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CNN This Morning

Severe Weather Causes Another Wave of Flight Delays, Cancelations During Busy July 4th Weekend; Man Named in Supreme Court Same-Sex Wedding Website Ruling Says He's Straight and Never Requests Services; 2 Killed, 28 Injured, Mostly Teens, at Baltimore Block Party. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 03, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[07:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is insanity. This cannot be the society that we are expected to live in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw the most air passengers not only since COVID but, we think, ever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: severe weather affecting much of the country. Flash flooding in Chicago today, leaving several cars underwater.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Less early, very early, only to be told that our flight was delayed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Zero problems whatsoever. I got lucky.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donald Trump pressured Arizona governor Joe Ducey in a phone call after the 2020 election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was really the effort throughout that time was to go to the states and try and get them to do investigations to find fraud.

MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: No, I don't remember any pressure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous priest towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is about empowering people and their rights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of Colorado has been silencing and coercing. My speech the court's decision yesterday protects speech.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, TRANPORTATION SECRETARY: Sending these kinds of things to the courts for the clear purpose of chipping away at the equality and the rights that have so recently been won.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People were saying it was TikTok's new app kind of like a mix between Instagram and Pinterest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lemonade is owned by ByteDance, the same company behind TikTok. That's raising some eyebrows among security experts.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you hear about something like this, especially if it's from TikTok, you want to make sure you're some of the first people there.

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning, everyone. I'm Phil Mattingly, here my good pal, Audie Cornish. Poppy is off. How are we doing so far? You feel good?

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: We're doing okay, except severe weather is wreaking havoc on holiday travel again.

So, this morning,, airlines are trying to bounce back from a wave of flight delays and cancelations, this is during one of the busiest weekends of the year. Just yesterday, we're talking 7,500 flights delayed, 500 canceled.

MATTINGLY: And in the Chicago area, you add the dramatic weather to it, nearly nine inches of rain drenched some parts of the city and the surrounding area.

CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking it all for us. And, Allison, when you're looking at the map, what can we expect today?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right, so a lot more showers and thunderstorms, and in some cases, the same areas that just saw it yesterday. Two main focal points today, the first is really going to be up and down much of the East Coast today and a secondary wave that's across portions of the Northern Plains as well as the Midwest.

Now, we have some active showers ongoing already this morning, mainly across the Northeast, but a few also in portions of the Mid-Atlantic.

Now, when we go through the rest of the day, that we'll get a second wave really starting to develop this afternoon and into the evening. So, Washington, D.C., New York, down to Atlanta and a secondary system out to the west, including Minneapolis. Main threats will be damaging winds, large hail and the potential for some tornadoes.

That secondary wave again, you really start to see it fire up this afternoon and into the evening, thanks to the heating of the day. And then more showers and thunderstorms yet again for the holiday itself tomorrow. So, we do still have the potential for some strong to severe thunderstorms. Again, some of the same areas today, like New York, D,C., and Atlanta, but also more becoming more widespread across the central U.S., but the threats themselves remain the same.

And another concern still is going to be the heat. Several heat advisories in the Southeast and some excessive heat warnings out into the west. Back to you.

MATTINGLY: All right. Allison Chinchar, thanks so much.

Let's bring in CNN Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean. He's live at Reagan National Airport near D.C. And, Pete, the expectations were set in records this weekend in terms of number of people screened by the TSA. Did it meet the busy expectations?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Met the busy expectation, exceeded the busy expectation. The TSA anticipated 2.82 million people at airports nationwide on Friday. Instead, we saw 2.88 million people. That's not a high of the pandemic era. It is an all-time. Record the highest number we have seen since December 1st, 2019, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So, these are huge numbers.

The good news right now is that things are starting off relatively smooth, but never say never. The day is still relatively young. And I just checked FlightAware. So far, we've seen about 80 cancelations in the U.S., pales in comparison to what we saw yesterday. In fact, the numbers really ramped up as the day went on and bad weather hit the East Coast. We saw about 600 cancelations in the U.S. yesterday, although last week was a lot worse. So, we are on the track to getting a little bit better.

One caveat here, though, the FAA does warn that there could be ground stops today because of thunderstorms later this afternoon in New York, which has been a troubled spot, in Philadelphia, in Baltimore, in D.C., all the way down to Miami.

But I want you to listen now to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He says things are on the path to getting back on track.

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BUTTIGIEG: We're watching more severe potential for severe weather.

[07:05:05]

That's what touched off all of these problems about a week ago.

But you look at where we were a year ago, where even on blue sky days with no severe weather, there were a really unacceptable levels of cancelations and delays. We've come a long way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: United Airlines canceled more flights than any other airline last week. And in a new memo, CEO Scott Kirby says he is committing to looking again at the airline's crew scheduling system, also partnering better with the FAA, an agency that he initially blamed for a lot of these cancelations early last week, and he's also saying that the airline will take another hard look at its hub in Newark, where there may be simply too many flights scheduled and the airline could draw down its schedule there a little bit.

Another big test on the horizon for airlines, all those people who left on Friday, that 2.88 million number, now they're going to start coming home. We'll see if airlines can handle it. CORNISH: Okay. You're not really giving me a sense that they can. So, what are you expecting over the next two days?

MUNTEAN: We'll see. The TSA says the big number was on Friday, and it's a long week. And so the way the holiday falls, people trickle back home a little bit slower.

So, we'll see if people actually extend their holiday, because the 4thfalls on a Tuesday, they may extend it into Wednesday or Thursday. They may simply take the entire week. So, the numbers will be high overall. It's not going to have another big peak. We'll probably just see high number day after high number day. And that will make a big challenge for the TSA and not only them, but the airlines as well.

CORNISH: Pete Muntean, thanks so much.

MATTINGLY: All right. Well, also this morning, we're watching something that I've been trying to figure out over the course of the entirety of the last weekend, questions swirling around a recent Supreme Court decision.

Now, you'll remember the court ruled last week in favor of a Christian web designer who says she shouldn't be forced to create sites for same-sex weddings. But now, the man cited in the case, named Stewart, says he never even requested a website, and says he's not only straight and married to a woman, but he's a web designer himself.

Now, in an interview with CNN, he said, quote, I've never asked anybody to design a website for me, so it's all very strange. I certainly didn't contact her, and whatever the information in that request is, is fake.

CNN's Joan Biskupic joins us live from Washington, D.C. Joan is the author of Nine Black Robes, Inside the Supreme Court's Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences. She also can explain all the questions. Every question I have, Joan ends up answering it when we're together in Washington. So, my question is, does this actually matter? Is it relevant to the case?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Good morning, Phil and Audie. Actually, Phil, you know what, no, I don't think so. And I'll tell you why. The Supreme Court brushed by lots of facts in this case right from the start.

The woman who challenged the Colorado law did it as what's known as a pre-enforcement challenge. They had never even cited her in any way. And what the Supreme Court said is that she had to essentially just show two things. One is that she wasn't going to produce any kind of message that conflicted with her Christian beliefs.

And what she said was that she did not believe in same sex marriage. She believes marriage is between one man and one woman. So, that was one key factor that she laid down. The other factor was just simply that Colorado has an interest in this law and would want to carry out its law, enforce the law against people who discriminate against same sex couples. The law itself says that if you operate a public accommodation, a business open to the public, you cannot discriminate on the basis of several factors, race, sex and sexual orientation is one of them.

So, from the start, there were a lot of questions about the facts of this case, Phil. And that issue came up during oral arguments. And the Colorado officials were from the start saying, look, the facts here are very elusive, we don't even know what kind of website she's going to have. And during oral arguments, the justices essentially said, it doesn't matter. As I said, both the State of Colorado and the solicitor general of the United States said, it is too early to hear this case.

So, the justices brushed that back. When Neil Gorsuch read his opinion from the bench on Friday, Phil, he said, we have two things that are part of the stipulations, kind of the basics here. One is she's not going to create a message that conflicts with her religious beliefs. And, two, Colorado wants to enforce its public accommodations law.

Earlier episodes about someone who might have sent a message to her saying that they wanted her to do a website, that wasn't part of the record once it got to the Supreme Court. And, frankly, Phil, it doesn't look like the lower court judges from the 10th Circuit even relied on that.

So, I can understand why many people would be disturbed by this new information, but it's not the kind of information that appears to be able to disturb this Supreme Court at all.

[07:10:02]

CORNISH: Joan, can I ask one follow up to that, which doesn't mean in the future that there are any vulnerabilities in this area of the law, right? Public accommodations law obviously goes back to the civil rights period, in terms of conflict. Does this ruling mean anything going forward or these questions that we're talking about today mean anything going forward?

Two separate things, Audie. In terms of the larger picture that you're talking about, in terms of how this ruling could have reverberations for other public accommodations laws, yes. I mean, this is a big deal. This is, as Justice Sotomayor said the first time, the Supreme Court said that a public accommodations law is going to essentially give a pass to someone for discriminating in this case on the basis of sexual orientation.

But just as Sotomayor and others in the dissent said, this could open the door to groups, businesses, saying they don't want to serve certain clients based on other protected characteristics such as race and sex.

But in terms of just the specific facts that have brought forward by Mr. Stewart here, I don't think that will affect it. But, as I say, many repercussions down the road, Audie.

CORNISH: Joan, thanks so much.

BISKUPIC: Thank you.

CORNISH: Now we want to bring in CNN Political Commentator, again, Errol Lewis, thanks, Errol, and former Democratic Congressman Max Rose and CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig. Welcome back.

So, I want to talk a little bit about this kind of like right word shift people are talking about with the court overall. Right now, it seems like progressives are sort of stuck complaining about it. What's sort of the message for them coming out of this period?

FMR. REP. MAX ROSE (D-NY): Well, look, the message is that politics matters, votes matter, elections matter, particularly as we're looking at the Senate, of course, where Supreme Court justices are confirmed as well as --

CORNISH: And to a young progressive voter, they're like, we got you the White House and you have the Senate, what gives? Things still are terrible for them.

ROSE: Well, people are pissed off, and that usually means that they're going to vote more, not less.

But, of course, politics and voting is not a hyper intellectual affair. People are not going to necessarily go out and vote because of this one ruling, but they are going to go out and vote with incredible passion because of the overarching narrative of the Supreme Court's war on people's rights and our democracy.

CORNISH: Errol, do you think this message resonates?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, it will have to. I mean, the -- in fact, it's not so much the message. I think people are going to feel it viscerally and realize that they have to get involved in politics. I mean, that's what we saw.

CORNISH: We know that happened with Roe v. Wade. Do you feel like it's going to happen with this collection of other cases?

ROSE: It's the same thing, right? It is the same--

MATTINGLY: I mean, the numbers, though, are dramatically different in terms of public perception on the actual cases themselves.

ROSE: Well, but I don't think that that's how people are experiencing the way that this Supreme Court is acting. I think that when you're looking at the average voter two days before Election Day, what they are feeling is that this institution is incredibly dangerous right now and incredibly scary because there appear to be no rights any longer that are sacrosanct.

And that's what's going to drive people. They are going to think about the Roe ruling alongside rulings like this, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is going to mobilize voters.

HONIG: So, whether anybody loves or hates what the Supreme Court has been doing recently, I think one of the big takeaways from last week is this is a court that is seizing more power for itself than in any time in recent history, and they're doing that a couple of ways.

There's a difference, by the way, between ideological conservatism and judicial conservatism. And, usually, judges and justices try to rule on cases as narrowly as possible and only rule on actual cases.

And the example we were just talking about with Joan where you have this fact scenario that's now come into question. Typically, the Supreme Court would not even take a case like that because of this doctrine called standing. We don't take hypotheticals. We don't issue advisory opinions. We wait until the facts have all played out, and then we ruled. And the Supreme Court showed us in that case that they are willing to essentially rule on hypotheticals, forward-looking hypotheticals. That enables the court to take more cases.

The other thing that the Supreme Court is doing is twice now in the last year, in very important ways, the Dobbs decision and then the decision that we saw last week on affirmative action, they're overruling longstanding, 40, 50 year longstanding precedents.

Now, the Court can overrule precedent. People say when. The real answer is when you have five or more justices. So, this court to me, is uniquely powerful.

CORNISH: But are calls to limit its power something that voters have an appetite for?

LOUIS: There's calls to limit its power. And then it sort of dovetails with these really important questions about whether or not there are conflicts of interest on the court, whether or not there's been disclosure, whether or not they can be held accountable when actions that would get you in trouble in any other field, including the federal courts themselves, just seem to just kind of go away.

[07:15:01]

I mean, when you have a Supreme Court justice who's mother is living in a house paid for by a guy who's got business before the court or interests that are undeniably going to be affected by rulings from the court, and he doesn't disclose it and he doesn't want to talk about it, and he thinks everything is fine. And then you find another instance and another instance and flying on a private plane. And the explanations are just clearly inadequate, like, oh, I barely know the guy, or it was going to be an empty plane seat.

And it's like, if you're friends with the guy, you have to recuse yourself. If you're not friends with the guy, what are you doing on his private plane? These kind of questions -- and because the political class, a lot of members of Congress are raising these issues. I think it does become something that voters are going to at least notice.

And that dovetailing with the rightward shift of the court, the judicial activism of the court, I think, sort of makes this something that is going to be politically salient. It will be up to some political entrepreneur to come and take advantage of it. MATTINGLY: Max, can I ask you on the kind of the political atmosphere

at this moment in time, and particularly when it comes to gay rights. We saw this Ron DeSantis super PAC put out an ad attacking former President Trump for his support for LGBTQ rights. I think we've got some of it.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I will do everything in my power to protect citizens.

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MATTINGLY: Yes. I mean, like whatever drugs that guy was on who made that --

CORNISH: I salute the editor of that.

MATTINGLY: -- had a good weekend, and, to be clear, the campaign did not make that, whatever that was, but they didn't back away from it, and some of them re-tweeted it, and then they defended the re-tweeting of it.

I think my question is with stuff like this, beyond the earned media element, for which we are providing them, it's what's your end game here? Like who are they targeting? What's the message? This doesn't happen in isolation. Like, they're talking about this. Why?

ROSE: And, first of all, I don't care, that was a super PAC ad. The campaign is responsible for it. And this notion that there's some division between super PACs and regular campaigns and modern day politics is totally B.S.

And this ad is illustrative of what Ron DeSantis is actually trying to do here, which is a hate-filled, utterly xenophobic primary campaign that then he thinks that he's going to be able to shift to the center. And everyone is going to forget about that because he's going to try to go to outflank Donald Trump from the right. There's no chance that this works.

Donald Trump has locked up about 25 percent, 30 percent of the Republican primary base, and it's those people, and this is no -- we can judge them, I'll judge them all I want, but they're motivated by ads like that. DeSantis is not going to pull them away, saying that he's more Trumpy

than Trump, he's more hate-filled than Trump.

It's appalling. But just as appalling as it is, it's also politically incoherent. I do not understand what he's trying.

MATTINGLY: Errol, can I -- I mean -- and I understand that donors aren't the most important thing, but I don't know Republican donors that are in anywhere near that place. And the Republican Party had moved pretty sharply away from this, and Trump is a good example of that in 2016, in his nomination speech,

LOUIS: DeSantis seems --

MATTINGLY: -- to spoke at the convention.

LOUIS: DeSantis appears to be trying to do what social conservative candidates have done for the last several cycles, which is get to the evangelical base in Iowa and spark something, and then try and build on that momentum.

CORNISH: Even foremost Trump.

LOUIS: Didn't work for Ted Cruz, didn't work for, I mean, on down the Line, right? It didn't work for Pat Robertson. It generally doesn't work. But it did work for George W. Bush 20 years ago. And so some people think that they can sort of catch fire and do it all over again. I don't think that's a sound assumption, but that seems to be what Ron DeSantis is up to.

CORNISH: All right. Errol, Elie, Max, stay with us.

MATTINGLY: Well, the hunt is underway for multiple suspects after a mass shooting killed at least two people and wounded dozens more at a block party in Baltimore. The Baltimore mayor will join us live just moments from now with the latest.

CORNISH: And a common sweetener in chewing gum, toothpaste and popular drinks, like Diet Coke, is coming under new scrutiny for its potential links to cancer. We're going to break down what we know about the upcoming announcement from the World Health Organization.

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[07:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ACTING COMMISSIONER RICHARD WORLEY, BALTIMORE POLICE: Detectives, federal partners, are still looking for evidence, and will continue to look for evidence until we find everything that we need to prosecute and arrest these individuals.

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MATTINGLY: Well, this morning, a police hunt is underway this morning in Baltimore as investigators are searching for any answers in the weekend shooting there. It left two people dead and 28 others injured, most of them teenagers.

Now, officials say at least two people opened fire on a holiday block party just past midnight on Sunday, but they say there may have been more people involved. Right now, there's no known motive, and they are asking anyone with information to come forward.

We are three days into July already, four mass shootings this month for the year. The U.S. stands at a staggering 339 mass shootings.

With us now, the mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott. Mr. Mayor, welcome, thank you for taking the time.

I guess I would start with, are there any updates on the investigation itself, on the manhunt? Where do things stand?

MAYOR BRANDON SCOTT (D-BALTIMORE, MD): Still ongoing. Like I said the other day, we will not rest until we find those who cowardly decided to shoot up this block party and carry out acts of violence, which we know will be illegal guns. But no further updates. We'll be giving a press update later today with any new things.

But as of right now, we are still investigating, going through every single lead, every minute, every second of footage, everything that we have to find out who decided to disrupt this peaceful event in this way.

[07:25:04]

CORNISH: Mayor Scott, you've said that this year alone, Baltimore P.D. has confiscated, what, 1,300 illegal weapons? Do you have a sense of where guns are coming from, the sort of illegal supply of guns are coming from into the city?

SCOTT: Wel,l, listen, we know, historically, most we recover every year more guns than to come from other states, the other 50 states in Maryland combined. So, we know that that's how it happens. We know that we've recovered hundreds of ghost guns of this year, something that we have seen declined this year, but we recovered over 400 of them last year.

These guns come into Maryland. And I want to be very clear about this, because Maryland has gun laws that actually have an impact. We have a ghost gun ban, which is why you see those numbers coming down.

But these weapons come from Virginia, they come from Texas, they come from Florida, they come from Alabama, they come from everywhere in this country.

And this is why it's critically important, not just for me as the mayor of Baltimore, but every mayor that will tell you the same thing. We have to deal with this issue of guns and the flow of illegal guns into the hands of people who should not have them at the national level. Ghost guns should be banned at the national level.

Congress should be taking these things up right now, as they said they would after Columbine happened way back in 1999, And here we are dozens of years later, decades later at this point, and we're still dealing with mass shootings because of the inaction to deal with this issue on a national level. This can no longer be an issue that falls to the feet of local police, local elected officials, or state governments.

MATTINGLY: Mr. Mayor, you've made the point both in your press conference yesterday, but also in some of your interviews, that this is a multifaceted kind of process to some degree, the approach. It's not just about one thing or four things or five things. It's community based. It's wide ranging. I was struck yesterday when you made the point when you asked people to treat this like it was a mass shooting in a rural community as well. Can you elaborate on that? I think I understood the point you were making, but it was an interesting one, and the framing of it was interesting. What you meant for your community specifically?

SCOTT: Well, my community knows this. We know that when you think about this country in the history of mass shootings, most of the time when we talk about this, we're talking about it being a school in a rural community or a suburban white community. And when it happens in Baltimore or Chicago or D.C., it doesn't get that same attention. These black American lives, children's lives matter just as anyone else. We're just asking for all of them to be treated the same.

Any mass shooting, anytime anyone is murdered with an illegal gun in this country should be treated the same, because it should not happen in the country that is the leader of the free world. But it does, because we as a country still allow the sanctity of American guns to outweigh the sanctity of Americans lives, and particularly Americans children's lives. And that is something that we have to change.

No one is saying that people shouldn't be able to have their right to have weapons, but those who shouldn't have them, and it shouldn't be easier for a young person to get a gun for than me to be able to go to CVS and buy my allergy medication.

CORNISH: Mayor, I just want to ask one other question, which is that the Baltimore Police Department has struggled a lot in the last couple of years. It's cycled through a couple of chiefs. Do you think you're in position to have the trust and relationship with the community that you would need to find this suspect or to deal with the teen violence in general?

SCOTT: Well, I will just tell you this, I just disagree with that. We've actually had the same police commissioner who decided to retire since 2018 until just a few weeks ago. And Baltimore, coming out of the Freddie Gray unrest, is now seen across the country as a department that is dealing with reform and fighting crime the right way.

We're consistently holding (ph) folks at the behest of the Department of Justice and others from other departments about how to put in those reforms through the work of our now former commissioner, police Commissioner Harrison, and now to Commissioner Worley. And even as we're going through this tragic incident, as I said

yesterday, we're a city that is seeing a 20 percent reduction in homicides. And even with this mass shooting, seeing a reduction in non fatal shootings, we're going to continue to do that work, because for me, one is too many. And, yes, we're going to continue to build those bridges, rebuild bridges, build bridges that will never happen in our community.

But this department has changed leaps and bounds throughout consent decree and those reform efforts and focusing in on what they need to be focused, on illegal guns, bringing them, those trafficking, those selling them, and holding those people accountable, and we will continue to do that.

MATTINGLY: All right. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, we appreciate your time, sir. I know it's a very busy time for you.

[07:30:00]

Thanks so much.

SCOTT: Thank you.