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The Situation Room
SpaceX Launch for Stranded Astronauts Postponed; Trump Speeds Up Mass Deportation Efforts; Trump Admin. Rolls Back Major Climate Policies; EPA to Gut Dozens of Key Climate Rules; V.A. Closes Office Helping Minorities Veterans. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired March 13, 2025 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: At this moment, NASA and SpaceX are both preparing to send a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station. The mission, to rescue Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Seen here, they've been stranded on the International Space Station for some nine months. They were supposed to be in space for only a few days, but look what's been going on.
Takeoff was slated for yesterday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But SpaceX called off the launch. For more, let's bring in CNN Aviation Analyst Miles O'Brien. Miles, so what exactly is going on right now? Why the delay? This is so critical to bring these two American astronauts home.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST AND SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWS HOUR: Yes, Wolf, if you can imagine Butch and Suni on the International Space Station, you know, scratching out little hash marks for each day they've spent on board there. And this is just going to add another one because of this.
There was a -- there's a piece of equipment, which attaches the rocket to the launch structure and the hydraulic system on that particular latch. Well, it was not working properly, and you want that thing to lock down when it needs to be locked down, and you very much want it to unlock when it's time to launch into space. And so, they're working on that.
Weather still looks good. So, likely we'll get a launch on Friday. Although, there's lots of things that can go wrong when you're launching people into space, Wolf.
BLITZER: Well, do you think it could be further delayed? What would that look like?
O'BRIEN: Well, then they'll have to stand down for a little while, wait for another launch opportunities. Let's take this one day at a time, or one launch at a time. But it is possible, always, in these cases, for something to go wrong that incurs a scrub.
Generally speaking, SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets have a very reliable launch record. It's not like the old space shuttle days, where you have six, seven, eight scrubs. We'd be sitting there in the sunshine in Florida and there'd be, you know, a dust storm in Morocco and they couldn't launch the shuttle. So, it was a much more finicky beast than the SpaceX Falcon 9. And so, let's hope for the best.
BLITZER: What do we know, Miles, about their supplies up there at the International Space Station, not just food, but also water and clothing? What challenges have they faced over these several months? For example, can they even take a shower up there?
O'BRIEN: Well, there are no showers on the International Space Station. There's the dirty little -- literally, the dirty little secret about space travel is you use a lot of wipes, essentially. And you know, I bet that's one of the things they're really looking forward to, by the way, when they get back.
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But as far as clothing, food, they are kind of getting closer to the limits, and that's part of why, once they get up there, normally, the incoming crew and the outgoing crew would have about a four-day overlap handover. They're going squeeze that into two days so that they have more opportunities for the Dragon to undock and splash down. And that is a weather dependent event as well.
They don't want extra people up there for too long to go too deep into the stores because there's a cargo flight which is coming, which has critical supplies, which has been delayed.
BLITZER: They were originally supposed to be up there just a few days, right? How many days?
O'BRIEN: Wolf, it was supposed to be about a week. And I'll tell you this, people forget they did not bring a change of clothes. They actually didn't bring a suitcase in order to make room for a piece of equipment for the International Space Station.
But fortunately, there's extras up there and eventually, they had a cargo ship come and provide a certain amount of supplies. So, they're doing OK. You have to remember these are -- you know, they're naval officers. They're used to extended deployments. And they're astronauts who love to be in space. This is -- if they need to be -- if they had to be stuck anywhere, I suspect they might have selected the International Space Station.
BLITZER: They've been stuck up there now for 280 days, 280 days, and I hope they come back healthy and strong very, very soon. Miles O'Brien, I know you hope the same thing. Thank you very, very much.
And this just in to CNN. President Trump is expected to invoke wartime authority to speed up mass deportation efforts from the United States. What we're learning about the timing. We got new information. Stay with us. That's next.
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BLITZER: We have some breaking news on President Trump's immigration crackdown. Four sources now tell CNN that the Trump administration is expected to invoke a sweeping wartime authority to speed up mass deportations from the United States. Legal experts have said the 18th century law would face an uphill battle in court.
Meanwhile, we have some new CNN reporting on another startling proposal on those mass deportations. It calls for deputizing private security contractors so they have the authority to arrest and swiftly report undocumented immigrants. And the discussion means one notorious private security contractor has maneuvered his way back into President Trump's orbit. You may remember Erik Prince as the founder of Blackwater, which sparked international outrage after a deadly 2007 shooting that killed Iraqi civilians. He was effectively exiled at the end of President Trump's first term.
I want to bring in my colleagues and great reporters who have been working on all this reporting for us, CNN's Chief Domestic Correspondent Phil Mattingly is with us and our Correspondent Priscilla Alvarez is with us as well.
Phil, how remarkable is this idea, first of all, of using a private army, if you will, to go ahead and deal with making arrests and deportations?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, it's remarkable in the sense that there's certainly no recent historical precedent that we can point to of something like that being put onto the table, but it's not happening in isolation. What you read at the top when we came back, which is actually Priscilla's reporting with the team on the hundreds of years old statutes that the administration's trying to deploy right now or implement right now in the furtherance of their goals for these deportations, that actually threads in with all of this.
There is a reality that the private sector, private contractors like Erik Prince are looking at, which is the government doesn't have the budget, the bandwidth, or the manpower to do the scale of what President Trump and his team have laid out, proposed, and want to implement over the course of those coming months. So, they're trying to fill that vacuum on some level and at least put things on the table and both benefit monetarily, but also in terms of their influence within the administration, which is what we've seen with Erik Prince.
BLITZER: Is this seriously being considered? You're doing a lot of reporting, Priscilla, on this.
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, President Donald Trump has said he's not opposed to Erik Prince's proposals, but sources tell us that there have not been any formal meetings with the White House. But what this is telling of is Erik Prince seeing signature issue for President Donald Trump and finding ways to be part of that, to influence that. In our reporting, we also learned that he held a meeting with private sector heads to discuss the U.S. immigration system, to discuss how to execute on this mass deportation pledge.
So, he is not only putting this in writing to submit to the White House, he is also tossing ideas around with other private security contractors because it is so clear to them that the administration can't do this on their own with the resources at hand.
BLITZER: Is Erik Prince already, Phil, playing a significant role in influencing the Trump White House on sensitive immigration issues?
MATTINGLY: I think there's nuance here in the sense of -- Priscilla makes a great point, there's no direct conversations that we've picked up on between Erik Prince and President Trump. He's not inside the administration by any means. The proposals he's put out, for the most part, have not been taken up that we know of at this point.
What I think is the more -- is the better way to look at it right now is somebody who, as you noted, was more or less ostracized by the end of the Trump administration, wasn't allowed at the Pentagon, wasn't allowed near the Intelligence Community whatsoever, wasn't really talked about by the more establishment conservatives inside that administration, now, this is a moment where Erik Prince's long held policy views, Erik Prince's long held business interests, and Erik Prince's long held relationships aren't just around the Trump administration, they're in the Trump administration. Cabinet secretaries have close relationships with Prince.
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And so, his influence certainly exists whether or not it drives anything or is determinative, I think right now it's still an open question.
BLITZER: Priscilla, wouldn't this idea of deputizing private citizens to go ahead and make arrests face enormous legal challenges?
ALVAREZ: It would. And, Wolf, I would say we're not quite there yet. This is reporting that shows that he has sprawling reach on this issue and also a direct line to foreign leaders. That was something else that we learned over the course of our reporting. Foreign leaders, by the way, that are key allies to this immigration plan.
El Salvadoran President Bukele, one of those, we learned in our reporting that Erik Prince had called him directly to talk about an idea about sending migrants, not from El Salvador, back there to detain them. Now, of course, we also heard about this when Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in El Salvador, and I've also been told that Trump officials were separately working on this proposal.
But when you take it all together, it shows you that not only domestically is Erik Prince trying to hold more influence and is talking to officials, but is also having a direct line to the leaders in Latin America, who are also so key to all of this mass deportation pledge.
BLITZER: Priscilla, you know your stuff. Thank you very much for coming in, Phil. You know your stuff too. Appreciate both of you very, very much.
Coming up, taking an axe to major climate policies. The impacts this could have on clean air and clean water here in the United States. That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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BLITZER: The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is set to undergo a radical transformation as the Trump administration takes a hatchet to key climate policies. Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the spree of deregulations earlier on X. More than two dozen moves that stand to impact everything from clean water to power plant pollution here in the United States.
Let's go live right now to our Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir. Bill, give us a sense an idea of the scope of some of these moves.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: It's massive, massive. And just the size and scale of this movement, unlike anything in American history, and they are touting it as such the greatest day of deregulation. And it seems to be coinciding with this major energy conference in Houston this week. Of course, President Trump promised oil executives that if they helped him win election, he would take away all regulations, and this seems to be fulfilling that promise.
These 31 different actions rolling back pollution limits on everything, from power plant emissions, tailpipe standards, cars and trucks, mandatory greenhouse gas, reporting standards, methane leaks from oil production, that's a huge global warming problem, limits on mercury, other toxic substances coming out, air quality standards, wastewater pollution rules, the good neighbor rule, which is if you're -- got a factory putting pollution in the air, it blows across state lines, you should probably fix that and be a good neighbor, that's gone. Environmental justice initiatives for marginalized communities that have to drink and breathe the brunt of the country's pollution, that has been stripped away.
But a lot of this, Wolf, will have to go through courts. It will take years to turn these declarations into new laws, and it will be fought at the state level on many places. There's the reality of the modern economy. Nobody's going back to coal anymore. And about 85 percent of the new utility scale power that went online last year was wind.
Plus, storage, batteries, plus solar and very little natural gas. So, the whole world is moving to a new economy, but the Trump administration seems hell-bent on staying in the 19th century.
BLITZER: You're a real expert on all of this. What concerns you, Bill, the most about the consequences of these actions, the impact that they will have on a day to day situation here in the United States?
WEIR: Well, big picture long-term, it's the life of everything on Earth is affected by what is happening as the Earth overheats last year. Insanely hot, off the charts. It's only accelerating 27 different separate billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. alone as a result of wilder weather, more unpredictable climates here.
But in the near-term, the people who are going to suffer the most are folks on the fence line communities, living literally next door to super polluters. A big case in Louisiana elementary school, right next to a petrochemical plant, they just dropped the case, Trump Justice Department, and walked away from it, saying it had something to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion rules from the Biden administration.
So, people who are the most vulnerable are going to feel it first. But eventually, everybody, regardless of tax bracket, is going to feel the ravages of an overheated planet right now, but this administration is literally stripping all references to climate change, from all federal websites, trying to deny just the acknowledgement of this.
The rest of the world will go in the other direction. China now dominating the post-carbon economy in ways that even experts could not have predicted a few years ago.
BLITZER: Bill Weir, excellent reporting as usual. Thank you very, very much.
Coming up, more cuts coming to the Department of Veterans Affairs. On the chopping block, the office focusing in on addressing disparities in aid for minority veterans. We got some new reporting. We'll share it with you when we come back.
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BLITZER: Happening now, breaking news, an important nomination pulled a very important nomination. Just minutes before his confirmation hearing up on Capitol Hill to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we learn that Dr. David Weldon is no longer the president's choice.
Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. Pamela Brown is off. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in the Situation Room.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.
BLITZER: And we begin with the breaking news. President Trump is pulling the nomination of David Weldon, his pick to lead the CDC. Sources are telling CNN that both President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had concerns --
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