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Israel Eases Restrictions on Gaza Aid After Global Outcry; 11 Stabbed in Michigan Walmart Attack; Trump Lawyers Push to Depose Rupert Murdoch Within 15 Days for Wall Street Journal Lawsuit; Trump Calls for Licenses of Some TV Networks to Be Revoked; California Officials Search for Mother, Baby Missing for Almost Two Weeks; Epstein Accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell Urges Supreme Court to Overturn Her Sex Trafficking Conviction. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 28, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

ARWA DAMON, FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR AID, RELIEF & ASSISTANCE: -- has been proven. We as humanitarians just need Israel to allow us to implement the system that already exists. The World Food Program alone has enough food either in the region or en route to the region, to feed more than 2 million people for three months. And so, you have this growing call, not just from humanitarian organizations, but other governments as well, saying enough is enough, enough with these airdrops that are little more than a grotesque distraction because they cannot even come close to the needed capacity.

Look, all the airdrops that we saw over the last 48 hours carried out, not just by Jordan, but also by Israel and the UAE, they barely amount to more than a few truckloads. And add to that, they're quite dangerous. 10 people were injured when they were hit by these falling airdropped pallets. And it's very difficult to understand how the international community, how these western governments have allowed the situation to get to this place where we are once again in a position where we're having to beg to save the lives of little children just because they can't access baby formula or food.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And Arwa, just really quickly before I let you go, and we've been showing that video, so we see how dangerous that situation can be. You mentioned the U.S. government assessment that said actually, there is no widespread theft of aid by Hamas. You also have a couple leading Israeli human rights groups who are now coming out and saying, that there's an Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Do you think that these are key pressure points that are going to make a difference in getting more aid in?

DAMON: One would hope. I mean, at this stage, one can really only hope because of these increasingly scathing reports and statements that are coming out. But there really is one person, essentially, who can alter the balance of what's happening in Gaza and that is President Trump. Only the U.S. has the capability to put the necessary pressure on the Israeli government to allow aid trucks into Gaza. KEILAR: Arwa, thank you so much for being with us. We really, really appreciate it, Arwa Damon.

Still ahead, stories of heroism emerging after bystanders step in to stop a stabbing rampage at a Michigan Walmart. We have some new details on the suspect allegedly behind the attack.

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[13:36:45]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": A Northern Michigan man is awaiting his first court appearance on terrorism and assault charges after authorities say he stabbed nearly a dozen Walmart shoppers in an apparent random attack. The 42-year-old suspect was arrested just moments after Saturday afternoon's attack. Video captures several bystanders cornering him in a parking lot, one Marine veteran was able to hold the man at gunpoint until police arrived.

CNN's Senior National Correspondent, Ryan Young, joins us now with the latest Ryan. Talk to us about what officials have learned about a possible motive and also, when he's set to be arraigned.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Boris, they're still working through to figure out what was the motive in this case. But what we do know is the fear from the people who were inside that Walmart was so high. They talked about folks screaming and yelling, someone stabbing folks nearby. Marines started running in to help out. We heard from one Marine who said he used a shopping cart as a defensive mechanism to sort of hit the man to try to get him away from folks, five people in serious condition, six in critical.

And we know the suspect now faces these very serious charges. But then you talk about the heroism that these people show who were confronting him. Let's take a listen to that scene that played out in this parking lot where you can hear the men screaming at him to stop and also, look at the spot shadow. You'll be able to see a gun that's being held on him. Let's watch that video as it played out in this parking lot on Saturday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drop the knife. Drop the knife. Drop the knife now. Throw it, throw it away, throw it away. Put it down. Put it down. Right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Yeah, you can see that gun being held to the side there. There was a folding knife that was involved in this attack. Obviously, the people trying to get that man to drop the knife. This happened around four o'clock. According to authorities, deputies, they believe the man was inside that store before 35 minutes before he did the attack. Deputies arrived on scene less than three minutes after the attack started, but obviously, people were already so very hurt and injured by that knife as he was slashing people, according to the folks on the inside.

Still trying to figure out motive. We do know he'll face 11 charges of assault with intent to murder. Trying to figure out the next details of this, Boris. But this shopping plaza, this Walmart was full of people, kids, families, and who were all shocked and surprised by this sudden attack. And obviously, the deputies are still trying to figure out exactly what motivated this man to do this.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, glad for the brave actions of those bystanders. Ryan Young, thank you so much for that reporting. We have new details on President Trump's ongoing legal battle with The Wall Street Journal. Ahead, why the president's attorneys are now asking for an expedited deposition of the publication's owner, Rupert Murdoch. Stay with us.

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[13:44:00]

SANCHEZ: Some new court filings show that President Donald Trump's lawyers want to depose Rupert Murdoch and they say they want to do it quickly because of his advanced age. Trump is suing The Wall Street Journal, the paper owned by Murdoch, over its recent reporting about the president's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

KEILAR: In the filing, Trump's attorneys pushed to get the deposition done within 15 days saying Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares. Taken together, these factors weigh heavily into determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial. CNN Chief Media Analyst, Brian Stelter, is with us now. It wasn't long ago Brian, that Rupert Murdoch was in the Oval Office with the president. Has the sun set on that friendship?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yeah. I view this as a legal form of an insult, saying you're older, you're older, you know, you're worse. This is Godzilla versus King Kong, Donald Trump versus Rupert Murdoch. These two men battling it out, the latest in an ongoing tug of war that dates back more than 10 years between the two men.

[13:45:00]

But in this move, it's a very aggressive move by Trump's lawyers. And it once again highlights how unusual it is that he is suing The Wall Street Journal, alleging libel, in this case involving that Epstein related story. For the lawyers to ask for a deposition in the next 15 days, highly unusual, very aggressive. And as our colleague, Marshall Cohen points out, these kinds of requests are rarely granted before the judge has even considered whether the case is strong enough to proceed to trial in the first place.

As Rupert Murdoch, yes, he is 94-years-old. He was deposed a few years ago in the Dominion case, and the lawyers for Dominion came out of the room saying, wow, Rupert Murdoch's still sharp as a tack. He was still fully there during that deposition a few years ago. So, we'll see if somehow Trump is able to get this sudden deposition to happen. But it is unlikely, and I think it speaks more to the really intense tensions between the two men right now.

SANCHEZ: And to the broader point, Brian, The Wall Street Journal is just one of many news organizations that Trump has been trying to sue. Over the weekend, President Trump also threatened TV licenses as well, posting this on Truth Social, saying that he wants some licenses, unclear exactly which ones, to be revoked, calling the networks political pawns for Democrats. This isn't the first time that Trump has talked about doing this. Why is this threat different? Is it possible for some kind of licensing to be revoked?

STELTER: Well, I think it hits differently now because of the recent Paramount settlement and the back and forth between the owners of CBS, recently resulting in the merger being approved by Trump's FCC. So, here's the boring basic thing about licenses. Normally, they're non- partisan. They're just renewed almost with a rubber stamp every eight years. The FCC is the agency that does this, again, normally kind of a rather mundane exercise, not very newsworthy. But Trump is trying to make it newsworthy by threatening some of these stations.

By the way, networks are not licensed nationally, only broadcast stations, and channels like this one CNN are not licensed at all. It's really only local broadcast stations. Now, we know that President Trump has already successfully defunded PBS and NPR, those local stations across the country. So we see that he is continuing to try to tighten his grip on the American news media with some success to some degree.

I've been speaking with scholars who studied Viktor Orban's attempts to do this in Hungary. Hungary is a country where we've seen real democratic backsliding in the past decade, a real sense of growing autocracy there. Here's what one of those scholars said to me. He was comparing what Orban did in Hungary to what Trump is trying to do in the U.S. Gabe (inaudible) saying to me, Orban's media takeover began with public broadcasting. The next step was the takeover and the muzzling of independent media.

Orban achieved this through financial and legal means, a system of autocratic carrots and sticks. So on the one hand, you encourage your friends in the press, you give them favored treatment. On the other hand, you use sticks against the ones that you want to punish. With these posts on Truth Social over the weekend, Trump is giving examples of the sticks, right? He's threatening licenses in a vague way. It's up to his FCC to try to follow through. And if the FCC tries to, this would be immediately challenged in court, it would probably take years for any of this to actually work its way through the system.

But even the mere raising of this by Trump is important to note because it speaks to the chill that he wants to have in the air. He wants to have a chilling effect over the American news media. But as that Wall Street Journal story shows, the recent reporting by the journal matched by other news outlets about Trump's history with Epstein, reporting still ain't (ph) done, right? The facts are still getting out there. The news is still being reported, even though Trump continues to make these kinds of threats toward news outlets.

KEILAR: Yeah, reporters are going to report. We see him doing it day in day out.

STELTER: Yeah.

KEILAR: Brian Stelter, thank you for being with us. We appreciate it.

Still ahead, a mother and her eight-month-old daughter disappeared nearly two weeks ago in California. Now, her family and law enforcement are looking for answers, and they are asking for help from the public, trying to find them.

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[13:53:33]

KEILAR: Family members and authorities are urgently searching for a missing California mother and her eight-month-old daughter. They've been missing for more than 10 days now. CNN's Julia Vargas Jones is following the latest on this story. And Julia, you spoke with the family. What are they telling you?

JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're saying, Brianna, that they don't believe Whisper Owen had any reason to want to disappear or to leave. That she was happy and she acted normally when they last saw her. But that goes against what law enforcement told them at the beginning of this investigation, that this was a case of a person not wanting to be found. Now, what the family is worried about is that she may have had a medical emergency behind the wheel and didn't have a way to call for help. Take a listen to what her mother had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICKIE TORRES, MOTHER OF MISSING WOMAN: I just don't know what could have happened to her. And it really bothers me that we -- that she didn't have a working phone and wasn't -- and communication with us when she left here, because I know her phone was dead, but she was trying to get home before it got dark. That's what's got me scared. And my fear is that she had a stroke because we weren't able to get this blood pressure under control.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VARGAS JONES: And the family told us, Brianna, that she had been struggling with high blood pressure since her pregnancy, and that she was at risk of stroke. Now, they have also taking the search for both mother and baby into their own hands. Her brother, Richard, told us that for days now he's been living out of his car, driving through back roads and searching the areas where Whisper was last seen and where she may have pulled over or maybe veered off the road.

[13:55:00]

Owen left Fresno on the afternoon of July 15th after visiting family and taking the baby to a doctor's appointment. Authorities told the family that she then stopped briefly in Atwater, California about 60 miles north of Fresno, but still about a hundred miles from her destination. That's possibly to change the baby's diaper and then she gets back on the road. But then, this is interesting, she goes in the opposite direction. The Fresno County Sheriff's Office says that they were last seen in Atwater around 8:15 p.m. when a traffic camera picked up their Silver 2006 Chevy Trailblazer with a missing driver's side headlight.

The family says that because she didn't have a reliable phone with her, they didn't realize that she was missing until about July 19th and that's when they reported it to police. In those interviews with the family, they told us that they don't believe law enforcement is doing enough to find Whisper. At this point, no leads have been shared publicly. But in a statement to CNN, the Fresno Police Department said, "There is nothing in the current missing person's investigation, which led us to believe any foul play is involved with Whisper and her child not being located yet."

Now, Fresno PD is working with other law enforcement agencies to find Owen and her baby, and they do not believe she's any longer in the Fresno area. Brianna, the family is asking people in the Atwater area to check their cameras, the home cameras and business security footage from that night of July 15th when they were missing. They said that any small clue could make a big difference. Brianna?.

KEILAR: All right, we'll see. Hopefully, they get some information there. Julia, thank you for the report.

Still ahead, attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, urging the Supreme Court to overturn her sex trafficking conviction. We'll take a closer look at the appeal next on "CNN News Central."

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