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CNN This Morning

Deadly Storms Expected Across U.S. As Millions Brace For Tornadoes; Senate passes Spending Bill To Avoid A Government Shutdown; U.S. Justice Department Probes Columbia War Protests For Terrorism Violations; U.K. To Hold "Coalition Of The Willing" Meeting To Discuss Ukraine. Vatican Reports Pope Francis' Release from Hospital "Not Imminent"; Trump's Pick for Hostage Envoy Withdraws His Nomination; Cuba Suffers Nationwide Power Outage. Aired 6-7a ET

Aired March 15, 2025 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to CNN This Morning. It is Saturday, March 15th. I'm Victor Blackwell. Glad you're with me. This morning a powerful storm system is pushing through the country bringing heavy rain and strong winds and tornadoes.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's here. Look at all that debris. Oh my God.

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BLACKWELL: Can you imagine? We're getting our first look at some damage left behind overnight and tracking the threat for more dangerous storms throughout the weekend.

The government is still open for business after Democrats helped Republicans pass a bill to stave off a government shutdown. But that act of bipartisanship is exposing some deep rift within the Democratic Party.

Representatives from two dozen counties are meeting this hour to discuss bringing an end to the war in Ukraine, I should say countries, even as Russia continues to launch fresh attacks.

Plus, what a new CNN poll reveals about how Americans feel about Trump's handling of the war.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ignition and liftoff. Go SpaceX, go NASA Crew 10.

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BLACKWELL: The days turned into weeks. The weeks turned into nine months. But now two astronauts stuck in space since June will soon be headed home. That's all ahead on CNN This Morning. We're starting though with that breaking news. At least three people

have been killed in Missouri after powerful storms ripped through the central US. Massive system is bringing strong winds, heavy rain, hail, tornadoes. Right now the system is making its way towards the East Coast.

The forecasters say the storm is expected to gather strength with the highest risk for more tornadoes and severe storms stretching through the week. The magnitude of the damage so far is unclear. But look at this dramatic video. It shows just how powerful the winds were as two men in Missouri found themselves forced to ride out a tornado from their truck parked at a gas station.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my God. Is this coming? Oh, it's here. It's here. Look at all that debris. Oh my God, we are in a tornado.

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BLACKWELL: Now the storms also brought hurricane force winds that helped fuel fast spreading fires in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. At least 15 fires forced people to evacuate throughout Oklahoma and along 121 -- I-27, I should say in Canyon, Texas. 80 mile per hour winds caused a major dust storm led to a pileup that killed three people.

Officials there say that more than three dozen vehicles crashed. Now, this system, it is far from over. And we have active tornado watches right now. CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking that for us. Again, it has been bad. It could get even worse.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: So the Storm Prediction Center is using the word violent tornadoes. That is, I want to emphasize that is not just a random adjective they pick. That word actually means something that means EF4 or EF5 tornadoes. Violent tornadoes make up less than 1 percent of the tornadoes we get in this country, but they account for 66 percent of fatalities.

So this is definitely a day you have to stay focused. You have to pay attention to the weather as it makes its way across the country. Excuse me.

So let's take a look at what we are taking a look at for the last 24 hours. You can see all of these dots indicating all of the storm reports that have popped in over the last 24 hours. There's a lot of them, 23 of them tornado reports.

We anticipate seeing those numbers go up over the next 24 hours as this system continues to slide east. And it's huge. Again, the top of this goes from Minnesota all the way down to the Gulf Coast. You've got a lot of tornado watches, but also severe thunderstorm watches basically scattered throughout this area. And more of them are going to develop as we go through the next several hours.

We start on the southern side. You've got several severe thunderstorm warnings, even a couple tornado warnings, often on the last few hours, across portions of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and into Texas.

[06:05:03]

The new area that we're most likely to get a new tornado watch is this new developing area over portions of Arkansas and Louisiana. That tornado watch likely to come out here in about the next hour or two.

Farther to the north, this long line of thunderstorms here, basically warnings up and down most of this path here as that line continues to shift off to the east. All of this is going to shift east as we go through the day today, essentially you're talking portions of Michigan all the way down towards Louisiana.

The target point really, especially when we talk about tornadoes and those damaging winds. You're looking at the areas where you see the orange, the red and especially the pink. That's the high risk. That is level five out of five. It does not get any higher than that. That's where we anticipate some of the worst damage to likely come through from these storms.

Here's a look at the forecast. You can see those storms really start to ramp up once we get the heating of the day. So late morning, early afternoon, we'll continue to see them slide to the east. Places like Atlanta, Knoxville, York is actually going to be overnight tonight and through the very early morning hours before this begins to shift off towards the east as we head through the day Sunday.

So this is going to be a prolonged event, Victor. We'll have to keep a close eye on it in the coming hours.

BLACKWELL: Already a deadly weekend. Allison Chinchar watching all of it for us. Thank you so much.

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UNDIENTIFIED FEMALE: The bill is passed.

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BLACKWELL: Right now to the nation's capital where Congress has avoided a government shutdown. The Senate voted 54 to 46 on the House passed spending bill and now heads President Trump's desk for signature. President Trump spent part of his day Friday at the Department of Justice.

He was there to make a speech that the White House said was about law and order. But the president also used the speech to rail against his perceived enemies. CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid has more for us. Paula, good morning to you.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Victor. Well, President Trump has made no secret of the anger and resentment that he harbors towards this very institution, the Justice Department. And it is certainly not common for a sitting president to come and address an audience here in the great hall at the Justice Department.

But it's not unheard of. I was here a decade ago when President Obama gave a speech in this very hall. But this is different for many reasons, notably the fact that for roughly the past decade, President Trump has been facing federal criminal investigations.

Of course, he has made no secret of how angry he is and how unfair he is, he believes those investigations were. And he packed this audience with friendly folks.

I mean, these are local law enforcement officials, people he had personally selected to lead the Justice Department, like Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Trump's longtime criminal defense attorney, and now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

So, for the most part, this was a very receptive audience, and they listened to him as he went through some of his priorities for the Justice Department. But mostly, this was a partisan speech aimed at airing his grievances about all the investigations, both federal and state, that he has faced. He even praised Judge Eileen Cannon down in Florida, who famously dismissed the classified documents case against him, calling her brilliant, even though most legal experts have called into question that decision.

Now, the White House has billed this speech as focusing on law and order and restoring law and order in America. He did touch on that throughout this speech. But for the most part, this was sort of his usual greatest hit of airing grievances against everyone from Hunter Biden to former President Biden to James Comey.

Now, there was another important issue that he brought up, and that was, you can't see it anymore, but behind me on that stage, there were some props meant to represent fentanyl and some signs that talked about fighting fentanyl. He did not get to that issue until the end of his speech, but he did touch on that important issue at the end of his speech.

And then he sort of joked about how he was invited to come here, but not sure he'll ever come back. This is certainly, though, a historic moment for President Trump, given the criminal investigations he has faced, to come here and address the Justice Department.

But having covered DOJ for over a decade and covered Trump for much of that as well, this could have been a real barn burner. But overall, look, by the norms of the Justice Department, it is highly unusual for anyone to come here and give a speech criticizing the Justice Department. For Trump, it was pretty much what we've heard over the past seven or eight years, not surprising at all. Victor.

BLACKWELL: Paula Reid for us. Thank you. Joining me now to talk is Axios congressional reporter Stephen Newcomb. Stephen, good morning to you.

I want to pick up exactly where Paula left off. Is that what we heard, most of the content of this speech was not new. The grievances over the Russia investigation and the classified documents and on. But how much of his disappointment with Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr and Trump 45 that first term informs his approach now to the Justice Department and the setting of these grievances that we saw yesterday.

STEPHEN NEWCOMB, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yes. Well, good morning, Victor.

[06:10:00]

And I think that, look, the thing that Trump learned from his first administration, and I think that what you've seen him do in the second go around is to surround himself with even more loyalists. I think he views the first term as a situation where he was surrounded by a number of folks and pretty high positions who he would say weren't loyal enough to him.

And he has, you know, stuffed those positions with folks who are strictly loyal to him, folks like FBI Director Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, a very close ally of the president as well.

So the speech was not out of the ordinary from what we've heard from the president. But if you look at what he's done with the administration so far, certainly the lesson he took from his first administration was that he needed people around him that were even more loyal.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And Todd Blanche, Emil Bove, attorneys who've represented him as well, now have high ranking positions there at DOJ.

I ask you this almost every time you're on because we're put in this position. You cover the Senate for a party that bills itself as defending law and order. Has there been any reaction from Congressional Republicans, specifically Senate Republicans, on what we saw from the president yesterday and the politicization of that great hall and going there to make that type of speech?

NEWCOMB: No, not really. And Congressional Republicans, specifically Senate Republicans sort of had the luxury this week, certainly of the last two days of the spotlight being focused on Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer and what was going on around government funding.

So on Capitol Hill over the last week, that has been the dominant thing that reporters have been asking in hallways, you know, sort of more than anything, chasing Democrats around in the lead up to the vote last night.

So maybe we'll see they're gone next week. Maybe we'll see once they get back after that a little bit more of answer and reaction from Senate Republicans. But just given the dynamics on Capitol Hill, we didn't get to hear much from them.

BLACKWELL: Let's talk about those dynamics. And I just went and read your headlines at Axios over the back half of the week. Senate Democrats embrace hardball on government shutdown. Senate Dems riskier scenario ahead of possible government shutdown. Those are Wednesday.

Thursday Democrats prepare to fold on government shutdown. Friday, 10 Senate Democrats cave to avert government shutdown. You can watch the trajectory there. How real is this frustration and anger within the party, specifically not at all of the Democratic senators, but at the minority leader, Chuck Schumer?

NEWCOMB: It's a real frustration. I would say that the frustration is stronger in the House of Representatives on the other side of the Capitol than it is within the Senate. Look, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was faced with two very bad decisions, either letting the government shut down or taking this really difficult vote.

Once Mike Johnson was able to get this bill through the House of Representatives without needing any Democratic support, it really hurt the negotiating position of Senate Democrats once the bill came over to the Senate.

And I think what's clear here was that there was no overarching strategy, no overarching message that the Democratic Party had to fight back against the spending bill that was being shoved down their throat. And that's essentially what happened.

They ended up swallowing this bill that was in effect, not a continuing resolution, but in some ways a quasi budget reduction that Republicans wrote up and got through Congress.

So the frustration, I think, is stronger on the other side of the Capitol. There are senators who voted against this bill who would tell you privately that they are grateful for the leadership that Schumer showed in this situation with the bad situation. He allowed them to vote against leadership, to vote against the party to please their base, while at the same time sort of falling on the sword himself and his leadership team and his allies falling on the sword to keep the government open and be the heat shield for the rest of the party.

BLACKWELL: Minority leader in the House Hakeem Jeffries is called for Tuesday the 18th to be a day of action for Democrats across the country. We'll wait for him to fill out what that means after this budget, I should say continuing resolution, not budget moves forward. Stephen Newcomb with Axios, thanks so much.

Still ahead on CNN This Morning weekend, a campus crackdown at Columbia University.

[06:15:03]

The Department of Justice is now investigating whether some people involved in last spring's pro-Palestinian protests violated federal anti-terrorism laws.

Plus, the British prime minister is urging European and NATO allies to ratchet up economic pressure on Russia to get a ceasefire deal with Ukraine done. We'll go inside this morning's urgent meeting. That's after the break.

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[06:20:07] BLACKWELL: New this morning, the Justice Department is investigating whether pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University last year violated federal anti-terrorism laws. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made that announcement as the agency expands its probe into the students involved in those demonstrations. And Columbia University is also under increasing scrutiny from the Trump administration. CNN Shimon Prokupecz has more for us. Shimon.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Victor, we learned that more students have been under investigation by the federal government over their role during protests last year. One of them, a Indian national, self-deported. Authorities announced that this individual, this woman, left to LaGuardia Airport. She is from India and went to Canada.

They say that they revoked her student visa. She was here on a student visa because of her activity last year during some of the protests here on the campus. She was arrested and issued a summons and as a result they revoked that student visa.

And then we learned of another student as well, this one a woman who's from the Palestinian from the -- a Palestinian woman from the West Bank who was also arrested during protest activity last year. She is now in custody with ICE officials for overstaying her visa.

All of this comes on top of the fact that the administration is ordering major reforms here at the university before they can continue some of the funding that the administration has pulled from the university. They're asking the university to suspend students, to expel some of the students that were involved in protests. They're asking for a mask ban. They want certain departments like the Middle East Studies department to be run by outsiders. All of this is happening here, really just a lot of pressure here on the university from administration officials.

And also lastly, one of the other things that was announced was that now the Department of Justice is investigating potentially students, protesters who are involved here for anti-terrorism laws and also the college also potentially under investigation by the Department of Justice for civil rights law violations and also for potentially harboring or concealing immigrants who may have been here illegally.

So a lot of investigations, a lot happening here, Victor, on the school campus, of course, all very concerning for students here and for the university as they continue to try and meet the demands from the administration to get some of the funding back. Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, Shimon, thank you. Let's turn now to Russia's war on Ukraine. And right now about two dozen European and NATO leaders are gathering virtually to discuss how to end the fighting.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is hosting the call just a day after President Trump claimed that a U.S. Special envoy had, in his words, a good and productive meeting with Russian President Putin. Now, a new CNN poll shows that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the war in Ukraine. 59 percent say his approach is unlikely to bring lasting peace.

Allen Fromherz is director of the Middle East Studies Center at Georgia State University, where he's also a professor of Middle East, Gulf and Mediterranean history. His latest book is "The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present."

Allen, thank you for being back.

ALLEN FROMHERZ, DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST STUDIES CENTER AT GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY: It's great to be back. Thank you.

BLACKWELL: So let's start with what's happening right now. And these about two dozen European leaders, Keir Starmer wants both cement -- they want concrete support for Ukraine, but also what pressure these allies can put on Russia.

Let's talk about the pressure first. It's been three years. What economic pressures that haven't worked over the last three years are on the table and could work now?

FROMHERZ: Well, you would be surprised. There are still ways they can additional pressure in terms of economic sanctions, in terms of sanctions against specific people within Russia. And there are ways that even the banking system can be targeted further.

I think Europe is seeing itself as becoming more of the bad cop here in this situation. It's sort of this bad cop, good cop situation developing. Also, I think the Europeans are fundamentally skeptical that Putin will actually agree to a real ceasefire because Putin's conditions are in many ways very unworkable, or they're meant as simply a delay because Putin right now is doing quite well on the battlefield, advancing in the Kursk region, especially that part of Russia that the Ukrainians had seized as part of their negotiations as a negotiating chip for a future ceasefire.

[06:25:00]

BLACKWELL: Let's take that bite by bite. So the White House says that there's some pretty good news, as the President said coming out of these conversations between Russia and his White House representative. Do you see, based on what we know, good news that's coming out or is Russia just stalling here?

FROMHERZ: I think there's long term, there is good news.

BLACKWELL: OK.

FROMHERZ: The long term good news is that this axis of upheaval that Russia is part of is weakening. That this attempt to overthrow, in many ways to replace the Western alliance and to throw wrenches into that system, what we're seeing is with the G7 summit, with this organization, by the Europeans getting together, is that in fact the alliance with the United States and Europe is holding firm. That is the good news. And the bad news for the axis of upheaval and Russia's allies is that

they are weakening over the long term. Over the short term, Russia is doing well in one particular region, in the Kursk region, which is inside of the boundaries of internationally recognized boundaries of Russia. And they are making a few advances even within Ukraine as well.

So, in that respect, I think Russia is trying to stall in the short term. And Putin has put all of these potential conditions into the ceasefire, thinking that he's in the more powerful position here to make those conditions.

BLACKWELL: Including surrenders there in the Kursk region and having Ukraine give up their long goal of joining NATO, which if those are prerequisites, it's a nonstarter for a ceasefire deal anyway. Right?

FROMHERZ: Exactly. And that would be against NATO policy too. From the beginning, NATO has said that they are open to those willing to join. Even Russia was offered a NATO back in the Yeltsin days. People forget this, but of course Russia felt that it would want to have a very lead role in NATO back then.

So I think in many respects Putin knows that many of these are nonstarters and indeed he is trying to delay. What we don't want is a situation where Ukrainian, a large number of Ukrainians and Ukrainian troops are surrounded in the Kursk region, become potential hostages or there becomes even a potential massacre situation developing, which would be horrible.

So I think there's a need in the short term to mitigate that, to really find a way for Ukraine to keep its advantage while still preventing some sort of surrounding situation.

BLACKWELL: And we've discussed mostly what the requirements will be from the Russian perspective. But the national security adviser said that Ukraine would have to give up the Donbas for there to be some ceasefire for anything to work. That's the U.S. perspective there. I mean, why even put that on the table. Is that something that's plausible for Ukraine?

FROMHERZ: Well, these regions that we're talking about, the Donbas, for example, extremely rich and resources in minerals, this is a reflection of a wider kind of rush and between these two forces, between both the alliance in Europe, the United States, and this axis of upheaval for rare earth minerals, for these resources.

And so what Russia has done is said, well, we want to claim those as part of our -- as part of developing our strength and as part of our claim on those very rare resources. I think that the Donbas is a very difficult situation for Ukraine and eastern Ukraine in general because there are many people who have connections to or feel affiliation with Russia. In the past, they would vote for the more pro-Russian leaders.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

FROMHERZ: So that's always been an issue for Ukraine. But Ukraine's territorial integrity is a fundamental part of the post-World War II and post-Cold War.

BLACKWELL: But we're not hearing that as much from the Trump administration considering, of course, it's a demand from the Zelenskyy and Ukrainians. Allen Fromherz. Thanks so much for coming.

FROMHERZ: Thank you so much, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, millions of people in Cuba without power this morning. What we know about a massive nationwide blackout. That's next.

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[06:30:00]

BLACKWELL: Pope Francis will not be getting out of the hospital any time soon. The Vatican says that Pope Francis is released from the hospital's, quote, "not imminent", although he's in stable condition. He's been in the hospital since mid-February with pneumonia in both lungs.

Now, the Vatican says he continues to alternate between high-flow oxygen therapy during the day and non-invasive mechanical ventilation at night. President Trump's pick for special presidential envoy for hostage affairs withdrew his nomination yesterday. He did it so he wouldn't have to divest from his company.

A White House official told CNN that Adam Boehler will stay on as a special government employee, continuing his work on hostage negotiations. He recently played a role in securing the release of Marc Fogel, an American wrongfully detained in Russia. And Boehler also recently met with Hamas leaders to discuss the release of American hostages.

More than 10 million people in Cuba are in the dark this morning after the country's power grid collapsed on Friday. Now, Cuban officials blamed U.S. sanctions for the crippling of the energy sector, while critics say years of government neglect is the real issue.

[06:35:00]

Cuba had its worst blackouts in decades. You may remember this was in October. Most of the island was without power for almost a week. And we're continuing to follow this breaking news this morning. The deadly storm system that wreaked across the central U.S. yesterday, it brought widespread hurricane-force winds, spelled disaster for fire crews battling brush fires in Oklahoma and Texas.

And in Oklahoma, at least 15 fires spurred evacuations in several parts of the state. Let's bring back now CNN's Allison Chinchar for the latest on this. And this is in a story about what happened just yesterday, it is happening now, and it's going to happen throughout the weekend.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, METEOROLOGIST: Right, this will continue to go through today. This is all part of that same system. So, we talked about the severe component earlier on the back side where you still have those strong winds, but you don't have the moisture to go with it. You're just having these incredibly perfect conditions for fires to develop and spread.

And that's what we're going to see for the rest of the day today. So, you look at this map, we've got two separate areas that we're looking at in terms of the fire threat. You've got the little one that's a little bit northerner, north of where we saw yesterday. And then the southern component and a lot of the same areas that we saw some of those fires spread very quickly yesterday.

Winds today still up around 50 to 60 miles per hour. Look at this. You have over 100 million people under some type of high wind alert as we go through the day today, and it's -- you can understand why. When you look at some of these numbers, again, you've got a lot of them out there where those wind gusts are 30, 40, even as high as 60 miles per hour.

That's leading to some power outages. So, now, yes, keep in mind some of these are from the severe thunderstorms. But a lot of these, especially for Oklahoma and Texas, this stemmed from those incredibly high winds that we had yesterday and through the evening, the same ones that spurred a lot of those fires to spread so quickly.

And because we still anticipate those high winds today, these numbers are likely to go up again, not just for the severe component, but also for the incredibly strong winds. You've got both components because of this system, the fire risk out to the west and the severe thunderstorm component on the east. And we will talk more about that severe component coming up in just a little bit.

BLACKWELL: All right, we'll see you in a few minutes. Allison Chinchar, thanks so much. This has happened again. Another aviation emergency. Airplane passengers in Denver this time forced to walk onto the wing to escape a fire. We'll tell you about why this happened, we'll speak with an expert. Plus, NTSB audit just revealed some new details about airline safety. We'll get into that.

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[06:40:00]

BLACKWELL: The FAA has until the end of the year to implement five new recommendations after an NTSB Inspector-General's audit. Now, after reviewing data from recent close calls on runways, these are these runway incursions that we discussed. The report revealed that the FAA does not have an integrated approach to analyzing the incident data, and the pending changes come after an emergency plane incident on Thursday at Denver International Airport.

Look at this. Some of the 172 passengers and six crew members were left standing on the wing of the American Airlines jet after an engine caught fire. With me now to discuss is CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo. Mary, good to see you on a Saturday morning. Let's start with the results of this audit that they're not even close to this integrating of the data and the approach. What's the threat? What are the implications of that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, this audit and this is from my old office, the Office of Inspector-General, the Department of Transportation. And it was a hugely important audit. And they do these audits about every five years and ask the FAA to get these jobs done to make runway incursions to things of the path of the past include you know, runway safety initiatives and airport safety initiatives.

But what was interesting about this is they reviewed some of the same data, and they had been doing this for about a year. They had this work in progress that the NTSB reviewed in discussing the DCA, the Reagan National Airport collision, and they found that there's lots of data pouring into different databases, including self-reporting by pilots and other databases.

But that the FAA wasn't analyzing it. So, there was this just incredible amount of data, and that's the data that they used to show. There were 15,000 near-misses at DCA in the last three years, but that the FAA wasn't using it to analyze and really do the trend analysis and to find the real hotspots and the real dangerous airports in the United States.

And by looking at that, they also found that the FAA's approach to the reducing the runway incursions and the risk of collisions at airports was spotty. It was airport by airport, and it wasn't a real nationwide, cohesive program, which is what we need. We have to have a nationwide system or we don't have aviation safety. And they did find that a lot of the near-misses and the incursions were happening in California.

BLACKWELL: You know, Mary, I just assumed after we have our reports on these near misses and the runway incursions where we say, there will be an investigation, that, that would be part of the investigation. Is it -- should I be surprised that it hasn't been up to this point?

[06:45:00]

SCHIAVO: Well, you should question that, and we all should question that, because the problem is, we have different government agencies. So, we have the NTSB out there, the National Transportation Safety Board, which is doing the investigation, you know, rolling up their sleeves, their feet on the ground, they're picking through the -- you know, the pieces of the airplane to find out what happened.

But then they have to make recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration, which is a different agency altogether. And report after report, literally about every five years for the last, you know, 25 years, the IG's office, the Office of Inspector General has been saying, you've got to get coordinated.

We have to have a nationwide transportation plan and system to reduce these bad statistics. But the two agencies are entirely separate, and the FAA has not adopted all of the National Transportation Safety Board recommendations. So, one of the things in this audit says, hey, you've got to have better coordination.

You actually have to deliver a nationwide, cohesive plan. So, they do have to talk to each other more, and the FAA has to adopt the NTSB recommendations.

BLACKWELL: Let's stay with the FAA this week, banning non-essential helicopter operations around Reagan National Airport. Of course, after that collision that we watched, that killed dozens of people also now going to analyze airports, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, L.A., also along the U.S. Gulf Coast. What does this analysis look like? And could we see likely bans there as well?

SCHIAVO: We should see some likely bans there as well, because what this analysis is going to look like is, I assume exactly what the NTSB did when they looked at the collision at Reagan National Airport. They went back and looked at the data and said, well, look, how many times have you had these warnings that are -- that are near-miss is imminent or a crash is imminent?

And when they looked at the DCA data, they found, you know, for example, you know, one a month of the most serious kind in 15,000. So, when they actually look at this data, the same data that the Office of Inspector-General said the FAA had not been analyzing, I think they're in for some big surprises, and there should be changes at these other airports, because with about 1,700 runway incursions, meaning you're going to have conflicting traffic when you're landing or taking off, we know there's something out there going wrong.

And by looking at this data, hopefully this team will find the real hot spots and solve these problems and reduce the risk that people will die.

BLACKWELL: Mary Schiavo, thanks so much, always good to have you.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: Two NASA astronauts, they are hoping to be back on earth soon after spending way more time in space than they had expected to. What they're saying about their extended stay. That's next.

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[06:50:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, ignition and lift-off, go SpaceX, go NASA crew 10.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Let's hope it works this time. The rocket that will bring NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore home has launched months later than expected. Now, the pair made it to the ISS in June. This trip was supposed to last a few days. It's turned into nine months, it's been politically-charged. This odyssey that's gone on and on. CNN's Nick Valencia is at the launch site.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On paper, this is a routine handover mission. But in reality, it is so much more, especially when you consider the comments made by President Trump alleging that the Biden administration left two American astronauts stranded in space. And while Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been in space for more than nine months, by and large, they've tried to stay out of the controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARRY BUTCH WILMORE, ASTRONAUT: We don't feel abandoned. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human space flight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those.

So, if you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, and let's change it to prepared and committed. That's what you've been hearing, that's what we'd prefer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: According to NASA, it will be between 4 and 7 days after Crew 10 docks on the ISS before Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will make their way back home. That means they could be back on earth with the rest of us as early as Wednesday. Victor?

BLACKWELL: All right, Nick, thank you very much. In today's "START SMALL, THINK BIG, we meet an entrepreneur who is using his passion for history to teach visitors all about Austin, including a tour of the river his ancestors were sold on.

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JAVIER WALLACE, FOUNDER, BLACK AUSTIN TOURS: My name is Dr. Javier Wallace, and I am the founder of Black Austin Tours. I took a lot of courses about the history of black education in America. I never thought in a million years that I would be able to create a business based on my history, based on our history as a people of African descent in this world.

Black Austin Tours, we do an east Austin walking tour, we do a downtown walking tour. We do a food and music tour, and we also do a kayaking tour on the Colorado River. And I found records of people who had enslaved my family, and they trafficked us through the different ports like the Port of Galveston and the Colorado River being one of them.

Hemsley Coursely(ph), my fifth great grandfather, who was born in Maryland and who was sold south from Baltimore, Maryland by Hope Slatter, one of the biggest domestic slave traders in United States history. He was sold here in Texas. This is exactly what people meant when they say I'm going to sell you down river.

[06:55:00]

History was something that had always been and will continue to be a passion of mine, but it was nothing that I ever thought could grow into something that could generate not only revenue and money for myself, but for community. What has come out of Black Austin Tours has been the most fulfilling thing that I've done in my life.

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BLACKWELL: Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING, it is Saturday, March 15th, you're up early and with me, and I appreciate it. This morning, there's a lot going on --