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Monkeypox Cases Continue to Rise in U.S.; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Calls for Organizational Restructuring; White House Officials Privately Express Concern over Classified Materials Taken to Former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Residence; Senator Lindsey Graham May Appear Before Grand Jury Investigating Efforts to Overturn 2020 Presidential Election in Georgia. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired August 20, 2022 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:30]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to your weekend. It's Saturday, August 20th. We are grateful to be part of it. I'm Boris Sanchez.

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm so glad to be with you, Boris. I'm Amara Walker. You are in the CNN Newsroom.

This morning the White House is defending its response to the spread of the monkeypox virus across the U.S.

SANCHEZ: There are more than 14,000 monkeypox cases in the United States, and in the last three weeks alone, the number of monkeypox cases in the U.S. has nearly tripled. The Biden administration declared monkeypox a public health emergency earlier this month, but critics argue they have not moved fast enough. Yesterday the White House Deputy Monkeypox Response Coordinator defended their response. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DEMETRE DASKALAKIS, DEPUTY COORDINATOR, WHITE HOUSE MONKEYPOX RESPONSE TEAM: We know what we've got in terms of this outbreak. It is acting differently than any monkeypox outbreak we've known before. It's clear the epidemiology, it's clear what strategies need to be implemented to be able to control the outbreak. And it's also clear which populations we need to focus on. So I think really it's more about the right time as opposed to there being a delay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: Those comments came one day after the White House announced its a new plan that called for boosting vaccine supply, making antiviral treatments more readily available and also reaching out to at risk communities. That plan is being put into action this weekend in Charlotte. Health care workers in North Carolina will be administering free monkeypox vaccine at Pride events across the city. Charlotte is one of several across the south receiving 50,000 vaccine doses from the strategic national stockpile ahead of large public events.

SANCHEZ: We want to get insight now from an expert. We have Kathleen Sebelius with us this morning. She served as the secretary of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. Kathleen, grateful to have your expertise and insight with us. So the Biden administration is brushing off criticism that they've taken too long to form a task force and declare monkeypox a national emergency. How would you grade the White House response so far?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, FORMER HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Well, Boris, I think that they are working rapidly to both distribute vaccine in an equitable fashion and get more vaccine out to states as quickly as possible. I think that testing has been a bit slow and needs to pick up pace, and their aim to do that. But I think we have a huge public health crisis in this country, and it's not going to be addressed one episode at a time. We really need Congress to pay attention to a huge worker shortage, a huge public underappreciation of public health, and use essentially the COVID crisis and now monkeypox as a wakeup call, as a post 9/11 for public health. We've got to rebuild this system from the bottom up.

SANCHEZ: One of the most concerning things about the monkeypox virus is that even the vaccine's manufacturer has expressed concern that they likely can't keep up with demand. In your eyes, should the Biden administration invoke the Defense Production Act to help expedite that process?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think they can certainly look at that as one of the alternatives as well as looking at the stockpile for the smallpox vaccine, which may well be effective against this outbreak. But again, I think this is -- we continue to be in a reactive mode as an outbreak breaks out. I was reading a report the other day about a county in New York who started with a measles outbreak. Again, a large group of people in that county had not been vaccinated and they have had a series of measles outbreaks in spite of the vaccine being available, then they have gone through COVID, now monkeypox, and now they have had a paralytic case of polio, again, based on a vaccine that is widely available and a treatment that's widely available.

So we are seeing episodic cases in the United States that measles and polio have been eradicated essentially and are coming back. We have a depleted public health workforce.

[10:05:01]

We have people who essentially pay no attention to public health guidance and are inventing their own medical remedies. So I really do think monkeypox is a piece of this puzzle, but we get a look at the whole public health system and what is happening in this country is really fairly alarming.

SANCHEZ: Specifically, on the monkeypox vaccine, I've spoken to friends that have expressed frustration at not being able to get vaccinated. So even those that want to are now having difficulty. And there is one step that health officials have taken recently to try to spread out supply. They've approved this different vaccination method that uses a smaller dose of the vaccine and it's a shallower injection. But there are critics out there, including the manufacturer, that have raised concerns about the effectiveness of this method. They feel that there is not enough research on how efficient it is. And then there are also questions about getting folks trained on this new method. In your mind, what do you make of it? Does the reward outweigh the risk here?

SEBELIUS: I think at this point, getting people some measure of vaccination is better than having a population that is just left in the cold. So yes, I think that it's based on public health experts saying this could be effective. I think they're trying to expand the existing amount of vaccine, spread it more widely, get people immunized. We will learn more as we go along, but I think it's better than leaving an entire group of folks without any protection whatsoever. We know the population we're dealing with.

The good news is monkeypox is debilitating and difficult. It is not life threatening. So trying to immunize widely is an important step right now, and do it as rapidly as possible with the vaccine that's available.

SANCHEZ: Certainly. And while we have you secretary, you mentioned rebuilding a system from the ground up. The CDC launched a new plan this week to try to restore trust in the agency, acknowledging some of its missteps in handling the coronavirus pandemic. What do you think is most essential for them to address now?

SEBELIUS: Well, again, the CDC needs to take a look at the steps along the way, why the initial COVID tests failed, what the communication failures were that led to a lot of confusion. But it's part of a larger public health system. The country has a very fragmented public health system, lots of the data systems don't talk to each other. It's difficult for the CDC to collect data from some states who don't want to share their data. And that's essential for epidemiology.

So I think the CDC review is very good news. Dr. Walensky has brought in Mary Wakefield who I know well, who was a terrific administrator of a key agency during the Obama administration, ended up as an acting deputy secretary of the department. She will be terrific. But I think building again, public health trust, being much more nimble, talking in plain language, communication is a huge part of this, but a recognition that the state and local governments have vastly underfunded public health for really the last 14 years. It started with the downtown in 08 and 09. They've never been rebuilt.

And then people were literally terrorized out of their jobs during COVID, threatened at their homes for giving guidance for suggesting that masks needed to be worn. We're in an age where public health officials are often treated as the enemy instead of the public health protectors that they are.

This has to be looked at across the board. The CDC can fix internal things in the agency, but the agency won't work as the gold standard of public health unless they have state and local cooperation, and that needs more funding. It needs more workers. It needs a really rebuild of confidence from the ground up.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the rebuilding of that trust so critical especially considering, as you noted, so many folks out there that remain unvaccinated even against diseases that have been eradicated long ago. Kathleen Sebelius, we've got to leave the conversation there. Appreciate your time.

SEBELIUS: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

WALKER: White House officials have privately expressed concern over the classified materials taken to former President Trump's Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, his residence, including some documents that are only meant to be viewed in secure facilities. Now, since the search, those closest to the president have maintained near silence on the issue, insisting that the ongoing investigation is a matter for the Justice Department.

[10:10:03]

CNN White House reporter Jasmine Wright is in Washington D.C. with more. Hi, Jasmine. What else are you hearing?

JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Deep concern. That is how one senior administration official put it to my colleagues Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak about the internal state of worry at the White House over the transportation of, of course, these private documents. You're right, the White House remained nearly silent about this, really being disciplined about their messaging, referring all comments to the Department of Justice. But here, thanks to my colleagues, we have a real window into the increasingly high concern that the White House officials have over the documents that were taken to Mar-a-Lago.

Remember, at some point we learned that some of those documents were remaining in the basement of Mar-a-Lago. Here you see the documents seized by federal agents, and some were so top secret, that first line there, that they were only to be viewed in those secure government facilities. Top secret/CIF, SCIF is what we call them in D.C. And so the real paramount concern here from officials in the administration and the White House is exactly what was taken to Mar-a-Lago and whether what was taken could imperil the way that the U.S. gathers intelligence and the sources that they gather it from.

Now, the White House is not exactly sure about what was included in those documents taken to Mar-a-Lago. They had read the inventory list, officials say the same one released to the public last week. But still, there is concern over how they were handled and whether the process of how they were handled to take to Mar-a-Lago could put it into places that it's not meant to go.

Now, of course, there is a diplomatic aspect to this, of course, because on the inventory list, we know that listed was French President Emmanuel Macron. So it opens up questions as to whether or not that could have diplomatic implications on the relationships that the U.S. has with France and the way that they gather information. So of course, here we have a real window into how the White House is privately concerned, though they haven't said much publicly about the risk that this information being stored in places that it's not supposed to be could have on the way that they gather information and the sources it comes from. Amara?

WALKER: Still so many questions about these documents and why. Jasmine Wright, thank you so much.

Senator Lindsey Graham may have to appear next week before a grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

SANCHEZ: The Trump ally has been trying to fight a subpoena in court, but so far a federal judge has ruled that the South Carolina lawmaker must testify. CNN's Sara Murray walks us through the details.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Boris and Amara, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is still trying to get out of having to show up on Tuesday and testify before a special grand jury in Georgia. Now, a federal judge already said she was not going to quash Lindsey Graham's subpoena. Graham went back to that judge and said could you put a stay on your ruling? Could you essentially push pause on this because I'm planning to appeal? On Friday, that judge said, "Senator Graham raises a number of arguments as to why he is likely to succeed on the merits, but they are all unpersuasive." Graham does have one other iron in the fire. He told the appeals court he is planning on filing an appeal, and he asked that court if they would stay the lower court's ruling. Again, push pause on this so he doesn't have to show up Tuesday and so they can wait and see how this appeal plays out. The appeals court has not yet ruled on that ask from Graham.

The district attorney is interested in Lindsey Graham because he had a phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Raffensperger came away from that call feeling like Graham was asking him to throw away ballots in a way that could benefit Donald Trump. Graham has denied that this was his intent, but this is, of course, just one of the things that the district attorney wants to get to the bottom of with Senator Graham. We will see if he manages to get out of that Tuesday appearance. Back to you guys.

WALKER: Sara Murray, thank you.

School districts across the country are grappling with a bus driver shortage. How officials are working around that and what they're doing to get more people into the driver's seat.

SANCHEZ: Plus, it is that time of year. Tropical storm warnings are up for parts of Texas today. We're tracking where we're going to see the rain and what it could mean for the drought.

WALKER: And emotional courtroom testimony from Kobe Bryant's widow Vanessa. How she says the idea of pictures of the deadly helicopter crash going public still impact her until this day.

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[10:18:33]

SANCHEZ: For some, the new school year is already underway, but there are districts that are facing a major shortage of bus drivers.

WALKER: In Connecticut, the Connecticut School Transportation Association estimates about 1,000 bus drivers are needed statewide. And the Anchorage school district in Alaska is only allowing one-third of students there to get bus service at a time due to the shortage. CNN's Nadia Romero has been following this story for us. Nadia, this is a problem. What's going on?

NADIA ROMERO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Amara and Boris, this is a huge problem from parents, for students and teachers, because for some of these kids, they'll be arriving to school late, which means that they will walk into the classroom behind schedule. So I'm here outside of one of the school bus depots for Fulton County school district in the Atlanta area, and they tell us that they're short about 200 bus drivers. And it's an issue they had last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other shortages, other reasons. And we're still seeing that again this school district.

So they're telling parents that you can expect a delay, where they're sending some drivers back around the block to pick up more kids so those kids will be dropped off late arriving at school. Now, right now, there are two recruiting events happening in the Atlanta area to try to attract more drivers. They're offering more than $20 an hour starting, including paid training, just to get more drivers on the roads. But this is happening all across the country. In Tempe, Arizona, they're expecting about a 15 to 20-minute delay because of a bus driver shortage. And we're seeing it in St. Louis, as well.

[10:20:06]

Let's look at the numbers. In St. Louis, we're talking about high schools and elementary schools that are being impacted by this bus driver shortage, almost 3,400 students on 35 routes will be impacted. And here is the superintendent explaining how they plan to mitigate these issues over the next two weeks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. KELVIN ADAMS, ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: We're providing $75 cards to elementary parents, which is about 600, and bus passes, meaning the metro bus by state that will be providing students transportation to schools is optional. We believe that two weeks will be the sunset of this. On September 6th we should be in a position with those 35 routes that we're not running right now will be able to be run.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMERO: So another thing that they're doing in St. Louis is opening up the schools earlier so that parents can drop off kids and still have enough time to make it to work on time. But this is an issue we're seeing all across the country as school districts are back. St. Louis will be back in school starting on Monday. Amara, Boris?

WALKER: There are so many parents who rely on these buses to get their children to school every day. Nadia Romero, thank you.

And it's just not bus drivers. School districts across the country are scrambling to fill teaching positions, as well. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is allowing military veterans to teach without a teaching degree. And then two rural districts in Texas are going down to a four-day school week to accommodate the shortage. And in Richmond, Virginia, officials there offering some major incentives to get more educators in the classroom. Here is the district's superintendent Jason Kamras.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON KAMRAS, SUPERINTENDENT, RICHMOND PUBLIC SCHOOLS: We are now down to about 120 classroom teacher vacancies, and one of the things that we have done is offer some pretty robust incentives. So anybody moving to Richmond, a teacher with experience will receive $10,000 to come here and to teach at Richmond public schools. New teachers moving to Richmond, $8,000. So we are advertising all across the state, all across the eastern seaboard to bring qualified educators here to Richmond.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: Until the Richmond public school district can hire more teachers, officials say they plan to fill those vacancies with long- term substitutes.

SANCHEZ: Some much-needed rain is rolling through the southwestern United States, but that creates a new set of problems even for areas stricken by drought. We have a look at the flood threat as several states are trying to figure out the best way to conserve water. Stay with Newsroom. We're back in just a few minutes.

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[10:27:13]

SANCHEZ: Some 10 million people are under a flood threat as a storm system is rolling through the southwest. The impact of that flooding is already being felt in Utah where crews are still searching for a person that's missing after they were swept away by flash flooding in Zion National Park.

WALKER: We're also tracking a system in the Gulf of Mexico. Let's get right to meteorologist Allison Chinchar with the latest on that. Allison?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, good morning, guys. We're taking a look at potential tropical cyclone four, right now, sustained winds of about 35 miles per hour. The ultimate question is, does it have enough time to strengthen into a tropical storm before it makes landfall, likely right around that Texas-Mexico border in about the next 24 hours from now. If it does get up to tropical storm strength, the next name on the list is Danielle. But regardless of whether it gets a name or not, it is forecast to bring a tremendous amount of moisture to the eastern half of the state of Texas as well as portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and even southern Arkansas over the next several days.

This will be the second system to bring the potential for flooding to the state of Texas. The other is the one that is currently over areas of Arizona and New Mexico for today, increasing their flash flood threat. The thing is that some is going to begin to push all of that moisture farther east in the next 24 to 48 hours, leaving Texas with two separate systems to bring the potential for flooding.

In all, over the next several days, look at this widespread area here of those yellows, oranges, and reds that you see on the screen. You're talking widespread three to five inches, but it's not out of the question for some of these areas to get six, seven, even eight inches of rain total just in the short period of time.

Now, on one hand, Texas needs the rain. We're still dealing with that ongoing drought across much of the state. The problem is you just don't want, Boris and Amara, too much rain in a very short period of time, especially when you've had a drought, because all of that water then just runs off.

WALKER: Allison Chinchar, thank you for that.

And as the southwest gets pummeled with rain, a new reality of water conservation is setting in.

SANCHEZ: CNN Bill Weir is in Arizona, a hotspot feeling the immediate impact of the human caused climate disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Summer monsoons are adding a few precious inches to the Lake Mead water line, but not nearly enough. America's largest reservoir is still 25 feet lower than last summer. So this fall, parts of Phoenix will see unprecedented tier two cuts of their share of the Colorado River, joining Arizona farmers at the end of the water rights line.

Do you foresee a day when it's tier three, tier four, mandatory cuts that will get really severe?

[10:30:00]

KATHRYN SORENSEN, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, KYL CENTER FOR WATER POLICY, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY: So absolutely. I am genuinely worried about this system hitting dead pool.

WEIR: You are?

SORENSEN: Absolutely I am. WEIR: Dead pool is when Mead gets low enough to crash the whole

Colorado system. And When Kathryn Sorensen was running water departments in Phoenix and Mesa, it was the biggest worry. But now it's worse, and the feds are begging western states to cut up to one out of every four gallons consumed.

I know from our reporting, there was some western water managers that were frustrated the Bureau of Reclamation wasn't tougher. They said you guys work it out or we'll work it out for you, but they didn't do that. What are your thoughts on that?

SORENSEN: Well, it is disappointing, because the longer that we have to endure the uncertainty, the more at risk the entire system is. And I don't envy the federal government, the Biden administration. They have some really tough choices to make. No elected official wants to be the person saying who gets water and who doesn't. I'm sure they are desperately searching for the least worst option. But in the meantime, water levels continue to fall.

GOV. DOUG DUCEY, (R) ARIZONA: And we will invest heavily in conservation, efficiency, reuse, and advanced water technologies like desalination.

WEIR: Arizona's outgoing governor wants to build a desalination plant in Mexico, and canals in Kansas to bring more water eventually. But in the meantime, the call to use less puts fresh scrutiny on thirsty industries like golf, especially after an Arizona Republic investigation found that 30 to 50 percent of courses here use more than their share of water with little oversight.

State records show that the water cops of Arizona have issued a punishment against a golf course exactly twice in the last 20 years. So it's pretty obvious from the feds down to the locals, people aren't exactly lining up to be the tough sheriff desperately needed to tame water use in the wild west.

SORENSEN: I don't golf. So I don't feel a need to defend golf. But I will say this, people focus on it because it's visible. But there are lot of things about what we do, what we consume, what we eat, what we wear, that are also very water intensive.

So I don't like to think of it in terms of we don't have enough water. I like to think of it in terms of what do we have enough water for? Do we want to build semiconductor factories, or do we want to grow cotton? Do we want to grow subdivisions, or do we want to have high density development that is more water efficient? Those are the conversations we need to have.

WEIR: Bill Weir, CNN, Phoenix.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

WALKER: And more parts of the country are drying out as well. In Texas, over 90 percent of the state is currently experiencing drought with nearly 62 percent under extreme or exceptional drought conditions, that's most of Texas, the two highest categories according to the U.S. drought monitor. And on the east coast, excessive heat has intensified in the New England area as extreme drought now covers parts of eastern Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the entire state of Rhode Island.

For more now on this, is University of California Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain. Daniel, good morning. Thank you so much for having this conversation with us. It's extremely important. And in just the past few months we've been experiencing and witnessing so many extreme weather patterns, right. Extreme heat, drought, flooding. Let's start with this intense drought that we're seeing in the northeast right now. I've seen images of it. It's as dry as the desert southwest in the northeast. What's going on?

DANIEL SWAIN, CLIMATE SCIENTIST, UCLA: Well, thanks for having me. Yes, there are a number of regions right now that are traditionally considered much wetter than the current drought region in the southeastern United States that are experiencing pretty significant drought conditions, and one of those is the northeastern United States. Another one is western Europe. Seeing satellite images of the United Kingdom looking sort of brown and crispy, a little more like you expect to see in California this time of year, are pretty striking.

And so when you have droughts in places that aren't accustomed to water scarcity, even relatively moderate droughts in the long run can have pretty substantial impacts. Although the drought in the southwest is much more prolonged, widespread, and intense, the northeast isn't quite as prepared for drought. And so I think the impacts arise more quickly.

WALKER: Is this seasonal or are these extreme patterns here to stay, this is something that we're going to experience every season?

SWAIN: Well, what's interesting is this summer, particularly in North America, there then really extremes on both ends of the hydroclimate spectrum. So extreme floods locally, in some places we've heard about those 100 or 1,000 year floods in multiple locations so far this summer, as well as severe drought in multiple locations.

[10:35:01]

As you mentioned, the southwest, southern plains, and now also the northeastern United States. So we're really seeing these extremes on both ends of the spectrum and the increase in this hydroclimate whiplash, as we sometimes call it, is a characteristic of a warming climate.

WALKER: And what does this mean, then, for our daily lives? Because you're talking about more wildfires, and also, impacting farming, which could obviously hurt our food supply then.

SWAIN: Well, it's tricky, especially in the southwest, where there are, in the Colorado River Basin, as that's drying out, there aren't right now a lot of alternatives. So for all the folks who live there and all the agriculture that exists in this region, there is a finite amount of water, and it's not enough for the demand that's currently there. So there are going to have to be some hard choices, some very hard choices, I think as we just heard in the last segment. And nobody knows exactly what the form that's going to take in the next couple of years, but I do think some of these droughts are going to get worse before they get better.

WALKER: So the federal government is implementing these new mandatory water cuts, right, because we're seeing like the Colorado River drying up. What can you and I do? What should local and the federal government be doing about this?

SWAIN: Well, I think one of the most important things to realize is that particularly in the southwest with the Colorado River Basin water crisis, this is not a transient event. It's not going to go away anytime soon. In fact, I would suggest that this is likely to be the future of the southwest, with less and less water available and still very high demand. And so viewing this as a long-term or even permanent problem I think is a really important part of that approach, rather than trying to find reactive or band-aid short term solutions, because ultimately, the long term sustainability of water in that basin in particular is in question. And I think we really need to be rethinking some pretty big picture things in the southwest. Exactly what that looks like I think is going to be a subject of considerable debate.

WALKER: And I have to ask you about this as a California native. I read this study that you were a part of that warns that California is due for an extreme mega flood. So here we're talking about droughts and extreme heat, and now we're talking about massive amounts of rainfall, up to eight feet in some areas, spanning from the city to the mountains. And you're saying it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when. So when are we talking about in terms of timeline? And my goodness, what would that look like?

SWAIN: Well, that's right. California has been a region more accustomed recently to severe drought and wildfires, we've been discussing, than the opposite problem of water overabundance, but this is intrinsically part of the world that is susceptible to both. If you go back into the 1800s, we know that there was a great flood of 1862, which caused the Central Valley of California to essentially transform into a temporary inland sea.

So in that study we're talking about, we looked at events like that. What would it be like if there were a modern recurrence of something like the great flood of 1862? And we found that climate change has already about doubled the risk of seeing an event like that today relative to about a century ago.

And while it would be nice to see more water from the drought perspective, there very much is such a thing as too much water at once, and that's really what the situation would be here, where we'd essentially get multiple weeks in a row of really intense winter storm systems. In California they're often called atmospheric rivers. And these would just bring, as you say, feet of rain, storm after storm after storm over a multiweek period that would likely overwhelm some of the state's flood defenses. And so the next phase of the project we're going to look at exactly what that might look like on the ground, but it's pretty clear California hasn't been thinking as much about the risk of extreme floods in this severe drought era. And so I think one of the big lessons here is we really need to be considering both ends of the spectrum according to climate.

WALKER: Both ends of the spectrum, absolutely. It is alarming. And we are out of time, Daniel. Thank you for the conversation. If you want to know more, just google "mega floods, California" and you'll find Daniel Swain's study. Thank you so much.

SWAIN: Thank you, again.

SANCHEZ: Some emotional moments inside an L.A. County courthouse as Kobe Bryant's widow takes the stand in a case surrounding photos of her late husband and daughter taken by first responders right after that deadly helicopter crash. Hear what she had to say in court, next.

And a quick programming note for you, as well. Don't miss an all new episode of "The United Shades of America" tomorrow night at 10:00 p.m. This time W. Kamau Bell goes beyond the crowded beaches in Hawaii to explore the tensions between visitors and locals on the islands.

[10:40:00]

It airs Sunday night right here on CNN.

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SANCHEZ: Looking overseas for a moment, at least 15 people are dead after armed gunman attacked an upscale hotel in the Somali capital of Mogadishu last night. Authorities say the gunman stormed the Hyatt Hotel after setting off car bombs. You can hear some of the explosions in the video. The hotel is popular with lawmakers and government officials. Official there say the death toll is likely to continue to rise as Somali security forces are battling the gunmen for control of the area around the hotel. Remember, the Al Qaeda linked terror group Al-Shabaab is active in this area. They have claimed responsibility for this attack.

Looking stateside now, Vanessa Bryant, the widow of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, gave emotional testimony in court yesterday as part of her lawsuit against Los Angeles County.

[10:45:00]

WALKER: At times, breaking down in tears on the witness stand. Bryant says she suffers panic attacks and anxiety after officials took and shared close-up photos from the helicopter crash that killed her husband, daughter, and seven others in 2020. CNN's Natasha Chen has more now.

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Amara and Boris, we heard from a tearful Vanessa Bryant who gave heartbreaking testimony about panic attacks that she had never had before but started experiencing once she found through an "L.A. Times" article about a month after the crash that L.A. County sheriff's deputies and county firefighters had taken and shared closeup images of her loved ones' remains from the crash site. She talked about the moment she found out about that, how she was with family but had to run out of the room, run out of the house so that her daughters would not see her fall apart.

She said it felt like she wanted to run and scream and jump into the ocean, but, quote, "I can't escape my body. I can't escape what I feel." She said she's even gotten strangers, very disturbing direct messages on Instagram that were shown to us in the courtroom, someone using helicopter and flame emojis and then threatening to leak the images of Kobe's body.

Vanessa Bryant is a co-plaintiff in this case. She's sitting next to Chris Chester who lost his wife and daughter in the same crash, and both of them describe this fear and anxiety that these photos could someday surface on the Internet and how that is compounded on top of the grief that they already felt losing family members.

The county in defense has emphasized that neither of them have ever seen a single one of these county employee photos out in public, and when they had Sheriff Alex Villanueva on the stand later in the afternoon, they explained that his highest priority was stopping those photos from getting out, not letting the horse out of the barn, so to speak. And that's why the sheriff said he asked those deputies to delete the photos in question instead of waiting for a formal investigation to go through. When the plaintiff's attorneys pushed him whether he knew for a fact that the photos had been deleted, he said I believe that they are. And when further pushed, he said God knows, and that's about it.

Amara and Boris, back to you.

WALKER: Natasha, thank you.

The federal government is cracking down on those annoying robocalls. What they are doing to stop them is next.

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[10:51:55]

WALKER: More than 33 million scam robocalls are made to Americans every day.

SANCHEZ: Something about extending my car's warranty, right? It looks like officials are close to shutting down one of the most sophisticated illegal robocall operations, though. CNN's Gabe Cohen has more.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Jessica calling in regards to your Volkswagen warranty.

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Odds are you've received a bogus auto warranty call similar to this.

UNKNOWN: Your warranty is up for renewal.

COHEN: Now authorities are cracking down on a scheme an FCC official calls the most sophisticated illegal robocall operation they've ever seen, more than 8 billion spam calls to Americans. And a new lawsuit claims two California man are behind nearly all of it.

Aaron Michael Jones and Roy Cox Jr. are accused of violating telemarketing laws by tricking Americans into buying vehicle service contracts, and making millions of dollars off the scam. CNN tried to track them down. Dozens of calls, texts, and e-mails, but no response. Both Cox and Jones have been sued by the Federal Trade Commission in the past, and ordered never to tele market again. And yet, like many robocall scammers, they are accused of just retooling their operation.

DAVE YOST, OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL: We are coming in to try to take them down.

COHEN: So now, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is suing Cox, Jones, and their associates, potentially for millions of dollars.

YOST: It's enough to take back everything they've made. If a slap on the wrist doesn't work, punch them in the face and knock them down.

COHEN: Did you consider criminal charges here?

YOST: Criminal charges are not off the table.

COHEN: Yost is part of a new anti-robocall task force, attorneys general for nearly every state working with federal officials to ramp up illegal robocalls enforcement. In 2021, Americans received an estimated 21 billion scam robocalls costing them nearly $40 billion dollars in a 12-month period.

MARGOT SAUNDERS, SR. COUNSEL, U.S. CONSUMER LAW CENTER: It's usually very hard to find the callers. All of these unwanted robocalls are undermining the value of our telephone systems.

COHEN: Most of the calls come from overseas, and tracing them is a fairly new technology, so up to now authorities have struggled to stop them, and the callers that do get caught often go right back to scamming, according to an FCC official. So, authorities are turning attention to the gateway providers, the telecom companies that let those robocalls on to the U.S. phone network.

JESSICA ROSENWORCEL, CHAIRWOMAN, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION: Specifically, those that we believe may be turning a blind eye to this kind of calling scams.

COHEN: When a call comes from overseas, typically several small carriers get paid to pass it along before it reaches your cell. Investigators are using a technique called trace backs to identify the original source of these illegal calls. Then agencies like the FCC can then order the rest of the industry to stop doing business with those carriers.

[10:55:00]

JAMES EVANS, ATTORNEY, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: If there are not this tier of providers who are willing to take those bad traffic, then the robo-callers will find themselves with nowhere to place their calls.

COHEN: That's the case with the auto warranty scam. In July, the FCC ordered all telecom companies to block all robocalls from Cox, Jones, and eight voice service providers they say are linked to the scheme. Since then, those calls have nearly vanished according to a robocall analysis company.

Do you think you can really stop these scammers?

YOST: I think we can significantly discreet them.

COHEN: How long will that take?

YOST: Years, not months. It's an arms race between the enforcers and the criminals. But we're getting smarter, and we are on to their ways.

COHEN: Gabe Cohen, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

WALKER: All right, that's our time. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you tomorrow.

SANCHEZ: There is still so much ahead in the next hour of the CNN Newsroom. Fredricka Whitfield is up after a quick break.

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