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Trump Threatens to Send National Guard to Chicago; Where Are They Now? The People Displaced by Katrina. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 26, 2025 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:05]

M.J. LEE, CNN ANCHOR: Powerball mania is starting to sweep across the U.S. After 37 drawings with no grand prize winner, the jackpot has soared to $815 million for Wednesday night.

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Thank you so much for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm M.J. Lee in Washington, D.C., and CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump trying to defend the deployment of National Guard troops in U.S. cities. And a lot of people are questioning his choice of words.

CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense. And --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: That's not all, he said. We'll let you be the judge in a moment.

And "you're fired." The Fed governor ousted by President Trump. Does he have the authority to do that?

And reaching into the private sector, the White House wants to buy shares of a chip-making company.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not really part of a party, although I've been a registered Republican. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Not your mama's swing voter. The new kind of voter that's not just jumping from party to party.

And a towering wall of dust engulfs Phoenix, knocking over trees and leaving thousands in the dark.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's like a ghost town now. Everybody split up in ten different directions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And when the levees broke, 80 percent of New Orleans flooded and became unlivable. Nearly half of all residents left and did not return. So where did they end up?

It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A gorgeous sunrise over New York City.

And good morning to you. It's Tuesday, August 26. I want to thank you for waking up with me. I'm Audie Cornish. And here's where we start.

It's not enough to have more than 2,000 National Guard troops in D.C. The president just signed an executive order creating specialized units of Guard troops, charged with quelling civil disturbances.

The order comes as he threatens to send troops into Chicago, and Democratic leaders across the country accuse him of making authoritarian moves.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And they say we don't need them. Freedom, freedom. He's a dictator. He's a dictator. A lot of people are saying, maybe we like a dictator.

I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense, and I'm a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities. And then you send in troops, and instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over the republic. These people are sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: No word yet on which Americans actually want a dictator. But here's the governor of Illinois in response.

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GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D), ILLINOIS: Find a family who's enjoying today, sitting on their front porch, and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching

for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now in the group chat, Zach Wolf, CNN senior politics reporter and author of the "What Matters" newsletter; Jerusalem Demsas, editor in chief of "The Argument"; and Ashley Davis, former White House official under George W. Bush.

OK, so thank you guys for talking with me.

That was, like, a really interesting clip of him responding. Usually, if the president responds, it's because he is hearing the criticism. It is reaching him in the office.

I want to start with you, Jerusalem. How do you hear this argument that Democrats are making, right? During the election, they were talking about democracy all the time. Now we're going to hear the word "dictator," "authoritarian," "fascist" all the time. What do you make of how they're playing this?

JERUSALEM DEMSAS, EDITOR IN CHIEF, "THE ARGUMENT": Yes, I mean, I think it's going to be really, really difficult to make this about democracy, because so many people are used to hearing that kind of charge from Democrats over and over again.

But I will say, what's different here is that seeing National Guardsmen troops patrolling your city in, you know, fatigues, it's like genuinely kind of shocking.

We're in D.C. here, and I think that most of the country hasn't experienced this yet, other than, you know, Los Angeles obviously has seen this. It is a really jarring thing in the United States of America.

It's something that, in eras past, people would have, you know, seen this as a completely unacceptable power grab by the president of the United States to begin using domestic law enforcement -- sorry.

CORNISH: Military police for domestic, yes.

DEMSAS: Or military as domestic law enforcement. And so, to me, I think there's going to be a reaction.

[06:05:05]

But also, people do want more of a robust response to crime. So, I think the way it shakes out is going to be difficult to say. I don't think this is a popular move by the president.

CORNISH: OK. The flip side is the people who perceive cities as fundamentally crime-ridden at all times, in all decades, think this is a good thing.

So, here's an example. "The New York Post": "O Safe Can you See? [SIC] No Murders in the Capital Since Trump Takeover."

Actually, there's probably no murders in North Korea, too, but am I -- I don't want to be presumptuous. So, tell me about this juxtaposition.

ASHLEY DAVIS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH: You know, I've been talking about this, at least from my perspective, living in Washington for the last 25 years.

Yes, I don't want crime. I don't want to raise my son here with crime. But I do think that there is a message here that the president is trying to convey, which I do think that some of these Democrats are falling into.

He's talking about -- yesterday was all about law and order. And OK, so let's talk about Chicago. We were talking before we started.

There were six murders this weekend. Twenty-seven people were injured, and 130,000 at Nordstroms were stolen. You know, from people breaking into it.

So, you have now -- he now forces Pritzker to say murder is good, right?

CORNISH: Or it is not as bad as you're being --

DAVIS: Yes.

CORNISH: Exactly. I'm being facetious.

DAVIS: Just it's a big leap.

But then also just --

CORNISH: Yes.

DAVIS: -- and I know I agree with you. And but on the other side, it's like the talk about the American burning of the American flag yesterday.

Som now for the next couple months, we're going to talk about if it's breaking the First Amendment, which I'm sure it does at the end of the day. But you know what the conversation is? The Democrats want, or certain Democrats, want us to burn the American flag.

So, I think that this is all messaging, which he does masterfully, by the way, whether we agree with it or not. And we keep falling in that trap.

CORNISH: Right. So, defining the agenda for the rest of us.

DAVIS: Correct. That's what he's doing.

CORNISH: Hey, Mr. "What Matters" newsletter. What matters here? What are you thinking?

ZACH WOLF, CNN SENIOR POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, you know, I keep thinking we see the troops on the -- on the street here in D.C.

People in -- in a lot of other cities aren't going to see that. In red states, I think we can all assume he's not going to be deploying the National Guard to red-state cities, at least any time soon.

CORNISH: Yes.

WOLF: I know they're talking about --

CORNISH: Although there are a number of cities in the sort of top ten.

WOLF: Correct. There's plenty of crime.

CORNISH: There's violent crime in Memphis, but we'll see.

WOLF: Yes. Well, he's -- he'll do Chicago first, you know. You know, we'll do New York. We'll do Los Angeles. These are places -- these are the -- the cities he would like to "other" for, you know, a lot of the voters that support him.

And then I think it's interesting, you know, the "I'm not a dictator." It almost strikes me as the "I do not beat my wife" kind of an answer to a question.

He clearly doesn't want to be seen as a dictator. But I also think that, you know, there's the law-and-order crowd might not be that opposed to --

CORNISH: Those are the people he was referring to.

WOLF: Yes, the strongman tactic.

CORNISH: I'm going to look for that in your reporting. People who said, I want a dictator.

WOLF: Yes, we're looking for them. Email me if you want a dictator. I'd love to talk to you.

CORNISH: All right. And here's where we are.

Group chat, stay with me. We've got a lot more to talk about this hour.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, a Fed governor sacked? Is the president trying to exert more control over the independent central bank?

Plus, ICE has a new focus. They're singling out truckers.

And a massive dust storm rolls through Arizona, damaging homes and knocking out power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This one felt like it was fast, but devastating at the same time. So, it didn't last. It lasts as long as a normal dust storm would. But the damage that followed it was kind of a bit more. (END VIDEO CLIP)

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[06:13:01]

CORNISH: It's almost 15 minutes past the hour, and here is your morning roundup.

Utah will have to redraw its congressional maps before the 2026 election. This after a judge ruled it was unlawful, because lawmakers weakened and ignored an independent commission to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

The current map divides Salt Lake County, a Democratic stronghold, among four congressional districts.

ICE in Florida will soon single out truck drivers. The state's attorney general announced Monday that all truck agricultural inspection stations in the state would also serve as federal immigration checkpoints.

They'll be looking for fraudulent documents, unsafe vehicles, and testing English proficiency for drivers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VENUS WILLIAMS, PROFESSIONAL TENNIS PLAYER: When you play unhealthy, it's in your mind. It's not just how you feel. You get stuck in your mind, too. It was nice to be freer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The outcome of the match was besides the point in Venus Williams' U.S. Open return.

She lost to the 11th-seeded 29-year-old from the Czech Republic, but the loss was a major moment in the seven-time Grand Slam champ's career.

At 45 years old, Williams is the oldest singles player to take the court since 1981. She just started competing again last month after 16 months off dealing with health problems.

And after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, where did they go? Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, a new study pinpoints where the people who were forced to evacuate it ended up.

Plus, a new kind of swing voter: voting sometimes and staying home for others.

Good morning to Chicago. We're talking today about whether or not the president will send National Guard troops to the city.

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[06:19:11]

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Planning on going back to New Orleans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm planning on moving on. Live out in Houston. I like it better out of here. I think the only thing we can do is move forward and put this behind us. You know what I'm saying? Can't let Katrina keep us down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, this big question remains. What happened to the million people who fled? Most never returned. And their journey reshaped the South.

In the chaos of late August 2005, families were packed onto busses with no idea where they were headed. Entire neighborhoods were emptied out overnight.

Louisiana's governor at the time gave this warning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATHLEEN BLANCO (D), FORMER LOUISIANA GOVERNOR: This business is of such magnitude, one that a nation has never experienced before. To have so many people moved out of their homes and displaced has caused -- has caused us as a nation to take a look at how we handle disasters in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Houston, Atlanta. Cities across the South saw sudden surges in population, while New Orleans lost more than half of its residents within a year.

School rosters shifted, neighborhoods evolved. Even local politics changed, all because of one storm. And most of those evacuees did not return to rebuild.

So, what happened to those people after this mass migration?

Until now, it's been hard to tell. And that's where our next guest, Elizabeth Fussell, comes in. She's recently done a study examining where the evacuees ended up.

Elizabeth, good morning. Thank you for being here.

ELIZABETH FUSSELL, PROFESSOR OF POPULATION STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY: Good morning.

CORNISH: So, I saw that Baton Rouge was on the list. So, some people just went to other parts of Louisiana. And then there were other states that picked up, probably a disproportionate amount. Texas, for instance, both Houston and Dallas.

Why was it so hard to find where people went? What were some of the complications with this data?

FUSSELL: Yes, the -- the kind of data that we have assembled here is very difficult to collect, because almost all of the surveys that we have that examine migration in the United States, ask people about where they lived one year ago.

And so, after a year, we had no way of tracing people back to New Orleans. What this data did is allowed me to go into a federally secure statistical data center in order to link data from the New Orleans population to their residential locations in each year between 2006 and 2019 to figure out where people had landed up.

And a few -- I was also able to assemble a few statistics about their characteristics.

CORNISH: Can you talk about who came back? Because we know there were multiple waves. Some people left early ahead of the storm. Some people were in that forced evacuation. Some people were in the late -- right? -- the aftermath evacuations, so to speak.

FUSSELL: Yes. And so, people who left voluntarily were able to choose their destination for the evacuation. And then people who had to shelter in place in New Orleans had fewer choices and needed the assistance of FEMA in order to figure out where they were going to go.

So, they did end up in a wider range of places, some of which were really unfamiliar to them.

CORNISH: How did it?

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: Go ahead.

FUSSELL: Sorry. Over time, people did sort themselves into locations where they wanted to be. And the data that I'm presenting really isn't so much about their evacuation destination, but where they might have settled once they figured out that they couldn't go back to New Orleans.

CORNISH: I notice you don't use the term "refugees." Can you talk about why?

FUSSELL: Yes, the word "refugee" is a term that we use to -- in order to identify somebody who's seeking asylum or refugee from their home country.

And it's a political term, which means that they weren't able to live in their country because of political persecution for some reason.

And of course, people who move internally are free to move. They're Americans. They can move anytime, anywhere they want to, to set up a new home.

So, the usual term for internally displaced people is just that, internally displaced people. And we more commonly call them migrants.

CORNISH: And yet, people did refer at the time to people from New Orleans as refugees.

FUSSELL: Indeed. There was a sense that New Orleans was such an exotic place to most people in the United States that, when New Orleanians left the city, they were somewhat exotic.

And of course, the pictures on the media of people who were really suffering in the convention center and the Superdome did a lot to contribute to that "othering" of the New Orleanians who had been left behind.

CORNISH: Well, Elizabeth Fussell, thank you so much for sharing your data.

FUSSELL: Thank you.

CORNISH: Straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, burn the flag, get a year in jail. The president wants to go after people who burn U.S. flags. The Supreme Court has actually already legalized it.

Plus, can President Trump convince Vladimir Putin to meet with his counterpart in Kyiv?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:29:42]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We burn this flag in protest to that president, who feels that it's his right to do whatever he wants, make whatever law he wants, regardless if it's legal or illegal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: A combat veteran arrested outside the White House after burning an American flag. This just hours after President Trump signed an executive order to criminalize the act.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING.