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Holiday Shopping Season Kicks Off With Black Friday; Trump Tariffs Expected To Increase Prices On Some Goods; 6M Plus Under Winter Weather Alerts As Brutal Cold Hits U.S.; Ukraine Reels From Massive Attack On Its Energy System; Trump's Ukraine Envoy Has Plan To End War With Russia; Supreme Court To Hear Transgender Care Case. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired November 29, 2024 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[15:01:04]
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: It's time for turkey sandwiches and holiday shopping and maybe some heartburn, too. We're going to tell you how inflation and possible tariffs are impacting what some people put in their carts.
Also ahead, authorities are trying to figure out how a woman with a Russian passport managed to slip through multiple security checkpoints and stowaway on a Delta flight to Paris.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: And later, if you're just waking up from your turkey coma, I'm one of those folks, pay attention a new study shows that even if you get eight hours of sleep waking up at different times could put you at risk.
We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.
SANCHEZ: The retail rush is on. Right now, millions of Americans are taking advantage of Black Friday discounts and it is projected to be a busy weekend with a record-breaking 183 million people expected to shop through Cyber Monday according to the National Retail Federation and about two-thirds planning to actually set foot in stores today.
ACOSTA: Despite concerns about lingering inflation and how President- elect Donald Trump's proposed tariffs could impact the price of everyday goods, holiday spending is also forecast to hit a new record. Nearly 1 trillion dollars with shoppers shelling out more than 6 billion on Thanksgiving Day alone according to a brand new survey. Let's turn now to CNN's Meena Duerson. She's at a mall in New Jersey.
Meena, how you holding up out there? How's it looking out there?
MEENA DUERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's getting more and more crowded as the day goes on. So really people are back in person shopping. You know, we heard about 65 percent of people plan to do their shopping this weekend in person and that really seems to be the case. People are coming to take advantage of these deals in person rather than just find them online. And we spoke to a number of shoppers who had sought out deals in advance and then come to take advantage of them.
So, you know, consumers told us, you know, they plan to spend a decent amount of their budget this weekend for the holidays. And here's a couple of shoppers who told us, you know, what they were looking for.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We came for the deals because we're trying to save money.
DUERSON: What - did you find good deals?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we actually bought a lot. Yes, we saw a good amount today.
DUERSON: What kind of stuff did you guys get?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got clothes. We got makeup. We got hair products.
DUERSON: How much money do you guys think you spent so far?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, like 600.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We went out at 5 AM to go to Kohl's and we were able to get their walk in ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Giveaway, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... giveaway.
DUERSON: Mm-hmm.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And then we just came here afterwards.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's one of the many reason we want to come out today, you know just trying to find a good deal, especially for larger - we have larger family. So, you know, one gift adds up for a family member.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DUERSON: So those, you know, younger shoppers are making up a big portion of the consumers that we're seeing out in person today and that's a big trend right now. You know, a large number of the people doing their shopping this weekend are in that 18 to 24 bracket and we spoke to a number of shoppers who are intentionally buying products, you know, right now that they think might go up in price. You know, in the next administration we saw a lot of people buying consumer electronics things like TVs, maybe tablets, things that might be impacted, you know, in a future administration by tariffs that President Trump has promised, you know, might come to pass in the next coming months. But, you know, consumers here are - they're excited. They seem to be, you know - they've been dealing with inflation for a couple of years, but they seem to be ready to spend their money at least this holiday season a little bit more than they have in past years.
ACOSTA: Yes, that one young lady spending 600 bucks the day after - don't hold back, you know. All right, Meena Duerson, thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
[15:05:03]
Joining us now is Washington Post syndicated personal finance columnist, Michelle Singletary. She's the author of "What to Do with Your Money When Crisis Hits: A Survival Guide."
I feel like we've come to the right person, Michelle, with that segue. Holiday shoppers spent a record $6.1 billion yesterday, more than 183 million shoppers hitting the stores this weekend. Are the deals really that good? And I guess judging what we heard from Meena a few moments ago, people are out there shopping and they're spending - they're putting those credit cards out there whether they pay them off or not.
MICHELLE SINGLETARY, SYNDICATED PERSONAL FINANCE COLUMNIST, WASHINGTON POST: I know, right, like I almost fainted. I was here going like, she spent $600.
ACOSTA: I did the same thing.
SINGLETARY: What?
ACOSTA: Six-hundred dollars.
SINGLETARY: I was like - so, you know, I get it, you know?
ACOSTA: Yes.
SINGLETARY: But there's a phrase that I say all the time, I wrote about it in my column recently, you never say when you spend, people. You know the act of saving is like, you know, putting money into a bank account or investing it for your retirement. What you're doing is you're spending less and you've got to get that in your head.
I know it's the holiday season, you want to be generous. But I would hope that that young lady had some money in her emergency fund or if she's in college, she's got student loan debt, she's putting this out for that. But I know nobody want to hear that right now, so ...
ACOSTA: I'm with you, Michelle. I'm with you.
SINGLETARY: So that was just (INAUDIBLE) ...
ACOSTA: I was thinking the same thing, exactly. So ...
SINGLETARY: My heart was like, if that was my child, oh, Lord. I'm going to call her right now.
ACOSTA: Exactly. That's right.
SANCHEZ: You've obviously been warning consumers to be cautious about spending during this holiday shopping season where can things go wrong?
SINGLETARY: I think the enthusiasm of this whole idea of I'm getting something on a sale, I'm getting something with a discount and we know there's actually a couple of apps - I actually did something on Instagram really like this app called CamelCamelCamel and you can put in what you're going to buy and it'll show you how, you know, the prices have been over a couple of months.
And my producer and I were looking at that and there were items that they were like, it's 40 percent off. Well, you know what, it's never been at that regular price. You know, they spike it up just before Black Friday and you think that you're saving 50 percent, but it - last week it was the same price. And to - guess what next week is going to be the same price. So don't feel so that if you don't get it today or this weekend or Monday that you're going to miss out. You should start with your budget first, see what you want to get for each person and if something fits in there, okay. But don't delude yourself into thinking that you are saving money. You are not saving money. You're spending less.
ACOSTA: Absolutely, and as Black Friday winds down, shoppers still have Cyber Monday to look forward to. I mean, that we've come up with all of these gimmicks to get people to spend their money. I mean, I - and I just - I'm so glad that you said what you said there a few moments ago, Michelle, because you're absolutely right. They do sort of trick us into thinking that we're getting these deals. I sometimes feel like you get better deals the longer you wait closer we get to the big day, you know, sometimes things are marked down even more. I don't know. What do you think?
SINGLETARY: That's exactly right. I - listen, I'm one of those people sometimes in a store tonight before Christmas and people are like, what, and I'm thinking things are definitely less ...
ACOSTA: Yep.
SINGLETARY: ... so I'm spending less, not saving. And here's the thing, if you're not going to see them on the holiday, you know, just wait, and buy it, and get it for them later, right? I mean, they're always going to be sales. There's always going to be something there for you. And I'm just concerned because, you know, the amount of credit card debt hit that 1 trillion dollar mark last year and it's been consistently going up.
And lots of people pay their bill off every month, but about 50 percent of the card holders do not, that's a problem. So if you're shopping right now, you're listening and you have credit card debt that you're revolving every month, you ought to take your behind home and eat your leftover Thanksgiving meal and think about how you're going to get out of this debt to secure yourself for the coming year. Because if there are tariffs, that things happen, you're going to need those savings in case inflation goes up. I know people don't want to hear that right now.
ACOSTA: I know.
SANCHEZ: It's a great advice.
SINGLETARY: But I have to be the voice of reason, right?
(CROSSTALK)
SANCHEZ: Yes.
ACOSTA: Absolutely. Well, thank you very - I know, I'm sure there are a lot of shoppers out there who's going to say I'm going to go spend that money anyway, but it's good that you're out there giving us those tips, Michelle.
Michelle Singletary, thank you very much. We really appreciate it.
SINGLETARY: You're so welcome.
ACOSTA: All right. This holiday weekend is colliding with some downright treacherous weather across the U.S. Ferocious snowfall threatens to trap residents and parts of the Great Lakes region, so please be careful. These images from Ohio today show what some crews are already facing.
SANCHEZ: Yes. And even if it's not whiteout conditions, some freezing temperatures are predicted to grip the eastern United States. CNN Meteorologist Elisa Raffa is in the extreme weather center with the details.
Sounds like it's going to be brutal out there for millions of people.
[15:10:01]
ELISA RAFFA, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Some of the coldest air that we've had so far this season and the snow will just pile on in the Great Lakes. I mean, look at this radar right now. You can see the lake-effect snow bands just pumping off of all of the Great Lakes. We're especially worried about Lakes Erie and Ontario because that will just continue as we go into the weekend.
So if you're doing some traveling, Grand Rapids, Interstate I-196, some problems there. These lake-effect snow bands can be very heavy, very localized, windy as well, so they drop visibility. I-90, a mess, from Cleveland up through Erie over towards Buffalo. This will have some huge visibility problems with these bands as we go through the day today.
These are all the winter storm alerts. Again, each to the Great Lakes and you've got those lake-effect snow warnings east of Cleveland including Buffalo and then off of Lake Ontario as well.
The problem is, is our lake temperatures are incredibly warm, record warm in fact. We have these lakes in the lower 50s and you might say that's not that warm. Well, compared to the air that's coming over it is much warmer than that very cold air. So what that does is that very cold air will pick up the moisture from the warm water and then it rises as it hits the terrain and that's what pumps the lake-effect snow.
So there's nothing really to turn this off until the wind stops, which is why it will continue as we go through the weekend. So we could be looking at snowfall totals in feet off of Lakes Erie and Ontario. That's the paralyzing part, because it won't stop and it piles up feet on end. And it's coming because we have again that very cold air. We're looking at 70 percent of the lower 48 with temperatures at or below freezing as we go through the rest of the holiday weekend.
And I'm talking even as far south as Atlanta. You're looking at your overnight lows below freezing as we go through Sunday and Monday, 29 for a low in D.C. How about teens in Chicago waking up to 15 degrees on Sunday 18 degrees on Monday? It's a pretty bitter cold again pretty far south that we've got freeze alerts in effect where that growing season might still be impacted. People need to watch out for the Ps: The people, pets, plants and pipes as we go through the weekend, guys.
ACOSTA: Very good advice. Elisa Raffa, thank you so much. We'll stay warm as best as we can.
Still to come, Russian president Vladimir Putin is praising Donald Trump, just one day after the President-elect announced his pick for special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.
SANCHEZ: Plus, a shocking breach of security at one of the country's major airports. How a woman evaded security and flew without a boarding pass from New York to Paris.
And later, irregular sleep patterns even if you do get enough hours of sleep may raise the risk of heart attack and stroke. Those details coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.
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[15:17:09]
SANCHEZ: We are watching some new developments today in Ukraine. Overnight, Russia launching another barrage of airstrikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. The attacks leaving more than a million people without power as temperatures begin dropping ahead of winter. Ukraine says Russia fired more than 130 drones into the country, injuring at least 8 people. Russia's defense ministry says it shot down dozens of Ukrainian drones as well as the two sides trade blows.
For more, let's bring in retired U.S. Army Major, Mike Lyons.
Sir, thank you so much for being with us on this holiday weekend.
I do want to ask about the fact that this is Russia's 11th large-scale attack on the country's energy supply. That is according to Kyiv. Obviously the energy supply is a frequent target of the Kremlin just before winter sets in. But I do wonder how much of this renewed aggressiveness from the Kremlin is tied, in your mind, to the result of the U.S. presidential election?
MAJOR MIKE LYONS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, Boris, I think all of it is. I think Russia is racing to get to this point where they can claim some kind of strategic advantage over Ukraine, given these kinds of strikes, knowing full well that attack missiles now have been released on the Ukraine side as they continue to strike deep inside of Russian targets there as well with drones as well as that weapon system.
But I think it's 100 percent, knowing full well that the Trump administration wants to get to some kind of ceasefire. They want to end this conflict in some manner. The current administration doesn't seem interested in trying to even start to do that right now. So I think the clock is running for Russia to do as much damage as it can and get as much land as it can right now before the Trump administration takes hold and starts this process in earnest.
SANCHEZ: I do want to ask you about what that might look like. But first, I wonder if Ukraine managed to shoot down two-thirds of the 130 drones that were reportedly sent overnight, how you might describe the state of Ukraine's aerial defense?
LYONS: Well, they have to pick and choose. They're doing =what's called economy of scale when it comes to their capability to shoot down all these targets. They don't have necessarily the AI, the artificial intelligence that you see in the Middle East with the Iron Dome system that's there. They don't have really the best systems that the United States could actually provide them. So they have to pick and choose what gets shot down. It's a very tough task. They're probably hanging on very much as each one of those rounds are fired on their land. So it's not a great situation for Ukraine as they continue to try to defend their land as best they can.
SANCHEZ: And on Trump - President-elect Trump selecting retired General Keith Kellogg as his envoy for Ukraine and Russia, he's argued that a proposed NATO membership for Ukraine should be put off indefinitely. I wonder, as we are likely heading into some kind of ceasefire negotiations, if you think that is the right move, and would that be enough to bring an end to the war?
[15:20:06]
LYONS: Boris, I think that NATO membership to Ukraine is the reddest of red lines for Russia, and that's one of the things that's non- negotiable for them. We've got to consider that if we want the firing to stop. I think that the Trump administration will likely go into this negotiation telling Ukraine that we're going to - you're going to have to give up something or else we won't provide the military support, but they sell the same thing to Russia that says if they're not willing to give up something, that we'll pour weapons and military supplies into Ukraine. Instead of giving them 50 battle tanks, we'll give them 300, 400 tanks. So I think that's the leverage they'll try to use.
But I do think that it's not in our best interest, the United States' best interest, to have Ukraine anywhere near a planning process to get into NATO anytime soon, just based on where they are, how the Russians feel about it. I was never actually for some of those other countries getting in as well. We need military allies that are going to fight alongside us, not military dependents, which some of these countries have become, even some of the larger NATO countries, frankly. They've not paid enough of their GDP towards their own self-defense.
What Ukraine wants is the nuclear umbrella of NATO, and maybe we can come up with some bilateral security agreement to make sure that they have assurances from the United States. But they want that nuclear umbrella that, frankly, some of these NATO countries now live under that they haven't, frankly, met their obligations towards.
SANCHEZ: Major, there is this $7 billion that Congress has authorized for Ukraine, but it doesn't seem that the Pentagon is likely to use it before President Biden leaves office. Do you think there's more the administration could do to put Ukraine in a stronger position before these hypothetical negotiations begin?
LYONS: There's always more we can do. They could release more active duty military equipment that can go there from Europe. They can provide them more training and support with their aviation assets, more air defense platforms as well. It's just that the time, from their perspective, is they just really want to punt it, I think, to the next administration.
And so it's causing both sides to do all it can to kind of figure out, you know, what's that line of demarcation going to be when this whole thing starts, what that boundary looks like? Because one of the other negotiations is going to be what's the new border look like between Ukraine and Russia. You saw - I saw a report today that President Zelenskyy agrees that he might have to give up landmass now inside of Ukraine, what was the former border. I think that's a starter as well for the negotiations that are going to take place once the Trump administration takes hold.
SANCHEZ: Major Mike Lyons, appreciate your analysis. Thanks for joining us and Happy Thanksgiving.
LYONS: Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving.
SANCHEZ: Coming up, it's one of the most consequential transgender rights cases to reach the Supreme Court. Justices are going to hear arguments over Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Why this case is dividing even some conservatives. We'll be right back.
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[15:27:34]
ACOSTA: Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a potentially explosive case involving transgender care that's even dividing conservatives. The case centers on a Tennessee law enacted last year that bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children. Critics say the law injects the state into family medical decisions and overrides parental rights. We're joined now by CNN Legal Analyst Jennifer Rodgers. She's a former federal prosecutor. Jennifer, good to see you. Happy holidays. Walk us through what the Supreme Court is about to hear.
JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Jim. Well, they're about to hear a case out of Tennessee that, as you said, prohibits gender- affirming care, so puberty blockers. It also bans surgery, although that's not very common for minors. In the lowest court, the trial court level blocked the law. They said that it was unreasonable. They said that it violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. And then it went up on appeal. The Sixth Circuit reversed.
So now we have it up at the Supreme Court and it's not just Tennessee where this matters. About half of states now in the last four years have passed laws that discriminate against transgender people by saying that they cannot get their gender-affirming care, they cannot play on sports teams and all sorts of stuff. So this really is one of the hottest issues in the culture wars right now.
ACOSTA: Yes, absolutely. And parental rights won't be the main issue the court is deciding on. But advocates from Republican and trans rights circles believe it should factor in. Tell us about that.
RODGERS: Well, the legal issue is a little bit different than the social issue, if you will. You can talk about whether it's right to discriminate against transgender people, whether parents, and doctors and the patients ought to be the ones making these decisions versus state legislators. But really what the court is deciding about is the standard that applies. The standard - the legal standard, right?
So in these kinds of cases, the issue is what level of constitutional scrutiny it depends. The highest strict scrutiny for things like race, the intermediate level is where sex discrimination falls and that's where the plaintiffs say the court should decide this has to be evaluated under. And then the lowest level is rational basis.
And that really dictates what will happen here, Jim, because rational basis can be just about anything. Anything the state can say, well, we have a rational basis to pass this law because you never know what these drugs are going to do to people, it probably passes scrutiny if that's what they decide. Whereas if they say intermediate scrutiny, and it has to be substantially related to an important governmental reason, that's where you say, okay, what are the pros and the cons on each side, what are the medical issues involved.
[15:30:02]
That's where you see that it most likely would be struck down.