be calm when he's sworn in in January so there can be a fresh start -- Alex Marquardt, CNN, Washington.
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HOLMES: For the latest, CNN's Ramin Mostaghim is live in Tehran.
Good to see you, my friend.
How is the Iranian government going to react?
RAMIN MOSTAGHIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Despite the pressure from the supreme leader's grassroots, the reality on the ground is that the IAEA inspectors are not going to be kicked out. They always come out and cool-minded spokesman of Iran's atomic energy organizations said no way the assassination has nothing to do with the inspectors of IAEA working in Iran.
So in that part, everything is normal, as business is normal as always.
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MOSTAGHIM: On the other hand, the supreme leader has called for the severe revenge in regionally and internationally against Israel or anyone who was behind it.
Even that part, the promise it prevails (ph) because President Rouhani said that Iranian nation is wise enough to not be entrapped by Israel to be engaged in all-out war.
Therefore, we can say the diplomacy (ph) apparatus in Iran and also the President Rouhani's government is cool-minded and tries to avoid any confrontations and try to give a chance to diplomacy in coming days until Joe Biden, President-Elect, will ascend to the White House -- Michael.
HOLMES: Yes. Exactly. There are a lot of economic considerations that play into those calculations as well. I'm curious what the funeral, much will be made of the burial.
What -- how -- what shape will it take, especially with the coronavirus?
MOSTAGHIM: Yes, that's a good question, because this -- I mean, comparing to Qasem Soleimani's great densely populated rally and funerals after his assassination in Iraqi soil, this one, although it's very important person and very -- was high ranking official and scientist, nuclear scientist, the officials here decided to avoid any things that add up the risk of coronavirus contractions.
So his remains at the moment are in Mashhad, according to semi official Fars News Agency, to be -- for blessing in the shrine of Imam Reza. And then it will be buried -- we don't know exactly the burial time and location tomorrow or Monday.
But the funeral will not be attended by the mass; will be attended by the relatives, officials observing all the protocols for social distancing -- Michael.
HOLMES: Coronavirus affecting everything around the world. Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran, thanks so much. Good to have you here.
MOSTAGHIM: Thank you.
HOLMES: We're going to take a quick break here on CNN NEWSROOM. We'll be right back.
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HOLMES: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company.
The Vice President-Elect, Kamala Harris; her husband, Doug Emhoff and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser all stopped by a holiday market to support small business Saturday.
Harris apparently bought puzzles, honey and some art as well. Small businesses have fought for years to survive against online and big box competitors. Now they've also become some of the hardest hit of the pandemic. Natasha Chen takes a look at the story.
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NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's never been this much riding on holiday season sales. According to the website, tracktherecovery.org, there's been almost a 29 percent decline in the number of small businesses open in mid November compared to the ones open in January of this year.
While not all businesses are listed on the website Yelp, that website shows that, of the businesses listed open in March, nearly 98,000 of them were listed as closed in September.
So this is a crucial time. A lot of small business owners told me they rely on assistance, including the PPP loan. That includes Bruce Kennedy, the owner of Universal Joint Restaurant here in Lawrenceville, Georgia. They really pivoted to opening up a general store when their restaurant had to be shut down. He said there is still more assistance needed.
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BRUCE KENNEDY, RESTAURANT OWNER: I'm going to tell you, without the PPP, which was the loan that we all got, probably nobody would have made it. That was a big thing that the government did for us. You think what happened in March and April, if that comes back again, tough. It will be really rough for us. And I don't know if we'd make it.
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CHEN: He said he's concerned for himself and his friends who own local businesses if there were to be another set of restrictions or another lockdown because of the current surge in cases. It's a question who would survive that.
The commonality among all the shop owners I've talked to is they have a loyal customer base, who understand, this year more than ever, what it means to shop small -- Natasha Chen, CNN, Lawrenceville, Georgia.
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HOLMES: Catherine Rampell is a CNN economics commentator and "Washington Post" opinion columnist. She joins me from New York.
You look at the landscape: millions unemployed, food lines, hungry Americans.
What are the biggest economic challenges facing the incoming Biden administration?
CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think there are a few worries on the horizon -- or not even on the horizon; present with us right now. COVID cases are rising. That's going to put a damper on the economy.
Beyond that, you have the fact that, even in the past few months, the fragile recovery that we did have seems to be petering out somewhat, maybe stalling. There's some warning signs this month that we may have lost jobs here in the United States in November.
I hope that's not true. We don't know for sure yet but it's quite possible. Beyond that, the federal fiscal relief has been dwindling over the past few months. Program after program has expired.
And Republicans in Congress seem to have no interest whatsoever at this point in putting together a new fiscal relief package, certainly not with a Democrat coming into the White House.
HOLMES: Certainly a lot to walk into on day one. What do you make of his appointments so far when it come to managing
the economy, the picks he's made so far?
RAMPELL: He hasn't officially announced anyone yet. However, it has been already widely leaked that his Treasury Secretary pick will be Janet Yellen, former chair of the Fed. I think she's an excellent choice for this position, given her talents, her temperament, her experience.
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RAMPELL: She's led, of course, the most powerful central bank in the world, as well as her values. She has written and spoken extensively about issues like equity and diversity, fairness, things like that, climate change.
So I think she will be a very powerful and qualified pick. It's hard to imagine someone more qualified than she is to take that job.
HOLMES: Right.
RAMPELL: The only downside, of course, is that she does not necessarily have the same sort of political experience that potentially other people might bring to the table, other Treasury Secretaries have had in the past. And she will need to negotiate with Congress over additional fiscal relief.
HOLMES: You look at Donald Trump and he, of course, trumpeted the Dow post election after saying repeatedly a Biden win would lead to a stock market crash. Of course, most Americans don't hold stocks. The vast majority of stocks are held by a small percentage of investors.
We've seen food lines, millions unemployed, the gaps between rich and poor couldn't be more stark. Speak to the economic realities for ordinary people, as the president touts the Dow.
RAMPELL: We're really in a world of two economies right now here in the United States.
You have the stock market doing well; you have white collar, highly educated workers doing well or at least OK. Their savings are quite fat right now, whether because of the stock market or because they're not spending money on travel and recreational activities that they would normally do in a regular economy. They're doing OK.
The rest of the economy, people who are service workers, more likely to be blue collar workers, who can't work remotely, they are not doing OK. They're down millions and millions of jobs.
Small businesses, likewise, have shuttered in droves. The real question is how many of those will be permanently closed, even when there is a vaccine that's widely distributed. The economy kind of just went into a coma for so many months. So again, it's this tale of two economies here.
HOLMES: I was going to say, there's one thing that all of this has shown is those two economies, have just been laid bare.
Once the inauguration is done and Joe Biden is president, I'm curious -- I think I know the answer.
Are we likely to see Republicans all of a sudden rediscover their fiscal conservatism, debt is outrageous, needs to be urgently dealt with, that, of course, skyrocketed under President Trump?
RAMPELL: Oh, they already have suddenly discovered, rediscovered their fiscal hawkishness, despite the fact that they passed a $2 trillion unfunded tax cut when the economy was perfectly fine and the fact that they spent loads of money in additional federal spending even before COVID.
COVID has run up the bill as well in the last six to eight months. But even before that, the debt went up because of -- beyond what it would have been previously tracked to do, because of the tax cuts and additional spending.
But all of a sudden, you see Republicans remembering, oh, right, we're supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, which I fear may be an excuse to withhold that lifeline to small businesses, to households who need assistance paying their rent, avoiding eviction and foreclosure, putting food on the table.
HOLMES: Which would be outrageous, having put it off. Catherine, good to see you.
RAMPELL: Good to be here.
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HOLMES: Recent coronavirus restrictions across Western Europe seem to be having an impact. Going to show you a map which shows trends from last week to this week. All the countries in green have a lower case count compared to last week.
This graph shows new cases since August 1st. You can see all of these countries except Germany have been dropping the last few weeks; Germany holding steady.
Police in London arrested more than 150 people during protests on Saturday. Have a look.
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HOLMES (voice-over): Now some groups were protesting lockdown measures, chanting "Freedom," as you just heard there. Others were marching against a COVID vaccine. Some maskless protesters were seen getting in fights with police.
Arrest charges included breaching coronavirus regulations, assaulting police officers and possession of drugs. The lockdown is set to end on Wednesday.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HOLMES: Scott McLean is in London.
A lot of anger, even violence there.
How did it unfold and how widespread is the support for the views of those protesters?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Michael.
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MCLEAN: Yes, this seems to all fall under the category of COVID fatigue, which certainly is not unique to England by any stretch. This particular protest was organized by Save Our Rights U.K., which was created because of the pandemic. Their core belief is that coronavirus restrictions have been disproportionate and unreasonable.
And they think they've been rushed through Parliament without any debate. That's because lawmakers actually voted to give the government power to make new coronavirus restrictions without consulting them, without actually holding votes in Parliament.
Before this event began, the London police had made clear that they believe, under the current lockdown restrictions -- the lockdown ends on Wednesday -- this type of gathering would be illegal because you're not allowed to gather in groups of more than two.
The protest organizers believe they were covered under an exemption. Legalities aside, you can see from the video that there's not a lot of social distancing going on. There were few masks in sight, either.
You can see the protesters clashing with police, chanting "Freedom." Police were turning back coach buses with protesters that were trying to enter the city as well. All in all, more than 150 people were arrested, most for breaching coronavirus restrictions, which is quite rare, because, Michael, police in this country have taken an extremely lax approach to actually enforcing coronavirus rules.
Case in point: yesterday afternoon I was out for a walk along the river, along the Thames River here, got through a couple of parks. You can see people openly breaching the lockdown rules, gathering in large groups, few masks in sight. No social distancing and no police officers around, either.
HOLMES: Extraordinary. All right, appreciate the update there, thanks so much, Scott McLean in London for us.
Now conflict in northern Ethiopia has displaced thousands of people. Coming up on CNN, the latest on the fighting that's pushed so many from their homes and whether it's really coming to an end.
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HOLMES: Ethiopia says federal troops took control of the regional capital Mekelle on Saturday and are now searching for members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front. The prime minister Abiy Ahmed tweeted on Saturday that critical facilities were under Ethiopian authority but a communications blackout makes it hard to verify.
Witnesses describe fierce bombardment earlier on Saturday. Ethiopia promising to open humanitarian corridors amid concern for the city's half-million residents. Thousands fleeing to Sudan since fighting began in the region November 4th.
Let's go to Nima Elbagir in London.
As always, civilians bearing the brunt of everything. Given the communications blackout, what do we know?
NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's the heartbreaking thing, Michael. We don't know what we don't know. Those civilians who were trickling over the border into Sudan brought with them horrifying stories, not only about the bombardment but their fears of ethnic militias allied to government forces, they say.
Even that trickle seems to be drying up. The worry is that refugees are being blocked from crossing the border. That's the concern of almost everyone we spoke to who's operating, both from the humanitarian perspective and even from the Sudanese military perspective on the border.
It went from several thousand refugees a day, Michael, to 700 refugees a day. Even this morning, we have a CNN producer and a CNN stringer on the border, trying to capture any movement across the border of civilians. And so far, none have arrived.
That is, as you can imagine, very, very worrying for aid organizations, because, until they know what is happening in there, they have no idea what they need to be able to respond to the situation on the ground -- Michael.
HOLMES: I guess one key question is what's happened to the TPLF leadership?
Is that going to become asymmetrical guerilla warfare?
ELBAGIR: That is the key question. It's less than four weeks in which the fighting force, an army in and of itself, the prime minister of Ethiopia says he's been able to vanquish it. But it feels like they've just disappeared. No one has any sense of where they are right now.
They say they're going to continue to fight. The worry is that this region does not need any more asymmetric, nontraditional conflicts. Eritrea, the U.S. State Department told Reuters, that four or five rockets landed in the capital. There's activity on the southern border with Sudan. They feel like there's a lot of activity there. But it's almost like
they have vanished into midair. Without any images, without any independent journalism coming out of Mekelle, we don't even know whether the Ethiopian prime minister has been able to deliver what he said he delivered.
HOLMES: Nima Elbagir, glad you're covering it as best you can. Appreciate it.
All right. Well, imagine not just one or two coronavirus cases in your family.
How about seven?
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CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: God kept me here for my boys and got me through this.
HOLMES (voice-over): Ahead, one family's struggle with the pandemic. We'll be right back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[02:50:00]
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HOLMES: A family in Minnesota is giving thanks this holiday weekend for surviving a COVID-19 outbreak that ripped through their own home. All seven family members caught the virus at the start of the pandemic and some are still suffering the aftereffects.
Now they're making it their mission to warn others about just how dangerous COVID is. CNN's Adrienne Broaddus reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Charles and Kirstin Johnson-Nixon pledged for better or worse, the Minneapolis couple didn't know where life would lead.
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: COVID --
BROADDUS (voice-over): -- and they had no idea the coronavirus --
KIRSTIN JOHNSON-NIXON, COVID-19 SURVIVOR: I've had pneumonia before, I didn't feel what I felt with COVID.
BROADDUS (voice-over): -- would write life's most painful chapter.
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: My father-in-law tested positive and was hospitalized. My mother-in-law tested positive and was hospitalized. My wife and I tested positive.
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: I'm a Black woman, I am overweight, I have some underlying issues. But I thought how could this happen, you know, to us? We are doing all the right things.
BROADDUS (voice-over): The virus attacked everyone in their family including the couple's three boys. And while recovering, this family received a call they hoped would never happen.
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: I felt hopeless --
BROADDUS (voice-over): At this hospital, Kirstin's father William was placed on a ventilator.
CALEB JOHNSON-NIXON, COVID-19 SURVIVOR: My grandpa was in the hospital for 50 days. The doctors kept saying that when a person over the age of 80 years old went on a ventilator, they usually didn't come off.
BROADDUS (voice-over): According to the COVID Tracking Project, Black people in the U.S. are dying at more than double the rate of white people. Native Americans and Latinos are also dying at significantly higher rates than whites and Asian Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Apart from our friends --
BROADDUS (voice-over): Charles feared he wouldn't be around to watch his kids grow up or see them play another lacrosse game.
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: That for me was my biggest fear. You know, I'm -- I lost my father when I was young and one of my goals when I became a father was to make sure that I was going to be here for my kids.
[02:55:00]
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: And the idea that this thing could turn on me and take me away from them was the hardest thing to deal with.
God kept me here for my boys and got me through this.
BROADDUS (voice-over): So in this season of Thanksgiving --
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: -- you can cut the apples when we get home.
BROADDUS (voice-over): -- the Johnson-Nixon family overflows with gratitude.
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: We're alive.
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: I'm also thankful that my parents are alive.
BROADDUS (voice-over): Six months have passed since Kirstin wrapped her arms --
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: It's hard not to hug him --
BROADDUS (voice-over): -- around her father.
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: -- or to kiss him.
BROADDUS (voice-over): He still needs oxygen.
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: I'm glad I still get to, you know, hug and kiss these guys, so.
(LAUGHTER)
BROADDUS (voice-over): Charles and Kirstin say for better or worse, their work isn't done.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cough, loss of appetite --
BROADDUS (voice-over): They're speaking on panels and vow to educate the hardest-hit communities about a virus that changed their lives.
K. JOHNSON-NIXON: It's important to wear your mask, to wash your hands.
CHARLES JOHNSON-NIXON: It makes you want to yell out and be on a mission to bring awareness to people and say, hey, we have to take this serious because we're already dealing with all the other problems that we have to deal with in being Black in this country.
2020 will be gone soon, thank God. 2021, hopefully, will -- will give everyone the opportunity to rethink how they do things, change how they do things if they need to.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: And our thanks to Adrienne Broaddus for that report.
I'm Michael Holmes. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. But don't go anywhere, Paula Newton will be here with more CNN NEWSROOM after the break.
