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Schools in Texas Defy Court Ruling; Chaos Erupts in Afghanistan; Tropical Storm to Hit Haiti. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired August 16, 2021 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[09:32:59]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a sad milestone. The U.S. is now leading the world in new daily COVID infections as the delta variant fuels a fourth coronavirus wave in this country. The director of the National Institutes of Health says the country could soon see more than 200,000 new infections a day. All this happening as the nation sees a concerning rise in COVID hospitalizations among children.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: To protect students, school districts in Texas and Florida are fighting back against bans in their states for mask mandates in schools in defiance of the Texas Supreme Court upholding Governor Greg Abbott's ban on local mask mandates. School leaders in San Antonio and Dallas say they will enforce mask requirements.
Here is the superintendent of Dallas Independent Schools on "NEW DAY" this morning.
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MICHAEL HINOJOSA, SUPERINTENDENT, DALLAS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT: We're going to keep the mask mandate in place. As that order was issued, it applied to Dallas County only. School districts were not mentioned in the order. My name was not mentioned in the order.
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HARLOW: Our Rosa Flores is live in Dallas.
Rosa, good morning to you.
What -- I mean what are -- what is the community saying? This has clearly torn apart the state. It's torn apart communities. What's the overall reaction this morning though?
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I've been talking to parents here at this elementary school behind me and they all agree with the superintendent, that they want the mask mandate. Now, the superintendent did say that there's one individual who threatened to sue him because of this. But as you heard the superintendent say there, the ruling by the Texas Supreme Court, according to him, does not specifically mention the Dallas Independent School District. So that's why he feels comfortable moving forward.
The Dallas Country judge also tweeting yesterday that the ruling by the Texas Supreme Court is very narrow. That, yes, it sided with Governor Greg Abbott, but it was very narrow in that it granted the stay to the governor on the temporary restraining order. But the justices are allowing the lower courts to continue with their hearings. There's one that's going on in San Antonio right now.
[09:35:02]
And so this is giving local officials confidence that they can move forward.
And they've got a lot of parent support. Take a listen.
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MATT LOW, FATHER WHO SUPPORTS MASK MANDATE: I mean we're super excited that Dallas ISD has kind of taken the initiative in making sure our kids are safe at school and like keeping their masks on.
SHERRI DOUCETTE, GRANDPARENT WHO SUPPORTS MASK MANDATE: I feel like whatever is necessary to keep the children safe, we have to do it, regardless of the mandates. So I support the superintendent. And we have masks. Where is our masks? We have masks. We have little bitty for k -- pre-k masks. And we'll encourage her to wear it. And we'll wear ours as well.
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FLORES: Now, here's the backstory on this fight between local and state governments. The biggest county states -- biggest counties in the state, the biggest cities, the biggest school districts are revolting against the governor after the governor issued an executive order last month, Jim and Poppy, that in essence ties the hands of local officials behind their backs. It suspends the powers that they have to impose mitigation measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 and now they've said enough is enough.
Jim and Poppy.
HARLOW: Rosa, thank you very much for that reporting. I'm glad those kids are going to get to wear masks and be safe, despite the rulings.
Thank you very much.
The Taliban are now back in control of Afghanistan 20 years after U.S. forces removed them from power. Our own Christiane Amanpour was there on the ground reporting extensively from Afghanistan at that time. What does she think now that the country has fallen back into Taliban hands? She will be here, next.
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[09:41:22]
HARLOW: Welcome back.
The State Department is expected to hold a briefing later today as it makes its final rush to evacuate Americans from Kabul. All staff have been evacuated from the embassy there. The Biden administration is now adding an additional 1,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan, bringing the total number up to 6,000 to manage all of this.
This as we learn the Biden administration has scaled back for now the number of government-sponsored evacuation flights to the United States for Afghans who worked alongside the United States.
Our Christiane Amanpour was on the ground in Kabul in 2001 when the Afghan people were liberated from the Taliban.
Christiane, it's great to have you.
Let's take a look back at your reporting and then get your thoughts on the other side.
Here you were.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (November 2001): This is the third day that the city of Kabul will wake up to its liberation from the Taliban forces and people have been going around, doing things that in the five years of Taliban rule would have made them criminals, things like playing music in public, things like women coming out from their homes and venturing out to see whether they can return to their jobs, whether they can get back into the workforce. This, of course, had been totally banned under the Taliban for the past five years. And women and, indeed, children, had suffered greatly because of the inability to provide any work, any money or any health and nourishment for their families.
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HARLOW: And the question becomes now, what, Christiane, you tweeted now, progress and hope die. American gamble. When you think back to that day, did the -- did the Afghan people ever expect to be back here again two decades later?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: I would say categorically not. In fact, I actually said reckless American gamble, question mark.
HARLOW: Yes. Yes, you did.
AMANPOUR: Because there's clearly been no plan b. There's clearly been no contingency. There's clearly been no even intelligence amongst the most sophisticated intelligence operation in the world that this could have happened so fast. In other words, the minute the United States decided -- remember, under President Trump, to pull out of Afghanistan, with no actual conditions based or no actual promises extracted, and promises observed that the Taliban would make to enable this pullback. So what you have now is, you know, the 20 years of American effort
collapse in a whimper. You have the wholesale redelivery of Afghanistan to the very people who the United States went to war to get rid of 20 years ago in the aftermath of 9/11. And you are left wondering, obviously, what next? And we don't know because we don't know whether there's any serious effort in Kabul today to actually construct some kind of transitional process that is a peaceful process and one that actually involves various different constituencies in Afghanistan. That's what the Taliban says but we haven't seen any evidence of it. And it's never been the case in the past.
To be frank, I was in Afghanistan before 9/11. I was there when the Taliban first took over in the late '90s and I watched what they did. They have never governed any space. They are not a government. At least they certainly weren't then and we don't know what they are now. They have imposed their form of fundamentalism and radical Islamic sharia on a population, not all of whom believe in that.
And so we do not know how they are going to react to now being in charge. And I think that leaves, clearly, a huge number of questions, not least for the women, the girls, the children, our journalists and any other member of the Afghan nation that actually put their faith in the U.S. and international effort to bring them an end to the war with peace and universal rights.
[09:45:04]
HARLOW: Given how much time you've spent in Afghanistan, time and time again, and saw what the Taliban meant for women and girls there, I want to ask you about what it means now, because the -- as you rightly point out, this began under the Trump administration with the Doha (ph) agreement, which you call a charade. And looking through it again, there is not a single mention in the final text of women and girls. The Taliban say this morning that they will treat women and girls with respect. What will actually happen? What should we actually believe? Is there any reason to believe that it will -- at that Taliban will treat women and girls any differently than they did?
AMANPOUR: Well, not really, except for there are those who are on the side of the -- what we now know to be now a precipitous withdrawal, who suggest that the Taliban have somehow, in the last 20 years, redefined themselves, become a group that seeks international legitimacy, wants to be not a pariah as they were before but an accepted and recognized member of the international community and will do the necessary in order to make that happen, in order to get financial aid and other international support.
Again, I think, clearly, not only do we have to wait and see, but we have to judge as to what happened last time, in which -- at which time they really didn't give a hoot about what the rest of the world thought. They did exactly what they wanted, backed by enough power from Pakistan and certain other quarters of the world to do what they were doing in Afghanistan.
And so I think that certainly women are right to be incredibly scared. And not only are we guessing at this, we're listening to interviews come out on radio stations and the like all throughout the last 24, 48 hours where women are expressing real fears that they're going to have to go back to the bad old days of staying inside, staying invisible, children not being able to go to school -- girl children, although the Taliban have said that, yes, they can go to school. It transpires that, at least according to some Taliban, it just means that they can go to school for a certain period of time and then just to learn religious and, you know --
HARLOW: Right.
AMANPOUR: You know, religious studies.
So, remember, girls also were allowed -- were enabled, were forced into marriage, you know, at 10 and younger. And there was a -- just a complete and utter retraction to a medieval kind of vision of the world.
Let us not forget that the designation of the Taliban as a terrorist organization still stands.
HARLOW: Right.
AMANPOUR: And it's a very big ask to think that this is going to be some kind of inclusive government with rights for all.
HARLOW: Right. There is reporting from multiple outlets that girls in Afghanistan, right now, are being turned into sex slaves through the Taliban. So to think it's much different than before is certainly a stretch.
Christiane, thank you very much for your reporting then and your perspective now.
SCIUTTO: Yes, just heartbreaking for the women there, the girls who stood up to so much and they had their hopes raised and now --
HARLOW: You met them. You spent time with them on the ground.
SCIUTTO: Some of the most impressive people I met on the ground there, right?
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: I mean these are tough people, and inspiring people, and I just am picturing them now with all the heartbreak.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Well, the number of people killed soaring in Haiti. This after a devastating earthquake there. Now a tropical storm could make matters worse. We're going to take you to Haiti, live.
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[09:53:06] HARLOW: Nearly 1,300 people are now dead and a state of emergency has been declared in Haiti. This is after that very powerful 7.2 earthquake over the weekend. And now the country is directly in the storm -- in the path of another tropical storm named Grace.
SCIUTTO: CNN international correspondent Matt Rivers is there.
And, Matt, it was only last month we were talking to you about a brazen assassination of Haiti's president. Now this earthquake. A tropical storm on the way. I just wonder how people there on the ground are handling this?
MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, I think you have to say right off the bat that the Haitian people are some of the most resilient people on earth. Perhaps not by choice, but by, you know, what they're forced to deal with, with these external events. You know, you go back to 2010, this is just the last decade, earthquake in 2010, major hurricane in 2016, a political assassination we were just here a couple of weeks ago talking about, Jim, and now an earthquake, then a tropical depression. The list is exhausting and it almost feels unreal when you list these things back-to-back and yet this is the reality in Haiti right now.
You said it off the top, around 1,300 people confirmed dead so far. That number is going to go up, there's no question about it, as authorities continue to try and reach some of the harder to reach places where this earthquake effected. We were able to see one of those places yesterday getting there to a place called La Kai (ph) by helicopter because roads were blocked at the time and we saw some of the destruction. We saw a multi-story hotel that had collapsed. There were bodies inside that rubble according to authorities. Some search and rescue efforts were happening when we were there but it was very limited.
The other thing we saw there was just desperate people going in, taking what they could from the scene. Things like scrap metal, air conditioners, dressers, presumably to sell at some point. It speaks to the desperation and the poverty and then just the overall situation in that area.
That is before what's happening today, which is a tropical depression, Grace, that's on its way here right now.
[09:55:04]
That has authorities concerned. Here's what the man coordinating these search and rescue efforts had to say.
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JERRY CHANDLER, DIRECTOR, HAITI CIVIL PROTECTION AGENCY: Yes, I am worried about the storm. As a disaster manager, like I said, it first puts an additional pressure on handling a disaster in a very complex situation. Also, as a citizen, it also worries me because I know that my fellow citizens are sleeping outside and they might be impacted because of the rain and, you know, and the possible flash floods that may occur.
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RIVERS: A crucial few hour as head, Jim and Poppy, for the people of Haiti.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
HARLOW: Of course, to try to get anyone else out they can before that happens.
Matt, thank you for the reporting on the ground in Port-au-Prince very much.
We'll be right back.
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