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Interview With Jena Griswold About Supreme Court Election Ruling; Trump, Haley Hit The Campaign Trail Ahead Of Super Tuesday; Israel Skips Cairo Talks, Cities Lack Of Hamas Response; VP Harris Calls For Immediate Ceasefire In Gaza; Experimental Brain Implants Helping ALS Patients; CNN's The Whole Story. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired March 03, 2024 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:01:29]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.
All eyes on the U.S. Supreme Court where tomorrow the justices could back it might look like, likely they're going to provide an answer on whether former president Donald Trump is eligible for Colorado's presidential ballot and therefore for other states that have raised this issue. The Constitution's 14th Amendment says that Americans who engage in insurrection are disqualified from holding future public office.
The Colorado State Supreme Court ruled this applies to Trump after his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, which then led to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. But the Constitution does not spell out exactly how to enforce that ban nor does it define what qualifies as insurrection, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court now to fill those gaps.
Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold joins us now.
Good to have you on tonight. I couldn't think of a better night to have you on given what Supreme Court watchers believe will hear tomorrow. It doesn't reveal ahead of time which opinion to expect, but there's a lot of analysis that given Super Tuesday is just 48 hours away, this will be what they decide on. What are you expecting?
JENA GRISWOLD, COLORADO SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, thanks for having me on, Jim. It's always great to join you. And I can tell you, I hope it's the decision and you're right, a lot of folks think that it will be the Colorado decision as to whether or not Trump has disqualified himself. I had hoped for this decision last week, the week before, because our ballots actually went out several weeks ago.
And over 400,000 ballots have already been returned for the Republican presidential primary. At the end of the day, Coloradans and Americans deserve to know as they go into Super Tuesday whether Trump is a qualified candidate or not.
SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this. You of course listened to the oral arguments last month where even the liberal justices seemed skeptical of the disqualification. So make the case here. Why do Donald Trump's actions and alleged crimes, why do they meet the standard, the 14th Amendment standard for disqualification?
GRISWOLD: Well, I think the Colorado Supreme Court got it right. Two courts in this country, both in Colorado, have looked at the question of whether Trump engaged in insurrection. They both determined that he did. And from my perspective, it's clear as day what he did. He incited that violent mob to try to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential authority. And when it comes down to it, I do not believe that the president should be above the law or above the Constitution. That's what Trump consistently argues.
Section Three of the 14th Amendment has clear language. If someone swears to uphold the Constitution and then engages in insurrection, they're disqualified. Again, I think the Colorado Supreme Court got it right. Oath-breaking insurrectionists should not appear on a state's ballot if that state determines to disqualify those candidates. But just like you we'll see what the Supreme Court says hopefully tomorrow.
SCIUTTO: How do you believe the Supreme Court will decide on this question?
GRISWOLD: I think there's a lot of commentary about the Supreme Court's questions during oral arguments. From my perspective, Section Three of the 14th Amendment is clear and its intention in the Constitution is a realization that insurrectionists in office can try to destroy democracy from within.
[19:05:03]
So I hope for a specific position. Colorado argued that oath-breaking insurrectionists should be able to be excluded from our ballot. But at the end of the day, Jim, whether Trump is disqualified, qualified, whether he's on ballot across the United States or not, Americans will be able to save our democracy at the ballot box in November.
SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this because beyond the questions about whether this meets the standard, what is an insurrection, et cetera, was the question of states deciding on a national election? And that even gets to what a justice such as Elena Kagan, that was the central question she asked as she pressed lawyers during oral arguments. What's your answer to that question?
GRISWOLD: Well, states all the time determine whether or not candidates are on or off the ballot, including in national races. Even in this presidential primary, there are candidates who have been determined disqualified in some states and so they're not on the ballot, but they're on the ballot in other states. So that's exactly how it already works in the United States and it's worked for over 100 years, at the least with election administration.
And earlier, you mentioned the question of, well, what is an insurrection. I believe that the United States Supreme Court can clearly define what an insurrection is. In this case, there was a five-day trial going after that exact question. Evidence was presented. Witnesses were called from both sides, and then the Colorado Supreme Court looked at that question again. So all these terms are able to be defined if the court chooses to go down the road under, I guess, allowing states to do what we many of us believe is already within our authority executing the Constitution, protecting our ballots and our democracy from oath breakers.
SCIUTTO: There have been public questions about partisanship on this Supreme Court, and I wonder, do you expect the Supreme Court, as it's currently composed, to answer this question without partisanship and fairly?
GRISWOLD: Again, what I can say is the American people will be in a great position to save democracy in November. This court has had several major issues to say the least. It has rolled back protections on voting rights, on women's rights, and ultimately, we'll see. This is a nation of laws and courts. I of course will follow whatever the Supreme Court decides but we have to dig into their decision when it comes down hopefully tomorrow to see exactly what path they go down and what authority is reserved to the states versus other actors like Congress.
SCIUTTO: We'll reach out to you after we have their decision. Jena Griswold, we appreciate you joining us tonight.
GRISWOLD: Thank you.
SCIUTTO: Well, the remaining presidential candidates are gearing up for a critical week with more than a dozen states holding primaries on what we call Super Tuesday as Nikki Haley is hedging on her promise now to support Donald Trump if he were to win the nomination, while President Biden works to fight off concerns among some Democrats, particularly after recent polling. We're going to take a deeper dive.
You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:13:10]
SCIUTTO: This week's high stakes, high drama in the political world. On Tuesday, voters could effectively deliver the final verdict on the Republican campaign when a huge number of Americans go to the polls for Super Tuesday. Then on Thursday, President Biden, he'll deliver the State of the Union address to make his case for why he should lead the country for the next four years, despite seeing some bad polls recently.
Here with us to break it down, our pair of political strategists, Democrat Maria Cardona, Republican Alice Stewart.
Good to have you both on.
So, Maria, I'll go to you first because you got a lot of concern about that "New York Times" poll over the weekend showing Biden not just behind Trump but also weak on things like enthusiasm among Democratic voters and a decent percentage of Democratic voters who wish there was another option. Does it worry you?
MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, it worries me. And yes, it should worry the campaign. I always say that the only way to win is if you're unopposed or if you run scared. So they should be concerned. But look, this poll had a lot of flaws in it, and I have to point out a couple. The first one is that it over represents Republicans and conservatives. The second one, which I think is huge, is that there -- I guarantee you, Jim, there is zero chance that Latinos are up for Trump as opposed to Biden.
SCIUTTO: Doesn't need to be most, though. Just has to be some, right?
CARDONA: I guarantee you there is zero chance that Trump is beating Biden with Latinos. And I will tell you why, specifically the flaw in this poll. In order to poll correctly for Latinos, you have to have at least 35 percent of the interviews done in Spanish. This poll had 3 percent interviews in Spanish.
SCIUTTO: Interesting.
CARDONA: Completely skewed. But let's not fight the polls. Let's have this campaign fight for voters, and that's exactly what they're going to do. And so moving forward, the message continues to be democracy, rights and freedoms. What this existential threat is if Donald Trump gets to the Oval Office, that will continue to be the contrast.
[19:15:04]
And when every single Democrat really starts to tune in and understand that that is the consequential choice, I believe Biden will come out on top.
SCIUTTO: That's the point Tom Suozzi, Democratic congressman, made to me earlier. Tell me, though, as a Republican looking at these numbers and I know Republican who does not love Trump as the option to lead America again, do you look at these numbers and say, well, Republicans got the advantage?
ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It does look good, and I applaud my friend Maria for acknowledging that this is not ideal, but we saw in "The New York Times" yesterday key Democrats saying the level of freak out in the Democratic Party is at an all-time high and it's not just the "New York Times"-Sienna poll that shows Trump behind or ahead of Biden by five points.
Look at our CNN Poll of Polls, which is a culmination of six recent polls that still shows Donald Trump up to.
SCIUTTO: Right.
STEWART: That shows that this is not just a snapshot in time. This is a trend where Donald Trump is edging out Joe Biden. Granted it is within the margin of error, but I would rather be two points ahead than two points below.
SCIUTTO: So let me ask your question because you got polls and then you have votes, and we've had a series of votes. We had a special election in New York three short time ago, because you had to go back to the midterms in 2022 when there's supposed to be a red wave, didn't happen. Other special elections where Democrats have looked stronger. And I talked to a guy like Tom Suozzi, that was of course George Santos' his district. So it had some problems in it, but that was plus eight for George Santos about 14 months ago and it was plus eight for a Democrat here.
That's a 16-point swing in that district. So when you look at, and I know by the way, again with the proviso that some number crunchers say specials aren't indicative of actual cycle elections, do you think they are? Do you think what we've seen recently going all the way back to the midterms tell you a different story?
CARDONA: With all respect to those number crunchers, how is it that they can put more faith in a poll of less than 1,000 people than actual real votes of real Americans voting for real people? That's just insane. And to again give an example of how off polls can be this same poll was the one that was predicting the red wave in the midterm elections.
SCIUTTO: Interesting.
CARDONA: A week and a half ago, the Quinnipiac poll had Biden up by five. So, again, polls, I think, especially this time around, it's not that they don't mean anything, but they don't mean everything. And let me talk to a little bit about enthusiasm. Enthusiasm can really be measured by when people invest their own money in the party or in the campaign. The Biden campaign just announced a record haul for presidential candidate at this moment in time in their reelection.
They have $132 million cash on hand. 97 percent of their donors came from donors who were giving less than $200. Donald Trump and the RNC are sucking wind when it comes to cash.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
CARDONA: So when you look at enthusiasm, I say the real measure is if you have somebody who's going to give up their own hard-earned money to a candidate --
SCIUTTO: Money where your mouth is, right?
CARDONA: Exactly. So that's why I think Democrats feel good about where we are. But again, work hard. No question. Democrats still have to bring home the coalition. All the advantage right now in terms of mobilization and energy and focus is on the Republican side because they're willing to have a primary.
SCIUTTO: OK. So do you -- I mean, do you see warning signs for Republicans in those skewed fundraising figures? I mean, there's also data that shows Republican donors don't love to give money that he then uses to defend himself in court.
STEWART: Right. Yes.
CARDONA: Exactly.
STEWART: The mounting legal costs are a concern, but people -- Republicans are continuing to give money to him knowing that part of that is going to cover his legal fees. But look, money is one thing, but momentum and enthusiasm is another and we're seeing poll after poll show that more people have enthusiasm. And Donald Trump's base is more enthusiastic for him than Joe Biden.
And another concern is a lot of these polls show that when you ask them what -- whose policies help you more, is it Joe Biden's policies or Donald Trump's policies, and they say repeatedly, Donald Trump's policies have helped them personally more than Joe Biden's. And you look at the key the issues for the American people in this election, it is the economy, it is immigration and abortion.
And look, Donald Trump has it a good amount of will and support when it comes to the economy and immigration. The abortion issue, I will acknowledge that is going to be a hindrance.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
STEWART: In the general election, but --
SCIUTTO: Now IVF is in play. OK, so just --
CARDONA: Exactly.
SCIUTTO: Just quickly because I don't have much time, but you've got the State of the Union speech, Biden. One thing Biden has to do and then one thing you think Biden has to do, but I'll start with the Democrats.
CARDONA: I think Biden has to bring it all together, focus on his accomplishments with which are record accomplishments to continue to tie the great things that he has done to the economy so that he will get credit and that is starting to happen in polls and in focus groups slowly. He also has to lay out his vision, his vision about what he will do for another four years and critical to that is the contrast.
He will continue to focus on our democracy, protecting our democracy, protecting rights and freedoms, reproductive rights will be huge even on immigration.
SCIUTTO: OK.
CARDONA: He's going to flip the script on Republicans.
SCIUTTO: Does he have to show himself, Alice Stewart, to be an energetic, humorous, sharp as attack guy as well?
[19:20:05]
STEWART: Absolutely. And that's almost as important as the policies. Him going out there showing them in bigger -- in prime time is critical to conveying to people, look, I have the stamina to do the job. Many people might question that, but I have the stamina to do the job. And with regard to policies, look, he has not fared well when it comes to the economy and immigration.
What he has to do Thursday night is show, here's what I'm going to do to turn things around in these two key areas that are top of mind for voters because he hasn't delivered so far and he needs to show how he's going to turn it around.
SCIUTTO: All right. We've got a lot to watch this week. Tuesday, Thursday, Supreme Court decision tomorrow.
Maria Cardona, Alice Stewart, thanks so much.
CARDONA: Thank you.
SCIUTTO: And CNN will have special coverage, of course, of Super Tuesday. It starts at 6:00 p.m. following the races taking place and how they play into the race for the White House. You can watch on CNN and of course streaming on Max.
Well, Vice President Harris made a strong and urgent call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Strong words, we're going to discuss next in CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:25:26]
SCIUTTO: Vice President Kamala Harris is calling for, in her words, an immediate ceasefire in Gaza today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The threat of Hamas poses to the people of Israel must be eliminated, and given the elements scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Haven't heard that in that clarity, in those terms from the White House today. They're especially notable considering there now seemed to be daylight between White House and Israeli officials as well on a possible ceasefire-hostage exchange deal. Senior U.S. officials said yesterday Israel has, quote, "basically agreed" to a deal. Today Israeli diplomats, they skip further talks in Cairo accusing Hamas of failing to respond to two of Israel's major demands in those negotiations.
Jeremy Diamond has more from Tel Aviv.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo earlier today to pursue negotiations to try and strike a deal that could see a six-week pause in the fighting. But Israel deciding on Sunday not to send a delegation to Cairo and Israeli official telling us that it's because Hamas has refused to provide a list so far of the Israeli hostages who would be released under this first phase of the agreement. They are also waiting for confirmation from Hamas of the number of
Palestinian prisoners that they would demand be released from Israeli prisons in exchange for those Israeli hostages Israel and the United States say that its mainly that issue of the lack of detail about the types of Israeli hostages who would be released that is the sticking point preventing negotiations for moving forward.
But Hamas sees it differently. A senior Hamas source telling us that they see the sticking points as Israel refusing so far to agree to a pathway for a permanent ceasefire. Questions about the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. And also this question of the return of displaced Palestinians back to northern Gaza. But amid all of these negotiations, the back-and-forth, the questions about the progress were also getting a clearer picture of the dire humanitarian situation inside of Gaza, particularly in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health saying on Sunday that 15 children have now died of malnutrition and dehydration, several of those in just the last few days. In (INAUDIBLE) Hospital in northern Gaza says that they fear for the lives of six more children, say that they could also soon face the same fate if urgent action is not taken to change the picture.
Now, multiple countries, including the United States working to increase the amount of aid getting into Gaza. We saw the U.S. yesterday carrying out airdrops, 66 bundles of aid containing 38,000 meals dropped from three different U.S. military aircraft yesterday alone. That may sound like a lot. It's really a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous humanitarian need in Gaza right now.
Those airdrops, they are costly. They are inefficient. What humanitarian officials say is needed is getting more aid in by land. Hundreds of trucks needed to get directly into the Gaza Strip. They say this is a manmade disaster and that Israel needs to do more to allow more aid in -- Jim.
SCIUTTO: Jeremy Diamond, thanks so much.
To discuss this and more, including negotiations, joining me now CNN military analyst, Colonel Cedric Leighton.
Let's begin if we can first with Vice President Kamala Harris' comments there. Immediate ceasefire. I mean, I know she was saying that in the context of the negotiations involving a hostage exchange, but it's not far off the language of U.N. resolutions that today the U.S. has vetoed.
COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, that's very interesting, Jim.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
LEIGHTON: It's definitely a change in language from the administration and I'm sure that Vice President Harris didn't say this on her own. This is now a concerted administration policy to get the Israelis to some kind of a ceasefire, or at least a cessation of hostilities on a temporary basis in Gaza. And that I think is going to really change the way in which the United States is approaching things.
There's obviously a political imperative for President Biden, he needs to shore up his support among Arab-Americans. He also needs to shore up his support among people who are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in general. And he also needs to frankly be in a position where he can deal with other leaders, for example, European leaders, in a way that they will then leverage the Arab side as we leveraged the Israeli side.
SCIUTTO: I want to show this picture again of how the U.S. airdropped aid in and by the way, I mean, look at this. This is direly needed aid, dropping in the surf there and you know, best of intentions, I imagine people swarming the beach to get at it here.
[19:30:17]
Is that the best way to get aid there? And why does this happen with a close US ally, Israel, that this is the only way they can get aid in?
LEIGHTON: Yes, this is a really difficult situation because from a logistical standpoint, this is one way of getting things in, but the best way of getting aid in is over land,. using trucks, using vehicles, or at the very least being able to land aircraft in Gaza or near Gaza and then transporting things into Gaza itself.
This is at best, a stop gap measure. It is effective for a limited population. Airdrops like this are normally designed to resupply military units, you know, think of the Battle of Khe Sanh in the Vietnam War, airdrops were very effective there.
We, of course have another example being the Berlin airlift that was--
SCIUTTO: We landed the planes.
LEIGHTON: They landed the planes in Berlin to make that happen back in 1948 and that is the kind of thing that the US does very, very well, but it is not going to alleviate -- completely alleviate the hunger of over two million people.
SCIUTTO: Let's talk about Ukraine now. I mean, outright, I mean, the US is abandoning Ukraine at one of the toughest parts of its war. It stopped military aid to them and it has consequences. I've spoken to Ukrainian military commanders, short of ammunition, it is costing lives on the ground.
They're short of key air missile defense ammunition at a time when Russia continues to deliberately pound Ukrainian civilian targets here.
The Speaker of the House, who has really blocked this, bringing it to a vote on the floor where there is support for this now says, well, he will allow negotiators to work on something. Do you buy that this is a path forward?
LEIGHTON: I would like to believe it is a path forward, but frankly, I have my doubts about the speaker's sincerity in this particular case, and the reason I am very concerned about this is that the speaker seems to have forgotten history. He seems to have forgotten how important it is for countries to aid countries that are fighting for their freedom.
And if we step back from this, we are giving Putin a major win. We need to remember that in our past, in our history the French aided us, for example, in the American Revolution and they did it at the most dangerous time for us, we almost lost that war. People don't realize, they don't think about that. The Ukrainians had an even better chance to, at least when, or at least make it a much more even contest with American aid.
Now, we are pulling that away from them, and if we don't provide aid to them, it is like pulling out the rug from under them and that's really the most dangerous situation because now, not only is there going to be a consequence on the battlefield, but there could be significant political and diplomatic consequences for not only Ukraine, but also for Europe.
SCIUTTO: US allies in Europe and Russia is already talking about their next target, which is to slice off a piece of Moldova, Transnistria folks at home might say, well, where is that? It is a piece of a sovereign nation there that Russia is saying, oh, they need our help, which is very much the way they talked about Ukraine prior to this bloody invasion.
LEIGHTON: Exactly, especially in the Donbas region of Ukraine. So the Donbas was in the east, Crimea in the south, and Moldova, Transnistria, the part that the Russians have occupied is in the West Southwest of Ukraine.
In essence, what they're doing is they're surrounding Ukraine or at least have the possibility of surrounding Ukraine. Now, they are only supposedly about 1,500 Russian troops in Transnistria, but if they leverage those troops and can use them as a diversionary tactic, or can invade even part of Ukrainian territory from that area, that would present significant problems for the Ukrainian regime and that would be a real, real disaster.
SCIUTTO: And right on the border of NATO ally, Poland as well.
LEIGHTON: And Romania.
SCIUTTO: Cedric Leighton, thanks so much.
LEIGHTON: You betcha.
SCIUTTO: Ahead in the NEWSROOM, we are taking you inside groundbreaking new technology that is helping patients who have lost their ability to move rebuild their brain to body connection.
[19:39:02]
SCIUTTO: Imagine being able to control your computer or smartphone just by using your mind. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but for one ALS patient, it has become a reality. His name is Mark and he sat down with our colleague, Sanjay Gupta to
demonstrate how a brain implant is now helping him reclaim his life. Have a look up.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Up, down left, right -- everything you are watching happen on this screen right now is being controlled only with Mark's thoughts.
GUPTA (on camera): So that just sent out a health notification.
MARK, STENTRODE PATIENT: Uh-huh.
GUPTA (voice over): He describes it as contracting and then relaxing his brain.
MARK: It takes concentration. It's a pretty involved process. It is one I don't take lightly.
GUPTA (voice over): This has all been pretty sudden for Mark. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2021. Mark has since lost control of his hands and arms. He would likely lose his voice.
Mark didn't hesitate to sign up for a clinical trial to have this placed in his brain.
[19:40:10]
It's called a stentrode.
MARK: The one thing about this disease is it affects your physical, but not the mind. To me, it gives me the opportunity to be able to continue to do things that I'm able to do now, just by thinking about it.
GUPTA (voice over): In the world of brain-computer interfaces or BCIs, it is still early days. In fact, up until recently, it's mostly led to monkeys being able to play pong. But Synchron was one of the first companies in the world to get FDA approval for human trials and Mark is one of those first humans.
It's all the brainchild of this man, Dr. Tom Oxley.
DR. TOM OXLEY, CEO, SYNCHRON: Text messaging is a really critical element of how we communicate with their family and friends now. So that's usually what people mostly want back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So then that will text the server --
GUPTA (on camera): So you just sent a text?
MARK: I did.
GUPTA: That's pretty cool.
MARK: Very simple. Yes. Pretty cool.
GUPTA (voice over): Dr. Oxley is a neurologist who first started thinking about the possibility of brain implants while in his native Australia.
OXLEY: For people who have got paralysis or motor impairment, but they have that part of the brains still working, then if you can put a device in, get the information, get it out of the brain then you can turn what previously was a signal controlling your body into a single that controls the digital devices.
GUPTA (voice over): The stentrode is the device that Oxley and his team at Synchron created. It's a cage of thin wire mesh with electrode sensors that can detect the electrical brain activity translate that activity, and then transmit it to devices such as a phone or a computer.
MARK: It's amazing. It's all I can say.
GUPTA (voice over): And just like a stent, it doesn't require open brain surgery. Instead, it's able to travel through the body's natural network of veins and sit in a major vein, right in the middle of the brain.
OXLEY: This is the actual deployment now.
GUPTA (voice over): I even tried my own hand at implanting one.
OXLEY: Keep pushing out the stent, nice and slow. Keep going. There we go. So that's deployed on top of the brain inside the blood vessel.
GUPTA (on camera): I think the procedure went well.
OXLEY: It went well. It was your first attempt. No practice. And you landed it perfectly.
GUPTA (voice over): The procedure is minimally invasive and you can't see the device just by looking. The stentrode is threaded up through a vessel along the neck.
GUPTA (on camera): Right here you can feel a little cable, that's actually connecting that stent to a device that now sits right underneath the skin here.
And it's from there, signals are sent out that can help him control these devices in his environment.
GUPTA (voice over): Our brains have billions of neurons firing electrical impulses that control our movements, everything from shaking hands to taking a step. Each and every one of those actions is associated with a specific electrical signature.
The stentrode, which again sits right here around that area of the brain responsible for movement, learns to recognize those specific electrical patterns and essentially creates your own personalized dictionary of movement. GUPTA (on camera): What can a BCI not do?
OXLEY: One myth for BCI is that it can read your thoughts. I mean, there's 80 billion neurons in the brain and you'd have to be watching all of them to have some sense of the complexity that's going on inside the brain.
Basically, it would just take a snapshot of particular domains of function.
GUPTA: And so, what we're looking at on Mark's angiogram here, this is the actual stentrode.
GUPTA (voice over): Dr. Raul Nogueira implanted the stentrode into Mark's brain.
DR. RAUL NOGUEIRA, ENDOWED PROF. OF NEUROLOGY & NEUROSURGERY, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: If you really want to cure a problem like paralysis, you really need to specifically read the signals from your motor cortex from the center of movement in the brain.
GUPTA (voice over): Previous generation BCIs tried to measure brain activity from outside the skull, but newer generation BCIs, including the one from Elon Musk's Neuralink attempt to sit right on top of the brain. The stentrode is sort of in-between.
NOGUEIRA: I'd like to make this comparison of going through a concert or a symphony.
GUPTA (voice over): Listen to the brain outside of the skull for a concert hall. And the music sounds garbled, difficult to hear. If you're too close, you only hear one instrument but by sitting in the center of the brain, like the stentrode does, you can hear the entire symphony more clearly.
NOGUEIRA: My hope is that in the next five to ten years, you're going to see this in the patient setting.
GUPTA (voice over): It's a hope for patients of the future and a chance for Mark to continue living a full life now.
GUPTA (on camera): Ten out of 10.
MARK: Woohoo!
GUPTA: Nice.
MARK: Ready for a tournament.
GUPTA: The brain control interface, pong tournament.
MARK: Exactly.
GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Pittsburgh.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[19:45:08]
SCIUTTO: It's a great story. A lot of hope there.
Well, hundreds gathered in Selma, Alabama to honor the 59 years that have passed since a brutal attack on Civil Rights demonstrators there, the fight still remains. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:50:06]
SCIUTTO: Tonight on "The Whole Story" with Anderson Cooper, we are delving deep into the heart of Tennessee politics ahead of Super Tuesday.
CNN commentator Van Jones takes us on a journey back to his own roots in the Volunteer State to unravel a dramatic shift in its political landscape. Here's a sneak peek at this week's episode "What Happened in Tennessee: The Battle of Blue and Red."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Democrats become Republicans, counties that have gone blue for Obama suddenly become red.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Absolutely. That's 2010.
JONES: That's the worst year for y'all to get whooped. Because then they got a chance to redistrict. That gave the Republicans the power to gerrymander everything, correct?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct.
JONES: Did they use that power?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They used it.
JONES: Did they abuse it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They abused it with surgical precision.
REPORTER: Tuesday night's results were decidedly Republican.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a paradigm shift in our state.
REPORTER: Republicans now have a super two-thirds majority in the House and Senate.
JAKE GRUMBACH, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UC-BERKELEY, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY: And in this moment, they start taking increasingly conservative policy changes around all sorts of policy areas. Guns, health care, abortion, but especially when it comes to democratic institutions like voting rights and districting. What happens in Tennessee is going to happen in nearly any red
controlled state after this time period, but Tennessee is really leading the charge in many ways.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Van Jones joins us now and Van, in there was that shift, right? From folks who voted for Obama who then switched to Trump, I've got some own personal experience of this because my dad did. He voted for Obama in 2008, Trump in 2016. What was behind that? Because of course that relates to what we are looking at in November this year.
JONES: Yes, well, I mean, it is amazing to go back home. I was born and raised in Tennessee. I actually got my start in the Tennessee State Legislature as an intern in 1989. That's a beautiful building still, but it is a lot uglier on the inside now because of the incredible division.
And I think what happened is that people forget the Tea Party. But in 2010, that wave gave a bunch of southern states one party control, and Tennessee in particular decide to gerrymander it so badly that even blue cities like Nashville don't have representation in Congress or any place else.
And so it has just left Republicans to fight among themselves as to who can be the most right-wing and it is completely shut out of the ability for Democrats to have even a voice in the State Legislature and for blue cities to self-govern. Blue cities are now being dictated to by the State Legislature. It is pretty shocking to see.
SCIUTTO: Let me ask you, there has been some talk that Democrats figured this out, right? And they've spent more resources, more attention on State Legislatures and you've seen some success. I mean, you look at the state like Virginia, although not nearly deep read like Tennessee. Is that true? Have they done a better job of trying to win some of those statehouses back?
JONES: They're trying to, in which you see on the special here in ten minutes that these young guys, the so-called Two Justins -- Justin Pearson and Justin Jones fighting that fight and fighting that battle, and really reminding everybody of the young John Lewis and the things that they talk about is very, very inspiring.
You also, in our specialty, you see the grassroots on the other side in what they see as a battle. So we really got under the hood and got into the grassroots on both sides. It is fascinating story of a state that has gone completely one-party rule and what that means.
SCIUTTO: Pearson got into the national conversation when he was expelled by the legislature there. Did that backfire on State Republicans?
JONES: Well, it did briefly, but I will tell you what, they've now -- they are trying to figure out a way because they basically expelled the young men in the city council then their respective cities, Nashville and Memphis, blue cities sent them right back. And so now, they're trying to change the law so if they throw them out
again, they can't come back. There seems to be no abuse of power. The super majority isn't willing to contemplate, but there is a growing backlash at the grassroots level.
SCIUTTO: So you have moves like this designed to disenfranchise and empower Republicans via State Legislatures. Then you have a broader talk about support for Democrats bleeding away among African-American voters. You see some of that in polling as relates to President Biden, and I wonder, do you see that as a significant, if not shift, at least loss of Democratic support nationally?
JONES: Well, yes, I do. And I think people should take it seriously. You have a 50/50 country at least effectively when it comes to the presidential election. And if you lose any votes on either side, that can throw the whole election.
And so having Black men and other men of color who are in the working class primarily beginning to drift away, if Democrats can pick that back up with abortion and female voters, it could become a really big problem.
[19:55:02]
SCIUTTO: Yes, and then as you say here, the focus really on using those super majorities to enact rules to make it more difficult really to lose power, is it not?
JONES: Yes, they paint themselves into power for a long time it looks like, but I'll tell you, the thing that I got a chance to see up close and personal, how people are dealing with all of these changes and how they are trying to fight back.
SCIUTTO: No question. Of course, it is your home state, so its personal as well.
Van Jones, thanks so much. Look forward to watching it tonight.
Please be sure to tune in, an all-new episode of "The Whole Story" with Anderson Cooper. That's coming up next.
Thanks so much to all of you for joining me this Sunday evening. I wish you a good weekend. I'm Jim Sciutto
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