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Hurricane Ida Aftermath; Restrictive Texas Abortion Law. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 01, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Which one would you prefer?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. If you want to keep the kids in school, you have got to take precautions.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

Athena, thank you very much for the reporting.

Top of the hour now. I'm Alisyn Camerota. Victor is off today.

Just into CNN, the White House says President Biden will go do Louisiana on Friday to survey the damage from Hurricane Ida. The National Guard says it has rescued nearly 400 people at this point.

Here's some new video for you. This is a cow stuck in a tree. Rescue crews are trying to get this cow out of a tree. This is just one of the strange things after a storm like this.

Almost a million customers are without power across Louisiana. All eight transmission lines into New Orleans are down. Officials estimate the outages could last three to four weeks in some areas.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is live in LaPlace, Louisiana.

So, Ed, what's happening there?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Alisyn.

Going into a storm, people in this part of Louisiana know to stock up on supplies. But now three solid days into all of this, those supplies are starting to wind down. So, these food and water distribution sites that are popping up in communities all across Southeast Louisiana are really becoming crucial.

This one's run by volunteers with the Cajun Navy. So you see the stacks of water. There's food. There's diapers. The line snakes out of this shopping mall parking lot and winds its way down to the street. At one point, it was blending into a line with a gas station, which is just kind of like everything coming to a loggerhead here in the town of LaPlace, Louisiana, which is just West of New Orleans.

And we talked to people here in lines as they have been dealing with everything that they have been dealing with this week. And you can sense the exasperation in their voices.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER JAMES, LOUISIANA RESIDENT: I don't know. I don't know. I'm lost for words right now. I don't know, coming back. They always say we're resilient, but I don't know. It's going to take a whole lot.

So, that's all I can say. It's tough. We will get through it. But it's going to be tough. It's going to be a minute.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: So, Alisyn everyone kind of dealing with the concern over the supplies in their homes. The gas lines are crucial. Many people running whatever they can off of generators that require gasoline.

We are told by GasBuddy, which has been tracking all of the gas stations situation, is that more -- a little more than half of the gas stations that are open are without gasoline. So that is why you're seeing many of the long lines and people just trying to figure out how to get day by day here as they're waiting for the major parts of the cleanup here to continue and also for power restoration to get into many of these smaller communities that have been so hard hit by Hurricane Ida -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Yes, it's just going to require a lot of patience. Ed Lavandera, thank you.

Joining us now is Warner Thomas. He's the CEO and president of Ochsner Health in Jefferson, Louisiana.

Mr. Thomas, thank you very much for being here.

So, when last -- what last we heard was that you were working to transfer 165 patients from local facilities that were damaged by the hurricane. So can you tell us -- give us an update. Have they been transferred and how were they transferred?

WARNER THOMAS, CEO, OCHSNER HEALTH: Yes, we did complete the evacuation of several facilities in the Bayou area down in the Houma, Raceland, and LaPlace area. All total, we actually evacuated about 200 patients from those facilities to other Ochsner facilities across the state and to some of our partner organizations.

So, that is complete. It was done safely. It was done very efficiently. And we are now really in the mode of starting to reopen and restart.

CAMEROTA: Are you currently operating on generators? Are you without power and operating on generators? And how long can that go on?

THOMAS: We are running on generator power. We are also running on backup water systems. We have wells at all of our facilities here in New Orleans. We're based in New Orleans.

So we are on a generator backup power. We can run for 10 days with fuel sources. We have fuel sources coming in to give us more fuel. But we do anticipate being back on city power hopefully within the next day.

CAMEROTA: That's great news, because, as you know, New Orleans -- I mean, some people in New Orleans are being told they will have to wait three to four weeks.

THOMAS: Yes, we have heard that.

And, obviously, organizations like hospitals are high priority organizations for Entergy. And they have been working around the clock to get power sources to us.

There is some power that has now come up in New Orleans. And we do anticipate, at several of our hospitals, we should be on power, as I said, in the next 24 hours. But, regardless, we will run on backup generation power until we need to -- until we need to come off that.

[15:05:06]

And we have got plenty of fuel and plenty of supplies to keep operating effectively.

CAMEROTA: But, of course, that doesn't even take into account your doctors and nurses and your staff and what the situation is in their homes, and if they have enough power and water.

What is their situation?

THOMAS: So, we are evaluating that right now.

We have set up a hot line for all of our employees to call into. It's really like an employee assistance line, so we can understand their situation. We have now secured several hundred hotel rooms. We have been -- for our employees. We have been in touch with Carnival Cruise Lines that may be able to bring a vessel into New Orleans that we could secure rooms on that vessel.

So there's been a lot of work done in the past 48 hours to secure these types of resources for our employees. We are bringing in other supplies like toiletries, personal items, clothing for all of our employees who may be out of their home for some period of time and need housing and other types of supplies.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Thomas, it's just incredible to hear, that some of your staff would have to move to one of the little cabins on a cruise ship after the cascade of catastrophes that they have endured for the past 18 months, I mean, from hospitals being overrun with COVID patients to the hurricane to their own losses, and then having to endure that.

I mean, how are they all -- how is your staff coping through this?

THOMAS: Yes, I have to tell you, I was touring two of our facilities that were evacuated yesterday in the Bayou Region. We have the emergency department still open at the facilities.

I would say the team is incredibly resilient. And in touring our New Orleans facilities, people are up. They want to understand the next steps. We're communicating with them nonstop. But this team is battle- tested. This region is battle-tested. We will come back.

And I will tell you that the attitude is actually exceptionally positive, concerned, scared about the future, but positive that we're going to get through this. We're taking care of patients. We're making a difference. And I just can't say enough thing -- enough positive things about our health care heroes here.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, I wish you could bottle their heroism and give it to the rest of us, because that is just incredible resiliency that they're showing after all of this.

The EMS, the New Orleans Emergency Medical Services, says they're seeing 195 percent volume increase over normal because of the aftermath of the storm. So, are you seeing that? How's that being manifest in your hospital?

THOMAS: We're definitely seeing that in our emergency departments.

The patients coming to those emergency departments with post-storm conditions has increased dramatically. Yes, so we're seeing lots of different types of patients, folks that have typical medical issues like heart conditions, neurological conditions in a post-storm environment, but also hurricane cleanup-related injuries, folks falling off ladders or others types of situations, chain saw accidents.

So, we do see these types of conditions in a post-hurricane environment. But all the while, throughout our hospitals, we have 770 COVID patients that we're still caring for. So we're still in this fourth surge of COVID that we're dealing with while we're dealing with the cleanup and restoration of Hurricane Ida.

CAMEROTA: In terms of those -- that post-storm situation that you speak of, we have been cautioned by officials to not think this is over.

Just because the storm has passed, it doesn't mean that it's over. And are you seeing heatstroke and all of those other attendant conditions because of the weather there that people are now having to deal with?

THOMAS: It certainly is hot. We do you see those conditions for folks that are in their homes and do not have generator power, do not have air conditioning.

The state and the city has done an amazing job setting up shelters, so we are getting people evacuated into shelters where they have cooling situations. But it certainly is -- one of the byproducts and situations that impacts people is the heatstroke and other types of heat-related conditions.

So we definitely are seeing those types of folks coming to our emergency departments.

CAMEROTA: Well, Mr. Warner Thomas from Ochsner Health, thank you for taking time to talk to us. We really appreciate the status report and we know how busy you are.

THOMAS: Thank you. Have a great day.

CAMEROTA: You too.

So, in addition to those high temperatures, the National Weather Service says Ida will cause significant flash flooding and heavy rains in the coming days.

Meteorologist Tom Sater is in the CNN Weather Center.

So where is it? What are you seeing, Tom?

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, it looks like Ida is taking a path like Camille in 1969.

I mean, that devastated Louisiana when it made landfall. But Camille then went to the Northeast, Alisyn, and really gave so much rainfall and such intensity, it took another 150 lives. And that's what our problem is now.

[15:10:05]

Now, we didn't have the warnings we have today. And, therefore, we have this. Notice the color of pink. The Weather Prediction Center has issued a very rare level four out of four for excessive flash flooding. To give you an idea how rare this is, maybe 4 percent of all the days in the year.

Why? It's moving into the high terrain, the mountains of West Virginia, Western Maryland, Pennsylvania. You can see in red already the flood warnings, but, again, to get in a little more detail, what you're going to see here, all of these are flash flood warnings. Most of the activity now is in parts of Pennsylvania.

Yes, they have had flooding in Maryland and West Virginia. This is a flood emergency, a flash flood emergency. We have heard from authorities the Wilmore Dam, this is about southwest of Altoona, in between Altoona and Pittsburgh. They had a dam break. At least they're calling an uncontrolled release. It means something went wrong.

So this warning now for areas downstream, and the closest town is Wilmore. We will be watching that. On a grand scale, we were talking three to six inches, but rainfall rates at one to two inches an hour could even be as high as three inches an hour, which means some areas around Harrisburg could see maybe seven eight inches.

We also have tornado watches. We have had several of them already just south of Washington, D.C., Anne Arundel County. Got a couple now. This is Baltimore County just to the east of Baltimore, spin-ups to the north as well. So that's a concern. But we have got much more rain on the I-95 Corridor or into the

Northeast, where easily in these areas of almost red here could be another six, eight inches in the forecast. The heat down in New Orleans is going to be even hotter tomorrow with heat index values 106 to even 107 degrees.

At night, they're just not cooling down. It doesn't drop below 80. So it's going to be oppressive for several, several days.

CAMEROTA: A hundred and six degrees, that is not good news for New Orleans.

SATER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Tom Sater, thank you.

Well, abortions are now essentially outlawed in Texas starting today, and challengers are already fighting this. We will talk to some.

And in the aftermath of Afghanistan, they escaped the Taliban, but now they have to start over. So what's next for the refugees that are arriving in the U.S.?

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[15:16:41]

CAMEROTA: The nation's most restrictive abortion law is now in effect in Texas, and President Biden calls it extreme.

He said in a statement that the Texas abortion ban blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe vs. Wade nearly 50 years ago.

Overnight, the Supreme Court made the decision not to intervene on several emergency requests to stop this Texas law. This ban outlaws abortion starting at six weeks, and that's before many women know that they are pregnant.

The law does permit an abortion under some so-called medical emergencies, but that's vague, but it does not permit an abortion in cases of incest or rape.

Even more unprecedented is the way it will reportedly be enforced, not through state law enforcement, but by letting any private citizen anywhere in the United States sue anyone who -- quote -- "knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion," meaning a counselor who talked to a pregnant woman, an Uber driver who gave a pregnant woman a ride.

The White House press secretary said this moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It will significantly impair women's access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes.

It also deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health care workers, front desk staff at a health care clinic or strangers with no connection to the individuals.

This further isolates individuals who are facing this tough choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now it's Erica Sackin. She's the director of political communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Erica, thank you so much for being here.

What does this mean for women in Texas?

ERICA SACKIN, PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA: Thank you so much, Alisyn.

This is a dark day for the seven million women across Texas and for all of us who care about access to safe, legal abortion. This law means that abortion is virtually inaccessible for anyone in Texas who needs to get an abortion.

CAMEROTA: I mean, the elements of this law are so dystopian to read.

It basically deputizes ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands, neighbors, strangers to become the abortion police. How is this even going to work?

(CROSSTALK)

SACKIN: It really does.

I mean, we have never seen a law like this before. This sue thy neighbor provision means that it's really going to be not just impossible for people to get an abortion, but really creates almost this vigilante, where they can go after anyone they suspect of even helping somebody to get an abortion.

CAMEROTA: One of the most jaw dropping elements of this entire thing in Texas is, as we know, as we have been covering for months now, Governor Greg Abbott, the governor there, is against mandates, state mandates. He doesn't want mandate for masks to protect against COVID, doesn't want a mandate for vaccinations, lifesaving, to protect against COVID.

And his rationale when he banned mandates said: "Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices."

What do you say to him today?

SACKIN: I mean, it's really hard to hear something like that coming out of his mouth, especially when we're looking at what this law means for people across Texas.

[15:20:07]

I mean, right now, patients are scared, patients are worried. Patients can't make the most personal decision about if and when they want to become a parent. If they even are going to be able to get an abortion at all, it's going to be in driving hundreds of miles out of state, if they can afford it, right?

And that includes not just the drive. That includes finding lodging. That includes finding an appointment. That includes taking time off of work. That includes finding child care. And so, really, the layers upon layers of restrictions to getting an abortion in Texas are unbelievable.

CAMEROTA: So what's your plan, Erica? What is Planned Parenthood's plan to fight this?

SACKIN: Well, we are going to continue to fight. We're still waiting for the Supreme Court to hopefully weigh in.

We're deeply disappointed that they didn't take any action overnight, allowing this law to go into effect. But it is still possible that they will take action and give some emergency relief because of how much harm this law will cause.

But this is one piece of a much larger agenda we're seeing across the country to make abortion inaccessible. This year already, 600 laws have been introduced in states to restrict access to abortion, this year alone. And, this fall, the Supreme Court will hear a Jackson case that is going to possibly make Roe vs. Wade meaningless.

So, right now, already, Roe vs. Wade has been virtually overturned in Texas. And we are concerned about what's going to happen to the rest of the country.

CAMEROTA: At the very same time that all these laws are cropping up, in terms of public polling, Americans support in bigger numbers than they have in the past legal abortion.

The latest NBC poll here shows that this August, just last month, 54 percent of Americans wanted to keep abortion legal, as opposed to making it illegal at 44 percent. And that is different than what we saw in January of 2003, significantly different.

And so, as you point out, the Supreme Court is a wild card. What happens if it overturns Roe vs. Wade?

SACKIN: Well, if it overturns Roe vs. Wade, we have 25 states poised to do similar things to Texas, ban abortion.

And so we are really concerned about what that means for people's ability to access this care that they need. Already in Texas, we're seeing people not able to get appointments, people being worried, people being very confused. And we're concerned about that only escalating across the country. We're, of course, doing everything we can, along with partners on the

ground, to help connect people to care within the law or outside of the state of Texas. But it really means that, for most people, they simply will be unable to access abortion. And, to be clear, this is 50 years of precedent that we're talking about.

Roe vs. Wade has been law of the land for 50 years. This is a huge change.

CAMEROTA: Erica Sackin, thank you very much for being here.

SACKIN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Joining me now is CNN contributor Steve Vladeck. He's a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

Steve, thanks so much.

Let's talk about this. Why did the Supreme Court stay mum? Why did they take a pass on a law that is, as we have just discussed, so repressive in some ways in terms of deputizing people to become abortion police?

STEVE VLADECK, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, Alisyn, I think a big part of the story here is that the law is deliberately designed to create a whole bunch of procedural uncertainties and procedural questions that certainly seemed to trip up the court of appeals in this case.

And that, I suspect, is part of why we haven't yet heard from the Supreme Court, where even for those who are absolutely convinced that the law is just completely flatly inconsistent with Roe, there's still this question of whether this is the right vehicle, this particular lawsuit, to put the law on hold.

I think the answer is yes. I think the trial court thought the answer was yes. But the I think the explanation, the best explanation for why we haven't heard from the Supreme Court yet is because, by design, the law creates these procedural questions to get in the way of what seems like a fairly obvious substantive problem.

CAMEROTA: And did Texas discover this legal loophole that other states could mimic?

VLADECK: Absolutely.

I mean, I think, wholly apart, Alisyn, from what people think about abortion, which obviously gets everyone's dander up, this is a model. And it's a model for how, whether it's red states or blue states, can make it very, very difficult for people to enforce their clearly established constitutional rights.

If Texas can do it today to abortion, can California do it tomorrow with gun rights? Can Vermont do it on Friday with regard to environmental protection? And so there's a reason why we don't usually allow for these kinds of end-runs. There's a reason why we don't usually allow for these kinds of procedural traps deliberately set in this case by the Texas legislature to get in the way of blocking laws like the Texas abortion law.

[15:25:09]

It's going to be, I think, really important what the Supreme Court does when it finally acts, but it's pretty darn telling that it hasn't acted yet.

CAMEROTA: Legally speaking, can we talk about the bald hypocrisy of Governor Abbott in Texas?

So he doesn't like mask mandates and he doesn't like vaccinations because people should be able to make their own health choices for their own family. He said, "Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices."

But he's willing to go along with the most draconian law in the nation when it comes to women's health. So, legally, is there any repercussion against that hypocrisy?

VLADECK: Yes, I mean, unfortunately, Alisyn, hypocrisy is not a constitutional violation. Perhaps it should be.

I mean, I think, even on vaccinations, I mean, Texas requires school- aged children to receive seven different vaccinations already. So we're not actually opposed to vaccination mandates, just COVID.

But I think it drives home that this isn't about personal responsibility at all. It's about a very particular, very partisan, very ideologically charged agenda. And the Supreme Court may be sympathetic to that agenda.

I mean, Erica mentioned the Mississippi case that the court is already set to hear later this term. What's very, I think, disconcerting, and eye-opening about the court is that it allowed the law to go into effect, which it's never done before. There's been no law this restrictive allowed to go into effect since Roe in the face of, Alisyn, what is a transparent, hypocritical agenda on the part of the Texas legislature here.

CAMEROTA: Steve Vladeck, we really appreciate your insight. Thank you.

VLADECK: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Well, a grand jury in Colorado just issued charges for the death of an unarmed black man who died after police put him in a choke hold. We have details on this indictment next.

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