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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Study Shows More Than 1 In 4 Women Have Suffered Domestic Violence; President Biden To Announce SCOTUS Nominee Before State of the Union; IRS Taps Second 'Surge Team' To Address Huge Tax Filing Backlog. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired February 18, 2022 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Make you refund late.

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JARRETT: One in four women around the globe has experienced domestic violence in their lifetimes -- one in four. It is a number that should be shocking. One might call it a global health epidemic. But sadly, too often these cases are still ignored or not believed.

A new review of data using responses from two million women over the course of 18 years shows the violence starts early, with 26% of women having already experienced some form of violence at least once since the age of 15.

[05:35:08]

Joining me now is one of the authors of that study I mentioned, Dr. Claudia Garcia-Moreno. She leads the WHO's work on violence against women. Doctor, so nice to have you this morning.

These numbers are so telling. They really are shocking. But what surprised you the most -- someone who researches this? What surprised you the most about what you found?

DR. CLAUDIA GARCIA-MORENO, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (via Webex by Cisco): Good morning, Laura.

The thing that we wanted to highlight was how early this violence starts in the lives of women and girls. We found in the study that 24% of girls aged 15 to 19 who have had a partner already have experienced physical or sexual violence in the hands of a partner. And this is a very important age in which relationships are being established. It has implications for later health and development.

So we really want to emphasize the importance of working with adolescents, both girls and boys to ensure more gender-equitable relationships, more mutually respectful relationships, and really emphasize the unacceptability of this form of violence.

JARRETT: So, the study is compiling 18 years' worth of data, which is just incredible. But it's from before the pandemic hit in 2020. It only goes up to 2018.

So what can you tell us about what has happened in the last two years? The prediction had been that being stuck at home, the economic stresses -- all of these things would actually increase the rates of domestic violence. Has that happened?

GARCIA-MORENO: Well, as you mentioned, we have a lot of reports and we know that women in the context of the pandemic, particularly lockdown -- during lockdown --

JARRETT: Yes.

GARCIA-MORENO: -- were exposed more to their abusers. There's more social isolation and economic strain. But we don't really know yet the impact that will have on the prevalence at the population level.

There are studies beginning to be done that are inquiring about how the COVID pandemic affected the violence. How it affected the access to services and the use of services. So we will know more precisely about this in the next couple of years as new surveys study that. But we can imagine that the factors that contribute to this may have exacerbated the prevalence.

JARRETT: And that -- and that is certainly a huge area of concern.

You say we need to scale up, in your words, existing interventions that are out there. And I wonder, are there any countries or one country, perhaps, that is actually doing this well -- that might actually serve as a model for everyone else?

GARCIA-MORENO: Well, rather than focus on a country, I think that I would say that we know a lot more about the types of interventions that work for prevention, but they've mostly been studied on a small scale.

And you really want to see now is countries investing in acting in all the different levels in which action is required. Everything from ensuring that laws and policies are not discriminating against women, working on women's economic independence, ensuring that girls have access to secondary education, at least, or higher education because we know that it's a protected factor. And as I mentioned, working in schools with adolescents.

So we need, really, a comprehensive package that is acting at many different levels of society, and a lot of work around changing the social norms that accept this violence as normal or something that happens.

JARRETT: Well, Dr. Claudia Garcia-Moreno of the World Health Organization, I thank you for your work. It's important work. It does not get enough attention. I appreciate you coming on this morning.

GARCIA-MORENO: Thank you very much, Laura.

JARRETT: To Washington now as the countdown for an announcement about a new Supreme Court justice. Senate Democrats have been told that President Biden plans to announce his pick before his State of the Union address on March first.

So let's go live to Capitol Hill and bring in CNN's Daniella Diaz. Daniella, did the White House give senators any hints? We all want to know who this pick might be. Did they get any peek behind the curtain?

DANIELLA DIAZ, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Laura, we all want to know who this pick might be and we do happen to know the three top contenders. I'm going to list them right now. It's Leondra Kruger, Michelle Childs, and Ketanji Brown Jackson who remain at the top of President Joe Biden's list for who he might nominate to the Supreme Court to replace, of course, Justice Breyer who is retiring at the end of the term.

[05:40:06]

Look -- but yesterday, there was some news. White House chief of staff Ron Klain visited with Senate Democrats during a luncheon on Capitol Hill and shared that President Joe Biden continues to review materials on who he might select for -- to nominate to the Supreme Court.

And they also updated the timeline again. They said that it would happen before President Joe Biden addresses Congress in his State of the Union, which we expect to happen at the beginning of March. He plans to nominate someone to the Supreme Court before that.

But really, the bottom line here being, Laura, that he continues to review these materials. He says that he wants to meet in person with some of these contenders.

JARRETT: Right.

DIAZ: We're not quite clear yet whether that's happened this week. We told it -- we were told it was going to happen as soon as this week. But as quick as we know what's going on we'll let you know, Laura, but we do expect to find out by the end of this month.

JARRETT: I know. I'm sure we have multiple locations staked out trying to put all the pieces together -- trying to follow those bread crumbs.

Daniella, thank you.

All right. One of the states that locked down earliest in the pandemic is now declaring it's entering the next phase.

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GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM, (D) CALIFORNIA: We stand firm and confident as we lean into the future, moving away from a reactive mindset and a crisis mindset to living with this virus.

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JARRETT: Governor Gavin Newsom calls his new approach to the COVID the SMARTER plan. It's an acronym for the state's even priorities moving forward -- shots, masks, awareness, readiness, testing, education, and RX, meaning, of course, medical treatment and meaning prescriptions.

All right, we're going to try to get Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is going to talk to me about this. And if we can, we will come back to him in just a little bit.

All right, a problem with Tesla brakes. That's next for you. Stay with me.

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JARRETT: All right, 45 minutes -- back now.

The IRS still struggling to tackle this massive tax filing backlog we have. Just how massive is it? Well, nearly 24 million taxpayers are still waiting for the IRS to process last year's returns and other requests. The agency's taxpayer advocate says the situation is nothing short of a crisis.

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ERIN COLLINS, NATIONAL TAXPAYER ADVOCATE: Paper is the IRS's kryptonite and the agency is buried in it. The IRS still transcribes paper line by line, number by number.

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JARRETT: Wow. The IRS is now implementing mandatory overtime for employees, and a second surge team is being added on top of the roughly 1,200 workers who have been shifted back into entry-level roles filing paperwork and answering phones.

All right, skiing superstar Eileen Gu made history at the Olympics overnight. Our Coy Wire was there to see it and has more in this morning's Bleacher Report. Hey, Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Laura.

Eileen Gu has just become the first freeskier ever to win three medals at a single games. We were there to see her take gold in the freeski halfpipe competition. She already won gold in big air and silver in slopestyle.

Just 18 years old and born and raised in San Francisco, choosing to compete for her mother's homeland, China, instead. Her years of dedication and focus and support from mom paying off. Two-time Olympic champ, model for Louis Vuitton and others, model student enrolling at Stanford soon. Eileen Gu doing exactly what she said she set out to do and that's have a profoundly positive impact on the next generation.

Now, Team USA figure skaters Madison Hubble and Zachary Donohue, competing in their final Olympics, told me earlier here that they're disheartened by the Russian doping controversy rocking their sport. But they also showed compassion for the 15-year-old Kamila Valieva and her teammates who were in tears after that individual competition. Hubble and Donohue -- they're going to take home bronze, Laura, from

the ice dance competition. But they were also part of that team event in which Americans won silver and they feel sad for those who will not go home with a medal while Valieva's investigation is ongoing.

Here's part of our talk earlier.

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MADISON HUBBLE, 2-TIME OLYMPIC MEDALIST IN ICE DANCING: I don't think that it's fair to any of the athletes who medaled, but we have to forego that Olympic moment standing on the medal stand. And it is -- it's hard to go home emptyhanded. We have our empty medal box waiting in our room and we have no answer as to what the timeline could be for that issue to be resolved.

WIRE: Are you being given anything from that team event to walk away with -- some sort of placeholder prize -- or is it just an empty box?

ZACHARY DONOHUE, 2-TIME OLYMPIC MEDALIST IN ICE DANCING: The IOC was very generous in extending to us Olympic torches, which we definitely consider to be an honor. But we have a whole team of athletes that have finished competing and are staring, looking at an empty box and the unknown of the future.

And missing out on that Olympic moment even if in the future we're able to have an amazing experience, it's not at the Olympic Games. It's not for the whole world to see. It's not the true culmination of their hard work and effort, blood, sweat, and tears.

HUBBLE: We appreciate the fact that Thomas Bach took time out of his schedule, upon our request, to -- you know, mainly the point was to hear our perspective as athletes. To hear that Team USA was still craving that medal ceremony. That we wanted a resolution that would result in us receiving our medals here in Beijing.

[05:50:00]

But we didn't leave the meeting feeling, I don't think, any better about the situation but at least we had our chance to kind of say what it feels like to be an athlete in our -- in our shoes. And hopefully, we all agreed as a team that we want to push for change and we want to continue to voice our opinion and use our platform to push for, as much as we can, a clean sport, fair play, and always looking to improve the sporting world and the Olympic spirit.

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WIRE: Team USA's Madison Hubble and Zachary Donohue -- compassion, understanding, and concern for the integrity of their sport and of the Olympic spirit. A powerful perspective shared by so many of the other athletes here at these Beijing Games as well.

JARRETT: All right, Coy. So great to see you. Thanks -- appreciate it.

WIRE: Thanks.

JARRETT: Now to this. The CDC previewing a change in mask guidance could soon be on the way, but is it too late?

Here with me now, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, CNN contributor and former health director of the city of Detroit. Doctor, so nice to have you this morning.

They're talking about changing this mask guidance but I wonder for you -- you know, so many states have already gone and jumped ahead of them on this. Is anyone listening right now to the CDC?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, FORMER HEALTH DIRECTOR, CITY OF DETROIT (via Skype): You know, that's the hard part, is that over the course of this pandemic the CDC has said and done things that I think have sometimes shaken the public's trust. And now that they seem so like they're singing from a different hymn book than the rest of states -- and, in fact, liberal states where vaccination and mask-wearing is high -- it seems as though folks aren't listening.

But what I think the CDC is really trying to get right here is the recognition that there's a difference between recommendation and requirement. And while states have dropped their requirements there are still high recommendations. And I think the CDC is right to continue to recommend that folks, when they're feeling sick, when they're in situations where it's really packed -- the virus is not gone and so there still is a recommendation to mask.

JARRETT: OK. So speaking of that, you see more and more blue states now sort of relaxing some of the guidelines. The situation in schools is a different picture. It's a little bit more mixed. But largely, a lot of indoor mask mandates we now see ending and the criticism is that this is politics. That the midterms are coming and the Democrats are worried about what this means for them.

Where do you come down on this? Do you think now is the time to relax these things or do we need a few more weeks still?

EL-SAYED: Well, the hard part about this is that it really comes down to what our tolerance for risk is. If you look at the curve of COVID cases you see that it's plummeting. And so, there is, of course, the argument that it is going to be safer next week than it is this week if this curve holds.

But it does draw the point of like OK, so when do you actually decide to make a hard decision? And I think at this point, as policymakers see those maps falling, they're saying look, we've got an opportunity right now to start normalizing a set of behaviors that are going to become more and more normal as, hopefully, we're looking at COVID in the rearview. All that being said, that's when and if a variant does hit us.

And so, they're trying to get ahead of where they see this going and do something that they're hearing a lot of clamoring for. Frankly, it is a really difficult situation because people fundamentally have different tolerances of risk. And, of course, when it comes to kids, we're talking about our most vulnerable people in a place where we keep them most of the day, most of the year.

And so, there is no real right answer here.

JARRETT: Yes.

EL-SAYED: Some folks with a lower risk tolerance would say let's wait, and some folks with a higher tolerance would say it's time.

JARRETT: Yes. Part of the problem is we're planning here in the dark. We don't know if there's another variant. We hope that there isn't. We hope enough people have been vaccinated by now. But we just have to wait and see.

Doctor, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Glad we got you up.

EL-SAYED: Thank you.

JARRETT: All right. Finally this morning, a little pop news. Jake Gyllenhaal breaking his silence on the hate from diehard Taylor Swift fans over a song long believed to be about their relationship and breakup.

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TAYLOR SWIFT, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing "All Too Well."

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JARRETT: Gyllenhaal now tells "Esquire" that song, "All Too Well," has nothing to do with him and it's about Swift's relationship with her fans. Gyllenhaal suggests she should have done more to not allow for cyberbullying in one's name.

I'm sure Taylor has some thoughts on this soon to come.

Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Laura Jarrett. Have a great weekend, everyone. "NEW DAY" is next.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Friday, February 18th, and I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

Within the next several days. That is President Biden's blunt assessment of how long it might take before Russia invades Ukraine. U.S. officials say evidence at Ukraine's border shows that Russia is moving toward an imminent invasion and is not withdrawing troops.

This afternoon, the president will speak to global allies about the Russian troop buildup and how to deter it. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Overnight, new video from Russia's Defense Ministry -- remember, consider the source here -- claiming, once again, to show tanks and armored vehicles returning to base by rail after completing.