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Myanmar Military Seizes Power in Coup; Republicans Quiet Over Marjorie Taylor Greene's Comments; Rep. Kinzinger Starts PAC to Address 'Poisonous' Environment in GOP; Anger and Grief Among Wuhan Residents One Year Later; Watchdog Group: Russian Police Arrested 5,000+ Demonstrators Sunday; Tens of Millions Facing Powerful Winter Storm; A Closer Look at GameStop's Wild Week. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired February 01, 2021 - 00:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[00:00:24]

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Michael Holmes. Thanks for your company.

We are going to bring you all the latest from Washington on the coronavirus relief negotiations after the deadliest month in the pandemic so far.

But first, breaking news from across the globe. Myanmar's military has seized power in a coup against the elected government. The army has detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of the ruling party.

Reuters reporting that the military has declared a one-year state of emergency. Soldiers now surrounding city hall in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

Suu Kyi and other leaders were taken in a raid early on Monday. There had been growing tensions between the civilian government and the military after Suu Kyi's ruling party, the National League for Democracy, claimed victory in a landslide in November's election. The military claimed that there were irregularities in that vote.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation, the White House saying quote, "The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar's democratic transition, and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed."

CNN's Will Ripley is in Hong Kong with the latest development.

I mean, the military says otherwise, but critics say this is a violation of the constitution the military helped write and said only a couple of days ago it would abide by. What's the latest?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is, as my colleague Ivan Watson put it, a textbook definition of a military coup. A military that suffered a humiliating defeat in November's elections, where the National League for Democracy Party that the military actually supported and helped put into civilian power, even though the military retained control of key levers of parties in the government. That NLD Party got 396 seats. The military proxy party got just 33 seats.

And there are accusations on the military's side now of widespread voter fraud. There was one memo that was put out, saying 10 and a half million possible cases of voter fraud, which election watchers say is highly unlikely. And in fact, the election authorities inside Myanmar have disputed that there was widespread voter fraud.

So what the military apparently has done now is detained not only Aung San Suu Kyi and her top lieutenants, but they have also shut off all but one television channel, the official military television channel in the country. They've turned off the Internet, tried to block social media, even cut phone lines, which makes the information flow very difficult, both getting out of the country, but also for people inside the country to communicate internally.

And then the one official news bulletin confirming this military coup says that a state of emergency will now be in effect for one year. Power has been transferred over to the military.

And these elected civilian leaders, part of a government that just came into power five years ago, won a landslide in this latest election, now their futures are uncertain as, you know, Aung San Suu Kyi is once again potentially under house arrest, where she has been on and off for the better part of 20 years before she was elected as Myanmar's civilian leader in the last elections five years ago. And then her party overwhelmingly won even more seats in this most recent election in November.

HOLMES: Yes, and that's kind of the point. As you mentioned, I mean, the military claiming irregularities. But this was an election in which Suu Kyi's party won, I think it was, 80 percent of the seats. I mean, is there any evidence being offered of irregularities or irregularities that would have changed such a landslide result? I mean, what is the military's aim here?

RIPLEY: Well, there are other stakeholders in the election who have been concern about irregularities, particularly political parties representing ethnic minorities inside Myanmar, which is a country that is deeply divided, not only along political lines but on -- on ethnic lines.

And Aung San Suu Kyi, who was a darling of the global movement for peace and democracy for many years -- she won a Nobel Peace Prize back in the early '90s and was celebrated for her work to try to bring democracy to Myanmar, which was for decades, you know, controlled by an authoritarian military government, isolated from the outside world.

She was a key figure in opening the country up, but then has really fallen from grace in the eyes of many internationally, because she was at the U.N., defending the military that kept her under house arrest for 15 years, in accusations of genocide against the Rohingya Muslims, who you know, more than 700,000 of them have been basically forced out of their villages into neighboring Bangladesh. They describe being raped, being murdered at the hands of Myanmar's military.

[00:05:27]

And Aung San Suu Kyi was at the United Nations defending their actions, saying they were justified, blaming Rohingya militants for provoking the confrontation with state security forces, even though there's overwhelming evidence that that was not the case.

And so -- but domestically, for that tough stance against Rohingya Muslims, who are widely despised by the large population of Buddhists inside Myanmar, she actually -- her popularity levels have been extraordinarily high at home, which may be reason why her party won so many seats this past November.

But from the military leadership perspective to have so many seats, to suffer such a humiliating defeat, it seems as if this kind of illusion of civilian leadership, the generals just decided no more, and they've now stepped in to take things over.

HOLMES: All right. Will, we'll be checking in with you. Thanks so much. Will Ripley there in Hong Kong.

Now in the United States, hopes for a new coronavirus relief deal are rising as both sides have agreed to talks. President Joe Biden has invited a group of Republican senators to the White House Monday to discuss their new proposal. They've announced plans for a $600 billion relief package, which is, of course, much smaller than what Democrats are pushing for.

This comes after the U.S. reported its deadliest month from COVID since the pandemic began. More than 95,000 deaths confirmed in January, far more than the previous record high, which was just a month before, December.

Despite all of this, the U.S. is seeing its lowest number of hospital admissions in two months. There's some good news there.

But even with fewer Americans in hospital with COVID-19, the country far from out of the woods, and one expert says he expects a variant of the coronavirus to impact the U.S. in a way the nation hasn't seen since this all began.

CNN's Natasha Chen with more.

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NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In some ways, Americans may feel the beginning of a light at the end of the tunnel. The number of people hospitalized from COVID-19 dropped below 100,000 on Saturday for the first time since December 1. Only one state right now, Louisiana, is seeing an increase in new cases compared to the previous week. And more than 30 million doses of the vaccine have been administered so far. RON YABROUDY, RECEIVED SECOND DOSE OF VACCINE: I feel that. I can go

see my grandkids. Getting a second shot, it just has done wonders for me, and it really has boosted my confidence to the point where I feel I can take on the world.

CHEN: Ron Yabroudy, who's about to turn 89, got both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which showed 95 percent efficacy during trials.

YABROUDY: Let me tell you something: There's nothing like having 95 percent on your side.

CHEN: Moderna's trials did similarly well.

But these modest signs of progress come amid a troubling development. In the U.S., there are more than 400 cases of the variant first identified in the U.K.

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY: The fact is that the surge that is likely to occur with this new variant from England is going to happen in the next six to 14 weeks, and if we see that happen, which my 45 years in the trenches tell us we will, we are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country.

CHEN: And variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil have turned up in a handful of U.S. states this week, causing some health experts to sound the alarm.

DR. CHRIS PERNELL, PUBLIC HEALTH PHYSICIAN: My primary concern is that we need to do more surveillance in this nation. We actually trail our peers on this. We need to do more genomic sequencing. There are U.S. variants. We just don't know, because we don't do the work to identify them.

CHEN: While new research is promising, it's not yet clear if those vaccinated could still get sick or even die from the variants. A troubling thought, especially as we close the month of January with the most deaths of any month since the first reported case in the U.S. a year ago.

HOLLY VANATTI, HUSBAND AND FATHER-IN-LAW DIED: That's been really hard, too, is because she's asking every day, Where's my daddy?

CHEN: Some families like Holly Vanatti's have lost more than one relative. In her case, her husband and father-in-law died of COVID-19 within 24 hours of each other.

VANATTI: Every day, I -- I wake up and I think that it's -- this nightmare is going to be over, and unfortunately, it continues to go on.

CHEN: Natasha Chen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Now, the European Commission president says the drug maker AstraZeneca has agreed to deliver 9 million additional doses of its COVID vaccine in the first quarter of the year.

Now, this comes days after the company said it would cut vaccine supplies to the E.U. because of production problems. But on Sunday, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that AstraZeneca would expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe and start deliveries sooner than expected.

Demonstrators across Europe gathered over the weekend to protest coronavirus restrictions.

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HOLMES: Police in Brussels say they arrested more than 200 people during what they described as unauthorized gatherings. Protesters angry about a national curfew and a ban on nonessential trips in and out of the country.

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HOLMES: You're looking at Vienna, where police in riot gear stopped some 5,000 marches before they could reach the president's office. Austria has been its third national lockdown for more than a month.

With a week to go before Donald Trump's historic second impeachment trial begins in the Senate, the former president announced that two new lawyers will head his legal team. He's been struggling to find attorneys willing to take the case.

CNN reported that five members of his impeachment defense team quit this weekend. Trump fell out with them over legal strategy, we're told. They wanted to focus on the constitutionality of convicting a former president, but he wants to use his disproven election fraud claims as a defense.

Meanwhile, one Republican lawmaker is pushing back on the party's continued allegiance to Mr. Trump. Adam Kinzinger has launched a new political action committee to battle the, quote, "poisonous conspiracies and lies" that defined the Trump administration. In a new video, Kinzinger says the Republican Party has lost its way, but so far, not many are supporting him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL_: Imagine everybody that supported you, or so it seems that way, your friends, your family has turned against you. They think you're selling out. I mean, I've gotten a letter, a certified letter twice from certain people disowning me and claiming I'm possessed by the devil. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Doug Heye is a Republican strategist and former RNC communications director. He joins me now.

Good to see you, Doug. OK. Let's start with why is the GOP leadership so quiet in the face of the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, for that, matter? I mean, in her case, someone who's been so damaging. Why the silence at the top?

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes, two simple reasons. One, they're scared of the feedback they're getting from their members, which is not positive. Or, feedback they're not getting from their members, because their members are scared of the feedback they're getting from their primary voters.

And the one thing about Trump supporters, they don't go quietly into that goodnight. They are loud. They're hopeful. And their members hear from them.

I'll tell you, Michael, I've heard so many stories from members of Congress, emails or text messages they get from their donors from -- from supporters who are saying they're not doing enough for Donald Trump and have said this over and over again. And really in unkind words.

So they're reacting directly towards their base. I don't think that's a positive thing, but that's the political reality right now.

HOLMES: You have the -- then you have the House minority leader, McCarthy, going to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump. There's all this talk, as you say, of keeping the base on their side. But Trump lost the House. He lost the Senate. He lost the White House. Why this continuing fealty. And we've got the photo of McCarthy and Trump in the gilded room. Why this fealty?

HEYE: Because the one thing that Donald Trump hasn't lost -- He has lost a lot, no doubt about it -- is he hasn't lost the core base Trump vote, which is really dominant in the GOP right now.

And -- and look, there are problems with that. And, you know, one I would point out to you is, in my home state of North Carolina, about 5,800 Republicans have left the party. They've changed their registration to unaffiliated.

And if you're -- if you're making those kinds of political decisions in January of an off year, you're pretty angry about things. That's obviously, long-term, not sustainable for Republicans.

The other, as I point out, you know, some recent electoral history, where we've nominated terrible, terrible candidates who cause a lot of problems for Republicans, like a Todd Akin in Missouri, a Richard Murdoch in Indiana. Candidates who got a lot of national attention for terrible comments they made, and ultimately lost.

Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell back in 2010, two Senate seats that we should have picked up in Nevada and Delaware, but we didn't. That also helped to define Republicans negatively. So we've lost these seats. We get defined negatively, and it's obviously paramount to a lot of what we're seeing right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene can define what Republican-ism is, I think, to a lot of independent voters and even a lot of Republicans who are leaving the party. That's dangerous --

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: The problem is there are risks in maintaining fealty to one man, especially since he's out of office. I mean, it is an extraordinary sort of eggs-in-one-basket situation.

[00:15:09]

I mean, if you had to think of the next party leader or figurehead right now, it's hard to do that. It is a one-man party. There -- there are a lot of risks in that.

HEYE: There sure are. And obviously, you know, we've seen them play out over the past few weeks. And obviously, on January the 6th. And the take away from me that I think is so critical on this is that an interview that Jonathan Swan of Axios did with Ukrainian President Zelensky, today he said, it is hard to look at America's a beacon of democracy.

It's what we've held ourselves up to be for basically, you know, almost 250 years now. We clearly have fallen short in the past few weeks, and the world is watching.

Myanmar is another country where they're dealing with issues like this, where the United States is supposed to serve as an example. And what we've seen from the Republican Party just over the past few weeks, much less the past four years, really, is falling short

HOLMES: We've got less than a minute, but I wanted to ask you. You had Representative Kinzinger, one of ten Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. He's launched a new political action committee designed to challenge the Trump wing of the caucus itself; stand up. Do you -- real quick, do you think that has legs?

HEYE: I sure hope it does. Look, those 10 members stuck their neck out to do the right thing, and they're -- they're paying some political price.

Adam Kinzinger is one of our best, and brightest, and smartest, and youngest Republican House members. We need a lot more like him, and you know, I'm one who will sign up on anything that Adam Kinzinger wants to do, because it's usually a pretty good idea.

HOLMES: Doug Heye, always a pleasure. Good to get you on. Thank you.

HEYE: Thank you.

HOLMES: Coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM, a team from the World Health Organization expands its coronavirus investigation in Wuhan. Now, while many living there still grieve in anger more than a year after losing their loved ones. We'll be right back.

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HOLMES: Welcome back.

A team led by the World Health Organization has visited a seafood market in Wuhan, China, where COVID-19 was first detected. The market has long been closed to the public.

The WHO team plans to conduct two weeks of fieldwork there as part of their investigation into the origins of the virus. They've also visited two hospitals that treated the most severely ill patients.

More than a year after that initial outbreak in Wuhan, many people, they're still grieving the loss of loved ones. For some, that grief turned to anger as they questioned why the government did not do more to address the situation from the very beginning.

CNN's David Culver, reports now from Wuhan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So this right here is the photo.

JUNG HAI (PH), LOST FATHER TO COVID-19: Yes.

CULVER (voice-over): Matching the photo on his phone with this Wuhan park where he last spent time with his father, Jung Hai (ph) can barely keep it together.

(on camera): Just take a second.

(voice-over): Jung (ph) says his father served in China's military, defending his country. But as COVID-19 spread in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak early last year. Weeks passed before health officials publicly acknowledged human to human transmission.

When they finally did, it led to the city of 11 million residents locking down. But by then, his 76-year-old father had contracted the virus, dying days later.

(on camera): You had told me that, when you're here, a few emotions come to mind. Obviously, sadness and sorrow, missing your dad. But also, anger. With whom are you angry?

(voice-over): "When the virus appeared in Wuhan in the early days, the local governments in Wuhan City and Hubei province could truly have put people and life first. They could have taken measures to control the virus," he says, "but they didn't. Instead, they covered up and missed a precious opportunity."

Government figures state nearly 4,000 people in the city of Wuhan have died from COVID-19. Jung (ph) is now suing local officials and the hospital that treated his father.

He is not the only one channeling his grief into action. In the back room of a quiet Wuhan tea house, we met Wang Lu Shien (ph). She packed envelopes addressed to China's high court. Her brother worked as a driver for a local market and was infected January of last year. She considers him a frontline worker, but she says the local government declined her family's claim for work injury compensation.

"He felt that he would leave financial burdens behind," Wang (ph) tells me. "I want to negotiate for proper compensation in exchange for his death so that I can take care of his child and family, pay the mortgage, and shoulder other responsibilities he couldn't complete."

Wang's efforts to persuade China's high court to help, unlikely to change anything, given the courts declined to take up any COVID- related cases.

For Yang Min (ph), it's not even about the money, but what she calls spiritual justice for her daughter.

(on camera): What is the truth as you know it?

(voice-over): "The local officials did not tell us about the pandemic," she says. "If measures were taken, I would not have sent my child to the hospital, which was the source of the infection."

Last January, Yang's (ph) 24-year-old daughter had been receiving treatment for cancer. She contracted COVID-19. Yang (ph) said the hospital was so overcrowded that she snuck in to attend to her own daughter.

"I couldn't bear it anymore, so I disguised myself in a set of blue surgery garbs that one of my doctor friends gave me, and I went into the hospital," she says. "I blended in to take care of my child."

Yang (ph) says she also contracted the virus, and while she was recovering, her daughter passed away. Yang (ph) says her husband, whose brother also died from the virus, nearly drove off a bridge. He wanted to take his own life.

Following the outbreak in Wuhan, several local and provincial leaders were ousted from their jobs. But Yang (ph) wants to see more done.

"I think the government officials who covered it up need to be punished, not just disciplined," she tells me. "My question is, why is it that those who have killed so many are not punished? If there's no explanation, there is no justice."

[00:25:13]

China's foreign ministry has said, as recently as last month, that accusations that the country covered up the outbreak are simply groundless.

CNN reached out to local and provincial court officials for comment. They have not yet responded. These grieving family members believe local officials should have done

more, and they are now knowingly risking their own freedoms by sharing their pain publicly.

Jung Hai (ph) says, given all his father sacrificed for his country as an army veteran, he deserves better, even in death.

"My father was a patriot, and I am also one," he says. "I've always believed it is a patriotic act to speak out."

David Culver, CNN, Wuhan, China.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Coming up here on the program, the latest on our breaking news of a military coup in Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders have been detained. We'll have details on the military's next steps when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: And welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Michael Holmes, and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

Let me turn you now to our top story. Myanmar's military has seized power in a coup against the democratically-elected government. Soldiers surround city hall in the country's main city, Yangon. The army has declared a one-year state of emergency.

[00:30:02]

The military detained Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders in a raid on Monday morning, the army claiming the results of November's election are fraudulent. There are now reports of widespread Internet and telecoms outages in Myanmar.

Tom Andrews is the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar. He joins me now.

I guess -- good to see you, sir. There have been murmurs of something like this possibly happening. What do you think caused the military to act to do this? What possible justification?

TOM ANDREWS, U.N.'S SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN MYANMAR: There is no justification, Michael, at all. And it's a real mystery as to why they did this.

I mean, first of all, they wrote the constitution that they just overthrew. It gives them enormous power, and -- and enormous economic power, political power, control of key ministries, control of 25 percent of the parliament. So first of all, how and why they overturned their own constitution is incredible.

But then, just 24 hours ago, they assured the international community that they would abide by the constitution. So this is an outrageous action, but it mystifies many as to why they would go about doing this, given the situation that they were in, that they put themselves in, and given the assurances that we had just 24 hours ago.

HOLMES: The military never took its hands off the levers of power, did it? I mean, it kept control of key parts of the government. How damaging is this to Myanmar's democratic future?

ANDREWS: Well, it's extremely damaging. I mean, think about this. The people of Myanmar have been through so much. They've lived through decades of brutal military rule. They're going through a pandemic. The economy is -- is in tough shape for so many. This is something that the people of Myanmar, who have suffered so much, it's so incredibly unfair for them to have to go through this right now.

As you mentioned, we -- there's a lot that we don't know. We know that key leaders, the state counselor and others in the National League for Democracy have been detained.

But we also know that there are others in civil society, in a wide range of people and groups. There are people who we can't reach. So there's a lot that we do not know. But what we do know is that an outrage has occurred in Myanmar, and the international community can't stand idly by while -- while it does.

HOLMES: I was about to ask you about that. I mean, the last time the military took power, elections didn't happen for 20 years. Are you worried about what's to come? And -- and this is a real test for the international community, and U.S. President Joe Biden, one of his first tests.

ANDREWS: Well, I am worried. And indeed, it is a test for President Biden. It's a test for -- for all of us. The international community has to speak very loudly, very clearly and unequivocally, that this is outrageous, and that the people of Myanmar are going to have people standing there with them. We're very close to the situation. We're monitoring the situation, and we stand with them.

Secondly, the international community has to begin work right away to identify the very concrete steps that can and should be taken to address this outrage and to apply the pressure necessary for justice to be -- to be done in Myanmar.

So it's a great -- it's a great challenge, but it's something that we just can't turn away from.

HOLMES: One of the military's claims is irregularities in an election, which Suu Kyi's party won by a whopping 80 percent of the seats. I mean, is there any evidence of irregularities, or irregularities that would have changed the result? And if that evidence is not forthcoming, then what do you say?

ANDREWS: Well, whatever your complaints are about the election, and most people, most observers agree that much of what they're saying is basically evidence-free claims of what -- of what happened. This widespread fraud. But at the very least, regardless of what your concerns are or

complaints are, you don't overthrow this developing democracy. You don't overturn this constitution that you have just pledged to abide by. It's simply outrageous, regardless of how you felt about the election, and it's unacceptable.

HOLMES: Tom Andrews, thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time. An important moment for Myanmar. Thank you.

ANDREWS: Sure, Michael. Thank you.

HOLMES: We'll take a quick break. When we come back on the program, Russian police are cracking down hard on protesters, but the opposition movement isn't giving in. We'll hear why there -- they are so motivated when we come back.

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HOLMES: A Russian watchdog group says police detained more than 5,000 protesters on Sunday, a record number. Crowds of people marching in demonstrations across the country, and the growing unrest obviously making the Kremlin nervous.

The protesters are demanding the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but that's not all they want. Fred Pleitgen reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Russian security forces showing no mercy, cracking down on protesters demanding the release of opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. But some telling us they want more fundamental changes in Russia.

"I came here today not only because of Navalny," this man says. "I think it's more because of the lack of freedom. And because of this demonstrative lawlessness that's going on."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want a free election. I want change in our government.

PLEITGEN: Independent monitoring group OVD-Info says thousands were detained across Russia. Many protesters but also some journalists, including briefly, me.

(on camera): Sorry, sorry, sorry. All right. All right. It's OK. It's OK.

(voice-over): While I was released after a few minutes, many others were not so lucky. The U.S. secretary of state condemned what he called harsh tactics against protesters and journalists.

Riot cops often wielding clubs and, in some cases even tasers, like in this troubling video from Moscow.

But as the protesters marched through the Russian capital, many motorists honked their horns in apparent support as they drove past.

Alexei Navalny, whose appeal for release from attention was denied this past week, called for the nationwide protests.

Vladimir Putin's government reacted swiftly in an unprecedented move, shutting down large parts of central Moscow, including 10 subway stops, in an effort to stop the protest, which authorities say are unsanctioned.

But people came out in mass across this vast country, often braving freezing temperatures like in Yekatarinburg and often faced with a harsh police response like in St. Petersburg, where OVD-Info says hundreds were detained.

"Release, release," they chanted, referring to Alexei Navalny.

Navalny remains in detention and faces another court hearing this week, locked away but not silenced, as many of his supporters have vowed to continue their action.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Now, the British World War II veteran who made headlines for raising millions for the U.K.'s National Health Service is in hospital for COVID-19. Captain Sir Thomas Moore has battled pneumonia for several weeks and tested positive for the virus.

The 100-year-old became a national celebrity last year after walking laps in his garden in support of the NHS, his efforts raising nearly $40 million, and Moore was later knighted by the queen for his service.

Thanks for watching, everyone. I'm Michael Holmes. WORLD SPORT coming up next for our international viewers. For everyone else, I'll be back with more news after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:45:27]

HOLMES: Welcome back.

Nearly 75 million Americans are under winter storm warnings or watches with a powerful Nor'easter bringing heavy snow and dangerous winds. Many cities will see several inches of snow along the East Coast, and New York could get well over a foot.

Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri joins us now with more.

What are you seeing out there?

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Michael, it's been a long-time coming when it comes to the amount of snow that is forecast across parts of the northeast and, of course, as you noted, among most densely-populated areas of the northeast, into New York City.

But notice this. In the past 24 hours, parts of the Midwest have seen as much as a foot of snow already come down on the ground. Chicago, that's the heaviest snowfall we've had in about three years' time for the Windy City there.

But notice, when you look at the prediction of NOAA, national storm prediction center there, when it comes to the level of concern, this is -- the color purple is indicative of a level four, which on a one to four scale there is the extreme level, right there for New York City. So the impacts could be significant when it comes to strong winds, the blowing snow, the accumulation of snow, as well.

And notice the wind chills already down into the single digits in Portland, Maine. In Albany, around 3 degrees is what it feels like. In New York and Philly, temperatures at this hour feeling close to 12 degrees there when you factor in the strong winds.

And the stage is set here for a blockbuster storm system that potentially could go down as one of the top ten strongest and heaviest snow events for New York City if the models play out here.

And we'll show you why, because the system parks just offshore. Potentially, it lingers there for about 24 to 36 hours, from Monday morning through Tuesday afternoon. Winds, at times, could gust upwards of 40-plus miles per hour. That includes New York City.

As we go into the afternoon and evening hours, notice parts of Boston getting on some of those stronger winds. That's when the snow really begins to push in towards the northern tier of this region.

Winter storm warnings in place for as much of foot or more of snow fall, including Philly, including New York and also including Boston.

And notice this, preemptively, some 1,300 flights have already been cancelled around the northeast. Eighty percent of the flights across La Guardia. Seventy-six percent at Newark. JFK also seeing major disruptions.

So Michael, this is a major storm system that could last through at least Tuesday, maybe even into Wednesday with very cold temperature. Like all of the snow and ice to stick around for a few days, as well.

HOLMES: All right there. Thanks for keeping an eye on that. Pedram Javaheri, thanks so much.

Well, Wall Street enters a new trading week with a wary eye on retail traders. Investors on Reddit's Wall Street Bets app have made -- have made Silver a new target. Silver futures surging as much as 8.5 percent on Sunday.

Now, the bubble hasn't burst yet for GameStop either, after the so- called Reddit rebellion, pitting hedge funds against retail investors. The stock is still up over 69 percent. Richard Quest explains how GameStop stock movement grew during an

historic week for markets.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR (voice-over); No one predicted the trading revolution would begin here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: GameStop. Play, trade, save, repeat.

QUEST: Its tale is all too familiar. A struggling brick-and-mortar retailer and a target for short-sellers. Then something strange happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Video game retailer GameStop, its shares are up some 15 percent pre-market.

QUEST: GameStop is soaring once again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The videogame retailer GameStop is set to continue their head-spinning ascent today.

QUEST (voice-over): Retail traders organizing on Reddit had spotted a simple opportunity. They knew that the major institutional funds were predicting GameStop's demise, so using trading apps like Robinhood, they snapped up its shares en masse, and they put the hedge funds on the back foot.

The results were staggering. The same big investors who bet that GameStop shares would fall suddenly had to buy those shares to protect their portfolio and position.

On Wednesday the shares more than doubled in a day.

The Reddit traders celebrated their victory. The hedge funds licked their wounds. And suddenly, everyone wanted in.

JORDAN BELFORT, AUTHOR, "WOLF OF WALL STREET": I just know it's got to be more of a full-time job, and of course, it of course, if you're on -- it's like catching a falling knife when things start to go the wrong way.

QUEST: Just as the world was waking up to this, the trading platforms were forced to act. Public interest was surging, and as a result, Robinhood blocked certain trades.

[00:50:10]

VLADIMIR TENEV, CEO, ROBINHOOD: You know, we had to make a very difficult decision to protect our customers and our firm.

QUEST: Retail traders from several platforms were blocked from buying shares in GameStop and other companies that were being targeted. As GameStop's shares tumbled, the online trading community was furious.

DAVE PORTNOY, FOUNDER, BARSTOOL SPORTS: In the history of the stock market, don't ever hear the rich guys, the institutional firms, the hedge funds saying, Hold on. We're making too much money. You better protect us in case it goes the other way.

This seemed like it was just the little guy was winning, and the rules changed on the fly.

QUEST: Robinhood later relaxed some of the blocks. Even so, where things go from now is anyone's guess.

There are calls for congressional hearings. The White House and the SEC say they're monitoring the situation. And yet because this trading is at the very grassroots, the mania continues.

GameStop shares are up more than 1,500 percent this year. A partner at one venture capital firm says it's only the beginning.

DAVID PAKMAN, PARTNER, VENROCK: This is a fundamental change to the market dynamics. It's not just a bunch of institutional traders. Retail investors are a force to probably be understood, and in a humble way.

QUEST: None of this is a game, of course. The risks are very real, and so are the companies caught in the middle. Whether it's airlines or phone companies or bricks and mortar retailers, companies must now deal with a whole different breed of investor that can be having dramatic influences on their share price.

Richard Quest, CNN, New York.

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HOLMES: The U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren admits she doesn't know who's right or wrong in the GameStop saga, so she's calling for the Securities and Exchange Commission to make sure no group of investors is manipulating the market or preventing everyday investors from taking part in the free market.

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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): What's happening with GameStop is just a reminder of what's been going on on Wall Street now for years and years and years.

It's a rigged game. They've turned this stock market, not into a place where you get capital formation to support businesses, but more into a casino. And they've been doing all kinds of market manipulation, pump and dump, companies that buy back shares of their own stock so that they can inflate the stock prices. We need a market that is transparent, that's level, and that is open

to individual investors. It's time for the SEC to get off their duffs and do their jobs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Matt Stoller is the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly, Power, and Democracy."

Matt, great to get you on for this. There's so much noise from Wall Street about what happened. But, you know, was this just the case of ordinary folks playing the same rules as the hedge fund titans? Instead of outsider -- insider trading, it was outsider trading. Is that what -- what's your read?

MATT STOLLER, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, AMERICAN ECONOMIC LIBERTIES PROJECT: I'm not -- it's not totally clear, because we don't know who was on the message board. We don't know who's seeding information.

But what we do know is that there's a lot of bets going on both ways with a lot of borrowed money. And it's -- it's fun to watch, but it basically reflects a disillusionment that most people have with Wall Street, which is why people want to think it's the little guy kind of rigging the market against the -- the cheaters who are trying to push these stocks down.

HOLMES: In some ways, has -- does this mean that the game has changed in some ways? The big boys, the suits, are they worried?

STOLLER: I don't think so. I this this reflects a basic corruption of our society and a corruption of our financial markets. It's exposing that the markets are rigged. It's not -- but this isn't -- I don't think this is some sort of revolution in which the suits are getting, you know, are getting pushed out.

I mean, saying everybody should have the right to cheat on equal terms isn't actually going to establish fair markets for everyone.

HOLMES: Yes, yes. Bernie Sanders, I think, tweeted something like, you know, the rules on Wall Street are, you know, that it's basically, it's corrupt.

I guess one of the real questions is why are the hedge funds allowed to short the way they did with GameStop? Why isn't that seen -- I was going to say irresponsible, but illegal? I mean, why is it a thing?

STOLLER: Well, you have a broader problem, which is that you have a bunch of funds who borrow a ton of money, and then they bet on stocks one way or the other. And then they talk those stocks up, or they talk those stocks down, and they do it on channels like CNBC. They do it through the newspaper. They also do it on message boards.

[00:55:07]

It's what's called pump and dump operations, and it should be illegal. It is, in fact, illegal. And the Securities and Exchange Commission should be stepping in and doing their job.

And a lot of the problem that we're seeing is, for the last 15 years, ever since the financial crisis but going through, you know, Puerto Rican bonds, Argentine bonds, the flash crash, any number of other examples, there just -- there have been no cops there. There's no one -- there's no one on the beat. So the laws don't seem to apply to the powerful. HOLMES: And it was interesting how the system, you know, Robinhood app

and others, sort of circled the wagons, if you like, around the hedge funds, helped them -- helped protect them from, you know, these so- called ordinary investors. You got to wonder why that is OK.

And to your point, Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling for an SEC investigation. Should there be one?

STOLLER: Absolutely. I mean, we need -- we need a congressional investigation, as well.

What we need to understand is what is happening in our markets, because I think what's important here is to recognize that GameStop is -- is simply one more incident that's taken place over the last 15 years that reflects systemic corruption.

And I think that's why people are cheering for the people that are trying to rig the stock to go up. It is still market rigging, right?

What Robinhood is doing is enabling, is still a form of gambling and speculation.

The reason that people are excited about it is because it seems -- it seems to be saying that this is some way to actually deal with the cheaters, by kind of outcheating them.

But that's not actually the way to address the situation, because in the end, cheaters are going to win. What you have to do is you have to drain the poison from Wall Street. You have to start to apply the rule of law there and start to put some people in jail for cheating, which we haven't been doing for the last 15 to 20 years.

HOLMES: Great points. Well made. Matt Stoller, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

STOLLER: Thanks a lot.

HOLMES: And thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM, spending part of your day with me. I'm Michael Holmes. Do stick around, though. I'll be back with more news in just a moment.

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