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CNN's Firsthand Look inside Ukraine's Second Most Populous City; Trump's Lawyers Hammered Ex-Fixer Cohen; Encampments in Washington D.C. Are Being Cleared Out as Homelessness Continues to Rise; Canada Wildfires Force Evacuations & Threaten Neighborhoods; House Committees Advance Contempt Proceedings Against Garland. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired May 17, 2024 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[02:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to all of you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is "CNN Newsroom".
Russia makes inroads near Ukraine's second most populous city. CNN is on the ground as civilians try to escape to safety.
Pitiful day in Donald Trump's hush money trial. His lawyers hammering Michael Cohen, suggesting his lies under oath.
And Canada battles more than 100 blazes across the country, an early start to the wildfire season made worse by climate change.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom" with Kim Brunhuber.
BRUNHUBER: Ukraine is generally getting things under control in northern Kharkiv, but the situation is still extremely difficult. That's according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who went there on Thursday, just days after Russia launched a cross-border offensive into northern Ukraine, capturing at least nine villages so far.
Local military officials say the Russian advance has been stopped in some areas, but Ukraine is still trying to hold the line in the town of Vyshchansk, where things are, troops are trying to clear Russian forces from the streets.
The town is about 60 kilometers from Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city. Despite Moscow's early gains, NATO believes the Russian offensive will eventually run out of steam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTOPHER CAVOLI, NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE: No, the Russians don't have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough. We don't believe more to the point, they don't have the skill and the capability to do it, to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUBER: Civilians in Vovchansk are desperately trying to flee as Russian forces close in. As CNN's Nick Payton-Walsh saw firsthand, they have to dodge drones and artillery fire to find their way out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON-WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When nightmares recur, they're often the same. Here they get worse.
The border town of Vovchansk, bearing the blunt horror of Moscow's race to take as much as they can in the weeks before Ukraine starts feeling American military help again.
Every street aflame, Russians deeper inside the town.
Policeman Maxim is answering one of 35 calls from locals on Thursday to evacuate. The day before, three colleagues were injured. The shelling never stops.
MAXIM, POLICE OFFICER (translated): Quiet! Everybody get down.
PATON WALSH: Three people still coming out, and you have to imagine quite how desperate for these final people the situation must be to leave.
PATON WALSH (voice-over): Mikola and his wife hiding in their basement, but despite staying through the first Russian occupation and then liberation two years ago, they found the airstrikes last night just too much.
They're joined by Maria, their mother, who can't hear the shelling or anything too well.
Thousands evacuated since Russia invaded again around here five days ago.
Why everyone has to leave is clear again as we drive out, as it is with almost every part of Ukraine Russia covets, just utter destruction, little left to rule over.
This is their first moment of calm in many days, entire lives in plastic bags.
PATON WALSH: She's saying it wasn't like last night, it was scary and everyone else was talking about significant bombardment, more that it was just better to get out of there at 85.
PATON WALSH (voice-over): An armored ride to a new world, knowing they may never get back to their homes, tormented for days by shelling.
MARIA, MIKOLA'S MOTHER (translated): Aerial bombs, everything. And mortars. UNKNOWN (translated): Did you see the Russian soldiers?
MARIA: No. They are over there on the other side of the river, and we were on this side. They were shooting close to us. Firing machine guns and everything.
PATON WALSH (voice-over): We head back in with another police unit who soon learn two of the houses they must rescue from are impossible to reach.
[02:05:00]
As we wait, they hear a buzzing noise.
PATON WALSH: They think they can hear a drone here, it's so hard to tell with the wind and the trees and the artillery, but that's a constant threat for them now.
PATON WALSH (voice-over): Then our security advisor spots it. They raise their weapons, but will firing make them more of a target?
Three drones, one large one that hovers and two small ones whizzing about, exposed, powerless. If we run for cover, they might come for us. All we can do is hide in the trees and hope that if we are seen, the Russians instead have a better target in mind. But they come right overhead.
That noise, either the sound of death or someone deciding you're not worth their payload.
We decide to leave, but again, we cannot travel fast enough to escape the drones, only expose ourselves and pray they lose interest.
Perhaps they did, we'll never know, but behind us, Ukraine is aflame again, because however the West's interest in this war wanes, Putin's burns brighter than ever.
Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Vovchansk, Ukraine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: And we're getting our first glimpse of the damage from Ukrainian strikes on a Russian air base in Crimea. The Belbek base was hit twice in the span of 48 hours this week. These satellite images obtained exclusively by CNN show at least three Russian fighter jets destroyed along with an adjacent building. Russia claimed that it prevented a large Ukrainian strike on Tuesday, while Ukraine says it's not ready to announce any details yet.
Well as Moscow's troops advance in parts of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the war with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday. According to China's foreign ministry, Xi told Putin during the meeting that China supports an international peace conference to end the Ukraine crisis. The Ukrainian peace summit is expected to take place in Switzerland next month. Now during their talks, the two leaders pledged to deepen their
strategic partnership even as friction grows with the U.S. and other Western nations. CNN's Kristie Lu Stout joins me now from Hong Kong. So Kristie, their friendship was on display yesterday. What are we expecting to see today?
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, today Vladimir Putin is in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, where the deepening relationship between these two countries, Russia and China, is again in focus.
Now, Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang province, which is right up on the border with Russia. And earlier there, Putin laid a wreath at the Monument to Soviet Soldiers, and he also already attended a Russian-Chinese expo in Harbin. We also learned that he has been meeting with the Chinese Vice President Han Jiang.
And Putin, while in this city, will also soon be interacting with students at the Harbin Institute of Technology. Now, this is a university that was sanctioned by the U.S. a couple of years ago for its alleged role in procurement for the Chinese military. So, and let's point out, this is a very significant choice. It's highly symbolic. It symbolizes solidarity against U.S. sanctions, as well as access to Chinese military technology.
Now, on Thursday, Putin and Xi, they issued that sweeping 7,000-word joint statement to declare this new era partnership.
In this statement, it said that relations between the two are, quote, "the best period in their history". And this statement also laid out how Russia and China are on the same page on a host of issues, from trade to Taiwan, Ukraine as well. In this statement, they also had pointed words about the United States. Let's bring up an example for you. It said this, quote, "both sides will strengthen coordination and cooperation to deal with the so-called dual containment policy of the United States that is nonconstructive and hostile toward China and Russia", unquote.
Now, top of mind for Putin is he wants reassurance from Xi, reassurance of China's support, especially China's economic support, as the war in Ukraine rages on.
As we've been reporting, trade between these two countries has been very strong, so strong it reached that all-time high of $240 billion last year. But according to official data, trade volume has been softening in recent months in the wake of Western pressure. So this is a very delicate dance for Xi Jinping to shore up ties with his dear no-limits ally Russia without angering the West and hurting China's economy. Kim.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, delicate dance, as you say. Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. Thank you so much.
Well, it seems the decision to deny Ukraine military aid is one of the motives behind the attempted assassination of Slovakia's prime minister. [02:10:01]
A 71-year-old suspect is now facing attempted murder charges, and officials are describing him as a lone wolf with political motivations.
CNN's Fred Pleitgen has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After getting shot five times in broad daylight, Slovakia's prime minister Robert Fico's condition remains difficult, officials say, even though the wounds are no longer life-threatening.
PLEITGEN: This is exactly the place where Robert Fico was shot, and you can see on that tree over there that there is a hole where the forensic teams appear to have carved something like a projectile out of the bark. Now, he suffered several gunshot wounds and had to be airbagged into a hospital nearby.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): The hospital says two surgical teams had to operate more than five hours to save the prime minister's life. Slovakia's president-elect confirming Fico is now conscious.
PETER PELLEGRINI, SLOVAK PRESIDENT-ELECT: He is able to speak, but only a few sentences, and then he's really, really tired because he's under some medication, some medicamentation, so of course it is very difficult for him.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): Slovakian authorities claiming the attack was politically motivated. The 71-year-old suspect, they say, unhappy, among other things, with the Russia-friendly Fico government's decision to cut off military aid to Ukraine.
The country's interior minister stressing, though, the assailant was not part of a wider network.
MATUS SUTAJ ESTOK, SLOVAK INTERIOR MINISTER (through translator): He is a lone wolf whose disappointment with the government accelerated after the presidential election when he decided to act.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): Dismay and disbelief in the suspect's neighborhood.
I was very surprised by what he did, this neighbor says. I don't understand how it happened. Something must have clicked.
Robert Fico is often viewed as pro-Russian and critical of the European Union. Slovakia's society deeply divided. But now that the prime minister remains in intensive care trying to recover, politicians from both sides are urging unity and stability.
Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: -- it remains limited in scope. A couple of new satellite images show Israel has been conducting bulldozing operations north of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
Israel defense forces have advanced nearly five kilometers since the start of the operation on May 6th. Entire blocks and many tent camps have been razed and the streets appear empty, U.N. estimates.
Nearly 600,000 people have fled the city. Prior to Israel's ground invasion, more than a million displaced Palestinians were seeking refuge there. Israel says the operation remains, quote, limited in space and in targets, but the Israeli defense minister says more troops will be deployed in Rafah soon.
Meanwhile, humanitarian conditions are worsening inside Rafah. The border crossing with Egypt has been closed since Israel seized it last week. Rafah had until then served as the only entry and exit points for foreign aid workers in and out of Gaza. They are working in hellish conditions and far from their own families.
CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. AHLIA KATTAN, ANESTHESIOLOGIST AND ICU MEDIC, FAJR SCIENTIFIC: We were evacuated from that safe house, which was supposed to be in a de- conflicted zone.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After more than two weeks in Gaza, Dr. Ahlia Kattan should be back home in California with her three children.
KATTAN: This is where we've been sleeping.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Instead, she's sleeping on the floor of Gaza's European hospital as her five-year-old daughter wonders when her mom will come home.
UNKNOWN: I love you, Mama. You are the best. When will you come back? I miss you so much. Happy birthday to Mama. You are the best ever.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Dr. Kattan and her husband are among at least 22 American physicians now trapped in Gaza after an Israeli military offensive in Rafah shuttered the critical border crossing to Egypt.
KATTAN: The Rafah borders are now closed, and that was our safe entry and exit. The WHO is trying to negotiate a safe exit for us, and it's not happening.
DIAMOND (voice-over): As Israeli and Egyptian officials trade blame for the crossing's closure, Dr. Kattan and her colleagues are doing what they can to keep this overwhelmed and under-resourced hospital running.
LAURA SWOBODA, NURSE PRACTITIONER, FAJR SCIENTIFIC: We were not aware of how dire the situation is here. There wasn't soap to wash our hands between infected wounds with maggots. There wasn't sanitizer wipes to wipe down the tables after each patient.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Israel is now threatening to widen its offensive in Rafah.
KATTAN: Always we can hear the drones in the background.
[02:15:02]
DIAMOND (voice-over): A move that the U.S. and international aid groups warn will have dire humanitarian consequences, one that will put even more strain on Gaza's already overwhelmed hospitals.
KATTAN: All of us don't want to leave unless we're replaced by physicians and medics and nurses and all the people that are keeping this hospital going.
My message to the U.S. government is, however they can help to maintain a safe corridor for medics to come in and out to bring supplies and themselves to support the innocent civilians and women and children, to please do that.
DIAMOND (voice-over): But until that happens, Dr. Kattan is stuck, unsure when and how she will make it home.
DIAMOND: What's the most difficult part of that uncertainty right now?
KATTAN: Missing my kids and waking up in the morning and realizing they're not next to me. But the harder part is knowing that I get to leave eventually and I get to go home and be safe. I've developed a lot of friends here who have the same age as me and have kids my age. And they don't have those securities and those basic necessities.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: Severe storms, powerful winds and a possible tornado blasted parts of the state of Texas on Thursday. At least four people were killed in Houston. Trees and power lines were toppled, knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses across the state, according to poweroutage.us. The storms also blew out the windows and some skyscrapers. Houston schools will be closed on Friday and the mayor is urging people to stay home and stay off the roads. Here's how two residents describe the chaos.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: So we all took cover in the bathroom, windows blown out, trees flying everywhere. It was crazy.
UNKNOWN: All of a sudden we're in the restroom and we hear everybody screaming and coming toward the restroom. And we there's like dust blowing down from the ceiling tiles.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUBER: This was the scene in the downtown area with debris swirling outside a bank building. The National Weather Service says the winds were equivalent to a category one hurricane at times.
All right, ahead, Donald Trump, hush money trial. The defense may have poked some holes in the testimony of a star witness. But was any real damage done? We'll have the takeaways from the cross-examination.
Plus, Washington, D.C., is clearing homeless encampments. But is the city making the problem worse? More on that next. We have more on that, next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRUNHUBER: Donald Trump's legal team turned up the heat on the star witness in the hush money trial. The lead defense attorney raised his voice and flailed his arms as he took aim at Trump's former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, who he repeatedly called a liar. CNN's Paula Reid has the details.
[02:20:08]
PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michael Cohen, the only witness being called by the prosecution who can directly implicate Donald Trump in an alleged hush money scheme, has crucial parts of his testimony undercut.
Returning to the stand for a second day of cross-examination, Trump defense attorney Todd Blanche grilling Cohen about all the times he has lied, painting him as unreliable and out for revenge after not being given a job in the Trump White House.
You were disappointed that after all the work that you had done for President Trump for nine and a half years, nobody, including President Trump, offered you a position in the White House.
Blanche asked Cohen after showing him text messages he sent to his daughter about potentially working in the Trump administration. That's not accurate, Cohen insisted. And he began to grow agitated as Trump leaned forward in his chair behind the defense table, at times staring intently at his former fixer.
The Trump defense then reached a crescendo, turning to a key moment of Cohen's testimony. A 2016 phone call he says he had with former Trump body man Keith Schiller, who says he then passed the phone to Trump. Cohen says he told Trump on that call how he planned to pay Stormy Daniels to keep their alleged affair quiet.
But referencing phone records, Blanche asked, this is the call that you testified about on Tuesday, it was to talk to President Trump about the Stormy deal and to move forward? Cohen was then shown a text message he sent to Schiller the same night about a 14 year old prank caller who had been harassing him.
Cohen texted Schiller, who can I speak to regarding harassing calls to my cell and office? The dope forgot to block his number.
Schiller texted back soon after, call me. Blanche then raised his voice, asking Cohen to confirm the call was not actually a conversation with Trump about Stormy Daniels, but about the 14 year old prankster.
Cohen defended himself, saying part of it was the 14 year old. But I know that Keith was with Mr. Trump at the time, and there was more potentially than this.
Blanche shot back. That was a lie. You did not talk to President Trump. You talked to Keith Schiller. You can admit it.
Cohen calmly responded, no, sir, I don't know that it's accurate. Blanch responded, a one minute and 36 second phone call. And you had enough time to update Schiller about all the problems you were having and also update President Trump about the status of the Stormy Daniels situation because you had to keep him informed?
I always ran everything by the boss immediately. And in this case, it would have been saying everything had been taken care of, it's been resolved.
Cohen answered. He maintained his composure. I believe I also spoke to Mr. Trump and told him everything regarding the Stormy Daniels matter.
We are not asking for your belief. This jury does not want to hear what you think happened. Blanche retorted. The prosecution then objected. The judge sustained and Michael Cohen shook his head.
REID: Every day we try to update people on when we could see a potential verdict in this case. Now, next week, there is court on Monday, Tuesday. Court's always off on Wednesday. But it's unclear if they're going to meet on Thursday because a juror has an appointment that conflicts with court. Then there is a four day weekend that they're giving the jury for the Memorial Day holiday. So at this point, it appears unlikely there will be a verdict with everything they still have left to do until after the holiday.
Paula Reid, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: A big moment for Wall Street on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial briefly topped 40,000 for the first time ever. Didn't last long, the blue chips finally settled down at 39,000 unchanged. U.S. markets had rallied earlier in the week after an inflation report showed a cool down for the first time in months. That report, along with a drop in April retail sales, has raised hopes the Federal Reserve could start cutting interest rates as soon as September.
All right, let's turn to the U.S. Futures, the Dow, Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are mostly flat at this hour.
Well, it's an issue now synonymous with American cities, the rise of homelessness in Washington, D.C. The numbers are staggering. The city is clearing out several encampments and will remove more. But will that make the problem even worse? CNN's Jake Tapper has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WESLEY THOMAS, ADVOCACY SPEAKER, MIRIAM'S KITCHEN: The average American is only one paycheck away from being right here.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): : Just blocks from Washington, D.C.'s most picturesque landmarks, a community of roughly 70 people is being torn down. The residents scattered. It's on both federal and city land, and now the city and the National Park Service are both saying these people have to leave.
[02:25:00]
ADAM ROCAP, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, MIRIAM'S KITCHEN: Our outreach team has been working diligently for months, helping people prepare, thinking about where you want to go, walking them through the shelter options. But there's nothing major. All the shelters are mostly full. We're doing everything we can to try to get people a solution. But for most people, there's nothing definite that's being offered.
TAPPER (voice-over): Staffers from the nonprofit Miriam's Kitchen have been going tent to tent, trying to help.
This is one of seven such encampments around Washington, D.C. that will be cleared in the next few weeks. The city says the closures protect residents from, quote, "dangerous circumstances such as fires, traffic collisions, assaults and rats".
TAPPER: The federal government says homelessness shot up 12 percent last year, with more than 653,100 Americans currently without a place to live. This is the highest and sharpest increase in the largest number since they began keeping records. And experts say this cuts across demographics and populations. It includes veterans and families with children.
TAPPER (voice-over): The city of D.C. says it will keep trying to help people connect with support services, including housing. But advocates say clearing these camps is not a solution. It's a setback.
TAPPER: Moving the problem from here to there. But this problem is not solved.
ROCAP: Right. And that's the part of the history of this encampment. There's people who are living here who used to be at McPherson Square, who used to be at other encampments that are being cleared.
TAPPER (voice-over): Advocate Wesley Thomas was homeless himself for decades, living on the streets near the White House until he finally got help from an outreach worker like him.
THOMAS: I didn't know anybody, but it came to a point where I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I knew where to go, who to talk to turn my life around.
TAPPER (voice-over): He says kicking people out of these encampments breaks trust.
THOMAS: They no longer trust the outreach workers. They no longer trust the city. And the main issue when you're displaced from an encampment is finding a safe place to rest your head. So all that goes away. And then they have to start all over again.
TAPPER: What's going to happen to these people when they're cleared out?
THOMAS: They're going to try to find another place to rest their head. But see, encampments are communities. There's safety in numbers.
TAPPER: So this is like a like a town almost.
THOMAS: Yeah. And encampments are community.
ROCAP: I mean, every person here has an individual story. You can see the big picture of things. You can see people are here because they're very low income and housing and D.C. and everyone in the country is just far too expensive. You see people who, because of that economic vulnerability, if I am living with a mental health issue, if I am living with trauma, then I'm more likely to be here.
TAPPER (voice-over): These individual stories, advocates tell me, are at the heart of the solution. One person finally getting a housing voucher or another knowing how to access emergency rental assistance.
Your shirt says end homelessness. Your hat says end homelessness. How do we do it? How do we end homelessness?
THOMAS: One case at a time. One case at a time.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: Wildfires are scorching parts of Canada, forcing evacuations and threatening neighborhoods. When we come back, the role of climate change in these disastrous fires.
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[02:30:54]
BRUNHUBER: Welcome back to all you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.
Wildfires are burning across wide areas of Canada, forcing thousands of people to get away with no sign of when there'll be able to return home. Helicopter footage shows flames and thick smoke rising from a wildfire in the province of Alberta. Firefighters could see temporary relief in some regions as a large mid-week storms cross the region, but the danger remains heightened as multiple fires are exploding in size and inching closer to neighborhoods.
It's a dismal start with the country's wildfire season. New fires are igniting every day and dormant so-called zombie fires are also reanimating. Fire officials are already warning of an explosive season ahead that may rival last years the worst in Canada's history.
All right. I want to bring in climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. He's joining us from Oakland, California.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
So what we're seeing right now in Canada, it's giving plenty of people out west eerie deja vu of last year.
ZEKE HAUSFATHER, CLIMATE RESEARCH LEAD, STRIPE : Yeah. So last years fires in Canada were truly exceptional. They burned 45 million acres are five times more in a single year than any other year of the record. Now, 2023 was also the warmest year on record for Canada and for the world as a whole. Now, Canada has warmed by more than five degrees Fahrenheit in the last 150 years, with much of that warming happening in the last 50 years. These higher temperatures are drying up agitation and making it more susceptible to catastrophic wildfires.
They also allow fires to burn and areas of the boreal forests that have historically been too cold to experienced frequent fire activity.
BRUNHUBER: All right. So we know as you say, climate change, a factor or making the world hotter, drawing out the land and the vegetation, as you say, creating more fuel. But there's also another factor as well, about half the fires in Canada, as I understand, are caused by lightning, and lightening strikes are predicted to increase due to climate change as well. Is that right?
HAUSFATHER: It's true in some regions with more severe thunderstorms occurring. But what's interesting is the number of fires and Canada has actually fallen by about a quarter in the past few decades. But the area burned per fire has increased substantially. So it's really fundamentally a problem of changing conditions, not changing ignitions.
BRUNHUBER: Right. And, you know, I mentioned this in the introduction. Many of the fires that were seeing now in Alberta, especially British Columbia, they were actually fires that began last year and just kind of kept going these so-called zombie fires. Explain how that happens.
HAUSFATHER: So, you know, Canada is big and very remote in many regions. And unlike the U.S., there's not this practice of putting out every single fire. Many fires are allowed to burn through if they're non populated areas but that means that, you know, there can be some remnants of fires that exist underground burning pit and other materials that can reemerge in the spring. And summer as it gets drier.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah. And they just keep going and keep going. And so now were seeing this starting of a bad year and last year, as you say, was the hottest on record? Plenty of people are predicting that this year could be really bad as well.
So, what are you predicting for 2024? HAUSFATHER: So this year is actually shaping up to pass 2023 as the warmest year on record globally while it's unclear exactly how warm it will be in Canada yet. You know, a series of warm and dry years is really primed vegetation there here to be highly combustible.
Now, its probably unlikely that 2024 be quite as catastrophic is 2023, which set a new bar, as I mentioned by a huge record. You know, it's still quite possible are going to see a pretty bad year for wildfire in Canada.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah.
HAUSFATHER: And it's already off to a pretty bad start.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, exactly right. And what's happening in Canada, it's happening elsewhere as you know, all too well there in California. And it's striking that despite all the dramatic damage, the lives lost, just giving one example, Florida's governor just signed a bill that strikes climate change from state law.
[02:35:02]
Now, I mean, this situation isn't quite as extreme in Canada, but still on the political level, it seems, you know, too many politicians are still kind of sticking their heads in the sand.
HAUSFATHER: And those politicians are increasingly out of touch and out of step with the general population who's starting to experience these extreme events more and more. You know, if you look at somewhere like Florida, most people think climate change is a serious issue there, even if the current political officials are not dealing with it, and the same is true in Canada. And so, you know, when you have a new smoky season, as we have in California, now that we had never had before, it's really hard to ignore that the changes happening in front of us day-to-day.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, exactly.
We'll leave it there, but really good to talk to you. Thanks so much, Zeke Hausfather. Really appreciate that.
HAUSFATHER: Thank you for having me.
BRUNHUBER: All right. Right now, the weather in Chile is living up to its name. Parts of the country are dealing with record low temperatures and even snow on coastal city recorded this longest cold wave and more than 50 years. Now this after another city ended in, ate day cold snap on Tuesday. The city of Santiago was expected to reach freezing conditions Thursday and people living there, as you can see, bundling up and just trying to stay warm.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUMBERTO BURGOS, SANTIAGO RESIDENT (through translator): To combat the cold, I bundle more in the morning and drink more coffee. I used to drink one cup of coffee. Now, I drink three cups. FRANCISCA VERGARA, STUDENT (through translator): They may used to be
a super autumn month, and now we go from extremely hot to extremely cold.
ENRIQUE TORRES, SANTIAGO RESIDENT (through translator): You can feel the cold. You can feel it. We have to cover ourselves with nylon with whatever we can find.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUNBER: Two Republican-led House committees are advancing contempt proceedings against the U.S. attorney general. They're going after Merrick Garland for refusing to turn over audio recordings of the U.S. president's interview with the special counsel last year after Joe Biden asserted executive privilege.
Here's CNN's MJ Lee.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: What we saw on Thursday was a major escalation in the on-going fight between the White House and House Republicans over the audio recording of special counsel Robert Hur's interview with President Biden.
Now as for the background of all of this, of course, special counsel Robert Hur interviewed and produced a report over an investigation into the president's handling of classified documents and that ended up concluding back in February. And special counsel, Robert Hur, declined to bring criminal charges barges against the president, but he did create a whole lot of controversy by suggesting numerous times in this report that the problem suffered from memory problems, which, of course, the White House Democrats said was gratuitous and politically motivated.
Now, back in March, the DOJ, the Justice Department did release the transcript of that interview. This was the written transcript, but since then, House Republicans have been pushing for the release of the audio recording of that interview. And now are threatening to hold Merrick Garland, the attorney general, in contempt of Congress, for not releasing that audio according.
They are arguing that they need the audio to pursue their ongoing investigation, the impeachment investigation into President Biden. Now what we saw happen on Thursday was that the House Judiciary Committee voted to advance those contempt proceedings. And this is something that the House Oversight Committee is also similarly pursuing as well.
And what the white house and Democrats have said all along is that all of this is just political theater. We saw the White House council saying in a letter to house Republicans I can quote the absence of a legitimate need for an audio recordings lays bare your likely goal to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.
I should also finally note that CNN is a media outlet that has sued to obtain those audio recordings.
MJ Lee, CNN, at the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: All right. Still ahead, this two-time World Cup finalist is now a two-time wax statue honoree. We'll have the details after the break. Stay with us.
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[02:41:16]
BRUNHUBER: Experts say rising ocean temperatures are impacting the world's coral reefs. Heat stress has triggered bleaching and nearly two-thirds of reefs across the globe over the past year according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. During bleaching, corals expel algae in there tissues leaving the pale and susceptible to disease and starvation.
NOAA says over 99 percent of corals in the Atlantic Ocean has been subjected to bleaching level heat stress in the past year.
Well, it's one thing to see yourself in a mirror, but have a look of this French soccer superstar Kylian Mbappe unveiled his Madame Tussauds wax likeness in Paris on Thursday. The world cup winner called double impressive, but was looking ahead to the upcoming UEFA European championship tournament.
Here he is.
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KYLIAN MBAPPE, WORLD CUP WINNER: It's beyond a dream to represent France all over the world, all the time. We don't have to forget that. It's the first thing because its going to be a big pleasure to be there even as a captain, to be there and to try to win the Euro, a great tournament, we as all the best team in Europe.
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BRUNHUBER: Now this is actually Mbappe's second wax double. It will be on display at Madame Tussauds in Berlin. His first wax statue was on display at the famous Music Ivonne in Paris.
That wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. I'll be back with more news at the top of the hour.
"WORLD SPORT" is next.
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[02:45:00]
(WORLD SPORT)
