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Rockefeller Foundation Urges Massive Ramp-Up in COVID Testing to Reopen and Keep Open Schools; Biden Nominates Pete Buttigieg for Transportation Secretary; Russia's Top Diplomat Says, Navalny Poisoning Reports are Funny to Read. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired December 16, 2020 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Keeping an eye to see if anything comes out of that cabinet meeting today. John, thank you.

Let's go back to the pandemic right now and what you can call a national emergency, millions of school students at risk of falling behind amidst school closures. The Rockefeller Foundation actually warns in a report the following, we are running out of time. Perhaps no institution in American life is more important to the present and future functioning of society than its K through 12 school systems.

They are calling for a massive boost in COVID-19 testing, 300 million tests for students, teachers and staff in order to reopen and keep open 100,000 schools. And it comes as superintendents from the nation's three largest school districts, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, are now calling for a Marshall plan for schools.

Joining me right now is the superintendent for the L.A. Unified School District, Austin Beutner. Thank you for coming back on.

This report first, the Rockefeller report, calling for a huge ramp-up in testing to keep the schools open, I thought of you because you had been offering testing to your students since August. We talked about it. Your schools are still right now online only. How do you square these two things then?

AUSTIN BEUTNER, SUPERINTENDENT, LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT: Well, the front door, if you will, starts with the level of COVID in the community. In Los Angeles, we're 15 times the state standard for opening schools, more than three times of New York. So we've got to address that first.

Once that's addressed, as the superintendents of New York and Chicago and I agree, we listen carefully to our colleagues and schools, and we need a Marshall plan, the same concerted effort our nation brings to other national emergencies, a fire, a hurricane, a flood, and that's comprised of four parts.

We need make sure the environment is safe, the cleaning and personal protective equipment. We need to test so we can identify and isolate quickly anyone in the school who might have the virus. We need money for mental health support because an enormous set of challenges will come with students back to school. And we need to make sure funding is there so every person, every student, every teacher can be in summer school in person in summer.

BOLDUAN: And I think everyone can understand, Superintendent, if you're comparing it to kind of funding akin to post-World War II reconstruction, that it's a massive plan that you're talking about, a holistic plan, and all aspects of school that you're looking for funding for and planning for. What is missing right now? Why do schools need this so much?

BEUTNER: Well, I think you said at the outset, as the Rockefeller Foundation said quite well, schools are the foundation of the community. We are what provide hope and opportunity to the next generation of children in our country. And we know so many children are struggling with online learning. Heroic efforts being made by teachers and principals and everyone who works in the school but we know it's better back in the school and it's going to take that same all tied-together effort.

I was listening earlier in your show talking about to conversations in Washington about a relief effort, I didn't hear any mention of schools, not by you but by the leadership who were working on this. Schools have to be the priority because they support students and their future, they support working families and they connect the communities that we serve.

BOLDUAN: I was actually just going to ask you about that. We don't know the details of the COVID relief bill that is coming together, but I would wonder what you would say to members of Congress and leadership if there isn't any help for schools in there.

BEUTNER: I probably would come back on your show with a third grader I spoke with yesterday who struggled. His family has struggled. They've had someone in the family become gravely ill because of the virus. This child struggles to log on to a Zoom because someone is missing in their household. Someone else in the household has lost work.

And I'd just ask leadership to say, what can we do for that child? And I think the answer is just staring us right in the face, which is do all we can to support schools, make them a priority. It builds the foundation for the economy to reopen, it builds a foundation of future, opportunity for children, it's just the right thing. It has to be a priority.

BOLDUAN: You really put a bright spotlight on where it needs to be on just all of the pressures and all that is really on the shoulders of these young kids and what they're dealing with at home. It's not just trying to get on to Zoom but it's what their entire family is dealing with. They can't be inoculated or hidden from that.

I mean, you had -- BEUTNER: And, Kate, as you've said, they lack voice. Is it because they don't have a lobbyist? Is it because children don't vote? Is it because we're serving those most in need? More than 80 percent of families we serve are living in poverty.

Three quarters of them have lost work due to COVID-19. More than 80 percent of the families are families of color. Families may lack voice in the communities we serve, their children may lack voice. And I'm here, I think you're here today to make sure policymakers to understand schools and the children in schools have to be the priority.

[11:35:00]

BOLDUAN: And, I mean, you have also -- I mean, Ds and Fs have gone up in your school district, 15 percent amongst high schoolers. Some of the information you've also put out is reading proficiency among elementary school kids has fallen 10 percent. How does that hit you as a superintendent?

And we're talking about why, what is driving this for these poor kids, why they are falling behind but it's really -- yes, go ahead.

BEUTNER: No. I was going to say, when -- we know that, we can see it, the diagnostic. A grade is a diagnostic. It doesn't mean the child has lost capacity, it doesn't mean the child lost desire. It means this way of learning connecting via screen is not the best way for many children, young learners, students with different disabilities, those learning English, those who might have been struggling before schools closed are struggling more. We know that. We can see that.

So then the question is, what can we do about it? We can provide more one-on-one support and more online tutoring, things like that, but those really doesn't get to the root cause, which is we need students back in school with their teachers, with their custodians, with their bus drivers as soon as possible, as safely as possible. That's going to take an all-hands-on-deck effort.

BOLDUAN: And you've experienced, I'm just curious, is your thoughts on Joe Biden has said in the first 100 days of his administration, he wants to have a majority of schools in the country reopen for in- person learning. With what you've experienced, do you think that's possible?

BEUTNER: Well, it's going to take this all-hands-on-deck effort. It's going to take making schools not just part of a relief plan but a vaccination plan. Let's make sure that those who work in schools, teachers, bus drivers, custodians, school principals get early doses of the vaccine.

Let's make sure that we think of schools as part of the system to provide vaccine to children, as was done for polio.

We did a little bit of a test case in one of the communities we serve, high-needs community. Within 10 square miles, quarter million people, 30 schools, three drugstores, two fire stations, begs to reason the place to provide the vaccine to students and their families is the place they trust the most, where they are almost every day, they're local neighborhood school.

BOLDUAN: That's very, very interesting. Austin Beutner, thank you for coming on.

BEUTNER: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, they went head-to-head during the primary. Now, former Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg is about to join Joe Biden's team. We're going to take you live to Wilmington, next.

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[11:40:00]

BOLDUAN: Moments from now, President-elect Joe Biden is set to announce more members of his cabinet. Among them, Biden will be nominating former presidential rival and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg as his transportation secretary.

CNN's M.J. Lee is there in Wilmington. She's joining us now. M.J., what are you hearing about the nomination of Mayor Pete?

M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, this is a barrier- breaking nomination. If Pete Buttigieg is confirmed, he will be the first LGBTQ member of the U.S. cabinet and he also brings a different kind of diversity to the cabinet if he is confirmed too, right? He is just 38 years old. We have seen a slew of other appointments and many of them come from a different generation from the former mayor.

And also in terms of just the path that he will have ahead, Biden has made very clear that getting some sort of deal done, some sort of big package on infrastructure, is going to be a big priority. And we certainly expect the person who is a transportation secretary to play a big role in that.

Climate change is also another issue that would be under the purview of the transportation secretary as well.

And in terms of just the personal dynamics that we're about to see in the room as well, remember these two men were 2020 rivals. And then when Buttigieg eventually dropped out of the race, he immediately endorsed Biden and that was very important for him in his race. And Biden has publicly shown a lot of affection towards the former mayor, even at one point comparing him to his late son, Beau. He has made clear that that is one of the biggest compliments that he could pay to somebody.

BOLDUAN: M.J., you also have some new reporting on kind of this lingering question of when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be getting coronavirus vaccines. What are you learning?

LEE: That's right. Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week that he thinks it is very important for both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be vaccinated as soon as possible and all signs right now point to the fact that that will likely happen. A transition official has said that an announcement on exactly how that exactly will come about will be coming soon.

And then in terms of Biden making clear that when this vaccination does happen, he intends to do it in public. This really gets to the public trust piece of this. This is a future administration that very much understands there are people across the country who have a lot of questions and are feeling weary about the vaccine. That's why we saw Kamala Harris saying in a new interview this morning she particularly wants to make sure that she is reaching out to people of color because she knows there are people of color who are distrustful of even getting a vaccine at all.

BOLDUAN: M.J., thank you.

We also want to highlight now an example of what it can look like when misinformation gets out of control, especially when it's about the election.

[11:45:04]

A former Houston police officer was just charged with running a man off the road and holding him at gunpoint allegedly because this former officer had bought in to President Trump's false claims of voter fraud and was trying to investigate them.

CNN's Josh Campbell has the details on this and he's joining me right now. Josh, what is going on with this?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Kate. Those of us who track national security threats have been warning for months that these baseless claims of mass voter fraud are not happening in a vacuum, there are real consequences. That include potential danger, and that appears to be what has happened there in Houston. It occurred just before the election.

Prosecutors say this former police captain who was hired to investigate alleged voter fraud by a private group called Liberty Center began surveillance on an unidentified man. This former officer thought that this unidentified man was a so-called mastermind of ballot fraud, began surveying him, followed him, crashed his SUV into the man's vehicle and then ordered him down on the ground at gunpoint.

Now, it gets even more bizarre because what the man thought, this former cop, is that inside this vehicle were 750,000 fraudulent ballots. Of course, authorities say that there were no fraudulent ballots inside the van. The man was actually just an innocent air conditioner repairman who was held down at gunpoint.

Now, the attorney for the former police officer is saying that his client is innocent. He says that these charges will be fought in court. However, the prosecutor standing by her case in a statement, she says that this former officer, Mark Aguirre, crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed. His alleged investigation was backward from the start, first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened. Now, it's also worth pointing out, Kate, that this man was not acting alone. We've talked to a representative of this Liberty Center, this group that was trying to find incidents of voter fraud and they tell us that this man was one of 20 investigators that were hired to privately look into these mass voter fraud claims. Of course, despite those efforts, we continue to see no proof of mass voter fraud. But this just one example of how some of this rhetoric and how some of these baseless claims can actually escalate into violence. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Yes. Josh, thank you.

Coming up, an extraordinary CNN investigation reveals a top-secret mission against one of Vladimir Putin's chief critics. The Russian government is now responding. We're live in Moscow, next.

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[11:50:00]

BOLDUAN: We now have both top officials here in the United States and in Russia speaking out and responding to the investigation by CNN and the group, Bellingcat, that uncovered new details on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in August. He nearly died.

CNN's Clarissa Ward and her uncovered that Russian operatives had been trailing Navalny leading up to that attack.

Clarissa joins me now live from Moscow. So, Clarissa, how is the Kremlin responding?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it has been astonishing, Kate. We've waited more than 48 hours now, we haven't had any real proper response until just a few hours ago where the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, told journalists in Croatia essentially that he found this report, quote, it is funny to me, is what he said.

He went on to say, we're used to this type of thing from the west. He also said that people shouldn't make the mistake of concluding that Moscow's silence on this issue for two days means that that is somehow an admission of guilt.

But what he doesn't do, Kate, is to get to the heart of the issue and answer the allegations that are made in our report. Now, we are hearing some reactions also from the U.S., Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying that the White House has already weighed in on this issue, although they haven't really done anything in the lines of what we've seen from the E.U. and the U.K.

And we've also heard from Republican Congressman Mike McCaul, who is a ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He released a statement saying, this new reporting uncovers truly disturbing information about the Putin regime's culpability and the poisoning Alexey Navalny. The administration must complete the investigation Chairman Engel and I requested and release its findings immediately so the United States can hold those responsible to account for this inexcusable behavior.

But certainly what we've seen, Kate, there is no sense that that is coming to any swift conclusion. Meanwhile, Alexey Navalny telling us that he feels frustrated that the U.S. isn't really on the right side of history, as he calls it, on this important issue, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Clarissa, what also -- just about Vladimir Putin, I mean, do you expect -- is there any chance that you expect him to respond directly?

WARD: So, tomorrow, Kate, is the big annual Vladimir Putin, President Putin press conference that takes place every year. It runs four or five hours even sometimes. And many different outlets are allowed to ask questions, although they do sort of cherry pick in advance which questions they can ask.

I'm not allowed to ask a question this year because I don't have the proper accreditation to do that, but we're very hopeful that some of our colleagues will put the questions of our investigation, the fact that his unit was trailing Alexey Navalny for years, the fact that they had expertise in the use of chemical weapons that they were in regular contact with a lab that produces Novichok, these are important questions that need to be answered.

[11:55:09]

And we can only hope that President Putin will have no choice but answer them tomorrow.

BOLDUAN: Stay on it. Clarissa, thank you and thank you, again, and your team for your fantastic reporting earlier. I really appreciate it.

Coming up for us, moments from now, President-elect Joe Biden, he is set to make another big announcement with regard to his cabinet. He will be announcing Pete Buttigieg as his transportation secretary. We're going to bring you that live when it begins. Stay with us.

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[12:00:00]