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DHS Secretary: "Acute And Immediate Need" For Barriers Near Border; Report: 2023 On Track To Be Hottest Year On Record; Fortune Reveals 100 Most Powerful Women In Business. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired October 05, 2023 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: To go ahead and do this with funding from 2019 during the Trump term.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR, HOST, POLITICAL BRIEFING PODCAST: Yeah. It is, I guess, a touch ironic that they --

HARLOW: Yeah.

CHALIAN: -- are using that. But again, I think -- I think the politics of this are shifting. And, of course, the real-world policy consequence as well.

And by the way, to tie it back to what Phil was talking about and some of the dysfunction we're seeing in the House, you guys heard Jim Jordan is making this central to his --

HARLOW: Yes.

CHALIAN: -- bid to become speaker.

So border security is going to be this first and most important litmus test for Republicans in the House as they choose a speaker, I would say above all else.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: To pull on that thread, though -- and I think you're 100 percent right and you know better than anybody the kind of animating feature this has been for the Republican Party. It was kind of what made Trump rise when he came down the escalator in 2015.

They can't get 218 votes for their own border security proposals in the House Republican majority at this point in time, so they can't move anything. The idea of some type of comprehensive bill is completely a nonstarter. And it just feeds into the -- I'm trying to figure out where this actually goes.

You watched this week and what we've seen on the House floor and what we've seen just writ large on politics, on policy, I don't understand where we are other than this is just going to be a political issue that people want to use in campaign after campaign after campaign. CHALIAN: Yeah. I think you've just identified at the end there precisely where we are. Obviously, if there were some larger solution available I would imagine folks would have found it over the course of the last 10 years since the last bipartisan immigration reform proposal fell apart. And you then saw obviously, President Obama did some executive work in this space.

You've noted, Poppy, Donald Trump with his perspective in policy preferences made this admission, though his Republican opponents are clearly going after him for not following through on all the promises as it relates to the construction of the border wall.

And now you're seeing the Biden administration take some action, too. I don't think some big, grand congressional proposal, Phil, is probably on the horizon.

HARLOW: Yeah, but the fact that both administrations had to do it and the Biden administration is now saying we have to do it, at least in this area, just points to the fact that we need comprehensive reform.

But David Chalian, thank you very much.

CHALIAN: Sure.

HARLOW: Live pictures right now out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Overnight, a plane operated by FedEx skidded off the runway after reporting landing gear issues. Fire officials say emergency crews arrived just before the plane's final approach. The engines released some smoke. No flames were detected.

The pilot and two other people on board that 757 jet accounted for. They're doing fine. An investigation is underway.

MATTINGLY: Well, a new climate report says last month was the hottest September ever. If that sounds familiar it's the fourth consecutive record-breaking month. Why there is some hope -- or reason for hope. That's next.

HARLOW: And the NFL responding to Travis Kelce's claims that they are, quote, "overdoing it" with their coverage of him and Taylor Swift.

MATTINGLY: Are you so happy we've got -- we're back to this story?

HARLOW: Favorite story. It just never goes away. We'll show you the statement ahead.

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:37:09]

MATTINGLY: Welcome back.

You're looking live at the Statue of Liberty. A beautiful, beautiful morning here in New York City. Also, a pretty hot day ahead. And if that seems like it's been familiar over the course of the last several days, but also the last several months, it's because it has been.

In fact, a climate report just out shows that last month was the hottest September ever. That's according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The report says September felt more like an unusually hot July with an average global air temperature hotter than 61 degrees Fahrenheit. September is now the fourth consecutive record-breaking month, emphasizing predictions that 2023 will be the hottest year in recorded history.

Joining us now with more, CNN's chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir.

We talk about this every month.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Un-hum.

MATTINGLY: Give me the hope --

WEIR: OK.

MATTINGLY: -- because every time I see you I'm like tell -- let's figure out the way that --

WEIR: I'm going to tell you a story --

MATTINGLY: Yeah.

WEIR: -- and we're going to end on an up note.

MATTINGLY: Love it.

WEIR: But first, we need to talk about the fact that we are the frogs in the boiling water. We are adjusting to this. Humans have an amazing capacity to normalize the horrible.

And if you see that chart -- that bar graph -- this is off the charts record-breaking. This is Copernicus data. But NOAA and NASA, here in the United States, says it's a 93 percent chance that this year will shatter all the other records there as well.

And this, of course, doesn't just make it uncomfortable, it brings floods that killed thousands in Libya, and wildfires in Canada, and unprecedented seasons -- wildfire seasons in parts of South America, and the deluge we had here in New York City last weed, and then the Mississippi --

HARLOW: Yeah.

WEIR: -- River. All of that sort of thing.

That said, the more fossil fuels we burn the hotter it's going to get. But at the same time, the International Energy Agency, which is not a bunch of tree-hugging environmentalists by any stretch -- long-tie poo-pooing renewables -- now says we're on track for 2.4 degrees of warming by 2100. Now, that's still much hotter than a lot of the Earth can handle but it's better than 4.8 degrees, which we were on track for just, like, 15 years ago.

MATTINGLY: Why?

WEIR: And it's a result of -- if you look at these charts -- if you look at solar photovoltaic additions and electric car sales -- and I hope we have these charts -- and residential heat pump sales, and battery storage solutions, the charts are just like a rocket ride.

And so because of the adaptation, because of the prices of renewables, they now think we're going to peak emissions in terms of fossil fuel commissions. Those are all the renewable energies there that are booming and far exceeding expectations. If you had showed these charts to even the most wild-eyed environmentalists in 2005 they wouldn't have believed it because it's -- the price of these things have come down so dramatically.

And so, now the IEA predicts we're going to hit peak emissions by 2025 -- that's only a couple of years away -- and then start ramping down.

So the big question is how hard, big oil and gas, and coal is going to fight that transition. Because we're past the point of no return in terms of electrification. It's just a matter of how fast.

[07:40:02]

MATTINGLY: Is the implication here that actual policies can have an effect?

WEIR: Well --

MATTINGLY: Is that what I'm taking away from those charts?

WEIR: Well, those trendlines -- those trendlines --

MATTINGLY: Because they track with --

WEIR: Yeah, they go to the Paris accords.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

WEIR: Twenty-fifteen is when this happens.

MATTINGLY: Yeah.

WEIR: And I should have had it prepared. If you look at the countries where it's sort of like an alligator -- a yawning alligator where the top jaw is GDP growth -- economic growth and the bottom jaw is decarbonization as carbon goes down. There are dozens of countries where that alligator is starting to yawn.

In Finland, it's huge because they have been on renewables for a long time. Places like Sweden. But even places like Egypt are decarbonizing and it's not making them poorer.

HARLOW: Um-hum. It's making them richer --

WEIR: You know, for 200 years --

HARLOW: -- you're saying.

WEIR: For 200 years, you had to burn a pound of carbon in order to make a dollar of GDP growth. And that's been coming down. Now, 50 years later, it was a dollar. Now, in China and the developing world, and in Africa and parts of South America, it's 66 cents. It's grown for every pound of carbon you burn. So that curve is coming down.

And it's been proven that you don't have to shiver in the dark now. These renewable sources of energy are so much cheaper than coal right now. That's what gives these economists hope that we've turned a corner.

But, at the same time, the transition isn't nearly enough for the scientists who are saying we're going to lose -- at this rate, we're going to lose all our coral reefs. Swaths of the middle of the planet will be unlivable at this level of warming.

So it's still room for concern but there's hope here.

MATTINGLY: I mean, I feel like you've kind of ended on a non-hope.

WEIR: I'm sorry.

MATTINGLY: But the middle -- there was a good through line in the middle.

WEIR: You're right. You're right.

MATTINGLY: And maybe a mental image of a yawning alligator is not going to leave me for the rest of the day.

It's great reporting. Thanks so much.

WEIR: Thank you, Phil.

MATTINGLY: Appreciate it.

HARLOW: Thank you, Bill.

MATTINGLY: Well, Fortune magazine just released the list of most powerful women in business. We're going to discuss who topped the list with Fortune's editor-in-chief.

HARLOW: And in today's Impact Your World, conservationists in Tennessee, the state with the most caves -- did you know that -- working to help bats recover from devastating illness. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally, this cave would have dozens of these and so far, this is the only one we've seen today.

CORY HOLLIDAY, CAVE AND KARST PROGRAM MANAGER, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY, TENNESSEE: Bats really are in crisis right now with this disease, white-nose syndrome. It's a fungus that grows really well in caves. We're seeing declines of 70 to 90 percent for some of our cave hibernating species and it's happened in less than 10 years so. And now we're sort of struggling to see how can we combat it.

So we have supported some university research into tools to combat the fungus and the disease director. The Nature Conservancy put up 19 receiver stations and we're putting transmitters on bats, trying to generally understand where they're at and where they're moving. What habitat they're using.

If we want these bats to survive and be healthy and recover, and staying out of caves in the wintertime, is unfortunately one of those things that's really necessary.

And we've built bat-friendly cave gates and tried to keep people out, but allow the bats come and go.

You can be a champion for bats in a lot of ways. We do these bat house building workshops that people will go home and put up in their backyards. And that just increases the amount of what we consider optimal reliable habitat on the landscape. And anybody can do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:47:30]

HARLOW: The number of women leading companies is on the rise. The new Women in the Workplace report out from McKinsey, in partnership with Leanin.org, shows women account for 28 percent of C-suite executives. It's a still low but steadily growing percentage.

Many of those women are part of Fortune magazine's most powerful women in business list. This year's list just revealed. It is the most comprehensive on record, according to the magazine. It's the first time Fortune has had a single worldwide list honoring 100 women.

At the top is CVS CEO, Karen Lynch for the third year in row, followed by Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, GM CEO Mary Barra. The list recognizes the near-record number of women leading Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies. It features 67 women with a CEO title.

Now I'm going to take you back to 1998. That is the cover of Fortune with Carly Fiorina on the cover. At the time, only two women ran Fortune 500 companies.

Let's talk about this with Fortune's editor-in-chief, Alyson Shontell. It's great to have you.

ALYSON SHONTELL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND CCO, FORTUNE MAGAZINE: It's great to be here.

HARLOW: Thanks for coming on CNN THIS MORNING. I always wait for this list.

Three years in a row for the CEO of CVS. That company showed its importance, particularly during COVID, et cetera.

But what I thought was interesting in your reporting is that you raised the question last year of whether health care companies, like CVS, being so big and dominant is actually good for the country.

SHONTELL: I think that's yet to be determined, quite frankly. I mean, I do think in the U.S. we're one of the only countries that really monetizes the poor and the sick in a sort of unhealthy way.

Their thought is hey, if we can get really big and be really vertically integrated, we can bring prices down for the whole health care process. We'll see. I hope so.

She certainly -- Karen Lynch is number one on our list three years in a row, as you said, because CVS is a giant. It's over $300 billion in revenue. No woman has ever run a company anywhere near that size. And she's not just the most powerful woman, she's just powerful. So we actually had her on the cover of our Fortune 500 issue this year.

HARLOW: Number two on the list is Mary Barra. General Motors certainly in the news right now. I believe she was number one on the list at one point not that long ago.

We're about three weeks into the United Auto Workers strike. She's trying to navigate through that. Yesterday, her company came out and said that it had cost $200 million for GM since this strike began.

This is a GM worker talking about it. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARINA ROSALES, CHAIRWOMAN, UAW LOCAL 2162: We're really fighting for the middle class. We want better wages. We want what every American wants -- a good, fair wage so you can go to work, be proud of what you do, feed your families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:50:02]

HARLOW: One of the things I think is interesting, how you determine power. It's not just the size of the company, it's the health of the company and the workers at the company.

How did you weigh Mary Barra's role in all of this, particularly in this moment, considering the list?

SHONTELL: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she has a lot of power at her disposal. Part of this -- of our ranking of the women is what they can do with that power. And so, certainly, how they handle these strikes, we will be watching carefully.

But another thing that we were considering is their push into EV. They really want to take all -- anything that's not an EV off the market by 2035.

HARLOW: She's really led on that.

SHONTELL: She's really led on that. So we feel like that's a huge environmental impact as well.

HARLOW: There is a real lack of diversity and you don't shy away from that. You write about. You talk about it in the report. Twenty-two percent of C-suite leaders are white women. Only six percent are women of color. And you write, "There are also more Black CEOs running Fortune 500s than ever before, but it is shameful to say that there are still only eight." Shameful.

SHONTELL: Yeah, absolutely shameful. And I've got to tell you when we were thinking about cover contenders, Roz Brewer obviously so powerful, and then she's now not in her role anymore.

HARLOW: Right. Remind people who she is. She ran Sam's Club. Then she was one of the leads at Starbucks --

SHONTELL: Exactly.

HARLOW: -- and then went on to be CEO.

SHONTELL: Yes. She was one of the few CEOs -- Black CEOs of a Fortune 500. And now there's only one. So that says all there is.

HARLOW: Yeah.

One thing that's interesting is Kim Kardashian is on the list. People know here sort of business empire. But $4 billion is now what her shapewear empire is in SKIMS.

What's interesting is that you look at not just someone's influence in the boardroom but outside the boardroom, too.

This is -- I was talking to her at the Time 100 summit about business, a little bit, but a lot about her work on criminal justice reform.

SHONTELL: Yeah.

HARLOW: How do you consider things outside of the boardroom in this list?

SHONTELL: Yeah. I mean, I think it would be -- you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who is a more influential marketer in the world. Maybe Elon Musk, you could say. But Kim has incredible reach impact. Yes, what she's doing with criminal justice reform is one area.

But she really -- I mean, now she has a private equity firm and people from Carlyle and Apple are following her there -- really respected executives across many fields.

I mean, how many times does this woman have to prove she's not just beautiful but she's also smart.

HARLOW: I don't think she has anything to prove anymore, if you ask me. SHONTELL: Yeah.

HARLOW: She is remarkable, as are all the women on the list in their own right.

Thank you very much.

SHONTELL: Thank you.

HARLOW: Appreciate it -- Phil.

MATTINGLY: Well, this morning, the Powerball jackpot increasing even more after another winless drawing. Here are the numbers from last night's $1.2 billion drawing (9-35-54-63-64-01). While no one hit the grand prize it's still worth checking your tickets. A few tickets matched the first five numbers worth at least a million dollars.

The next drawing is Saturday with an estimated jackpot of $1.4 billion. We could do something with that money. This is the first time in the game's history two consecutive jackpot winners will be worth more than a billion dollars.

And it's been two whole days since we talked about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, and Poppy has been losing her mind. She has to talk about this. Chiefs star Travis Kelce telling his brother during their podcast that the NFL has taken the whole Taylor Swift thing too far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON KELCE, PHILADELPHIS EAGLES CENTER: Is the NFL overdoing it? What is your honest opinion? Not -- take away -- take away --

TRAVIS KELCE, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS TIGHT END: I think --I think everybody's just like overwhelmed with --

J. KELCE: -- your feelings for Taylor. What is your honest opinion on how the NFL is treating celebrities at games?

T. KELCE: I think it's fun when they show who all is at the game, you know? I think -- I think it brings a little bit more to the atmosphere. It brings a little bit more to what you're watching.

But at the same time, I think --

J. KELCE: They're overdoing it.

T. KELCE: They're overdoing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Now it's worth noting they showed Taylor Swift 17 times during the broadcast of an NFL football game.

The NFL is defending their coverage, saying, quote, "Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce news has been a pop cultural moment we've leaned into in real time, as it's an intersection of sport and entertainment." HARLOW: Is this really a controversy?

MATTINGLY: Is it a moment?

You know what's not a controversy? Today's Travis Kelce's birthday --

HARLOW: How do you know that?

MATTINGLY: -- Poppy. What have you done --

HARLOW: How do you know that? How do you know that?

MATTINGLY: -- for this moment in popular culture?

HARLOW: How do you know that?

MATTINGLY: Do we know where Taylor Swift is?

HARLOW: Did you bake him a cake?

MATTINGLY: No, I don't --

HARLOW: No, I have no idea. But I'm sure we'll have more on this story for you tomorrow, folks.

The Biden administration is getting ready to build a border -- now to news. The Biden administration is getting ready to build a border wall. They are waiving 26 federal laws in South Texas to do this. It's a significant break from their posture before. The details of the plan ahead.

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:59:01]

HARLOW: It is the top of the hour this Thursday morning. Thank you so much for joining us.

Let's start with five things to know for this October 5.

The Biden administration preparing to build a border wall, waiving 26 federal laws in South Texas to do so. And the Homeland Security secretary says there is an acute and immediate need.

MATTINGLY: And the race for speaker now fully underway. Top Republicans Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan are officially running. Whoever the House GOP picks could have major policy implications from Ukraine to the looming shutdown.

HARLOW: Also, the wife of Sen. Bob Menendez struck and killed a pedestrian while she was driving a car five years ago. That crash was allegedly the inception of a bribe outline in the federal indictment against the couple.

MATTINGLY: And Commander Biden, a dog, was involved in more biting incidents at the White House than were originally reported. Sources telling CNN the number is much higher.

HARLOW: Team USA's women's gymnastics team winning its record seven straight gold medals at the World Championships. They were led by superstar Simone Biles who now has twice as many golds at Worlds -- 20 -- than any other gymnast in the world.

MATTINGLY: She's good.