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New Day Sunday

Pelosi Meets with Zelenskyy During Unannounced Visit to Kyiv; Civilian Evacuations from Mariupol Steel Plant Begin; Biden Acknowledges Importance of Free Press in the U.S. at White House Correspondents Dinner; Experts Warn Higher Home Prices Could Be Here to Stay; Authors & Librarians Teaming Up to Fight Book Bans; Country Music Star Naomi Judd Dies at 76. Aired 7-8a ET

Aired May 01, 2022 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:02]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: The next hour of NEW DAY starts right now.

(MUSIC)

JARRETT: Good morning, everyone. It is Sunday, May 1st. I'm Laura Jarrett here in New York.

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: Good to be with you, Laura.

I'm Amara Walker in Atlanta. Thank you so much for waking up with us. Boris and Christi are off.

And we begin with breaking news, and a high level show of support from the U.S. to Ukraine.

JARRETT: Yeah. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the first official U.S. delegation to Ukraine since the war began. She is the highest ranking U.S. official to go there. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the visit is an important sign of the U.S. commitment to Ukraine.

In a news conference just a short time ago, Speaker Pelosi was asked how far the U.S. is willing to go at the risk of triggering a wider conflict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Do not be bullied by bullies. If they make threats, you cannot back down. That's my view of it. That you -- we're there for the fight and you cannot -- you cannot fold to a bully.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: Also this morning, we are all following new developments in what's left of that steel plant in Mariupol and evacuation efforts to get trapped civilians out. New ground images show the extent of the devastation there.

JARRETT: Our correspondents are covering the latest developments in Ukraine from all angles this morning. Matt Rivers is live from the capital in Kyiv. Scott McLean is in Lviv.

We begin with Matt and a visit to Ukraine by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and this congressional delegation.

Matt, good morning. Give us the highlights of their meeting with President Zelenskyy.

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure, it was just about a week ago now that we had the first U.S. delegation, senior delegation here in Kyiv, meeting with Zelenskyy, since the war started. That was, of course, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

And this morning we woke up to the news that there was another delegation of the congressional kind here led by none other than Nancy Pelosi, this was an unannounced visit as is the norm in situations like this with security risks, high level visits, generally announced after these meetings take place. And that is what happened.

We were alerted to the fact this meeting was taking place when President Zelenskyy tweeted out a video where you could see both sides meeting, Speaker Pelosi joined by senior congressional delegation as well. With Zelenskyy saying afterwards that he really appreciated the visit, he appreciates U.S. support, he called the United States a, quote, leader in supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia. And what we know is that speaker Pelosi now back in Poland, with that congressional delegation, she's continuing her trip there.

I want to play you a little bit of what she said was discussed in that meeting, when she was here in Kyiv, with President Zelenskyy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PELOSI: Our discussion centered around the subjects at hand as you would suspect -- security, humanitarian assistance, economic assistance, and eventually rebuilding when victory is won. We are proud to convey to him a message of unity from the Congress of the United States, a message of appreciation from the American people for his leadership, and admiration for -- to the people of Ukraine for their courage.

America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won. And we stand with our NATO allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIVERS: So she is just continuing that public showing of support that we heard a lot from President Biden over the past few days. Remember, it was just a few days ago, Biden publicly called and requested from Congress $33 billion in additional aid from the U.S. to Ukraine and mixture between humanitarian funds and heavy weaponry that Ukraine has asked for. And, of course, Speaker Pelosi will play a key role in shaping a legislative package around that, getting it passed, getting it to Biden's desk and getting the weapons here to Ukraine.

This visit a symbolic one, but perhaps the next message that the U.S. Congress will send will come in the form of tens of billions of dollars in additional aid.

WALKER: Symbolic and very significant indeed. A show of solidarity there from the U.S. House speaker.

Thank you so much, Matt Rivers.

And as we were saying, evacuation efforts underway at what is left of that steel plant in Mariupol. We're getting a closer look at the extent of the destruction there.

And correspondent Scott McLean joining us now from Lviv.

Scott, what can you tell us in the latest on the evacuations?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so the Mariupol mayor's office says it is in radio silence mode about this evacuation effort which at last word appears to still be ongoing.

[07:05:03]

Yesterday, a cease-fire agreement between the Russians and the Ukrainians seemed to be holding, which is pretty remarkable because the day before on Friday, the Russians were storming that steel plant facility from the ground, rather than just their usual bombing campaign from the sky.

Now, that relentless bombing of the plant, sprawling steel plant, meant that according to the soldiers hiding underground there, some of the cellars, bunkers underground had collapsed and some people were trapped beneath the rubble. And there was an ongoing effort to try to get those people out. Yesterday there was a glimmer of hope when both the Russian media and the soldiers underneath that plant confirmed that 20, maybe 25 people were able to evacuate from the plant itself.

According to a Ukrainian deputy commander of the regiment fighting from that area, those people were pulled out from the rubble underneath the plant. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SVIATOSLAV PALAMAR, DEPUTY COMMANDER, AZOV REGIMENT (through translator): All last night, barrel artillery work on the territory of the plant, which caused the destructions and new rubble blockages. As of now, a special rescue operation is being carried out by the Azov regiment. We get civilians out of the rubble with ropes. It is the elderly, women and children. We hope this process will continue and we will be able to evacuate all the civilians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: Now what is not clear is that if anyone else is being allowed to leave beyond that initial group. Yesterday, the Mariupol mayor's office said people were being allowed to move from neighborhoods on the east side of the river where the plant is to neighborhoods on the west where they could potentially link up with an evacuation corridor set to go further into Ukrainian territory. But it wasn't clear whether that included people from the plant itself.

Just today, Russian media is reporting that some 46 people from a residential area next to the plant were able to evacuate. But we don't know whether they were evacuated toward Russian held territory or if they were allowed to go deeper into Ukraine. And here's one other problem, is that even if this latest effort succeeds in evacuating, some or maybe even all of the civilians from underneath of that plant, it still leaves potentially hundreds of wounded soldiers there.

And right now, there are no signs, no indications that the Russians are going to let them leave.

JARRETT: All right. Scott McLean, thank you for your reporting as usual.

Joining me now is Mark Fallon. He's a former deputy assistant director for counterterrorism with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and author of the "Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon and U.S. Government Conspired to Torture".

So nice to see you, Mark, great to have you on this morning.

I want to start with Mariupol. Given the widespread destruction we're seeing there, how confident are you that investigators can effectively gather any evidence of possible war crimes, the place is in ruins.

MARK FALLON, FORMER NCIS DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM: Well, it is a challenge, that's why Ukrainians help. They're looking to conduct their own investigation, and forensic exploitation of sites is critical and the interview of witnesses is critical for any accountability that we look to have for the war crimes.

JARRETT: Ukrainian authorities unveiled their first war crime charges against members of Russia's military Thursday. What's the significance of making those charges public at this point, some two months into this crisis?

FALLON: Well, what Ukraine is doing, what they have an opportunity to do is teach the world that we need not abandon the rule of law when conduct becomes hellish. And so, what the prosecutor general is trying to do is set an example and to show that even under existential threat, the government of Ukraine is able to operate under the rule of law and avoid some of the pitfalls that we had post-9/11 after those attacks.

JARRETT: So speaking of learning those lessons, you write this in a recent op-ed with some colleagues. Quote: Ukraine will be a proving ground for the proposition that a nation victimized by an aggressor can be capable of fairly meting out justice.

You know, Mark, if Ukraine manages to get this right and you talked to the top prosecutor there, talk about the message it would send the world and what are some of the lessons learned already, you think?

FALLON: Well, the lessons we have learned from 9/11 are what they're trying to -- Yuri Palazo (ph), who was the chief prosecutor, lead prosecutor for human rights violations was on an 80-person advisory council of the Mendez principles on effective interviewing, which was a four-year process to try to come up with a universal standard for the manner in which we interview suspects, whether they be intelligence capacity or law enforcement capacity.

[07:10:01]

So, Yuri well knows that enable to put somebody in jail, and to hold somebody accountable, you cannot stoop to their levels. Russia is involved in terrorism. You don't match that tactic with a tactic. You match that tactic with a strategy, and the strategy is about accountability, and maintaining your own dignity during this terrible time in Ukraine.

JARRETT: Do you think that message me getting through to people on the ground. The prosecutors are not the ones that first meet a suspect or a POW for instance. Do you think the folks there on the ground understand how careful they have to be in these types of situations?

FALLON: I think they need training. I think we need a comprehensive strategy in order to ensure that those -- for the people who first come in contact with prisoners understand that it is a continuum and that their actions or activities could actually interfere with the -- and that's why we have people in Guantanamo, 20 years after the 9/11 attacks that have yet to be brought to justice and others in detention without trials in the presidential administration that we had. So they need to avoid the mistakes that we have made.

JARRETT: Yeah. And, hopefully, they will see the past cases and ways to try to avoid some of those pitfalls.

Mark Fallon, thank you so much for joining us this morning. I appreciate your insight, sir.

FALLON: Thanks for having me on.

WALKER: Comedian in chief, President Biden, was throwing and taking jabs at last night's White House correspondents' dinner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: After a two-year hiatus, this year's dinner certainly had a quite different tone. More on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:16:06]

JARRETT: President Biden attended the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night, affectionately known as nerd prom. The president became the first one to address the gathering of newsmakers, celebrities and the news media in six years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: This is the first time the president has attended this dinner in six years.

(APPLAUSE)

It is understandable. We had a horrible plague, followed by two years of COVID.

And, folks, I'm not really here to roast the GOP, that's not my style. Besides, there is nothing I can say about the GOP that Kevin McCarthy hasn't already put on tape.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to turn this over to Trevor now.

And Trevor, the really good news is now you get to roast the president of the United States, and unlike in Moscow, you won't go to jail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: Joining us now, someone who knows a thing or two about writing jokes for the president, David Litt is here with me. He was a speechwriter for President Obama and author of "Thanks Obama, My Hopey Changey White House Years."

David, nice to see you this morning. So, how did he do?

DAVID LITT, FORMER SPEECHWRITER FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA: I thought he did very well, Laura. Thank you for having me on.

I think in particular the -- if you think about the things that presidents traditionally do on a night like this, they need to show they can laugh at themselves, they need to show they can tell a joke or two, take a couple of shots that are in good fun, but maybe a little bit edgy at least for a president.

And I think most importantly they need to show up and talk about the importance of a free press and I do think for all of the many elements of the correspondents' dinner that are a little bit bizarre, acknowledging the free press and the importance of that is one of the main things that the night still stands for.

So, I think President Biden, he checked all of those boxes and did a really good job after -- as you heard him say, six years which -- with no president.

JARRETT: It was blissfully short, I thought, especially for President Biden, which I'm sure was welcome for the audience. You know his team has been working on this speech for weeks.

Take us behind the scenes on what the prep is like for a moment like this. How do you blend the president's own sense of humor with all the ideas that I'm sure you're fielding from in and outside the White House.

LITT: The most important thing when you're writing jokes for politicians is that the joke is that it is the politician telling the joke, right? It is playing off that person's persona of their -- the day and the job they're doing, 365 days a year.

I thought President Biden's team did that very well. These were jokes that played off of who he was, they're clearly ones he found funny, that's really important when you're writing for someone who is not a full time comedian. And the key to writing a good monologue like this is to write a gazillion bad jokes and find a couple good ones in there.

So, I'm sure the process leading up to it was many weeks and finding the jokes that really land best. It is not an easy thing to do and I think his team did it very well.

JARRETT: Yeah. It's not easy at anytime, especially now with the lingering effects of COVID. You got this raging and awful atrocity that's happening in Ukraine. You got economic uncertainty. He talked about all of that.

How do you strike that right tone without sort of getting too down in the dumps?

LITT: Yeah, you can see the president and his team thinking about that, in the speech. Normally, I would say the ratio of these speeches is 75 percent jokes to 25 percent serious stuff. Sometimes even more jokes than that.

[07:20:01]

But I think that President Biden acknowledged that this is a very serious time, both because of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and also because of the threat that American democracy is in. One of the lines of the night was not a joke, but when he said, American democracy is not a reality show, and I think there was a pointed appreciation of the free press, but also a calling on the free press to be the best version of itself because democracy may very well depend on it.

You know, that has not a traditional part of a White House Correspondents' Dinner speech, but it was part on this one. I think it should have been. I think it was a good decision.

JARRETT: Yeah. And he was strong on that note.

He also sort of pointed out how weird the night is, he said kind of, like, what are we doing here? You know, putting the COVID concerns and super spreader concerns aside, the blending of the newsmakers and the people who cover them is always sort of this weird balance, and, obviously, his predecessor never came to the White House correspondents' dinner, never wanted to be roasted.

Do you think it is significant to have the president there actually taking jokes, making jokes? Should we keep doing this?

LITT: I think that's a really good question. And I honestly don't know the answer to it.

I think the thing about the White House correspondents' dinner is in many ways, it is absolutely distasteful. There is something that is a little bit self-congratulatory and not just a little bit about Washington throwing a ton of parties to talk about how great Washington is.

JARRETT: Yes.

LITT: And I say this hypocritically as somebody who likes to go to parties.

And at the same time I think there are a few pieces of value that we would not want to lose from the correspondents' dinner. One is the president of the United States willing to make fun of him or herself. That's a reason, I think, Donald Trump did not go, self-deprecating was not his thing.

And I think it is important. As President Biden mentioned, you don't see this kind of thing happening in Russia. I think similarly the importance of the president of the United States acknowledging that a free press is essential to democracy is not the enemy of the people, but is part of our democratic process or part of the institutions and keep our democracy alive, that matters too, especially when the press and the president have an adversarial role.

So, those things are good. Lots of other things, I think are pretty bizarre and maybe less good, euphemistically.

JARRETT: Fair enough to say.

All right. David, thanks so much for coming on bright and early. I'm sure you had a late night.

LITT: Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun.

JARRETT: Great.

WALKER: With housing and rent prices hitting record highs, Americans are left to make some really tough choices. Up next, what cities can do to alleviate the burden since these prices are not expected to go down anytime soon?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:27:01]

JARRETT: Right now, anyone looking for a place to live is probably navigating one of the toughest housing markets in recent history. The pandemic crunch in housing pushed prices to an all time high of $375,000 in March. That's up 34 percent from the start of the pandemic, according to the National Association of Realtors.

WALKER: Yeah. And to make it worse, rent prices are also up about 20 percent across the nation. CNN went to one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country for a closer look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN MCCARROLL, SERVED EVICTION NOTICE: I don't even want to ever -- this is so humiliating.

MIKE VALERIO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Erin is a mother of three in the fight of her life, she says, battling breast cancer. She has not one, but four surgeries on the way.

MCCARROLL: There. There you go. That's emergencies.

VALERIO: She also faces eviction.

MCCARROLL: No. It's, like, helpless. It's like being drowning and you're, like, holding your hands up for air, but you can't get it, it is that bad.

VALERIO: McCarroll lives in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles. It's one of the hottest most expensive real estate markets in the country. McCarroll says rent for her one bedroom apartment just went up from $2,600 a month to $2,800. She tells us the bump is now too much to afford with all of these too.

Medical bills piling up that have just made the situation so much worse.

MCCARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD K. GREEN, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LUSK CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE: Rent will unfortunately will continue to rise.

VALERIO: Richard Green, at the University of Southern California, studies housing markets around the world and says he doesn't see a crash that could spell relief for millions like Erin in the near future.

GREEN: I don't see where a crash comes from. Could you see a small decline? Sure. Five percent? Sure. If interest rates keep rising? Sure.

VALERIO: For real estate broker Juan Huizar, the crisis of sky high prices is profoundly personal.

JUAN HUIZAR, PRESIDENT, SAGE REAL ESTATE: We're inside one of the units, four bedroom, two bath, very large.

VALERIO: Huizar remembers coming to California from Mexico 38 years ago, cramming into a single home with multiple families. He says the heart of today's problem --

HUIZAR: There's simply not enough inventory. If one house hits the market, there is 30 qualified buyers to buy it.

VALERIO: Green says there aren't enough rentals either. More empty units pushes prices down, but that's difficult to change here in Los Angeles.

GREEN: The number one thing is here we have one of the biggest cities in the world, and the vast majority of it you can only build single family houses. That's the number one problem.

VALERIO: That brings us to this spot in L.A., where there used to be one home, now there are 13.

HUIZAR: I see multiple families living here. I see families having grandma come live with them.

VALERIO: Green says he's more optimistic than he's been in five years that places like Houston, Minneapolis, Washington state, Oregon, and California are finally getting serious and taking real steps to build more affordable housing.

GREEN: I think these things are helpful, but they're not going to help immediately.

VALERIO: That gives Erin McCarroll little solace, a religious charity paid her back rent hours after our interview. But for next month's rent, she doesn't know what she'll do or where she'll go if she receives another eviction notice.

ERIN MCCARROLL, SERVED EVICTION NOTICE: I don't have a place to go. I don't. I don't.

VALERIO: I'm Mike Valerio, reporting from Mission Viejo, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALKER: This is awful. This is a real crisis.

Let's take a deeper dive into this brewing issue. Here to discuss is the executive director of the Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, Dennis Shea.

Let's bring up those numbers again. The big picture here is key. Home prices hit another record high in March with the median existing home price of $375,000. And then if you look at this map, national average rental prices have skyrocketed by nearly 20 percent in the past two years during this pandemic, up 58 percent in Miami. That's where we're seeing the highest increase.

And we heard from this piece that we just saw, there is high demand, low supply, walk us through why we're seeing such sky high prices in the housing market now.

DENNIS SHEA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TERWILLIGER CENTER FOR HOUSING POLICY: Well, thank you very much, for having me on. You're right. Prices have gone up on the rental side by double digits over the past year. Miami is at 50 percent increases, places like Austin are 40 percent rental increases a year on year and these communities are basically victims of their own success in many ways because they're attractive places to live that are drawing a lot of people to come there and live. At the core of the housing affordability challenge is a lack of

supply, both on the demand -- on the -- for rental and for sale. A recent study found that we had the United States had underbuilt housing by 5.5 million homes over the past 20 years.

WALKER: So why is it catching up to us now, the low supply?

SHEA: Well, I mean, there is some short-term factors, the pandemic obviously led to shortages of critical construction materials like lumber, steel, copper wire, and prices for these materials have gone up. But over the longer term, we had an insufficient to persistent lack of skilled construction workers, but also you heard that in the segment that too many communities have restrictive land use and zoning policies that limit the range of housing options that can be available in that community. So that has been a big factor in inhibiting greater supply of these local regulations.

WALKER: So I'm hearing from you that part of the problem is that the house construction -- house building hasn't been able to keep up with the demand because of the supply issues. How do we address this then? What can a federal government do to help?

SHEA: Well, the federal government can do a number of things. One, we should significantly expand the low income housing tax credit program. That is our most effective program over the past 35 years to build affordable rental housing. So, we should significantly expand that program and really helps the lowest income households.

We should enact something called the bipartisan Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which incentivizes the private sector to invest in the rehabilitation and construction of starter homes or entry level homes in distressed communities. And the federal government can also provide incentives to local communities, to relax restrictive land use and zoning policies to ensure a broader range of housing options.

On the housing choice voucher program, we need to incentivize landlords to participate in this program. This is the housing choice voucher program helps our lowest income families achieve affordable rental housing. So we should be doing that. And that's the supply side. But on the demand side, we need to provide greater investments in the housing choice voucher program.

Only one in four families that are eligible for this program receive assistance and much of the assistance is done by lottery, and so we need to really expand that program during this period.

WALKER: Yeah, a multipronged approach. I mean, it is really a difficult situation, right? Do you rent, do you buy, then mortgage rates are higher because the fed is trying to get a hold on the inflation. So, it's really just a tough pickle to be in right now.

Dennis Shea, we're going to have to leave it there. We're out of time. Thank you.

SHEA: Thank you, Amara. JARRETT: Coming up, flying off the shelves, book bans increasing

across the country. Up next, how librarians and authors are now fighting back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:39:41]

JARRETT: Book bans in 2022, it may sound like the plot of some dystopian novel or movie, but, no, it is happening, today, across the country. School districts in 26 states have reportedly banned more than 1,000 books in the past nine months alone, Amara.

WALKER: As a censorship escalates, librarians and authors are fighting back.

[07:40:03]

CNN's Evan McMorris-Santoro has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELISSA HART, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: This isn't right.

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Melissa Hart's life is filled with young adult fiction. She writes YA books from a small studio behind her house.

She teaches other people to write YA books. She dresses up as a T-Rex and gives YA books away. Her latest title comes out this fall.

HART: Oh, "Daisy Woodward Changes the World" is about a 14-year-old girl, eighth grade passionate track and field runner, who also is an amateur entomologist, and when she gets an assignment from her social studies teacher to change the world, she decides to help her older brother who has Down Syndrome, fulfill his life long dream of becoming a YouTube fashion celebrity.

The problem is that their parents don't want him on social media, and if she can't -- if she can't help him fulfill his dream, she failed him and her assignment.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: That sounds like a pretty teenage story. A lot going on in that book, but all right. Are you afraid it is going to get banned?

HART: I know it is going to get banned.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Why?

HART: Because one of the main characters has two moms and that is representative of the type of book that is being banned right now.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: These days, a lot of people speculate about the intent of authors and educators. It is a frustrating situation for people who actually do those jobs. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are specific, controversial and harmful topics making their way into our schools that just don't belong here.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: When you see a parent stand up at a school board meeting and say, these books are indoctrinating my kids, what do you see when you see that?

HART: I see somebody who is not looking at their kid's social media feeds, first and foremost. Books are not teaching kids to be a certain way. Books for kids are providing safe spaces for kids to explore their identity, and not just their identities.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: In 2019, Hart wrote a book for adults. It's a guide to finding inclusive books for kids. The idea came from the missing stories in her own childhood.

HART: I think that that representation is critical. I mean, I grew up not even aware that anybody besides me had two moms, because it wasn't in literature, it wasn't talked about.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Hart and her husband live with a lot of books, animals and their teenage daughter. We agreed not to show her face on camera.

Like most teenagers, she's plugged into the social media culture war, where adults are increasingly warning that teenage lives are becoming dangerously confused about identity.

What do you say to those people?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I say, obviously, you've grown up in a different world than we have. And, I mean, identify as non-binary, but I love all genders. I think they don't have the capability to understand us because they didn't grow up in our time. They don't know exactly what we're going through.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: This teenager is thinking of becoming a writer, not a surprise in a house like this one.

When she hears adults attack books, she hears an attack on kids like her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What else am I supposed to read? Like, obviously, they're supposed to read, but they should read about themselves. They should see themselves in the books that they read, and not just white people or straight people or cisgendered people, like look at yourself in a book.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: It seems like a pretty easy concept.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Why do you think it is so hard right now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Adults, adults throwing temper tantrums. MCMORRIS-SANTORO: The adults are not slowing down. More books are being challenged, and states are passing laws to make challenging books even easier.

HART: I refuse to give in. I refuse to surrender. I will fight the good fight. I will put on my inflatable T-Rex costume and fill the little free libraries in my community with diverse books until the cows come home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: Such great reporting from Evan there. Thank you for that.

To the Midwest now, after more than a dozen tornadoes ripped through Nebraska and Kansas, that same system is moving east and bringing some wet weather to millions this Sunday. We're tracking it for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:49:11]

JARRETT: Forty-eight minutes back now. Investigators say one person was killed and at least five others were injured in a shooting at a music festival in Mississippi.

WALKER: Yeah, the shooting happened last night at the mud bug music festival in Jackson. Authorities say around 10:00 p.m., two or three people in the crowd began shooting at each other. Four people were taken to the hospital where they are in stable condition. Authorities believe the person killed was shot by an officer and may have been one of the shooters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF TYREE JONES, HINDS COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI: I think it is a very coward and very selfish act on behalf of those that are involved to involve so many innocent people, innocent lives, that are here again to enjoy themselves and have fun here on the fairgrounds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: Two people, both under age, were taken in for questioning and several weapons were found at the scene.

[07:50:04]

And right now, a manhunt is under way for a corrections officer and an inmate charged with capital murder. The two were last seen on Friday morning after a veteran officer Vicki White was supposed to be driving the inmate to court for a mental evaluation.

JARRETT: Yeah, a curious case. Officials say the pair never made it to that location and it turns out a health evaluation was never scheduled. The local county sheriff says it's unclear whether Officer White intentionally helped the inmate break out or whether she was coerced in some way. Now to this cleanup effort continuing today across Kansas and

Nebraska, after more than a dozen tornadoes ripped through those states, including what the national weather service says was an EF-3 in and Andover, Kansas, packing winds up to 165 miles per hour.

JARRETT: Yeah. Now, the same system is starting to impact other parts of the country.

CNN's Allison Chinchar joining us now with more on that.

Hi, Allison.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, ladies.

Yeah, it's been a busy last 48 hours, a total of 20 tornado reports from Friday, seven in the last 24 hours, in addition to damaging wind reports and very large hail reports.

But that system is going to continue to make its way off to the east. This is a live look at where it is now. So, you've got some showers and thunderstorms across Cleveland, stretching down across Huntsville, Birmingham, even all the way down across southern Louisiana. A lot of lightning with these storms as they continue to progress off to the east.

But we also have a secondary system that's going to make an entrance today, bringing additional say severe weather. So, that first system we saw on the radar is going to bring severe storms to this region right here, later on this afternoon. We also have the secondary system. This is going to bring the potential for damaging winds, tornadoes, and large hail to portions of Texas, Oklahoma, areas of eastern New Mexico, as well as eastern Colorado.

There's that secondary system. Now, the bulk of that system fires up in the second half of the day today, and will continue through the evening. Whereas that first system obviously we've already seen it, it's ongoing this morning, and will continue throughout the rest of the day.

But this is a multi-day event. So we've got even additional showers and thunderstorms with the potential for severe, on Monday, just changing areas. And unfortunately, on Monday, we have the potential to hit some of the same areas that were just hit on Friday night, including the greater Wichita area.

By Tuesday, that same system continues to push off to the east, now the focus becomes more of the middle Mississippi River Valley as well as the Ohio River Valley. But there's the progression of that system. It's not very fast, ladies, unfortunately that brings the potential for flash flooding to some of those communities.

WALKER: All right. Allison Chinchar, appreciate it. Thank you.

Now, turning to sad news. Country music legend Naomi Judd, one-half of the duo The Judds, has died at age 76. JARRETT: Judd and her daughter Wynonna are known for dominating the

country music charts in the 1980s, winning five Grammy Awards and selling more than 26 million records.

CNN's Polo Sandoval has more on Judd's life and legacy.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Amara and Laura, it is loss that has shaken the entire country music community and beyond with Naomi Judd dead at 76 years old.

It was actually one of her daughters, actress Ashley Judd that broke the news to the world yesterday, writing on her Twitter: Today, we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory.

Naomi Judd teamed up with her other daughter Wynonna in the early '80s, creating the singing duo The Judds. Eventually, they created a very long list of memorable songs, in fact in just seven years, they earned a total of five Grammys and had a total of 14 number one songs.

In fact, this weekend, they were scheduled to be inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame. With their announcement recently, that organization wrote the duo helped take country back into its roots in the 1980s with lean, tuneful songs influenced by traditional folk music, acoustic blues.

We saw The Judds as a family together for the first time in years less than three weeks ago as they came together and performed during the CMT Music Awards. In fact, in 2011, they had finished a so-called Farewell Tour, but had recently announced a ten-day final tour that was scheduled to begin this coming September. Sadly, we now know that won't happen, at least not at this point.

So now, and this morning, her family, her friends, and of course her fans, are grieving this loss, but her lyrics will continue to live on.

Amara, Laura, thank you.

WALKER: Polo, thank you.

And thank you for starting your morning with us.

Laura, it's been great being with you this weekend.

"INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY WITH ABBY PHILLIP" is up next.

JARRETT: It's always nice to send time with you, Amara. But before we go, watch the premier of the all new CNN original series "NOMAD WITH CARLTON MCCOY," as he searches for the true heart of a city through its food, music, art and people.

[07:55:09]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CARLTON MCCOY, CNN HOST, NOMAD WITH CARLTON MCCOY: I'm Carlton McCoy, I'm a black and Jewish man, one who grew up in a pretty impoverished part of America. Even though most kids like me don't have much of a chance, I got out.

The journey from where I started --

I got something out of culinary school, huh.

To where I am now.

This guy --

Has allowed me to move in and out of different places in world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you a lefty?

MCCOY: No, maybe just right here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Usually right hand.

MCCOY: I'm on the clock.

This thing is huge.

Oh, most people are like, how can you eat something that smells like that?

After all, we carry our travels with us to our next destination. That's what life is all about.

This is incredible, huh?

I'm a nomad, let's do this.

ANNOUNCER: "NOMAD WITH CARLTON MCCOY", tonight at 10:00 on CNN.