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CNN Tonight

Supreme Court Protects Access to Abortion Pill, For Now; Report Shows Americans Purchased Nearly 60 Million Guns Between 2020-22; Five NFL players face suspension for violation of gambling policy; $15M Worth of Gold and Valuables Stolen in Toronto Airport Heist. Aired 10- 11p ET

Aired April 21, 2023 - 22:00   ET

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

[22:00:06]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And it did not spark a movement out of that genre and from those artists. But Nashville is their home, many physically but also kind of spiritually. And I actually -- since we spoke, that letter came out and I'm starting to wonder now if there's being -- if a real movement, a nascent movement is starting to kind of poke its head up.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: All right. Thank you all so much for giving up your Friday nights to be here with us.

CNN Tonight with Erica Hill filling in for Alisyn starts right now. Hey, Erica.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Hey, Pamela. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Great to have you with us. I'm Erica Hill in tonight for Alisyn Camerota. Welcome to CNN Tonight.

We have much more on the biggest story of this night. The Supreme Court, of course, protecting access to a widely used abortion drug by freezing lower court rulings that restricted its usage. It's a big victory for the Biden administration. It is far from the end, though. The ruling means the appeals process now will play out and it is almost guaranteed the case will eventually land back before the justices. In the meantime, though, the FDA approval of Mifepristone stands as does current access.

Plus, turmoil in the NFL tonight, three players suspended indefinitely, two others slapped with a six-game ban. So, what they do, is the punishment fair.

And it wouldn't be a Friday night here without a news quiz. See if you know more about what happened this week than our distinguished panelists.

Here is my panel tonight, Defense Attorney Misty Marris, John Avlon, our senior political analyst, former Democratic Congressman Max Rose, Jessica Washington from The Root, and joining us, Republican Strategist and Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. We do begin, though, this hour with CNN Justice Correspondent Jessica Schneider. So, Jessica, take us through in terms of the court's ruling. What does it do?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is definitely a relief, Erica, tonight for possible patients, doctors, drug manufacturers, the FDA, the Biden administration, all were worried about the potential fallout here. But in the end, the Supreme Court did step in tonight to protect full access to the abortion pill, Mifepristone, while this appeals process plays out.

So, what does it mean? Well, it means status quo for the administration of Mifepristone. That means women can continue to take it up to ten weeks pregnant, they can continue to receive it by mail and via telehealth visits with their health care providers and the generic version will still continue to be widely available.

So, this is actually exactly what the Biden administration, the FDA, what they were asking for and pushing for. In fact, they warned that if those restrictions were imposed on the drug at this point, there would just be chaos and confusion.

So, now, all of that has been avoided, and, Erica, the appeals process will start playing out in the Fifth Circuit court in New Orleans with briefs next week and then oral arguments in less than a month and May 17th.

HILL: So, as that whole process begins to play out, when we look at what we heard this evening from the Supreme Court, Justices Thomas and Alito publicly dissenting on this ruling. What more did they say?

SCHNEIDER: So, they were the only two justices who noted there just descents. But because of the way this order structured, we actually don't know exactly how the other seven justices voted, if there were other dissents, only that five justices were needed to grant this stay, which, of course, they got.

But Justice Alito did write that four-page dissent. And in it, he makes some arguments. He says, you know, the Supreme Court has previously been criticized for granting these types of stays, you know, these holds on lower court decisions. So, he's asking, why, fellow justices, are you willing to grant a stay now in these circumstances, especially because he's arguing there would not be any harm, in his words, if they let these restrictions go into effect.

So, he wrote this. At present, applicants are not entitled to a stay because they have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the interim.

But what's really interesting here, Erica, is that the FDA made a big argument that there would be major harm if these restrictions went into effect, with women not being able to fully access the drug, the chaos, they said, in the way that the changes would be made, to the way it was administered. But Justice Alito sort of disputing that that would actually happen. He said at one point, the FDA could just choose not to enforce those restrictions if they had taken effect. So, really a big dissent from Justice Alito with four pages of writing, and that might have been what took a little bit long to get this final decision here. Erica?

HILL: Jessica, I appreciate it, thank you. Lots to discuss here with my panel.

Missy, I'm going to start with you. I saw you nodding a couple of points during Jessica's last answer there. You know, as she noted, I was struck when she said Justice Alito at one point, saying, well, the FDA could just choose not to, they can just continue its status quo. I mean, really?

MISTY MARRIS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yes. So, it's interesting. So, first of all, that's the standard for any stay its likelihood of success on the underlying merits of the case and irreparable harm. And that's what someone has to show, a party has to show that in order to get a stay.

The reason that he's saying that is because there's a huge question mark about whether or not a regulatory agency can actually have something reversed by a court.

[22:05:01]

So there's a whole school of arguments about the power of the federal agency and whether or not they're actually subject to that jurisdiction and whether a court could intervene. And so that's where that comes in. But I agree with this decision. I'm not surprised that this is what happened.

There would have been chaos just in the sense of, well, now, what does this mean for any other pharmaceutical in the market. Can a court come in and say the FDA doesn't have the right to approve and we can reverse it if we don't agree? It would not have been good. It would have said a crazy precedent and it would have actually impacted other regulatory agencies as well.

HILL: And that's certainly been one of the questions. If that had happened, right, what would the fallout be? What FDA approved medications would be next? John, you say this is the right decision. Now, we're going to watch this play out, though, for some time.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Which is appropriate because that's the process. The problem was that the process was completely overturned by a judge who seemed to be acting for ideological reasons unrelated to precedent or the process of expertise set up by the FDA.

This is the problem with politicizing our courts. You get decisions like this that have meaningful impact on people's lives and can throw total, you know, people's lives into chaos. What Alito is saying about no harm is a bit of a head scratcher. But be that as it may, this is the sensible thing to do, it will go forward, but the precedent stems from the fundamental problem of the politicization of our courts.

HILL: Which interesting is that change, I would say, in messaging that we have seen, it's been far more forceful from the Biden administration. They have really put Vice President Harris out there on this over the last couple of weeks. How effective has she been as a messenger, and you anticipate this is her role moving forward?

FMR. REP. MAX ROSE (D-NY): Well, it should be, and I think that she has been extraordinarily effective. Of course, the Biden administration has been searching for what exactly her role can and should be. And I have to say, you know, as a Democrat. I'm very thankful that they finally put her in a role that she can succeed at. That's not a judgment of her capabilities. That's a judgment of them being strategic.

Previously, they said, well, you're going to go to space and then you're going to solve the border, and then they set her up to fail.

Now this is exactly where the Democratic Party needs a strong messenger, and she is that, she has demonstrated that over and over again and this is the winning issue for the Democratic Party, and it has to continue to hammer at home, beginning with the president's campaign.

HILL: How has the conversation changed at this point, do you think because of just what we've seen over the last couple of weeks?

JESSICA WASHINGTON, SENIOR REPORTER, THE ROOT: Yes. I mean, I think this is definitely something that people are paying more and more attention to. I mean, after kind of the fall over the Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision, I mean, that changed everything, right?

But this, again, is kind of putting it back into the headlines. People are talking about the fact that this is a drug that has been approved by the FDA for 23 years. It is the most effective regimen when combined with Misoprostol that we have in the United States to carry out self-medicated abortions.

And so I think people are really looking at this and they're saying it doesn't make any sense to try and get Mifepristone and kind of thinking about how ideological this war has become.

HILL: Kristen, you were saying that this is a bit of a sigh of relief for Republicans. Why?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Taking this out of the headlines and turning the temperature down, the Supreme Court making this ruling is, in some ways, pushing back against this idea that the court is just a political arm of the Republican Party.

It's made a statement to say, look, let's all take a breath and let's let the process play out. And that's probably a good thing for questions about the legitimacy of the court, et cetera, but also the more this is in the headlines, the more political peril, I think, Republicans have faced.

You know, if you think back to a Supreme Court ruling around something like gay marriage, when they decided the Obergefell case, that was something that took a political hot button, and it took it off the table. It said the Supreme Court has made a ruling and no longer were Republicans really getting asked the same kinds of questions as often about, well, what do you define as marriage, et cetera.

In this case with the fall of Roe versus Wade, with its overturning in the Dobbs case, it put abortion back on the political agenda, and Republicans, in my view, have been pretty flatfooted in their messaging on this. So, every new headline about abortion is bringing more potential political peril to Republicans as long as they don't have their act together on this.

HILL: So, maybe out of the headlines for a little while, Misty, give us a sense, is there a timeline in terms of this appeals process? What are we looking at?

MARRIS: So, this particular case is expedited. We're going to hear those arguments on May 17th. So, that's really quick. But that's just the beginning, there're other cases that are working their way up. And to the extent that different federal courts come out on the issue in different ways, well, that's a circuit split. That brings the issue back to the Supreme Court ultimately to make really novel decisions.

Number one, the FDA's power, whether or not the court to reverse it, whether or not states can actually limit the use after the FDA has said, well, we think it's okay to dispense it this way. Can states take that action? Is there a federal preemption issue?

There are so many novel legal issues that are coming out of the Dobbs decision, especially in a world where we can get medication, and we do en masse get medication through the mail, commerce issues, so much.

[22:10:06]

So, I don't think we're even 1 percent to where we're going to be to get some clarity on these issues. But the first case, we're going to know it pretty soon where that lands on around May 17th.

HILL: And so it's interesting, too, Kristen, to your point in terms of taking some of this out of the headlines because, you know, usually your words there, you feel Republicans have been sort of flatfooted, and we've seen that just in the response, even lack of response to a number of questions. I think Senator Tim Scott is a great example there. It's not going to go away because we are going to see more activity in the courts and not just when we're talking about this appeal.

ANDERSON: Well, certainly. And you're also going to see this play out in the Republican primary. Right now, you have this really interesting dynamic where some candidates, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are kind of trying to outflank Donald Trump on the right on a host of things, abortion now being one of them. And whether that's a smart strategy to try to peel off Trump's most ardent supporters or whether that jeopardizes somebody like Ron DeSantis is claimed to be a more electable candidate in the Republican primary, I think that's a really interesting gamble and we will know soon enough how that turns out.

HILL: Yes. And as we're watching, it will be interesting, Jessica, I think too, and maybe you're starting to see this in your reporting, how that conversation will change. You talked about how effective you think Kamala Harris is as a messenger here. It will be interesting to see if Democrats, as a whole, not always their strong suit, Max, to come with a united message to see if that changes.

JESSICA WASHINTON, SENIOR REPORTER, THE ROOT: Yes. I think abortion has been something with, for the most part, Democrats have had a pretty united message on, and a pretty strong message, not all Democrats, obviously, but most for the most part, have had a pretty strong messaging on this. So, I do think this is one of the strongest issues. And we'll likely see that going into kind of the presidential race as well, that this is an issue they can come out on, they can be strong about and they don't have to kind of quibble around the edges, like Republicans do on this issue because they know it's unpopular.

ROSE: The strongest.

HILL: Yes, we'll be watching all of it.

Just ahead here, it's been a traumatic week when it comes to wrong place, wrong time shootings. We're talking about ringing the wrong doorbell, pulling into the wrong driveway, losing a basketball in a neighbor's yard. Americans are living in fear that perhaps the next innocent mistake could lead to them getting shot. So, what is happening in this country, why is violence seems the answer and how do we calm things down?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:15:00]

HILL: This week, it feels like we have been covering shootings on a nonstop loop. All of these victims, all young people, they were just really in the wrong place at the wrong time. Easy access to guns, is that part of the problem? The Louisville bank shooter left notes claiming that he wanted to show just how easy it is in America for someone dealing with a serious mental health issue to go out and buy an assault weapon.

Back now with my panel, and joining us, former professional tennis player Patrick McEnroe. Good to have all of you with us.

This is part of the conversation that I had with my kids this week. A couple of teenagers were looking at this, and the question was why is the answer to reach for a gun. Where are we at in this country? Is at a level of fear? So, your fear, full stop?

AVLON: Fear, lack of trust, and an abundance of weapons that, you know, aren't simply, you know, hunting rifles. You know, one of these studies that just came out said during the pandemic, Americans bought 60 million new guns. And it was predominantly people who owned firearms previously. But you did that because of a feeling of fear. And it wasn't just rising crime, it was this sort of raw sense that I need to defend myself.

But when the shootings that we've been covering this week are people who have a hair trigger because they sense a threat when there is objectively, in many cases, when, you know, there's no evident threat. And that's about lack of trust and fear combined with easy access to guns.

HILL: So, how do you then look at the fear? Because the fear goes both ways, right? So, then there's the fear of any time I go to get in the wrong car in the parking lot. I've done that. Who hasn't done that? I've driven up the wrong driveway. Then do I have to worry that I'm going to get shot? It's a vicious cycle.

ROSE: I wish it was a simple that it's just fear. And I think that plays a part. But it's much more than. It's culture in the United States of America today. There are so many different communities with this strong culture of gun ownership and self-reliance that often translates in moments of heightened emotion or heightened fear to the use of a gun for violence.

You know, that we are the only nation in the world with this level of this problem. And so you kind of separate everything out. It's a policy issue that allows for this pervasiveness of guns. And that's what has to be addressed head on.

What is so disappointing is that after each and every one of these events, there's a conversation, there's a debate, there're marches and then they nibble at the edges talking about a red flag law, saying that shouldn't be a question that someone that's mentally ill can get access to a gun. That shouldn't even be a question, but we should have things like universal background checks. We should get at the core root of the problem here, which is that we have hundreds of millions of guns on our streets.

PATRICK MCENROE, FORMER PROFESSIONAL TENNIS PLAYER: 400 million, to be exact, which is more than the people. And the fact of the matter is that we've lost it. I mean, we've totally lost our minds. And even now, I mean, don't you all -- when you go -- if you're in your car and you someone cuts you off, and it used to be like I'd honk at them or I say, you idiot. I don't even like consider doing that now.

HILL: It's true. I don't even consider doing that because I'm like, you know what, someone could just pull out a gun.

AVLON: You're falling into the whole armed society is a polite society argument.

MCENROE: But, well, the more guns, you just keep buying more guns. So, everyone is just, you know, getting more armed because they're trying to protect themselves, so they think, and think that this is going to somehow alleviate the problem, when obviously it's just making it considerably worse.

HILL: We talk about what the discussions are, right, after every shooting. I've covered far too many mass shootings. And you think about that conversation. I remember being in Sandy Hook and afterwards, the conversation with this could never happen again. We're talking about first graders. You look at Uvalde, you at everything that has happened since. What is amazing, though, we have numbers too when it comes to children. So, gun deaths among U.S. children increased 50 percent between 2019 and 2021. If children are not going to spur action, Jessica, is there anything that you've seen that will?

[22:20:03]

WASHINGTON: I think that's what really scares me. You know, we have seen these, you know, mass shootings of children but then also most of these gun deaths of children are happening in homes with weapons that are unlocked and available for children to access and potentially hurt themselves with, which is actually we're seeing most of the gun deaths among children.

I think that's what really scares me is just that we keep having these situations where children are dying on a very regular basis and we haven't done anything. And so I'd love to tell you right now, I think, you know, this is going to happen one more time, and we're going to do something, but that just hasn't been the reality that I've witnessed.

AVLON: Now, look, it breaks your heart and it makes you sick. But after Sandy Hook, of course, there was 90 percent support across partisan lines for closing background checks, you know, increasing background check, closing the gun show loophole. And the NRA lobbied against it and nothing happened.

Now, we had some action in Congress, and red flag laws, nothing, right? It's a step in the right direction. But the fundamental problem remains that onion headline that they air every time after every mass shooting. There's nothing we can do, says nation that's the only one in the world where this happens.

HILL: It's interesting to bring that up. And also not only that onion headline, which is honestly so important, but the fact that there have been some in incremental, there has been some incremental movement, and I even think back to the settlement that Sandy Hook -- some of the Sandy Hook families had when it came to the way these rifles were being advertise and who they were being marketed to. That's an important step.

ROSE: That was absolutely an important step. But at this point, we can't imagine the United States Senate passing something like an assault weapon ban that in a manner that's filibuster-proof. It has to get to over 60 votes or more. We can't imagine a Senate right now in its current composition passing universal background checks.

And what's striking here is that this is not something that can be solved with local policy. The vast majority -- take New York City, for instance, the vast majority of gun instances in New York City involved weapons that originated from out of state. It's called the iron pipeline, flows from states with extraordinarily lax gun laws.

There's even this little tiny bill called the T Heart Amendment, which denies local law enforcement from getting access to gun crime trace data. So, the NYPD can't even know that about the criminal gun dealers who are selling massive amounts of weapons to straw purchasers. The entire federal code in relation to gun violence and weapons sales is built in support of the gun lobby, not public safety.

HILL: Well, if that's not sobering. I don't know what it is. We're going to leave this discussion now.

We do have much more to talk about. The NFL players caught betting on games, the consequences they're now facing, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:25:00]

HILL: The NFL announcing the suspension of five players for gambling. Now, three of them suspended indefinitely for gambling on NFL games in the 22 season, not games they are playing in but NFL games. Two others were suspended for the first six regular games for other gambling policy violations.

The NFL saying in a statement, the gambling policy, which is annually reviewed with all NFL personnel, including players, prohibits anyone in the NFL from engaging in any form of gambling, in any club or league facility or venue, including the practice facility. The league review uncovered no evidence indicating any inside information was used or that any game was compromised in any way.

Back now with our panel, I'm going to go to the athlete on the panel. Mr. McEnroe?

MCENROE: I have feeling about this, yes.

HILL: You knew you were going to be up first. If you would bet on that, you would have won.

MCENROE: Look at that smile a smile on your face.

HILL: I saw this and I thought well, yes, I mean, if you know the rules, of course, you know what's going to happen. Is there a surprise, though, at all that it is happening?

MCENROE: No, there's not a surprise, although these players obviously are going to pay a hefty price. But let me give you all a little bit of a history lesson here, okay? Baseball, of course, was the American pastime. And then in the, you know, '50s, '60s, as television started to take over in sports, the NFL got in front of that.

So, by the early '70s, the NFL became the biggest sport in America, and it's only continued in the last 50 years. It has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And one of the main reasons it's as big as it is today is --

HILL: Gambling?

MCENROE: You nailed it, gambling, okay?

So, they, meaning the NFL, like all sports, they have to protect the integrity of the actual game that you as a fan are watching when you're watching it every Sunday now, pretty much every day of the week, you can watch the NFL. So they have to come down extremely hard on these players, even the two players that we're betting on something else.

Betting is like become the new American pastime, to me. I mean, betting is everywhere, whether it's in sports, whether it's casinos, I mean, you name it, betting is -- I mean, I consider it like an epidemic because it's just insane how much people bet and how big the industry itself is and the NFL is playing right along into it. And it's one of the reasons why it's to be a myth that it is.

HILL: So, when you look at this, Max, you said you're going to bet on this panel

MCENROE: We made him laugh. We got you.

HILL: So, when we look at betting overall then, when you look at how much happens with football, where does this end up? Does the NFL have to change any of these regulations? Because, again, they weren't betting on the games that they were playing in, they weren't trying to throw the game.

ROSE: This is the stupidest policy. And, of course, this is near and dear to my heart because my uncle, Pete Rose, paid a very significant price for this. I'm just kidding.

HILL: You got all of us for a second.

ROSE: I almost had you. But this is beyond idiotic.

[22:30:00]

And they didn't bet on the game they're playing in, right? They didn't bet against themselves or anything to that effect. And this notion that betting is something new is also patently absurd. It's just only recently become legalized and I'll tell you, let's do it even more because that produces amazing tax revenue for our schools, amazing tax revenue for infrastructure, and I'll certainly take that --

MCENROE: Wait a second. Wait a second.

ROSE: -- I will take that any day of the week ahead of a middle class tax increase --

MCENROE: Hold on a second. Are you saying that these players -- you can't allow the players to just bet on anything they want.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: This is the "All Drug Olympics."

MCENROE: I know which players are a little bit dinged up, a little bit injured, so I could just, no, you can't let that happen.

ROSE: Righteous indignation at Sports Insider trading, who cares?

JESSICA WASHINGTON, THE ROOT SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah, sorry. There were two - they didn't -- MCENROE: They didn't -- they were at their own facility and they were betting on something else, you know, likely from their phone. You know, placing bets.

HILL: Yeah, I mean, do we think that's as serious - just - is that as serious? Yeah.

MCENROE: But they have to lay down the law -- the NFL, because they have to get the attention of the players because if anything ever did happen, where they were betting on their own team or for the other team, for example -

HILL: --the NFL I would imagine, you know, they may be used to headlines that are perhaps not favorable to the league and how things are handled. However, you don't want to have another one coming back on you, right? Which is why you do have to crack down on this.

WASHINGTON: But there's the concern, too, about is there too much gambling in general?

AVLON: Well, yes and it also --

HILL: Not according to this one.

AVLON: Max -- Max Rose, it is sort of, you know, "All Drug Olympics" scenario where players should be betting on their own teams is -- is like a glide path to hell. But -- but look, you know, the standard he mentioned -- Pete Rose. That's the standard that makes sense to folks. You know, or it's like the Black Sox scandal.

You know, betting on a game you're playing in, your team is playing in, or throwing a game, that's the bright line. Betting in the NFL, okay fine, indefinite suspension. But two guys who were just betting from -- from a practice facility, I mean, apparently something else, that -- that is not within the realm of common sense, it seems to me.

WASHINGTON: Yeah, and it also feels there's something weird about it, when you have the NFL promoting gambling to the extent that they are, and then they're fueling this massive industry. And then you have two players who for kind of what it sounds like they're sitting in the facility, they're are gambling on their phone, they shouldn't have been doing it, they weren't doing anything related to the game. I'm not saying that they shouldn't face any kind of consequences but I can understand why it might feel somewhat like there's a little bit of hypocrisy almost going on.

HILL: It is interesting, too, when you look at, when you talk about the advertising, I mean, it is everywhere during every game. And so, it is hard to ignore, especially with a lot of these online, these online sites and apps on which you can gamble, it fuels so much of their funding.

MCENROE: It's totally -- it's totally out of control, okay. But if there are -- there are positives to it because, like you said, it's a huge revenue driver for the sport and for all these betting -- the entire betting industry. And Jessica is 100% right. The hypocrisy is there. But as a player, as an ex-professional player, you have to just play by those rules. You can't be that dumb.

I understand it's not that big of a deal. They were betting -- don't be doing it from the facility. Pretty simple.

HILL: I mean, I have to say I'm with you. If you know the rules, if you break the rules, I have very little patience for like --

ROSE: These stupid, stupid rules are meant to be broken. But I will say this, I will say this though, if the NFL were able to move with this sense of purpose and urgency in and around the racial discrimination suits against them right now, they'd be in a much better place as an organization, but now suddenly, they know how to move so swiftly and so quickly when a couple of players make a $30-bet on a game that they're not even involved in. It's ridiculous.

HILL: I gonna say that's a pretty good point. We're gonna end up that one. Okay, so we're gonna leave the parleys behind because we have -- we have much, much bigger purse here that we're talking about. Fifteen million people, all of it, gone in a flash -- is. The very real heist that seems like it is straight out of a movie. You're gonna want to hear about this one, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Your favorite story of the night. Oh, we're pulling out notes there. More than $15 million worth of gold bars and other valuables disappeared, vanished from a holding facility at Toronto's airport on Monday. Police still trying to figure out what happened, who's the mastermind behind the heist. And it had us all thinking it sounds a little bit like a movie, doesn't it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE CLOONEY, "OCEANS 11" ACTOR: The 3,000 block of Las Vegas Boulevard, otherwise known as the Bellagio, The Mirage and the MGM Grand. Together, they are three of the most profitable casinos in Las Vegas. Let me see - this is the vault at the Bellagio, located below the strip beneath 200 feet of solid earth that safeguards every dime that passes through each of the three casinos above it. We're going to rob it.

BRAD PITT, "OCEANS 11": Smash and grab job?

CLOONEY: Slightly more complicated than that.

HILL: A little "Ocean's 11" on a Friday. Who doesn't love that? My panel of detectives in training here to try to crack the case. So, here is the deal. If, let's say, George Clooney, not available. We tried to get him. Oddly enough, didn't take my call. George Clooney, not available, who are you calling in to plan your heist? You get to go first. Ladies first. [23:40:00]

WASHINGTON: I don't know if I have a good heist planner. I wasn't prepared. I don't know. Gosh. Yeah, I'm gonna have to toss this one around.

HILL: Do they have any good - I mean, are there any George Clooneys around?

AVLON: Obviously, Robert de Niro, Jimmy in "Goodfellas" in the "Lufthansa Heist". That's the movie clip we should have played.

HILL: There you go. Go, Henry Hill.

AVLON: Yeah, man.

HILL: Okay, so you got -

MCENROE: I'm - Brad Pitt. I'm going Brad Pitt. I could get behind that choice.

WASHINGTON: I'm okay with that.

HILL: You know, in all serious -- when you look at this, so it disappears, right? There's this massive container. It is gone. Toronto airport is huge, just to put it in sort of Canadian terms, our producers found that the Toronto Pearson Airport is equivalent to 12,500 hockey arenas. How about that? This is a big space, right? Things are coming in. People know things are coming in, it disappears. Inside job? No?

ROSE: Without a doubt, without a doubt. I mean, when you see that Toronto airport worker rolling up in a Ferrari, we know exactly who, you know, but really, this is a great payday for somebody. I'm amazed though. It was a Canadian that pulled it off. I mean, they're so -- they're so they're so polite, very polite.

HILL: But we don't know.

WASHINGTON: I think they are very polite.

ROSE: Listen, obviously, a Canadian airport worker -

MCENROE: This is -- this is -- almost as big, okay, as the great Canadian Maple Syrup, 2012 --

HILL: That's right.

MCENROE: It was about $20 million worth of about 3,000 tons of the best maple syrup around --

HILL: Liquid gold, that's what that is.

MCENROE: --and this one is measuring up to that.

HILL: It is measuring up to that. What I find remarkable is even if you walk off with these gold bars or whatever, I keep wanting to say golden balloons, even though it's not a pirate heist. How are you getting rid of those? Is this like stolen art? Clearly, I don't do a lot of major heists. Is it stolen art or it's just a black market thing, and you want to show it to your -- people that come over to your house. You can't really -- can you sell it? How traceable is it?

ROSE: I'm nervous about showing too much -- I think very clearly you could melt it and do something to that effect. I mean, we obviously have a hustle --

AVLON: You know. You're the one praising the guy for a good payday.

ROSE: But I think they get to bet on football.

MCENROE: We beat that one down. All right. I find it very interesting, though, on a somewhat serious note, that all of the Canadian authorities are like, oh, we can't tell you, we're not sure where it came from. What type of point -- what airline was carrying it? It all sounds very sketchy. Very fishy to me. This actually could be a movie. I think.

HILL: It could be, right. And is there a video? Where is the video? Why don't we know it? They didn't really want to talk about it. Full stop. Really did not want to be addressing it. That raises a lot of questions.

ROSE: If anyone believes this wasn't an inside job, you know, tell me Epstein committed suicide, as well. I mean, this is, this is this is just this is just great, but we're almost at 11. But no, you know, in all seriousness, come on. I mean, this was so clearly an inside job. And often, though, what I would say in cases like this, which involved massive institutional failure, you're going to see the news cycle very quickly, or they'll make an effort to have the news cycle move on very, very quickly. So, I would expect that that we won't hear much of this until the movie comes out.

WASHINGTON: I wanna get another podcast people on it like I don't know, some of those like, yeah, it's not the true crime exactly, those are little dark, but like the kind of true crime adjacent, like a scam goddess like something like that. I want one of those podcasters to get really into it. Like the documentary can come after, but we need to get one of those podcasts also on it.

WASHINGTON: I'm on it.

AVLON: This is gonna be a movie. And you know, I think, Canadian mob movies are under-represented. So, there's a real opportunity here.

HILL: How many - how many are there? Do you have a top 10 list?

AVLON: I'm gonna go zero. All right none. Maybe, yeah, it was the opening scene. I don't know, a re-make.

MCENROE: I just want to know who decided to put all these particular goods into one container. That's what I'd like to find out.

HILL: I agree. I - you know, I space mine out especially on traveling. I mean, what if you lose one container there goes your 15 million.

WASHINGTON: Double scam. Unless it's double scam. What if it was insured, and then someone stole it from themselves? We don't know. I hate - I don't know if those are real crimes, so -

MCENROE: How much time do we have?

HILL: And sadly, we are out of time. Keep your ideas flowing because Jessica has a podcast coming up and she's working on a script, there's a little twist in the movie. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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[22:24:00]

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HILL: President Biden wants environmental justice to be the mission of the entire U.S. government, announcing a new executive order today, creating an office of environmental justice and requiring every federal agency take into account how pollution impacts the health of all people with an emphasis on disadvantaged communities.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: We will include communities that have been denied basic security, basic dignity that comes from clean air, having clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs and environmental justice. We vow to take action, the most ambitious climate, environmental justice agenda in American history. And that's exactly what we did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Joining me now is CNN's Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir.

So, this is one idea, Bill, obviously to tackle the impacts of climate change.

[22:50:00}

HILL: You found a lot of other ideas really innovative approaches, too, in your words, unscrew the planet, which is the focus of yours -- of your reporting this Sunday night on the whole story. I'm - I'm fascinated by this idea and I love the title.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Thank you. Yeah, it was sort of, the future is screwed if you listen to the evidence and the -- and the predictions, and I wonder how many people does it take to unscrew a planet. And it turns out eight billion of us in every very various different ways, but I wanted to talk to the real dreamers. The Thomas Edison's who are out there with the boldest ideas.

And I met a guy who made a fortune in software and then said, you know what? I'm going to tackle this problem and started a company called "Charm" and I gotta look, it's sort of like a glimpse inside the Model A factory, the beginning of a whole new trillion dollar industry. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEIR: You're part of the movement to basically build the oil industry in reverse.

PETER REINHARDT, SOFTWARE DEVELOPER: That's right.

WEIR (voice-over): After making a killing in software and becoming frustrated with carbon offsets, Peter Reinhardt helped found "Charm."

REINHARDT: So, this over here is the paralyzer (ph).

WEIR: A start-up that scoops up the organic waste usually left to rot in farm fields, heats it into biochar, which improves soil health and bio oil, which he injects down into old oil wells.

WEIR: How much have you injected, to date?

REINHARDT: We've sequestered about 5,450 tons of CO2 equivalent, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the 50 billion tons a year that we're emitting as a -- as a civilization.

WEIR: Confirming Peter's claim independently is tough because carbon removal verification is also brand new. But if he's right, his teeny drop in the bucket would be about half of all the carbon ever removed.

No offense. This is awesome, but it's a couple of containers in a parking lot in San Francisco, and we were in Iceland and saw what's there and that's it, in the whole world? Should I be depressed by that?

REINHARDT: Or you could view it as an opportunity.

WEIR: I guess.

REINHARDT: You wanna start a carbon removal business?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: Wait, are we gonna lose you as our chief climate correspondent?

WEIR: No, I'm not smart enough. Not smart enough but I met a lot of brilliant people from the labs of M.I.T. and Caltech who are in this space, competing, getting billions of new investments, the big sort of tech companies have a billion dollar fund that pays companies like him to lock this carbon away.

Sometimes you've heard of carbon offsets. If you fly a lot. Well, I'll protect the forest. A lot of times, you don't know if that forest is not going to burn or if it wasn't gonna be cut down anyway. And so, these kinds of ideas are verifiable. We know exactly how much he's pumping back down into the ground. That's his argument. If you can get the cost down, and we're going to pay for it as a society, that's sort of the next step. But I also talked to folks who want to spray sunscreen in the sky,

high in the stratosphere. To try to cool and mimic the shading power of volcanoes and bias a few years to keep like the worst tipping points from happening. That's where we are in this conversation.

HILL: It is, it is fascinating, and I will say I love that you're finding people who are doing all the work because it gives me a little bit of hope.

WEIR: Me, too. Absolutely, you know, action is the best remedy for eco- anxiety. We - we're capable. We just need to be put in the right direction.

HILL: Yeah, we just need to put in some work, a little bit. Right. Well, and you know, if you start that side hustle, you just let us know.

WEIR: Okay, I'll let you know. All right.

HILL: You tune in for a new episode of the whole story with Anderson Cooper. It airs this Sunday, 8PM on CNN.

A monumental decision from the Supreme Court tonight affects women and girls across the country. Everything you need to know about this decision when it comes to abortion medication, that is next.

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[22:55:00]

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HILL: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us this hour. On the night, the Supreme Court has protected access to a widely-used abortion drug by freezing lower court rulings that place restrictions on medication abortion. It's important to note this is not the end here. So, what does it mean? Well, it means the appeals process still has to play out. It's almost guaranteed, though, that the case will land back before the justices. In the meantime, however, it also means that the FDA's approval of the drug Mifepristone remains in place.

My panel is here, but first, I do want to check in with CNN Justice Correspondent Jessica Schneider, as well as, Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

Good to see both of you, tonight. So, Jessica, first of all, take us through this ruling, and what the decision actually means tonight.

Jessica Schneider, CNN Justice Correspondent: Yes, So, Erica. This means that full access to Mifepristone will remain. As you mentioned, those -- that appeals process plays out. So, what that means practically, women can continue to take this up to 10 weeks pregnant. They can continue to receive it by mail. They can also get it prescribed via telehealth visits with their health care providers. And also, the generic version, it's gonna remain available. So, this is exactly what the Biden administration was asking for. They

wanted this stay in effect, so these restrictions didn't take effect, and they warned that if there were restrictions imposed on the drug at this point, they said, there would be confusion and chaos.

So, really now, all of that has been avoided and this appeals process will play out in a pre-speedy fashion in the Fifth Circuit. We've got briefs due next week and then arguments in less than a month on May 17th. Erica.

HILL: So, as we're watching for that on the legal side when it comes to the drug itself, Elizabeth, there's also been a lot of questions about the FDA's authority to make science-based decisions about medication going forward. You know, their approval is still there tonight. But what are the concerns about that process and the FDA's authority moving forward?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. The concern, Erica, is that it would undo the way that it has been for many, many decades, which really makes sense. The FDA are scientists, and they consult within themselves and with outside scientists when a company says, hey, I want to market this pill. It's the FDA.