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Rocket Attacks Follow Israeli Raids on Mosque; Police Clash with Demonstrators in France; Tennessee House Expels Two Democrats, Spares Third; JPMorgan CEO Says Banking Crisis Could Have Big Impacts; Jordan's Foreign Minister Speaks Out Against Mideast Violence; Report Blames Trump Administration for Chaotic Afghanistan Withdrawal; Jewel Speaks with CNN about Learning to Be Happy. Aired 12-12:45a ET
Aired April 07, 2023 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM, escalation on two fronts. Israeli air strikes target the military group Hamas after incoming rocket fire from both Lebanon in the North, Gaza in the South.
[00:00:36]
Extreme punishment. The Republican-controlled Tennessee state house expels two Democrats for protesting on the chamber floor. They were demanding stricter gun control in the wake of a mass shooting.
And singer-songwriter Jewel opens up on her challenges with health and why society has it all wrong when it comes to happiness.
ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with John Vause.
VAUSE: At this hour, the Israeli military is reportedly preparing for major unrest on all borders after a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza in the South, as well as from Lebanon in the North. Israel says the military group Hamas is responsible for the incoming rocket fire from Gaza.
Most were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system.
Israeli air strikes in Gaza have targeted Hamas, according to the IDF, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, says it holds the Israeli occupiers responsible for what it calls a dangerous escalation.
Israel also blames Hamas for 34 rockets fired from Lebanon, the largest attack from Lebanese soil since the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Most of the 34 rockets were intercepted, but six were not, damaging some buildings.
The U.S. peacekeeping force in Lebanon stressed that neither side wants another war.
Well, all that back-and-forth fire follows Israeli's police raids at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which is the third most holy site for all of Islam.
CNN's Hadas Gold has details now on how the violence unfolded.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HADAS GOLD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Streaking across the sky in Northern Israel, dozens of rockets fired from Lebanon Thursday, according to the Israel Defense Forces, which said it intercepted most of them.
But some made impact, this car hit in the Israeli town of Fassuta. And in Shlomi, the store front of this bank was destroyed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hear the siren. I hear the warning. I wasn't in my home. It was very, very scary.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm still shaking, because it's -- children are not supposed to see this, in this age.
GOLD (voice-over): The Lebanese army says it found these rocket launchers and rockets close to the Israeli border Thursday and is working to dismantle them.
Israel has pointed the finger at Palestinian groups and doesn't think the Lebanon-based Hezbollah was responsible.
Not since the war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006 have so many rockets been fired across the border, a worrying sign of escalation in an already tense time for the region.
Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque multiple times this week, as Palestinians gathered for Ramadan. Footage from inside the mosque showed Israeli police beating some worshippers with batons and rifle butts.
Police say they moved in after Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the mosque, threw rocks, and set off fireworks. Jordan, the custodian of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, told CNN that it believes Thursday's rocket attacks were a response to Israeli actions at the mosque.
AYMAN SAFADI, JORDANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: The two are obviously interconnected. We're unfortunately at the exact moment, the dangerous moment which we've worked for months to avoid, which is a moment where violence is erupting.
GOLD (voice-over): As the first day of the Passover holiday came to an end, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a meeting of his security cabinet.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We will strike our enemies, and they will pay the price for any act of aggression.
GOLD (voice-over): Multiple hot spots flaring up at once, just as Easter begins in this holy land, and all three main religions are supposed to be celebrating.
Hadas Gold, CNN, Northern Israel. (END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Yaakov Katz is a senior columnist and editor at "The Jerusalem Post." He is with us this hour from Jerusalem. Good to see you again.
YAAKOV KATZ, SENIOR COLUMNIST/EDITOR, "THE JERUSALEM POST": Hi, John.
VAUSE: OK, so has Hamas ever had the capability of firing rockets or missiles from Lebanon before? Because if that's the case, this would seem to be a significant improvement in their capability.
KATZ: Well, we definitely know that the Palestinian terrorist organizations and different factions have a strong presence in Lebanon training grounds. And there has been sporadic rocket fire from the Lebanese territory into Israel in the past. Not at this scale.
I did see a letter that the Israeli envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon -- former, back about five years ago -- wrote to the U.N. Security Council, basically warning of Hamas infrastructure in Lebanon. And we know that Hamas's, one of the heads of the political side of their organization, although there's no real difference, is in Beirut as we speak.
[00:05:03]
So there's strong ties and a strong presence in Lebanon.
VAUSE: Well, according to UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which has been there for quite some time. "Both sides" -- this is a tweet -- "Both sides have said they do not want a war."
UNIFIL's been engaged, talking with both sides. Both sides being exactly who? Israel? Israel and who else? If it's the Lebanese government, then that statement would seem to be almost meaningless, given the country's verging on failed state status.
KATZ: It's a collapsed state, and that's what makes this terrible. But I think, you know, John, to give a little perspective, it was just two nights ago that millions of Israelis sat down for the Passover seder and said the words of how, in every generation, there's someone who tries to destroy the Jewish people.
And what we've seen on Passover is this happen in two different fronts for over 40 rockets from Gaza, and just overnight, another 40, 35 rockets from Lebanon. Almost 100 -- over 100 rockets total on two different fronts slamming down and being fired into the Jewish state of Israel.
In Lebanon, is it Hezbollah? Is it Hamas? Is it the Lebanese armed forces? It's probably not them. But Hezbollah would have to allow something like this to happen.
And Israel's trying to really go and strike a balance between striking back at these terrorist groups, on the one hand, but not leading to a further escalation, the likes of what Hadas mentioned before. What we saw in 2006 that was 34 days of fighting between Israel and Lebanon. Israel does not want that kind of war.
VAUSE: Yes, I remember. I was there for it. And, you know, the partition (ph) rockets kept raining down like you could not believe.
Netanyahu finally called a meeting of the security cabinet, after refusing to do so for the past two months. And he's promised to, you know, those who fire the rockets, there will be a severe response; they will have a price.
But there are those within his coalition government who want a much more severe military response than that. One of the M.K.'s is quoted as telling the "Times of Israel," "We don't need to absorb these rockets. We need to respond in a language our enemies understand -- the language of strength."
He acknowledged that that could spark a wider conflict, but then added this: "What are we preparing the IDF for, if when dozens of rockets are fired into Israeli territory we do not react?"
So at this point, how much pressure is Netanyahu under from the extreme right, within his own coalition, for demanding, you know, a decisive military strike? And if that happens, if Netanyahu goes down that road, what comes next?
KATZ: Well, you're right, John. Netanyahu has not convened his security cabinet until last night for two months, because he didn't want to sit around the same table with some of these more radical, extreme elements that are in -- in the coalition and would be pushing him to do and take more of an aggressive approach, which is something that he knows inside, even though these are members of his own government.
But he knows that that would be wrong for Israel.
So he wanted to try to contain things. He had no choice last night but to convene everyone, because of just the mere escalation and scale of what's happening on multiple fronts at the same time.
Violence in Jerusalem at the Temple Mount, violence in Gaza, violence now, rockets from Lebanon. I think that what he wants to try to do is keep things contained. He is trying to strike that balance.
Remember, this also comes at a tough time for Israel. We've had hundreds of thousands of people weekly protesting against the judicial reforms. We have lowering (ph) ties now with the United States.
Every place that Netanyahu's gone in Europe, he's been condemned, and his judicial reforms have been condemned. Israel is -- Israelis are concerned about a slip away from democracy. The country is divided like never before. This is not the moment in time to go to a larger conflict.
VAUSE: Just very quickly, you know, it's very easy to, you know, find causes and responses in this ongoing cycle of violence in the Middle East. But can you draw a direct line from the Israeli police raids on the Temple Mount at Haram al-Sharif at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and these rockets attacks coming in from Lebanon and Gaza?
KATZ: Look, John, that's the excuse that the Palestinian terrorist groups and maybe Hezbollah were using, but they don't need an excuse for why they want to fire rockets at Israel. Hezbollah has over 100,000 rockets in their territory that are pointed in our direction. All day, 24-7, 365 days a year. Same with Hamas in Gaza.
So whatever happened on the Temple Mount, I know that's still being investigated. The people barricaded inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They had fireworks. They were attacking. Who knows what was going to happen?
Should we have seen such violence by the police? Probably not. But they don't need an excuse. They have an excuse every single day, which is a desire to attack the state of Israel.
VAUSE: Yaakov, thanks so much for getting up early and being with us. We really appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
KATZ: Thank you.
VAUSE: Take care.
Well, a new round of nationwide protests in France against the government's pension reforms has escalated into clashes and scuffles with police on Thursday. The French interior minister says more than 150 police officers were hurt, some of them seriously.
Authorities detained more than 100 people.
Across the country, nearly 600,000 people attended protests. More demonstrations are planned for next week.
CNN's Nada Bashir has now the latest, reporting in from Paris.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NADA BASHIR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Heavy clashes in Paris on the 11th day of nationwide demonstrations. The protests quickly taking a violent turn. Demonstrators seen here throwing smoke bombs towards the capital's armored riot police.
[00:10:04]
In response, tear gas to disperse the crowds.
At one point, protestors targeted Cafe de La Rotonde, where French President Emmanuel Macron held celebrations during the 2017 election.
Union members and other protestors also stormed American investment firm Black Rock. Roughly 100 demonstrators entered the building, some wielding red flares and smoke bombs, targeting the financial center because of its connection to private pension funds.
The protest movement was sparked in January over the government's proposed pension reforms, which would see the national retirement age raised for many workers from 62 to 64. Though still below most other European nations, it's a move which has drawn fierce backlash.
SEVERINE TRICHET, CAREGIVER/PROTESTOR (through translator): I'm a caregiver. We cannot work until 64 with the people we accompany every day. We will be the same age at one point, so it's not possible, physically and psychologically.
BASHIR (voice-over): Last month, the French government bypassed its lower house and employed special constitutional powers to force the controversial legislation through without a vote.
France's constitutional council is expected to rule on the reform next Friday. But with talks between the government and union leaders falling apart, yet another protest has been scheduled for next week, with the potential for even more violence.
Nada Bashir, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: There has been condemnation from the U.S. president on down over the expulsion of two elected Democrat lawmakers from the Tennessee state house. Joe Biden said it was shocking and undemocratic.
The Republican-controlled legislature voted out Justin Pearson and Justin Jones but spared Gloria Johnson. Hmm.
They took part in a protest on the House floor last week against gun violence. That comes in the wake of a mass shooting which left six people dead. Republicans, though, say that act of protest violated House rules. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: As you can hear, spectators in the gallery erupted into chants of "Shame on you!" after the expulsions. Here's what the lawmakers had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUSTIN JONES (D), EXPELLED TENNESSEE LAWMAKER: What we're seeing is a very dangerous step in Tennessee. That should signal to the nation that this is -- if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.
JUSTIN PEARSON (D), EXPELLED TENNESSEE LAWMAKER: The status quo is not working. It's hurting people. It's killing people. And they're treating things like this as normal. We can never normalize the ending of democracy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gloria, should America be worried about what we've seen here today?
GLORIA JOHNSON (D), TENNESSEE STATE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE: America should absolutely be worried about what we've seen here today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: CNN's Gary Tuchman reports now from Nashville, Tennessee.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was a tumultuous day here on Thursday at the Tennessee state capital in Nashville: outside the capital and inside the capital.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): There were hundreds of protestors here, afraid at what might happen to three Democratic legislators. And indeed, what they feared did happen.
The Republican super majority in the House of Representatives voted to expel two of them. Those two representatives expelled were Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, accused of disorderly conduct after an incident last week.
A third member, Gloria Johnson, was also part of it. She survived by one vote. She's still in the legislature.
TUCHMAN: But those three legislators said they were not being acknowledged. They walked into the well of the House of Representatives last week and started talking about what they wanted to see with gun reform after the horrifying school shooting that happened here in Nashville. But they were declared out of order; they violated the rules.
Typically, in a legislature, or in Congress, or in a city council, if you violate the rules, you get a slap on the wrist, or maybe you're censured.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): But the decision was made to fire them, to expel them, despite the fact that they were elected in their districts by tens of thousands of voters. They are now gone.
When the decision was made for those two men to be expelled, people screamed and yelled. They actually had a die-in, where people were lying down in the halls of the legislature.
And when it all ended and when the representatives came out, there were Tennessee troopers separating the protestors from the legislators as they came out.
TUCHMAN: It was a wild day and a very unusual day in American politics.
This is Gary Tuchman, CNN, in Nashville, Tennessee. (END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Coming up here on CNN, could Xi Jinping have a new BFF maybe? Leaders of France and China meeting to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine.
Plus, Ukraine has new plans for the world's largest plane, which was badly damaged in the early days of the war.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:16:56]
VAUSE: European leaders are in Beijing, trying to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties with China.
French President Emmanuel Macron met with Xi Jinping on Thursday. Both leaders struck a deal on nuclear and wind energy. Also on the agenda, finding an end to the war in Ukraine.
During a meeting with Macron and the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, President Xi said his top priority is pushing for a ceasefire.
China has tried to frame itself as a peace maker. It's also refused to condemn Russia for the invasion. Macron, though, is hoping Xi may be able to put pressure, maybe reason with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT (through translator): The Russian aggression in Ukraine has dealt a blow to the stability. It ended decades of peace in Europe. I know I can count on you, moreover under the two principles I have just mentioned, to bring Russia to its senses and everyone to the negotiating table. And we will come back to this with detail, but we need to find a lasting peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The battle for Bakhmut now through the eyes of Ukraine's special forces. The Ukrainian military released this video, showing troops fighting house to house in damaged buildings.
Ukraine says it repelled about 10 new Russian attacks in Bakhmut in the past day or so but also says that it's grinding down Russian forces, ahead of an expected Ukrainian counter offensive.
Meanwhile, Ukraine says footage shows its forces destroying a Russian tank. You can see it right there, catching fire after being hit by some kind of munitions. Ukraine did not say when or where that happened.
A Ukraine aircraft producer wants to get the world's largest plane back in the sky. The Antonov 225 was a one-of-a-kind airplane which Ukraine built during the 1980s. It was an engineering marvel. That is, before it was destroyed in the early days of the war.
But as CNN's David McKenzie reports, Ukraine is not ready to give it up.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first hours of the war. Russian elite forces descending on Hostomel Airport outside Kyiv, their intended launch pad to the capital. It didn't work out.
Ukrainian forces famously pushed the Russians back. And they made a discovery at Hostomel. The pride of Ukraine, the remarkable AN-225, or Mriya cargo plane, gutted in the fighting.
CAPTAIN YEVHEN BASHYNSKY, PILOT: It was feeling like you are a part of something great.
MCKENZIE (voice-over): It's the first time pilot Yevhen Bashynsky has come back.
MCKENZIE: Yevhen, coming back here, it must be quite hard for you. What's the emotion like?
BASHYNSKY: It's -- it's very -- it's very hard to be here and to see all this -- situations. Destroyed plane, destroyed hangars. It's quite hard to see.
MCKENZIE (voice-over): The Ukrainian Antonov company says it wants to rebuild this one-of-a-kind giant, no matter what it takes.
Designer Valery Kastilok (ph) says they've already retrieved much of what they can use.
MCKENZIE: You can feel the extraordinary size of this plane inside the fuselage. Mriya was the heaviest plane in the world. It could carry up to 250 tons inside, or even on top.
[00:20:08]
MCKENZIE (voice-over): Designed to transport the Soviet-era Buran spacecraft, the Antonov company refurbished the Mriya multiple times. With six turbo fan engines, each with more than 15,000 pounds of thrust, and a 32-wheel landing gear system, the Mriya was a marvel. An outsized hit with plane spotters and aviation enthusiasts.
MCKENZIE: When you were flying this plane, so many people wanted to take photos of it, follow it.
BASHYNSKY: I was feeling a great responsibility, not only to operate this plane properly, correctly. But it was also great responsibility because you are attracting a lot of attention.
A few days after, you can open the YouTube and see, Oh, what have you done? MCKENZIE (voice-over): But to put Mriya back in the sky, the Antonov company says it could cost nearly a billion dollars and take years. But for Ukrainians, it's a point of pride.
David McKenzie, CNN, Kyiv, Ukraine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: The CEO of JPMorgan Chase says the banking crisis could reverberate through the wider U.S. economy, and the war in Ukraine could determine for how long.
Jamie Dimon spoke exclusively to CNN's Poppy Harlow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Has this banking crisis, even though you think it's almost over, which I'm really glad to hear, though, increased chances of a recession here?
JAMIE DIMON, CEO, JPMORGAN CHASE: Yes. But I look at it like it's not definitive. It's just, like, another weight on the scale.
HARLOW: OK.
DIMON: And think of it as, you know, people said it's like raising rates under 50 basis points or something like that. We are seeing people reduce lending a little bit, cut back a little bit, pull back a little bit.
It won't necessarily force a recession, but it is recessionary.
HARLOW: Storm clouds ahead? Maybe some, for the economy?
DIMON: Yes. Yes. I mentioned, the QT, higher inflation for longer, the war. Those are -- those are a pretty strong thing. And if you look at history since World War II, we've not kind of faced it like that.
It's still early in that. That war could go on for longer. We don't really know the outcome in QT. I think we'll be writing about QE and QT for 50 years.
HARLOW: Quantitative tightening, quantitative easing. OK.
DIMON: Quantitative tightening, quantitative easing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: The interview with Jamie Dimon will air Friday, CNN THIS MORNING, at 11 a.m. in London. That's noon, mid-day, in Berlin.
Coming up, Jordan's foreign minister speaking out, blaming the Israeli raids at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for triggering this latest round of violence in the Mideast.
Also ahead, why the White House is blaming Donald Trump for last year's chaotic pull-out from Afghanistan.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:25:08]
VAUSE: Welcome back to our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
In the past three hours, Israeli air strikes have targeted Hamas in both Lebanon and Gaza. Violence continues to escalate across the region since Israeli police twice raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during Ramadan prayers.
The strikes against Hamas come just hours after a barrage of rockets, nearly three dozen in all, were fired from Southern Lebanon towards Israel. The IDF says most, but not all, were intercepted.
The Israeli raids at the Al-Aqsa Mosque brought harsh criticism of Israel from across the Arab and Muslim world, including neighboring Jordan, which is custodian of the holy site.
CNN's Becky Anderson spoke with Jordan's foreign minister about the violence.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAFADI: We're unfortunately at the exact moment, dangerous moment which we've worked for months to avoid, which is a moment where violence is erupting.
What we see unfolding on the Lebanese border is obviously a consequence, a reaction to what we saw happening in Al-Aqsa. It is the outcome of the unprovoked Israeli aggression on peaceful worshippers performing their religious duty.
We are seeing -- it's almost deja vu -- what we've seen before. You cannot do the same thing and expect a different reaction. We always said that respecting Palestinians' right to freedom of worship; allowing people to worship freely and not storming Al-Aqsa will prevent us from getting to the eruption of violence.
Unfortunately, Israel did the exact opposite. And we are, as I said, at this very dangerous moment.
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. How concerned are you that this could seriously spiral out of control? After all, this is the largest such attack across the border since the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
SAFADI: Extremely concerned. The key, we've been warning, that if a spark is provided to the powder keg that already exists in Palestine, as the result of the absence of political horizon, the continued pressure on Palestinians, violence could spiral out of control. And what happens next really depends on what Israel does. If it stops its aggressions on worshippers, if it upholds the status quo, if it allows Palestinians, Muslim and Christians, to pray freely, then we'll -- we'll have calm. If it doesn't, then everything we've done over the past two months will be cannibalized by events on the ground.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: It was all Trump's fault. That seems to be the bottom line finding on why the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year was so chaotic.
A report summary released Thursday does not admit any mistakes. It says President Biden followed his military leaders' recommendations.
We get more now from CNN's Natasha Bertrand.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The White House said on Thursday that it would be transmitting to certain congressional committees a long-awaited after-action report, outlining lessons learned from the lead-up to the withdrawal in Afghanistan and, of course, the aftermath, as well as that Abby Gate bombing that took the lives of 13 U.S. service members as that very chaotic evacuation was taking place.
Now, this report is classified, and members of Congress are going to be able to read a hard copy of it. But they, of course, will not be able to disseminate it widely.
BERTRAND (voice-over): However, the White House is kind of getting out ahead of this, and they released their own summary of their perspectives of the lead-up to the withdrawal and the lessons that they believe the administration has learned since.
Namely, among those lessons, are the fact that they will now begin evacuations much sooner than they did with Afghanistan. They say that they delayed those evacuations, essentially, because they did not want the world to lose confidence in the Afghan government and for the Afghan government to collapse.
Now they say that they are prioritizing faster evacuations in there. Also, working more aggressively to communicate the risks to Americans who may be in these situations where the security environment is deteriorating very rapidly, as we saw with that rapid Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.
BERTRAND: So while the White House says that they will be taking these lessons learned and applying them elsewhere, they also were arguing very fervently that this was a bad hand that was dealt to them by the Trump administration.
And they say that everything that they did was really a reaction to deals that President Trump made with the Taliban that forced the Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan, reduce their presence there, and thereby leave the Afghan government and the Americans in-country a lot weaker.
That is the argument the White House is making. Obviously, this after- action report going to Congress. It will remain classified. But what it remains to be seen, of course, whether any of this will be made public.
For now, however, the administration really pointing the finger back at their predecessors.
[00:30:04]
Natasha Bertrand, CNN, at the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Just days after the indictment of Donald Trump comes what appears to be Republican payback. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wants to hear from a former senior prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office.
The notoriously partisan Republican Jim Jordan has subpoenaed Mark Pomerantz for his role in investigating Donald Trump and his business empire. This is the latest move by Republicans to frame Trump's indictment as politically motivated.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg fired back on Twitter, saying, "The House GOP continues to attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation."
Stormy Daniels, who's at the center of that hush-money case, says she absolutely wants to testify against Donald Trump if this case ever goes before a jury.
In a new interview with Talk TV's Piers Morgan, Daniels said that when she watched Trump in court on Tuesday, she felt, quote, "the king had been dethroned."
The former adult film star also lamented that violent threats against her have now become way more specific and graphic, allegedly by people no longer trying to hide who they are.
Still ahead here on CNN, singer/songwriter Jewel on the fight for better mental health care and how to teach yourself how to be happy.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: So how are you feeling today? A simple question. But an honest answer isn't so easy.
Earlier this week, the U.S. surgeon general warned of a mental health crisis facing teenagers and children. A crisis born of bullying, the harmful impact of social media, fallout from the isolation of the pandemic, and the ever-constant likelihood of being shot and killed.
Since 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death of children and teenagers in the U.S., a country which has recorded 130 mass shootings so far this year, and it's only April. And it's not just young people. A new study from the U.K. found that just before the second nationwide lockdown, people aged between 53 and 65 experienced their highest level of psychological distress ever in their lives.
A 2021 study from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, found a dramatic increase around the world in depression and anxiety.
[00:35:04]
Last year, Britain's National Health Service warned of a second pandemic of depression, anxiety, psychosis, and eating disorders.
The reality is that many of us, perhaps even most of us, are not fine. Instead, facing mental health issues which, for some bizarre reason, we still find difficult to talk about, even now in 2023.
Not so, singer-songwriter Jewel.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC: JEWEL, "WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL?")
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The first song she ever wrote, the 1996 hit, "Who Will Save Your Soul?", was about being responsible for her own happiness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC: JEWEL, "HANDS")
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Two years later came another hit, "Hands," written to overcome an urge to shoplift.
In a recent CNN op-ed, she writes this, "When my hands reached out to steal, or my fear of going hungry and homeless took hold, I learned to put pen to paper and write instead. It turns out that, yes, happiness is a learned skill --- a learnable skill. No matter our histories, we can all heal, grow and be high-performing people in healthy ways."
And for more now, joining us now is singer-songwriter Jewel.
Thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it.
JEWEL, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
VAUSE: So in your op-ed, you write about happiness being this learnable skill, by training your brain to behave differently, "starving old habits, while building new ones."
You know, that sounds pretty straight forward. It sounds kind of easy enough. But, you know, I've had treatment-resistant depression, so I can tell you, for a lot of people, it just isn't that simple. You need some kind of help out there, which often is not available.
JEWEL: It's so true. We're experiencing a bottleneck in the therapeutic industries, and I don't believe we're going to crawl out of this in the traditional way.
Many other platforms have enjoyed the advancements and innovations that technology provides. But psychology, actually, has been falling a bit behind. And as you noted in the beginning of this talk, there's a worldwide problem that we're having right now. And we're not really rising to meet that challenge.
And so, in everything I've been doing, I've been looking at how can we address more scalable solutions to help people.
VAUSE: And part of that was the result of you challenge -- forming a partnership with the former Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh. You were trying to build a company with him, quote, "aimed at creating the next frontier of corporate culture, one that would help deliver lasting happiness by offering mental health tools for the workplace."
And Tony died just over two years ago in a fire, but he struggled with mental health issues for a long time. How do you think he would have benefitted from, you know, some kind of mental health officer or strategic plan for mental health in the workplace?
JEWEL: Tony was really a visionary and saw the importance of investing in human capital and realizing that training an employee to do their job was actually the easy part.
Helping them with their stress load is actually where companies are currently losing over $1 trillion a year, just to mental health sick days. So this is a problem that everybody's looking at how do we address, and how can we address it in innovative ways that are truly impactful?
VAUSE: And you raise the idea of schools and businesses having a chief mental health officer or a strategic plan in place to deliver mental health, which will help those with, as you say, a rare talent "by not only helping them with the resources they need in school or at work to excel, but more importantly, the resources they need to be happy."
When it comes to treating mental health, the focus almost seems to be like triage. You know, treatment aimed at, you know, preventing suicide. There's not a lot of talk about being happy or even how to be happy.
JEWEL: It's true. You know, I think that, for me, I moved out at 15. I was raised in an abusive household. And I knew that moving out at 15 meant, statistically, things shouldn't work out well for me.
I knew that I had an emotional inheritance that would give me a predisposition to anxiety, depression, possibly addiction, abusive relationships. And I didn't want to be a statistic.
And that's why I set off on this mission to look at nature versus nurture and could I re-nurture myself? Did the amount of trauma that I experienced obscure my nature from me?
And so I set off with this sort of heady mission, and it's culminated into what now I feel like is my life's work of what do we do with pain? We're all in a lot of pain right now. Why aren't we taught what to do with it?
VAUSE: So you've learned the skills in how to deal with your trauma from the past and how to be happy now. Is it something you work at every day, or is it something which you've done and everything's great?
JEWEL: I think it's something I'll work on for the rest of my life. It's -- a switch has happened that I enjoy it now. I think it's a lot like working out, if that can be used as an example. You know, when you first start going to the gym, it doesn't feel fun. And it doesn't feel good to work out.
And then once you really build the habit and those lifestyle changes, you can't believe there was a time when you didn't work out.
So I've actually really learned to enjoy my mental health practices, to really enjoy building a lifestyle that I know leads to better outcomes of happiness.
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VAUSE: Is it just a lifestyle component to this, or do you actually, you know, support the use of antidepressants and medication, as well?
JEWEL: I'm supportive of whatever helps people in a healthy way that them and their doctors think is fit. You know, for me, I'm not a Ph.D. I'm not going to prescribe medications. What I can do is help on the behavioral side. And that's where I really developed my own tools.
And what we focus on in Innerworld is really making sure we support people wherever they're at. There's many people in Innerworld who are using medications. There's many people who aren't. There's people who are in therapy. There's people who don't have access to therapy.
Our job is to try and find a way that we can genuinely help people, teach them tools that will help them behaviorally in their lives.
VAUSE: And you're one of the founders of Innerworld. It's a virtual reality app which has this mental health support. And there's a focus, though, on cognitive behavioral therapy, right?
JEWEL: Yes. It's based on CBT and DBT, which are sort of these best- in-class behavioral tools to help people. But not everybody has access to them, because there just aren't enough therapists right now.
So we developed something called Cognitive Behavioral Immersion. It's our proprietary, kind of scalable technique. It's a form of psychological intervention that's been demonstrated to be effective with a range of problems, including depression and anxiety disorders.
VAUSE: Just very quickly, given the amount of sort of negative publicity or harm social media has had in actually causing depression and problems in young people, are you comfortable partnering with a social media platform?
JEWEL: Yes. I really believe this is a innovative and important step for mental health. We actually are a clinical research platform. We just actually got a grant from the National Institute of Health. So we're very rigorously studied. There's a ton of oversight, what we do.
And we actually did three years of beta testing with over 10,000 people prior to doing this. So we track our outcomes. We track clinical outcomes. We're here to help people create connection and all off those network effects.
VAUSE: Jewel, it's been a real pleasure speaking with you, and thank you for everything you're doing. It's -- I'm sure a lot of people out there are very appreciative, without even knowing the role you've been playing. So thank you.
JEWEL: Thank you. It was nice talking with you.
VAUSE: Likewise.
Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. My colleague -- and friend -- Michael Holmes picks up things about 15 minutes from now. In the meantime, stay with us. WORLD SPORT is next. Have a great weekend.
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