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Tensions Boil Over New "60 Minutes" Leader, CBS News Chief; Yea or Nay? The Artificial Intelligence Debate in Education; Ebola Stoking Fear and Grief in DRC as Deaths, Cases Climb. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired June 02, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, the Justice Department says it is pausing its controversial anti-weaponization fund after a court ruling blocked it. The nearly $2 billion pot of taxpayer money would have been available for President Trump's allies, including convicted January 6th rioters, but it has angered Republicans on Capitol Hill and stalled the party's agenda.

Well, Jill Biden's new memoir is out today. The former first lady details her experiences during the 2020 and 2024 campaigns and her concerns about her husband's health. This morning, she said she believes he would have beaten Trump in 2024, but she doesn't know if he could have served the entire term.

And people in the Denver area had to dodge golf ball-sized hail Monday as severe weather ripped through that region. A hailstorm pelted homes and streets, and some people reported ice as big as a pool ball. Colorado is one of the most active hail zones in the world, and it is in peak hail season right now. Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: It's pretty scary indeed. Also happening now, a ticking time bomb of anger and tension over at 60 Minutes. A recent staff meeting led to accusations that CBS's editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss, is trying to, quote, "murder" the highly-rated news magazine. Veteran correspondent Scott Pelley blasted Weiss during the meeting, accusing her and the show's new executive producer, Nick Bilton, of being unqualified for their roles.

CNN media analyst and Axios media correspondent Sara Fischer is joining us right now. So, what else, Sara, came up during this explosive staff meeting?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST AND MEDIA CORRESPONDENT, AXIOS: Well, one of the things that Scott Pelley charged, Wolf, was why were many veterans fired? He basically said that this incident last Thursday was Black Thursday for the show, where they got rid of the show's executive producer, Tanya Simon, Cecilia Vega, a very well-known correspondent, as well as Sharyn Alfonsi.

He basically said that Nick Bilton was not qualified to lead this program because he has no broadcast experience. He alluded to the fact that Barry Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, also was underqualified and that she doesn't care about the show. Now, Nick Bilton tried to push back, saying that he cares deeply about the show, and as does Barry, and that he's trying to modernize it. But when, you know, prompted, Scott Pelley basically said that he didn't believe him, saying, oh, please.

BLITZER: So, what are some of the changes that Barry Weiss has made that apparently are so upsetting to the staff?

FISCHER: Well, the staff changes are huge, Wolf. I mean, Tanya Simon is a veteran. She was the interim executive producer after the longtime E.P. Bill Owens exited last year, citing, of course, threats to editorial independence. And then the flashpoint really was, a few months ago, Barry Weiss pulled down an episode of 60 Minutes that was produced by Sharyn Alfonsi, one of the people who exited last week, claiming that it didn't meet CBS's editorial standards. That really riled up the staff.

And then, broadly speaking, she's brought in a lot of her own people, people from her blog, The Free Press. And so, people think that inside, Barry Weiss is trying to change the editorial independence of this show. And as you mentioned, Wolf, CBS's 60 Minutes has been the top-rated news program in the country for well over 50 consecutive seasons. And so, people internally are just confused. Why mess with something that's working?

BLITZER: I know, Sara, you wrote that the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, faces what you called a crisis of confidence. What can you tell us about him?

[11:35:00]

FISCHER: Well, he's never worked in broadcast or television, Wolf, and that's a big concern for a lot of people inside. He was a tech columnist at The New York Times and a special correspondent for Vanity Fair before moving to Los Angeles to work on documentaries. He's a person who's affable and is well-liked.

The challenge that a lot of people at CBS face is that they don't know is that he has no experience working in a newsroom of this size and scale or a news program like this. In fact, he was based in Los Angeles and is now moving to New York for the job. I think he's very close personally to Barry Weiss. She sees him as an ally, and that's why she probably put him in this role.

BLITZER: All right. Sara Fisher, helping us understand what's going on. Thank you very, very much. Pamela.

BROWN: All right. Wolf, just ahead, our Situation Room special series on artificial intelligence. Can A.I. hinder learning or help it, or both? We'll look at its impact on the future of education. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:40:00] BROWN: Now, to our series in the Situation Room this week, Decoding AI. If you've been watching some graduation commencement addresses lately, you may have noticed that artificial intelligence is a top talker, but it's not always popular.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC SCHIMDT, FORMER GOOGLE CEO: There is a fear -- there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And one college recently used A.I. to read graduates' names at its ceremony and didn't go so well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIFFANY HERNANDEZ, PRESIDENT, GLENDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE: We're using a new A.I. system as our reader. Yes, yes. So, that is a lesson learned for us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining us now is Dan Levy. He is the co-author of "Teaching Effectively with ChatGPT," and he's also a senior lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. Nice to see you, Dan. So, as you well know, a lot of people are worried about the influence of A.I. on higher education, and they point to this idea of brain atrophy, that students may just turn to the technology to write an essay or solve a math equation without using any of their own creativity or problem-solving skills. Do you think that's a real concern?

DAN LEVY, SENIOR LECTURER, HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL AND CO-AUTHOR, "TEACHING EFFECTIVELY WITH CHATGPT": Thank you, yes. I think it is a real concern. A.I. can be used in ways that help learning. A.I. can be used in ways that hurt learning. And yes, A.I. can be used to cheat, and I've seen plenty of evidence of that. But I think we've spent too much time talking about cheating and not enough time talking about learning.

So, if you want to learn something, I would say there's no better time in the history of the world to learn than today. Each of us has access to a personalized tutor available 24/7 with infinite patience. This is true not just for students, but for any of us.

BROWN: How important, then, in that case do you think it is for a student to be versed in A.I. literacy, discerning what is or is not created by artificial intelligence and really using it in a way that is effective for them and not causing that brain atrophy?

LEVY: Yes. I think in essence, students need to discern how to use A.I. in ways that are not going to cognitively displace their own thinking. They can use it in ways, they have to remember why they came to school, and hopefully in that why they came to school, there is something about a desire to learn something that they're very interested in, a desire to grow and develop as a human being.

So, they need to use A.I. in ways that help them achieve those goals. And to do that, they can't use A.I. to do those things for them. So, those are, I think, challenges both for students, but also for educators, how we help students develop those skills.

BROWN: But then can you just expand on that a little bit? Then how do students use A.I. in a way that can help them and benefit them in education, but not hurt them in their learning and just that, like I said, brain atrophy?

LEVY: Yes. So, it's a little bit like a car, right? So, if your goal is to travel somewhere, you can use the car. But if your goal is to get in shape, then taking the car instead of running defeats the purpose. And here we need to remember, and hopefully students need to remember that the learning is the goal itself.

So, for some things, it's fine to use A.I. to displace what you were doing before, but for other things, the kinds of skills that you want to develop, using A.I. to do that for you is not very helpful.

BROWN: Yes, and it can be a useful tool just in terms of learning and understanding things and putting the dots together to understand something that maybe you didn't understand before. I want to play what Vice President Vance recently said during a commencement address about A.I., watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I've watched a few highlights of graduation speeches where this or that corporate leader will discuss artificial intelligence, A.I., and be met with literal boos.

[11:40:00]

Now, you can't boo me, I'm the vice president of the United States. But your fellow Americans are understandably, they're worried about A.I., about how it will affect the labor market, how it will distribute resources, and how it has fundamentally changed how we interact with one another, our social lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What do you make of his assessment here, and why do you think A.I. is so often booed by grads?

LEVY: Well, understandably, grads are worried about the labor market. Grads are worried about, there's a lot of risks that A.I. poses to our society, so I don't want to dismiss them. But there are also a lot of opportunities. And so, I think part of our challenge for us in our society is to be able to balance those potential opportunities with the risks.

And I think some of the risks that our graduates are worried about are real risks that we need to deal with. The labor market is one, but there are many others. The environment is another one, misinformation is another one, intellectual property is another one. So, those are things that are not to be dismissed.

BROWN: And how do you advise educators to teach students about A.I. literacy and how to use it so they're not overwhelmed by the technology, but they can use it to their advantage and also learn to discern in this age we're in, what is real and what is A.I. generated?

LEVY: Yes. Well, that's a very interesting question because the reality is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is produced by a human being versus what is produced with A.I.'s help. And so, the question for educators, in my mind, if we spend all our energy trying to ban or police the use of A.I., that won't be a very good use of our time. We need to embrace the technology so that we ourselves use it in ways that are conducive to learning. And then we need to nudge the learning environment for students to be able to use it for their own learning.

BROWN: All right. Dan Levy, thank you so much. And don't miss the Situation Room tomorrow. We'll look at A.I.'s potential impact on housing discrimination.

BLITZER: Look forward to that. And coming up, an exclusive and truly extraordinary new report from CNN's Clarissa Ward from the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak that has alarmed health officials around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:00]

BLITZER: New this morning, the World Health Organization reports nearly 50 confirmed deaths from an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Uganda. Health officials are treating more than 300 confirmed cases, but experts are afraid hundreds more have not been diagnosed yet. The virus has spread grief and fear in the two countries.

CNN's Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward gained extraordinary access to the so-called red zone at a hospital in the DRC. Here's her story in this Situation Room special report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is a surreal but now all too familiar ritual. Health care workers painstakingly disinfect the coffin of the latest suspected victim of the Ebola virus at Bunya's General Hospital.

His family members look on in anguish, unable to get close to their loved one, torn apart by grief and consumed by fear.

Oh, my father, why, God, this woman cries. Oh, God, this is my only father.

As the dead are carried out, new potential cases are arriving. At the entrance to the hospital, everyone's temperature must be taken.

WARD: So, this is the room where they take people who are found to have a fever. There is a woman in there now. Obviously, they don't know if she has Ebola or not, but they're going to keep her here until they do more tests and get a better sense of what's going on.

WARD (voice-over): At a makeshift coordination center inside the hospital, Dr. Richard Kojan and his team are working around the clock to keep up with an outbreak they say is out of control. They agree to show me and photojournalist Alex Platt what they're up against.

WARD: We are now getting ready to go into the so-called red zone of this hospital. That is the area where all suspected Ebola patients are put. And there is a lot of protective gear, unsurprisingly, that one needs to wear to go inside.

WARD (voice-over): Bundibugyo is a strain of the virus that few were expecting. There is no vaccine and no cure.

The doctors write our names on our backs so they can recognize us. And then it's time to go in. At the moment, patients are treated in hastily constructed tents.

[11:55:00]

30-year-old Gloria is a lab technician, one of dozens of health care workers believed to be infected.

WARD: She says it's difficult to breathe.

WARD (voice-over): Earlier, we met her sister waiting outside for news.

WARD (through translator): I saw your sister. She's waiting for the moment she can hug you again. Do you want us to toll your sister something from you? A message?

WARD (voice-over): Do not be afraid, she says. But it's impossible not to be scared. Some of the patients here are in very bad shape.

WARD: How do you stay strong when you're seeing this?

DR. RICHARD KOJAN, EMERGENCY ICU DOCTOR, ALIMA: For me, it's our humanity.

WARD: Your humanity?

DR. KOJAN: Yes, yes. It's our humanity. When people are suffering like this, I feel it. I feel it.

He was in a coma. It's Ebola confirmed.

WARD (voice-over): Ten-year-old Meshack (ph) is still very weak. His mouth ravaged with blisters from the virus. He asked the doctors for a banana, an encouraging sign.

Slowly, slowly, Dr. Kojan warns him. His condition is improving, but he has a long way to go.

WARD: He wants to lay down? Let's help him lay down then.

WARD (voice-over): They lay him down in the corridor while his room is disinfected. Nothing about this situation is OK. But these doctors are doing everything they possibly can.

As we walk to another ward, a familiar sound in the distance.

WARD: You can hear the cries of a family who are claiming the body of their loved one. This is a scene that's playing out here multiple times every single day.

WARD (voice-over): This is a temporary ward for suspected cases. Patients lie waiting for test results that are taking up to a week to process.

WARD: So, this is the situation that health care workers really want to avoid and are racing to put a stop to. You have five patients in the same room, all of them suspected of having Ebola. But doctors can't be sure. They can't rule out the possibility that one person in here may not have Ebola. And then, of course, there's a strong chance they could contract it.

WARD (voice-over): Every exit from the red zone is as careful as the entry. Protective equipment must be sprayed down with chlorine and methodically removed.

WARD: We were in there for maybe half an hour, and I could barely stand up by the end. It's incredibly tiring, really hot. You're sweating so much. You're thirsty. I just like help us understand the kind of stamina that you need as a doctor to be going in and out of that red zone multiple times every single day.

DR. KOJAN: It's really hard. We have to stand strong for those patients. And otherwise, you know, the situation will be really very, very bad.

WARD: That 10-year-old boy. That's hard to see.

DR. KOJAN: The first day, you know, he was really bleeding. A lot of diarrhea and shock, you know. So, you have to get a way to give IV fluid. It's not really easy. So, for me, you know, like an ICU doctor, when you have a situation like this, it's very hard to just say, I have to stop because I'm tired.

WARD (voice-over): On the outskirts of the city, the family we met earlier is burying their father, 72-year-old farmer Papa Babona Bodwan (ph). The burial team forms a cordon around his grave. The mourners forced to grieve at a distance. The final cruelty of this vicious virus.

Clarissa Ward, CNN, Bunya, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: We want to thank Clarissa for that really courageous report she had right in the middle of all that activity.

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: Yes.

BROWN: Going right in there and, and it's such important reporting because she's really taking you inside to show you how bad this is for the patients, that 10-year-old little boy who's just coming out of the coma.

BLITZER: So, heartbreaking

BROWN: And the, you know, heroism of the medical professionals --

[12:00:00]