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The Story Is with Elex Michaelson

Trump-Backed Paxton Wins Texas Senate Runoff; Trump To Hold Cabinet Meeting Amid Rising Tensions With Iran; Europe Sizzles As Record-Breaking May Heatwave Scorches Continent; NASA Unveils Next Steps To Build Permanent Moon Base; Study: Late-Night Phone Use Cutting Into U.S. Teens' Sleep; Ukrainian Drone United Prepares Wave of Strikes on Russia; Thunder Take Series Lead with Game Five Win Over Spurs; Porsche Technicians Tel A.I. To Take a Back Seat; Rescuers in Laos Trying to Reach 7 People Trapped in Cave. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired May 27, 2026 - 01:00   ET

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

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[01:00:02]

ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN ANCHOR: Check out this video shared by Health Secretary RFK Jr. He appears to handle two black racer snakes in Florida with his bare hands. See the snakes thrashing as Kennedy picks them up. One even appears to bite him. His wife Cheryl Hines can be heard urging him to put the snakes down.

Thanks for watching the first hour of The Story Is. The next hour starts right now.

The story is all eyes on Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEN PAXTON, U.S. SENATE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE: Texas will be the radical left's number one priority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: CNN projects Ken Paxton will win the Republican primary in the state, setting up a faceoff with Democratic candidate James Talarico in November.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAXTON: We're not going to let them take it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: The story is Iranian negotiations on the line. President Trump calls for a cabinet meeting as Iran threatens to retaliate recent U.S. strikes.

The story is living on the moon. Could it soon be a reality? NASA gives the details on their planned moon base. And former astronaut Garrett Reisman --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because the Moon base is as beautiful as it is hostile.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: And the story is doom scrolling. A new study finds that teens spend hours on their phones late at night. We'll discuss how to reduce their screen time and increase sleep time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Los Angeles, The Story Is with Elex Michelson.

MICHAELSON: Welcome to the story is. I'm Elex Michelson live in Los Angeles where it's 10 p.m. it is just after midnight in Plano, Texas where Ken Paxton is partying tonight. The top story is the power of a Trump endorsement. Check this number out.

CNN projecting that Paxton defeating incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican Senate runoff. And it's not even close, winning by almost 30 points. No candidate got the necessary 50 percent of the vote. Back in the March primary. It took President Trump more than two months to pick Paxton to endorse. Paxton will now face Democratic State Representative James Talarico in the November midterm election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAXTON: Tonight is not the end of a campaign. Tonight is the beginning of the fight to preserve every value we hold dear. The future of Texas and the future of America is on the line and I intend to do everything I can to expand our movement. I've won three statewide elections because I know how critical it is for our party to come together. And that's what we must do now. Without a shadow of a doubt, I will be the Democrats number one target in November.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: Talarico wasted no time going after Paxton, calling him the most corrupt politician in America. He posted this attack ad on X shortly after the race was called.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES TALARICO, U.S. SENTE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE: Thank you all so much. Three years ago, Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party for using his public office to enrich himself and his donors at the expense of the people. That kind of corruption is the rot at the core of this broken system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: Let's bring back in Jeremy Wallace, political writer at the Houston Chronicle. Jeremy, welcome back. We saw that Paxton is already trying out nicknames on Talarico. Listen to this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAXTON: Some people know him as Tofu Talarico. Some people call him Six Gender Jimmy. I've even heard some people call him James Talofrico, and others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: So you think about the way that Donald Trump was able to do that in 2015, 2016, when he was running against his fellow Republicans. What's the strategy there in terms of what Paxton's trying to do?

JEREMY WALLACE, POLITICAL WRITER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE: He wants to make sure there's an image of James Talarico that is defined by him, Ken Paxton, and not by Talarico. Right. The faster you can get out there and start, you know, plastering a name on him, that's less, you know, that Talarico can run on what he wants to present himself like.

Look, Talarico is pretty unknown to most general election voters. He has a long way to go to build up his name identification. And Paxton really wants to start defining him as all those things, even if they're not true, potentially. Right. You know, they've been calling him a vegan.

It doesn't sound like he's a vegan. He's told me he's not. And so -- but they're still going to type, you know, go after those type attacks, the tofu, you know, type shots on him. They want to paint that image in the barbecue joints out in West Texas. So there's no hint, no possibility that those voters might be tempted to go with a more moderate sounding Democrat, potentially, at least how Talarico will present himself.

[01:05:04]

MICHAELSON: The vegan thing is so hilarious because in parts of Southern California, that would be a plus. But in Texas, it's very much a negative, a reminder that the 50 states are different.

So in terms, though, of what Talarico has to do from here, talk about his strategy. He's talking about power, Paxton as the most corrupt person in America. What's that about? And how different is maybe the campaign against Paxton than it would have been against Cornyn?

WALLACE: Yes, right out the gate, you saw, like, at least I've been seeing Talarico making some plays to try to win over Cornyn voters. Right. They want to make sure those Cornyn voters maybe come to him instead. So he's definitely going to aim for that more moderate Republican who's been voting for John Cornyn, who was put off by the scandals and the issues that the impeachment of Ken Paxton, you know, Talarico sees those people as potentially up for grabs for him.

Now, that's a big if. Right. There's going to be a lot of work that he needs to do on that front because, look, we know what the Republicans are going to do. They're going to paint James Talarico just like they did Colin Allred two years ago, as some, you know, somebody who wants, you know, transgender people playing in girls' sports or things like that.

And so somehow Talarico has got to figure out an answer to that sounds more convincing and more understandable to people in Texas than what Colin Allred was able to do just two years ago.

MICHAELSON: But for that corruption charge, there's a lot of people that are watching this around the country and around the world that may not be familiar with what he's talking about. What is that main charge against Ken Paxton?

WALLACE: Yes, he was impeached by the Republicans in the Texas legislature for all kinds of issues. One of them being that his own staff, you know, tried to turn him into the FBI for investigations, alleging that there had been corruption going on in his office. That was one of the straw that broke the camel's back in that case that led to the impeachment. All kinds of other issues over his career that he's had to deal with here in Texas, but he's become somewhat of a survivor in all that.

You heard him at the top there talk about how he's won these statewide races. What's interesting is he's had three runoff elections where he's had to go into basically overtime to win his seats, and he's won all three of them. And so he's somewhat a survivor in Texas politics in a lot of different ways. You know, it's almost very Trumpish in a lot of ways.

MICHAELSON: Yes.

WALLACE: You know, despite all the stuff that has gone on with Trump and his legal issues, he continues to lift the fight another day. And I think Paxton kind of fits that mold, at least of what we see happening with Trump.

MICHAELSON: So this wasn't the only election tonight. We're also talking about some congressional races as well. Texas sort of started the trend of this gerrymandering that we're seeing around the country. President Trump pushing Texas to try to have five more Republican seats. How is that going? Where are we right now and sort of in terms of Republicans winning all five of those seats?

WALLACE: Yes, it's a mixed bag. Look, I'll tell you right now, I don't think they're going to get to the five seats that they thought they were going to get. I think people in Washington who try to draw the lines in South Texas particularly don't understand the terrain in South Texas very well.

They saw that Latino voters there voted for Trump in 2024, but that's not transferable to any Republican out there. I think they're going to learn some lessons. They may lose two of those seats down in South Texas, maybe even three that they thought they were, you know, going to have at the end of this. So I think they've had some, you know, questionable decisions on what they did with some of those drawings. So stay tuned for that.

But the one thing that's really interesting, in a lot of these races, including that Paxton-Cornyn race in Houston, we had one of the redistrictings that put Al Green and Christian Menefee in the 18th congressional district against each other. That's a historic black district in Houston. So you had two incumbents having a clash against each other.

But in all three of those races I just mentioned, and really a lot of our races, it became a question of we need to change from this guy you've seen in politics for a long time. You know, even in the attorney general's race, we had that in Chip Roy vs. Mays Middleton. All of these people running as I'm a fresher face or even really a fresh face than this guy who's been in politics for a long time. And I think you saw that in both Democratic and Republican races.

And it was very effective, I think, in up and down the ballot. I'm looking at all these races and I'm like, there's a common thread in all this.

MICHAELSON: Yes.

WALLACE: You know, try to paint your opponent as somebody who's part of this swamp type thing to steal kind of the phrasing. But it worked in the Democratic way as well, too.

[01:10:06]

Al Green campaigned as this, the senior representative who knew how to get things done, had the seniority, knew how to get legislation done. But you know, Christian Menefee made the case of people like let's -- it's time for a fresh, a new generation of leadership.

MICHAELSON: Yes. Yes. well --

WALLACE: It's pretty consistent throughout Texas politics tonight.

MICHAELSON: Our pal Mike Murphy, who's a frequent guest of ours, longtime political strategist, has said that the best brand in politics is new and change.

WALLACE: Yes.

MICHAELSON: And that continues once again here tonight in Texas. Jeremy Wallace, thank you. We can check out your reporting tonight and tomorrow in the Houston Chronicle.

It is just after 8 in the morning in Saudi Arabia where we're looking at live pictures from the city of Mena. There, Muslim pilgrims taking part in the annual Hajj pilgrimage are performing the ritual known as stoning of the devil. This comes one day after nearly 2 million pilgrims gathered out on Mount Arafat near Mecca. This year's observance comes against the backdrop of the Iran war and the ongoing uncertainty in the region. Extraordinary to see all those people there.

The story is the war with Iran. President Trump set to hold a cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday with the war now at a critical juncture. A source telling CNN all cabinet members are expected to attend. Meanwhile, Iran is accusing the U.S. of violating their ceasefire. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is threatening to retaliate after the U.S. launched what it called self-defense strikes on Iranian missile sites and boats around the Strait of Hormuz. As for the negotiations, the Iranian government claims the U.S. has been unreliable in those talks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FATEMEH MOHAJERANI, IRANIAN GOVERNMENT SPOKESPERSON (through translator): It is not the first time we are witnessing these contradictions from the United States. In fact, one of the problems in our negotiations is the inconsistencies and contradictions in their behavior. This is not a new issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELSON: Inconsistencies. Let's bring in CNN's Mike Valerio live for us in Beijing. What does she mean in terms of inconsistencies? Where are we at in terms of this negotiation?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDNET: You know, I'm not going to say exactly what she means. I'm not going to be so bold as to interpret her comments. But I think reviewing the reporting from Beijing and D.C. and Tehran certainly Qatar that both sides of these negotiations seem to be treading water here, that the Iranians are back from Qatar and we have this cabinet meeting tomorrow. So the question is, what happens when both of these sides huddle?

I do want to bring in China's foreign minister Wang Yi. Comments in Beijing and New York certainly making headlines with Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, seeming to manage expectations of how long this thing, this agreement is going to take. It's not going to be an overnight task, he says.

But he's telling reporters at the United Nations and Chinese state media, also reporting here that every step forward in negotiations brings a glimmer of hope so things are not stopped. He has hope and has also told reporters in New York that China, the U.S., Iran and Pakistan, one of the critical mediators, are still talking. So that's certainly good news.

But testing the ceasefire has been certainly an essential through line of our reporting. And whether or not the ceasefire is going to hold after those U.S. strikes. And Iran is saying that it has the right to respond to any violations of the ceasefire. It's also inserting some more developments and lines into the conversation, saying that the United States has carried out repeated attacks on commercial ships. So we're trying to get some more details on that with the Cabinet meeting that's going to happen in D.C. on Wednesday.

Now the Iranians have left Qatar and the leader of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, has spoken with Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran. And we're trying to see whether or not the unfreezing of $24 billion in exchange for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz makes it to this memorandum of understanding, if it survives. Because of course, you know, when you think, Elex, you've pointed this

out yesterday and the days before, the unfreezing of these assets very much mirrors the Obama administration agreement that was hammered out in Geneva and that came under huge criticism by President Trump when he was a private citizen so many years ago. So it will be interesting to see whether or not that through line survives this cabinet meeting.

Also, the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is claiming the 25 vessels, including key here oil tankers, have made its way through the strait. And then connectivity in Iran. We talked about it last hour. The filternet, as one Iranian woman is talking about, is calling it is back.

Notable, after 88 days of the internet being throttled since December of last year, a lot of people are reporting that they still need VPNs, virtual private networks, which, for example, if you're here in China, you need to turn on a VPN to mask your location, say you're connecting in Burbank, for example.

[01:15:10]

Pretend like you're connecting in Burbank to access YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram. That's what Iranians are having to do to buy expensive VPNs to try to connect through Starlink. So we're going to be seeing what they're posting now that they are almost finished with 88 days of a near total Internet blackout, it's being lifted ever so slowly. Elex.

MICHAELSON: Mike Valerio in Beijing, who apparently is stealing my internet from here in Burbank, thank you so much for that. Now we know the secrets. We appreciate it. Good work.

The Israeli military is ramping up its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying it struck more than 100 targets of the militant group overnight. Lebanon's Health Ministry says Israeli airstrikes killed at least 31 people and wounded 40 others on Tuesday in one of the deadliest days since the ceasefire began last month.

Meanwhile, an Israeli military official says that IDF soldiers have expanded ground operations beyond the Yellow Line, a self-declared military security zone in southern Lebanon.

Let's talk about the weather. A heat wave has been breaking dozens of temperature records across Western Europe this week. Temperatures from England to France have reached the mid-30s Celsius or mid-90s Fahrenheit. And we're still weeks away from the official start of summer in the Northern hemisphere. CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam has the tales.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, this early season heat wave certainly has the fingerprints of climate change written all over it. Take for example, these dozens of red dots. These are the locations that set May monthly record temperatures, meaning that all of these individual locations have never experienced this warmth, this type of warmth during the month of May. It's not even officially summer just yet.

Let's talk specifics though. This is Kew Gardens just outside of London, the past two days, shattering its May monthly all time record high temperature. That's significant. But when it first did so on Monday, it actually shattered it by roughly 2 degrees Celsius from the previous record.

That is significant. But so is the overnight lows now not giving your body the opportunity to really cool itself down from the extreme daytime heat for this time of the year. That's saying something because only about 5 percent of the households in the UK have access to air conditioning. Let's boil it down to its brass tax.

The U.K. is built for a climate that no longer exists and there are several other examples that showcase this heat. Take Paris for example. We're running 10 to 15 degrees above average right through the early parts of the weekend. So what is causing this extreme early season heat wave?

Well, it's a dome of high pressure clearing out the skies overhead but also trapping the heat at the surface as it tries to escape back into the atmosphere. It's just not able to and it's not going to move very fast, very quickly. In fact, we're going to continue that heat dome over the western and central parts of Europe into the weekend. That's why we see lots of reds and oranges on this map.

And as we go forward into the future, we continue to release these greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels, the heat trapping gases. We are going to see more frequent heat waves and more extreme temperatures within these heat waves as well. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELSON: Derek Van Dam. Thank you. NASA announced new details about its upcoming plans to build a permanent base on the moon. Phase one will see robotic missions scout and prepare for surface operations.

That includes the Moonfall mission which will send four drones to fly short hops to survey potential landing sites for Artemis astronauts. NASA is aiming for a 2028 launch date. Phase two expected by 2029 when NASA will begin building semi-permanent infrastructure. Phase three aims for a sustained presence with routine crew rotations and continuous surface activity.

(B EGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED ISAACMAN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: The moon base is as beautiful as it is hostile. In sunlight the surface can heat to over 250 degrees. In darkness it can drop well below minus 200. In the permanently shaded craters, areas of great interest that have been untouched by sunlight for millions, even billions of years. Temperatures can fall well below minus 400 degrees. There is no atmosphere to moderate these extremes.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MICHAELSON: Joining me now is our go to guy when it comes to space. Professor of astronomical engineering at USC, former NASA astronaut, former top guy at SpaceX, Garrett Reisman. Welcome back to The Story Is.

GARRETT REISMAN, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: It's great to be here. I was -- I wasn't the top guy that you know who that was.

MICHAELSON: Well I know we're going to give you, give you some credit. He's got a trillion dollars. He'll be OK. Let's talk about what's going on here. Why a moon base? Why does this even matter?

[01:20:02]

REISMAN: Why not. Moon base is awesome.

MICHAELSON: Yes.

REISMAN: So I think the big picture, obviously it's the next logical step in exploring space. We will learn a lot that will help us when we eventually go to Mars. This is viewed by NASA as a stepping stone on the way to Mars. And I believe it's really valuable because one of the things that we don't know about sending humans out beyond low Earth orbit, where I was on the space station and the space shuttle, is the radiation environment. We don't know what that does to the human body. We know what's out there, but we don't know exactly how that affects us.

If we go to Mars, right? If we just went tomorrow, it would take two and a half years to go there and come back. And so we're committing to that when -- when we leave. And with no, no ability to turn this thing around and come home early, right?

If you go to the moon, you could go for a month, you can go for two months, you can go for six months, you can go for a year. And we can incrementally do this in a more safe and measured way and learn a lot that would help us know really what those risks are for going to Mars.

MICHAELSON: I mean, what would you do on, on a, on a moon base? Is it kind of like the International Space Station in terms of what you do, or how would it be different?

REISMAN: In some ways the biggest difference is you have some gravity. OK, you have about a sixth of the Earth's gravity up there on the moon. So the nice thing is you could put things down and they'll stay there. You don't get to do that on the International Space Station.

You can separate water and air, which is a very hard thing to do with zero gravity. So there's big advantages to having just a little bit of gravity. And the other interesting thing is we don't know if, for example, if you have one sixth of the gravity, do you get 1/6 of the benefit of having a full Earth's gravity or do you get 80 percent of the benefit? We don't know if that's linear, if it's nonlinear. So there's a lot we don't know that we'll learn by being there on our -- what's going to be our new moon base.

MICHAELSON: Do you think that this timing to do this is realistic?

REISMAN: It's aggressive, it's space sexy, I would say, in the sense that we always set extremely aggressive schedules.

MICHAELSON: And which sometimes didn't get done.

REISNAMN: Quite often. Yes.

MICHAELSON: And that's also true of other Elon Musk products. But then also he changes the world and deserves credit for that.

RIESMAN: True. So the thing is that if you -- if you set kind of a realistic or like a comfortable schedule to get to where you want to go, you're not going -- you're definitely not going to get there. Right. But if you set something very aggressive, it might not make it, but you hopefully make it not that much later.

MICHAELSON: So there's two reasons for the aggressive schedule or part of the two reasons. One, President Trump would like to have people land on the moon before 2029 when he leaves office.

REISMAN: Right.

MICHAELSON: The other is China who say that they're going to land on the moon in 2030.

REISMAN: Right.

MICHAELSON: Talk about what they're doing in terms of the space race and are they trying to do a moon base as well?

REISMAN: You know, they are moving much more methodically, much more systematically, and have been for a long time. So they've been building up the building blocks to get to the moon very similar to what we did during the Apollo program. You know, we are taking very different approaches. We've been changing directions. We've been changing vehicles, changing the name of the program.

So, we've been moving more in fits and starts. It's a bit of the tortoise in the hare kind of thing. But on the other hand, we've been leveraging something that they don't have, which is this private investment, private commercial approach to doing this, this new approach and leveraging that private sector.

MICHAELSON: Right.

REISMAN: And I think that hopefully will give us the edge.

MICHAELSON: Some of that also seems to be like the difference in personality between Trump and Xi as well. When you think about it, the way they do things are also the way the countries. Quickly to wrap things up. Part of that private approach today, NASA announced all these private companies that they're working with on this. One of them is Astrolab.

REISMAN: That's right. MICHAELSON: Which are your buddies that are doing this.

REISMAN: Yes.

MICHAELSON: We've got a picture of you there. Talk to us about what we're looking at here, other than your beautiful head.

RESIMAN: Yes. I didn't have to wear the hat because -- so what we're looking at there is first of all, the CEO, Jared Matthews, and then the program manager, John Muratore.

But more importantly, behind us is the Flip Rover. So this is a prototype lunar rover that's going to launch near the end of this year as part of the announcement today, as part of the CLPS program, it's going to travel on a spacecraft to the lunar surface, get off and move around.

And the thing about it is all those components, even though that's a relatively small rover, they are the exact same components, the wheels, the motors, a lot of the sensors, the actuators, they are the same ones that are going to go on the big lunar LTV, the lunar rover that's going to carry people. And that's what was announced today, that both -- that both Astrolabe and Lunar Outpost, a company out of Colorado, were selected with contracts of about $180 million to deliver full size rovers in this phase, one that will be autonomous.

[01:25:08]

And also eventually somebody's going to get to drive them. I wish -- I wish it were me. Unfortunately not going to be.

MICHAELSON: Maybe one day. There's still time. All right, Garrett, great to see you. Thank you so much.

Still to come. Doom scrolling, a new study has found how late night phone use is impacting teens in the US. Stay with us and in the meantime, try not to doom scroll during this commercial break.

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MICHAELSON: Medical experts in the U.S. recommend teens get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night, but a new study by "The Journal of The American Medical Association" suggests that many teens are spending a big part of their night on their phones, scrolling social media instead of sleeping.

Dr. Jason Nagata of UC-San Francisco is the author of that study. He joins me live right now from the Bay Area.

Welcome to THE STORY IS for the first time. What did you find?

DR. JASON NAGATA, U.C.-SAN FRANCISCO: Yes. Thanks so much for having me. We measured actual overnight phone activity during school nights, and we found that on average, teens spent more than 50 minutes a night of phone use between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. And actually, 65 percent of this time was spent on social media. Between midnight and 4:00 a.m., over half of teens were still using their phones.

MICHAELSON: Why does that matter?

DR. NAGATA: Sleep is so essential for adolescent brain development, learning, mental health and emotion regulation. Teenage years are just really important for rapid brain development, body development. And sleep is really when a lot of that restoration happens.

So teens really need, as you mentioned, 8 to 10 hours of sleep for healthy development. And sleep affects attention, memory, learning and mental health.

So it's really important that even small, small improvements in sleep can make a big difference for teenagers. Even 10, 15 minutes of extra sleep can improve mental health and cognitive performance.

MICHAELSON: We know there are plenty of adults that are doing this sort of doomscrolling as well late at night, but you've got some practical advice for the teens up there.

Let's put this up on the screen. For parents of teens, you suggest that they create a family media plan, establish screen-free times and zones, and use nighttime notification settings. What does that mean?

DR. NAGATA: You know, many phones now have sleep mode or know to actually eliminate or close notifications at nighttime. But actually our studies have found that even better than that is really keeping the device outside of the room entirely.

Even if the phone is on silent or do not disturb, it's pretty easy to still check it late at night if you happen to wake up.

So the best advice is actually to keep phones outside of the bedroom and turn them completely off.

MICHAELSON: Well, and that's part of our next graphic we want to show. Charge phones outside the bedroom. This is your advice for teens. Turn off notifications overnight. And if you wake up at night, resist checking your phone.

That seems easier said than done though, right?

DR. NAGATA: Yes. I mean, I do think that part of the sort of enticement of social media is that they're really designed to keep people engaged, especially teens, and that can make it especially difficult for teens to disconnect.

But our research has found that actually the most effective strategies are really to keep the phones outside of the bedroom entirely. That way, if you happen to wake up overnight, it's not so easy to just pick it up and see all the messages or posts that have happened overnight. And then all of a sudden your brain is activated.

If it's in another room, it's just that much harder to get to it. And if you have to turn it off from on, it's just extra sort of activation energy.

MICHAELSON: Yes.

DR. NAGATA: And so those are just small tips that I think can make a big difference in teenagers' lives, especially given that so many teenagers are using phones between midnight and 4:00 a.m.

MICHAELSON: And unlike adults, teens likely don't have to take an emergency call in the middle of the night. So there's really no need for that phone to be there.

Dr. Jason Nagata --

DR. NAGATA: Yes.

MICHAELSON: -- thank you for the excellent work. And people can check out your --

DR. NAGATA: Thanks so much for having me.

MICHAELSON: -- your research at UCSF.

Coming up, how Ukraine is turning scarcity into advantage with drones.

[01:33:43]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELSON: Ukraine's ambassador to the U.N. is denouncing Russia's quote, "new appalling level of aggression" against Ukrainian civilians. This comes after Russia's massive bombardment of Kyiv last weekend, one of the largest in the four-year war.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh shows us how Ukrainian forces are using technology to strike back.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: President Trump once said Ukraine had no cards. But now they've built themselves a new deck.

We're now with perhaps Russia's most keenly sought target in the war, a deep strike Ukrainian drone unit, launching this night a wave of 200 attack drones into Russia.

The issue here is the scale. Potentially 20 drones being launched just from here. And three or four other locations around here also involved in tonight's attack.

The sheer number overwhelming. It seems much of Russia's air defenses and causing persistent embarrassment to the Kremlin.

Working fast in silence, knowing an error with the fuel or explosives or launch could kill them all.

They are a key target for the Russian Shahed drones flying overhead, constantly interrupting their work, which is going to go on all night.

Close to here, Russian strikes have just hit Ukrainian civilians.

And in Russian Stavropol, these Ukrainian drones hit. The mayor telling Russians there to stay indoors.

[01:39:43]

WALSH: In another field, another technological leap is at work. Jet boosters used to get drones to their 120-mile-an-hour speed in just seconds.

At their base, one screen is a glimpse of a world order turned on its head.

Dozens of Ukrainian drones roaming inside Russia -- code, coordinates, targets, A.I.-powered, pulsing on the screen faster than your eyes can read.

Russia, often seen as the third largest military power, preyed upon by a series of laptops.

VECTOR, DEEP STRIKE COMMANDER, UKRAINIAN DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE: It's our biggest advantage and why it's so hard for Russia to destroy this program, because we split up. We don't have any common centers. And we use dozens of places.

Also, the software gives us a chance to work with thousands of UAVs.

WALSH: The (INAUDIBLE) drone can take a huge payload, over 1,200 miles. There are decoys and a jet-powered drone, they say, seems to appear like a rocket on Russian radar.

VECTOR: Those are decoys. We sent hundreds of them. Some are empty, some with a payload. The payload is small but it's enough to destroy air defense systems.

WALSH: It is dizzying, the speed of evolution, adaptation, ingenuity. Ukraine two years ago, begging for old American missiles to hit just inside Russia's borders.

But now it builds itself and launches so many drones, often as deep as Russian Siberia. Even Kremlin loyalists are questioning Putin's end game.

Now the West wants to learn from what Ukraine had to do to survive when it didn't get the help it needed. Each leap, advantage lasts just months before the other side catches up.

Ukraine is ahead for now but only because it's learned it'll likely be on its own when it's not.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN -- Eastern Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELSON: Our thanks to Nick.

For international viewers, "WORLDSPORT" is next. For our viewers in North America, I'll be right back.

[01:41:42]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELSON: The defending NBA champion, Oklahoma City Thunder taking a three games to two lead over the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference finals. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dropped 32 points in game five. Stefan Cassell led the Spurs with 24. Final score Thunder 127, Spurs 114.

If the Thunder win the next game, they would move on to face the New York Knicks. Jalen Brunson, Karl Anthony Towns, that team swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.

If the Spurs win, then their game six and there'll be a game seven.

Ferrari's first fully electric vehicle is facing a wave of mixed reviews following its high stakes debut. The four-door Luce, Italian for light, is priced at a staggering $640,000. It also marks Ferrari's first five-seater.

Many people are critical of the new look, calling it a major departure from the brand's core identity. Ferrari shares dipped as investors and analysts questioned the company's shift towards EVs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KARL BRAUER, EXECUTIVE ANALYST ISEECARS.COM: I think this was really just them wanting to be able to say that they're joining the kind of global movement toward EVs.

Certainly, nobody who buys a Ferrari cares about gas prices, let's be honest. So they don't have to worry about that.

And I feel like the parent company Stellantis, they still can kind of spread out their kind of CO2 across a larger organization, so they don't really have to do it even for regulatory purposes.

This is very much about kind of a positioning and a branding and an image thing. And just like Dodge and Porsche, when they tried to go heavily into EVs. They're now running away from that because not surprisingly, their customer base had no interest in that.

MICHAELSON: Changes may be coming to high-end sports cars, but the technicians at Porsche say they feel safe from the threats of automation and A.I.

Ryan Young visited a plant in Georgia to find out why.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A car requires a human touch. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to have that human interaction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A.I. cannot do what a trained technician can do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People are concerned, and rightfully so.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Workers across all industries are growing anxious as advances in artificial intelligence and automation technologies move deeper into the workplace.

Goldman Sachs estimates that as many as 300 million full time jobs are exposed globally over the next decade as automation technologies from robotics to algorithmic systems evolve.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People are afraid because they don't know if their jobs will be next.

YOUNG: But Porsche believes their well-paid technicians will stay in high demand.

JOSHUA FINKBEINER, PORSCHE TECHNOLOGY APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM: Even if A.I. advances further in the future I just personally don't see A.I. ever taking over our jobs.

YOUNG: How important is it for you to be able to put your hand in the spaces and be able to touch all?

RANDY BUMSWORTH, AFTERSALES TECHNICAL TRAINING MANAGER, PORSCHE CARS, NORTH AMERICA: It's very important. Something is starting to deteriorate. You know, there's normally kind of like a pliability to some of these rubbers.

YOUNG: Right.

BUMSWORTH: Right. And if you can touch it and you're starting to feel that its hardening, then you know.

And one of the things too, that's super important is smell. It's an instant clue that something's not right.

DARIAN MORENO, PORSCHE TECHNOLOGY APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM: I can never see a robot, you know, bending their, you know, parts to get into a crevice or a little point where a human could, you know -- a human touch.

DOMINIC WAGNER, PORSCHE TECHNOLOGY APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM: A robot can't go through and notice some things like noises, even just small things that you might overlook. You have to go back through, kind of go back and forth. It's never always cut and dry.

YOUNG: Let's have some fun.

Keep going. Keep going. And lift.

And then just hop on the brake. This car is like a scalpel to a surgeon.

What could you say to someone who's even thinking about the car industry or being a high-level technician?

MARC PISCITELLI, ASSISTANT CHIEF INSTRUCTOR, PORSCHE EXPERIENCE CENTER: Do it. Even when I was younger, growing up, kind of the trades didn't have a bad, you know, stigma to them, but they were always kind of pushed to the side.

Whereas right now, the people that are getting into the automotive industry have so much more growth ahead of them.

[01:49:43]

YOUNG: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of auto technicians and mechanics is projected to grow around 4 percent over the next eight years, just under 34,000 jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think there's really such thing as a A.I.-proof job. It's just those jobs that are A.I.-resilient.

And even when you think about mechanics and those jobs and the skilled workforce, I personally believe that right now they're not going to replace the worker. They're just going to help improve efficiencies and make the tools better.

YOUNG: There's no way that you couldn't make money doing this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The demand is there for them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very nice knowing that when I get out of here, I'll pretty much have a guaranteed job.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELSON: Our thanks to Ryan Young.

Up next, a cave rescue in Laos.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:54:43]

MICHAELSON: Urgent operation is underway right now in Laos, where rescuers are working to reach seven people who've now been trapped underground in a cave for a week.

New video coming in shows rescuers covered in mud exiting the cave late Tuesday. One diver said efforts had been hampered by rain.

The seven trapped villagers had gone searching for gold, reportedly were stranded after heavy rain triggered flash flooding and blocked their exit.

CNN's Mike Valerio has more now on the efforts to rescue them. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Rescue teams squeeze through narrow, flooded tunnels in rural Laos. Their goal, reaching seven people trapped underground for almost a week.

We're told local villagers often visit the site to search for gold deposits. Videos recorded by rescue divers from Thailand show them navigating a more than 1,000-foot-long tunnel. For most of the way, they have to crawl.

In some places, they have to submerge completely to find a way through.

One of the groups coordinating the rescue says that at its narrowest point, the tunnel measures just 23 inches.

Outside, other team members run cables through a gap between the rocks to guide rescuers to its lower reaches. Three divers from the crew were involved in the dramatic 2018 cave rescue of 12 Thai boys and their football coach.

No word on this latest incident from Laos Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Southeast Asian nation is a one-party communist state that often closely regulates the release of information.

Mike Valerio, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELSON: Tomorrow on THE STORY IS, Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate for California governor, will be live in our studio. Plus Grae Drake and the movies.

I'm Elex Michaelson.

See you tomorrow.

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