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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

NYC Mayoral Primary is Referendum on National Crime Wave; Appeals Court Blocks Ruling to Overturn California Assault Weapons Ban; Carl Nassib is First Active NFL Player to Come Out as Gay; Supreme Court Sides with Student-Athletes in NCAA Case; Mayor Voting Rights Bill Expected to Fail Key Senate Test Vote. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired June 22, 2021 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:29]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: New York City heads to the polls today, local politics with national implications.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats hope for a unified front today. A big test ahead for voting rights. What happens when it fails?

JARRETT: And for the first time in NFL history, an active player says that he is gay. Why he chose to speak out now.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.

ROMANS: Good morning, Laura. Good morning, everyone. I'm Christine Romans. It is Tuesday, June 22nd. It is 5:00 a.m. in New York.

And today, voters in New York City head to the polls for a crucial primary election, one that doubles really as a referendum on the crime spiking across the country. Just as the pandemic begins to ease, murders, shootings, hate crimes all up significantly as New York City reopens from COVID-19, a situation mirrored in other cities, big and small.

JARRETT: In the wide open Democratic field, these are the four considered top candidates, Brooklyn borough president and former police officer, Eric Adams, former sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia, and a recent presidential Andrew Yang who teamed up over the weekend in an effort to slow Adams' momentum. And there is also civil rights Maya Wiley, the consensus pick of New York progressives.

ROMANS: Today marks the end of a wild and heated campaign, but don't expect results anytime soon.

More from CNN's Athena Jones.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and Laura.

Today is primary day in what is being called the most significant election in New York City in a generation. Thirteen candidates are vying for the Democrat being nomination in the race for mayor and whoever wins is heavily favored to win the general election in November.

The next mayor faces a difficult task of leading a city emerging from a pandemic-induced economic crisis. And with voters ranking public safety issues like crime on the streets and subway system at or near the top of their list of concerns, the candidates' plans for how to combat rising crime have been a big focus in recent weeks.

Today is also the first big test for ranked choice voting, a new method that allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. It means that if as expected no one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote of first choice ballots, the candidate with the least support is eliminated.

Those votes reallocated to those voters' second choice candidates. The process continues until someone wins a majority of votes.

The board of elections plans to release the first choices of early and in-person votes on election night but won't start the rank choice process for another week. Starting July 6, they will run the rank choice count week will he including absentee ballots until a winner is determined. That could take weeks -- Christine, Laura.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right, Athena. Thank you so much for that.

With gun violence on the rise, California's decades-old ban against assault weapons will remain on the books for now. A federal appeals court has blocked a controversial ruling that had overturned the state's ban on assault style earlier this month. That judge, Roger Benitez, remember compared the AR-15 to a Swiss army knife.

California's attorney general says the state's current laws will stand while the legal battle goes on.

JARRETT: The defensive lineman for the Raiders makes NFL history, becoming the first league's active player to announce publicly that he's gay.

Andy Scholes has more on the landmark moment.

Andy, it's kind of amazing, it's 2021 and we're still having this conversation. But here we are.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: And that's what a lot people are saying, Laura. Hopefully in the future, we won't have to have this as a big news story.

But Carl Nassib is going into his sixth season in the NFL, second with the Las Vegas Raiders. And he made his announcement on Instagram yesterday during pride month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CARL NASSIB, LAS VEGAS RAIDERS DEFENSIVE END: Just want to take a quick moment to say that I'm gay. I've been meaning to do this for a while now. But I finally feel comfortable to get it off my chest. I'm a pretty private person so I hope you guys know that I'm really not doing this for attention. I just think that representation and visibility are so important.

I actually hope that one day videos like this and the whole coming out process are just not necessary. But until then, I'll do my part to cultivate a culture that's accepting, that's compassionate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: And Nassib is also saying he's donating $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which is a nonprofit that provides crisis intervention and aims to prevent suicide within the LGBTQ youth community.

Now, reaction just pouring in from all over the sports world praising Nassib for having the courage to make this announcement.

[05:05:03]

J.J. Watt tweeting: Good for you, Carl. Glad you feel comfortable enough to share and hopefully some day these types of announcements will no longer be considered breaking news.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell meanwhile saying in a statement, the NFL family is proud of Carl for sharing his truth. Representation matters.

Now, many NFL players have come out as gay after their careers were over. Michael Sam became the first to be drafted into the NFL in 2014, but he was cut without ever playing a regular season game in the league.

And, Laura, Nassib in his post also noted that studies have shown it only takes one accepting adult to decrease the risk of an LGBTQ youth committing suicide by 40 percent. So, Nassib really hopes that by making this announcement that he will end up changing lives around the world.

JARRETT: That is a staggering and depressive stat. But as you said, and as he said, representation does matter. Andy, there was also another big piece of sports news yesterday, and this one at the U.S. Supreme Court, justices ruling against the NCAA, opening a door for a significant increase in compensation for student athletes, something that they have been asking for, for a while. So what is the reaction like?

SCHOLES: Well, this long overdue in many people's eyes, Laura. And, you know, anytime all nine justices of the Supreme Court rule against you, it is pretty clear what you were do position and saying wasn't right. And that is what happened to the NCAA here. And this decision really opens the door to be used as a precedent in future cases.

The Supreme Court upholding a district court's decision that the NCAA was violating antitrust law by placing limits on the education-related benefits that schools can provide to athletes. So that means that the NCAA can't restrict how much schools can give in terms of things like computers, graduate scholarships and paid internships.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh hammering the NCAA in his opinion, saying nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate and under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.

Now, this decision did not have anything to do with whether college players can make money off their name, image and likeness. That decision looms as many states continue to pass legislation making it illegal for the NCAA to prevent athletes from making money.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says that the ruling is a victory for the efforts of student-athletes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Our view is that, of course, NCAA student-athletes work very hard both on the athletic field and in the classroom. I'm a retired one myself. And today's decision recognizes that as with all Americans, their hard work should not be exploited and the president believes that everyone who works should be compensated fairly for his or her labor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Psaki was a member of the swim team when she attended William and Mary.

And, you know, Christine, this isn't like going to be an immediate thing, where college players and athletes are getting paid right now and it's going to change. But it really is the start of a big change in college athletics. We're not really going to see the NCAA as it was before, they won't be able to police these schools and keep them from not offering fair compensation to these athletes. Big decision and it's going to be just the beginning of many more to come.

ROMANS: Yeah, we've been debating this for years and now the Supreme Court ruling on it unanimously. Nice to see you. Thanks, Andy.

SCHOLES: All right.

ROMANS: And later today, the Senate will hold a key test vote on a sweeping bill tackling voting rights, election reform and government ethics. The measure not expected to pass, but Democrats are holding it anyway as a chance to showcase solid support within their party and to highlight a clear contrast with Republicans.

Former President Obama gave a powerful endorsement of the bill Monday, invoking the Capitol insurrection to make his point.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: The violence that occurred in the U.S. capitol on January 6, just a few months ago, should remind us that we can't take our democracy for granted. Around the world we've seen once vibrant democracies go in the reverse, locking in power for a small group of powerful autocrats and business interests and locking out the political process dissidents and protesters and opposition parties and the voices of ordinary people. It is happening in other places around the world and these impulses have crept into the United States. We are not immune from some of these efforts to weaken our democracy.

In the aftermath of an insurrection with our democracy on the line, and many of these same Republican senators going along with the notion that somehow there were irregularities and problems with legitimacy in our most recent election.

[05:10:15]

They are suddenly afraid to even talk about these issues an figure out solutions on the floor of the Senate. They don't even want to talk about voting. And that is not acceptable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: So the big question for today's vote is whether all Democrats will be on board, that includes Senator Joe Manchin who has said that he can't support the For the People Act in its original form but he has offered a substitute. That includes mandating voter ID and giving state and local election officials more authority to update their voter rolls.

That plan does have support from Stacey Abrams, by the way. A key voice on voting rights, of course. The big cliffhanger here is whether Democrats will try to change the filibuster. That's, of course, the 60-vote requirement to end debate, to pass those bills, which Senator Manchin and others have objected to gutting, despite pressure from some progressives.

ROMANS: All right. America post-pandemic, heading into the best of times and the worst in times. What a spike in violence and economic investments mean for a post-COVID America.

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[05:15:25]

JARRETT: Welcome back.

The good progress we've seen fighting coronavirus is being tempered a bit by potentially what may lie ahead. The average number of deaths in the U.S. now below 300 per day. That is good news. But states that have fewer vaccinated residents face a greater threat from what is known as the Delta variant you've heard so much about, the one first identified in India.

Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Missouri all showing a substantial increase in new COVID infections.

ROMANS: One hospital official says cases of these more contagious variants have gone from 10 percent of the total a month ago to 90 percent today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVEN D. EDWARDS, PRESIDENT AND CEO, COXHEALTH: Well, we've seen now in 4 1/2 weeks almost a six-fold increase in COVID patients. But our staff is exhausted. I think the culture and the morale has changed. And it's harder to know that you're risking your well-being for someone that chose not to vaccinate and puts both you and them at risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Challenge for health care workers indeed. Meantime, it's looking less likely that the U.S. will reach President Biden's goal of having 70 percent of adults vaccinated with at least one dose by the Fourth of July. One public health official tells CNN there is no real Hail Mary pass to achieve that.

JARRETT: Of course, the best argument is simply this, they work. Case in point: a COVID-19 outbreak in a government building in Manatee County, Florida, two people died and four co-workers were hospitalized, but a vaccinated employee was not infected.

ROMANS: All right. It's the great American comeback, but the economy isn't going back to what it was before the pandemic and maybe that's a good thing for many of us. There are help wanted signs, of course, across the country. Nearly 4 million people quit their jobs in April showing a shift by workers in to new careers.

Nearly every industry is hiring, Delta plans to hire more than 1,000 pilots next summer, citing a remarkable rebound in demand for travel. Getting back to so-called normal won't cut it though for millions of Americans. Normal before the pandemic was an army of low wage workers working multiple part-time jobs for the consumer experience.

Now, workers have the upper hand in the recovery. They have had a year to refocus and retrain with a cushion from stimulus checks and jobless benefits. It's why employers are raising wages and offering bonuses to attract and retrain workers.

President Biden said this in a message to the Poor People's Campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think that we've ever been at a time of such opportunity to deliver dignity for our nation's poor and low wage workers, and make ending poverty not just an aspiration, but a theory of change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: "The Wall Street Journal" reporting pay for those with only high school diplomas is rising faster than for college graduates. That's according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That means low wage workers here are emerging as the winners on the other side of the pandemic.

And the way we have worked has changed, with many people still working from home, possibly indefinitely, and, look, these changes post-COVID are not just the labor market. The pandemic disrupted supply chains. It disrupted consumer behavior, working out kinks in distribution is causing shortages and price spikes. Most recently, price spikes for laptops and printers because of that computer chip shortage.

Honestly, everything from used cars to airline tickets is more expensive and ultra low mortgage rates have helped feed this frenzy in housing. That's another post-COVID reality. The median sale price for a home hit a record $341,600 in April. That's the highest since 1999. We're heading into a new kind of normal here and it will continue to evolve in the months ahead, Laura.

JARRETT: Maybe the goal shouldn't be normal. Maybe we should be looking as you say for something entirely new, a new model to begin with. We'll see what happens.

All right. Big news for renters in California. The state planning to pay off all past due rent that was occurred during the pandemic. California is actually flush with cash and the state plans to use billions in federal aid to cover the costs. At the same time, officials still haven't decided whether to extend the state's eviction moratorium, which is set to expire in eight days. At least 22 states have unused pandemic relief money and now find themselves with a revenue surplus.

ROMNS: All right. In Afghanistan, dozens of districts have fallen to the Taliban. Can President Biden stop the erosion when he meets with the president this week?

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[05:24:12]

ROMANS: Welcome back.

As U.S. forces move out of Afghanistan, the Taliban move in. And that has America's top national security officials concerned because with each day that passes, the Taliban gain more control over the region.

International diplomatic editor Nic Robertson live for us this morning in London.

And, Nic, these gains by the Taliban, they're happening quickly.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: They are. They are happening in the north of the country, in a number of different provinces, Taliban taking control of a number, significant number, dozens of different district centers. I was speaking to a commander, an Afghan military commander in the north of the country yesterday, and he said that it could take weeks to get some of these districts back under control.

What's troubling as well is a couple of those provinces the Taliban have actually arrived at the city gates of the provincial capitals.

[05:25:00]

They've been repealed. The Afghan Army says that they're sending additional military forces to the area. But I think what is significant about this, it indicates that the Taliban have been waiting to take advantage of the U.S. drawdown, that it signifies they no longer have to worry about the air support, that U.S. and NATO forces were giving to Afghan forces on the ground.

Taliban have extended their control right up to the border town with Tajikistan, taking control of a significant border town there, that's significant for trade in Afghanistan. So, that will be a growing concern. It weakens the resolve of the Afghan military who in some cases haven't fought, have handed over weapons, ammunition, including American made up-armored military fighting vehicle Humvees that are now in the hands of the Taliban that weren't a couple weeks ago.

So the Taliban are not only taking territory, they are taking the wherewithal and equipment to take more territory. And I think what's significant to me, and I covered the Taliban back in the 1990s, at that time they were slow to take control. At that time, they were very slow to take control of the north. It took several years. Now, they're starting in the North. They already feel therefore that they have control in their ethnic areas in the south and east.

Taliban are emerging here perhaps more quickly and more significantly than anyone had anticipated.

ROMANS: All right. Nic Robertson for us, thank you so much for that. We'll continue to watch that. And American authorities have to grapple with, you know, what it will look like, what they have to work out overseeing the region after this. Thanks, Nic.

Laura?

JARRETT: Voting rights, infrastructure, police reform, much of the Democratic platform now hinging on two Democratic senators. President Biden just met with both of them. So what was his message? We're live at the White House, next.

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