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DOJ Appeals Ruling that Struck Down Travel Mask Mandate; Home Prices Hit New Record High in March; Russian Soldiers & Rockets Not Stopping Ukrainian Farmers; "Navalny" Premieres Sunday at 9PM ET; Johnny Depp Takes Stand for 3rd Day in Defamation Case Against Amber Heard. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired April 21, 2022 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Exactly, Ana. We don't see the Justice Department asking for a stay of that ruling, which would have the effect of setting aside the judge's order and bringing back masks to transportation immediately.

So what we are -- what the Justice Department is doing instead is they are asking for -- again, they are appealing the order from this judge in order to try to preserve the CDC's authority in the future.

However, you know, lawyers inside this building have warned the CDC that this is an uphill fight. That appealing to a very conservative leaning circuit, the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, is probably they're going to lose.

And they're likely to lose at the Supreme Court if you look at previous rulings, including, for example, the Supreme Court striking down the CDC's authority to do a moratorium, an eviction.

This is going to be a long haul for the CDC. And at least for now, for passengers, we don't expect that masks are coming back any time soon.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Evan Perez, we know you'll stay on top of it. Thanks.

From pandemic travel to the struggle to find affordable housing, the average price for a home last month hit a record high of $375,000. That's up 15 percent year to year.

CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich joins us.

Vanessa, what is fueling this rise, and will it continue? VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: There's

still intense demand from homebuyers, but limited supply. That's why, last month, we saw home sales drop by 2.7 percent. That's because there simply is less inventory on the market.

But in turn, that pushed home prices higher to that record $375,000 to own a home on average in this country right now. That's a 15 percent increase, as you mentioned, from just a year ago.

And if that wasn't expensive enough, just take a look at what mortgage rates did today, 5.11 percent. That's the mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed rate loan.

That's up about a point from just a month ago. And about two points from a year ago. So it's incredibly expensive to buy a home right now.

Also those mortgage rates may deter many Americans from becoming first-time home buyers.

We did a little math, Ana. It's about $370 more for a mortgage rate this year than it was last year per month.

And if you look at rental prices soaring right now, up 17 percent in just the last year.

So analysts tell us that we may see a little softening in prices on the homebuying market.

But mortgage prices, Ana, we're still expecting them to rise because they usually rise in line with interest rates, which the Federal Reserve said they're going to raise a couple of times this year -- Ana?

CABRERA: Right. Those interest rates going up in order to deal with inflation. Tricky situation.

YURKEVICH: Yes.

CABRERA: Vanessa, thank you.

To farm or to fight? That's the question facing farmers in Ukraine forced to make a tough choice as rockets rain down on what is considered to be the breadbasket of Europe.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:37:57]

CABRERA: In Ukraine, farming on the frontlines mean rockets litter fields of crops intended to help feed people around the world.

CNN's Ed Lavandera talked with Ukrainian farmers who are fighting to keep themselves and their businesses alive.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sergiy Yaiichuk runs a one-man dairy operation. He has six cows on a little farm just 15 miles from the frontlines of the battlefield in southern Ukraine.

But neither Russian soldiers or falling rockets have stopped the 49- year-old from tending to his work.

(on camera): That is Sergiy's house there, just in the distance. And there is an unexploded rocket, landing this close. It landed here about a week ago.

Did you hear the rocket land?

SERGIY YAIICHUK, UKRAINIAN DAILY FARMER (through translation): Everything happened before my eyes.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): The explosions erupted all around him, when this strike hit. Russian rockets, often targeting his village, of 500 people.

YAIICHUK (through translation): We were covered in dust. Just dust and shrapnel all the way here. I fell to the ground, crawling, not feeling my legs or arms. It was scary. For those who have not gone through this, you would not believe it.

LAVANDERA: Sergiy keeps one eye on his herd and the other eye on the war.

(on camera): So, these are Sergiy's six dairy cows. And if you notice, he has them spread out. He wants to separate them so they all don't get killed in one strike.

(voice-over): He must keep the cows alive. This is the life of a farmer in Ukraine.

Maxim Krivenko and his family grow the traditional Ukrainian crops of wheat and sunflower on these lush, wide-open fields. But the war has upended his business.

MAXIM KRIVENKO, UKRAINIAN FARMER (through translation): It has been unfortunate for all of us. Basically, everything has shut down and we aren't working now.

LAVANDERA: Maxim says the cost of fuel and grain seeds have skyrocketed. It's difficult to find parts to repair farm machinery.

[13:40:01]

He's supposed to plant this year's wheat crop in the coming weeks, but if the fighting returns to this land, it won't happen.

(on camera): So this is the storage area where they keep their sunflower seeds. But they haven't been able to sell it because of the war.

(voice-over): Maxim is also stuck with an entire season's sunflower seed harvest. It just sits in the storage space.

(on camera): Will this war kill your business?

KRIVENKO (through translation): It's already killed it. We have stockpiled our wheat production and our sunflowers. We aren't able to sell them. So, I would say, it's the beginning of the end.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Ukraine is considered the world's breadbasket, along with Russia, producing 30 percent of the world's wheat exports. The United Nations says this war is creating a food production crisis not seen since World War II.

(on camera): Thousands of Ukrainian farmers now find themselves on the frontlines of this war. And their growing fields of wheat and sunflower have been turned into debris fields for missiles and rockets and other explosives.

(voice-over): The wreckage of recent battles still sit in the farm fields. The body of a Russian soldier is buried next to this ammunition supply truck.

Farm or fight is the choice facing frontline farmers. Sergiy Yaiichuk has already faced this life-and-death decision. When the Russians invaded this village last month, Sergiy joined the fight. He was shot in the shoulder.

(on camera): If the Russians come back, do you want to fight again?

YAIICHUK (through translation): What else can we do? I'll take my pitchfork and go fight. I will defend my village until the end.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): When the war returns, the harvest will have to wait.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: What courage.

Russian opposition leader and fierce Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, has been in jail for more than a year. The story of how he got there after tracking down his failed assassins is told with the urgency and drama of a spy thriller in the new CNN film "NAVALNY."

Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEXEI NAVALNY, JAILED RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER (through translation): My message for the situation that I am killed is very simple. Not give up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do me a favor. Answer this one in Russian.

NAVALNY: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Joining us is CNN chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, in Dnipro, Ukraine. She worked closely with Navalny and his team on the investigation into the assassination attempt.

Clarissa, why does he pose such a threat to Putin that he wants him either in prison or dead?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think a lot of people have been really confused as to why President Putin has gone to such lengths to prevent Navalny from doing his work.

The easy answer, I think, is that he has exposed the rampant corruption in Russia. And he has mobilized a huge amount of support online, particularly with young people.

And there's a sense that President Putin doesn't have any tolerance for any real political opponents.

You might remember that Boris Nemtsov was assassinated just a few hundred meters away from the Kremlin some years ago.

It's a dangerous business getting involved with opposition in any way, shape or form in Russia. And Alexei Navalny is the single most galvanizing force that the opposition has had in many years.

So I think, for those reasons, the Kremlin has done everything within its means to try to stop him.

CABRERA: You worked closely with Navalny, as I mentioned, and his team as you investigated the assassination attempt against him. And as the film shows, that investigation was very revealing.

What was the most surprising thing you uncovered?

WARD: I think the most surprising thing, honestly, was to see how Russian security services, the FSB, were in many ways very sloppy in their tradecraft.

[13:45:01]

I mean, the extraordinary moment of this documentary is when Navalny actually calls one of his would-be assassins on an open line posing as a senior aide to the National Security Council.

And this man who he speaks to actually ends up spilling the beans, believing Navalny, this claim to be the senior administration official, and telling the details of how the poisoning was done, sprinkling of the poison in his underwear.

And it's this moment where your jaw drops because you realize sometimes there's an aura of invincibility around Putin's Russia and this sort of Machiavellian slick image that he has cultivated.

But in actual fact, we found time and again multiple instances where they were doing things other security services would be shocked at.

To give you one more example, Ana, one of the would-be assassins actually made a call, opened his cell phone the night that Navalny was poisoned from a hotel just a few blocks away from where Navalny was.

And this is what made it possible for Bellingcat and the Navalny team with us and some others to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

CABRERA: That is fascinating, Clarissa.

I interviewed a woman yesterday who finally made it out of Mariupol after 45 days of being trapped there.

She said the Russian soldiers that she met there were actually shocked when they were not greeted with a warm welcome. That they had genuinely been, you know, understanding that they were going to liberate Ukrainians.

Putin has had such a hold on power and on information. But is there a sense that that could slip away as this war drags on?

WARD: It really depends on who you talk to. There are those who are optimistic that this is a moment potentially where Putin has overshot the mark and cannot possibly deliver on what he's promised.

And cannot really stop the floodgates from opening in terms of the mass amounts of misinformation that have been channeled out to ordinary citizens.

But there are many others who will say, especially here in Ukraine, people who have witnessed atrocities, who are speaking to relatives in Russia, who are telling them, that's not true. That's not possible. We know what's happening. This is the de-Nazification process. President Putin is trying to liberate ordinary Ukrainians.

And it's very easy to forget just how powerful the grip is of that kind of propaganda. When you control the information space, you control what a lot of people are thinking.

So I would say it's probably a little too early to talk about Putin losing his grip on that. But certainly, this poses serious challenges for his narrative.

CABRERA: Clarissa Ward, thank you for all the work you do, the dangerous work at times, often, to keep the truth from being buried. Thanks so much.

Don't miss all the new CNN film "NAVALNY." It premieres Sunday night at 9:00 Eastern on CNN.

Violent fights, a severed finger, substance abuse, accusations of cheating. Johnny Depp has been testifying for hours now in his defamation case against ex-wife, Amber Heard. The details of their relationship are disturbing. And Depp is back on the stand today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [13:53:00]

CABRERA: New explosive testimony as Johnny Depp is back on the stand for a third day in his defamation case against Amber Heard.

And our Jean Casarez has been watching all the trial developments.

So, Jean, throughout this trial, deeply personal and troubling allegations of abuse have been raised by both parties. What is Depp saying today?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's two sides to a story.

You know, on cross-examination, the defense attorney really initially led him down the primrose path, as they say in the law, by saying, you're a southern gentleman, you like to have your demeanor be a southern gentleman.

Yes, he did, yes, I definitely do try, Depp says.

Well then, he talks and goes into texts that Depp wrote about conceivably Amber Heard, not to her, but to a guy friend, saying, I'm going to -- we're going to drown her, burn her, burn the corpse. And it's vile. It's heinous.

And then going into so much about his drug and alcohol abuse. And he mentioned -- he -- on direct, he said he had problems in that issue. But nothing to the magnitude of what's coming out on the defense cross-examination here.

But then there's a text -- because remember, the issue is, did he abuse Amber? There's a text where he is apologizing to Amber. They read it in the courtroom.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN ROTTENBORN, AMBER HEARD'S ATTORNEY (voice-over): It's a way. I've let it go. Went too far. We/I tend to do that. I always regret it when I jump or worse when you jump. I don't want to be conditioned to continue that behavior. Therefore, I'll put in heavy work with shrink.

I'm sorry for being less, for your disappointment in me, for my behavior. I'm a (EXPLETIVE DELETED) savage. Got to lose that. Going to lose that.

How when we fight, little girl, how do we end up on the very edge of the precipice and why? Wish I knew.

(EXPLETIVE DELETED) and know that you are right. I am well aware that I should have been bigger than the moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:55:07] CASAREZ: So far, different from the direct testimony.

We also can say that, in testimony, he admitted that he thought Amber Heard was having an affair with James Franco.

Now, what did we not hear in all of this? We didn't hear that he struck her. In the text to his friends, he's not saying it to her personally. He talks about the monsters inside of him. Is that toward himself or is that toward her?

So, some open issues here.

CABRERA: And more questions to be answered.

CASAREZ: Yes.

CABRERA: Jean Casarez, thank you.

That does it for me. Thank you so much for being with us. A reminder, you can always join me on Twitter, @AnaCabrera.

The news continues right now with Victor Blackwell.

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