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NASA Wants U.S. to be First Nation to Put Nuclear Reactor on the Moon; Stark Split in Where ICE Makes Arrests in Blue States and Red States; Lyme Disease Surges as Climate Change Expands Tick Range. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 05, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Just a short time ago, NASA confirmed that the space agency is launching an effort to be the first nation to put a nuclear reactor on the moon.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I feel like we need a record scratch there. Acting Administrator Sean Duffy says the Trump administration is fast- tracking plans to place a reactor on the lunar surface after Russia and China both announced joint plans to develop a similar moon project by the mid-2030s.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN DUFFY, ACTING NASA ADMINISTRATOR: We're in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon, and to have a base on the moon, we need energy. There's a certain part of the moon that everyone knows is the best. We have ice there, we have sunlight there.

We want to get there first and claim that for America. And to do this, this part of the fission technology is critically important to sustain life, because solar won't do it, but it's just a lower amount of that fission technology that's going to allow human life to sustain.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by Joe Cirincione, a nuclear policy analyst and the author of the book "Nuclear Nightmares, Securing the World Before It Is Too Late." Speaking of nuclear nightmares, last we spoke to you, it was about nuclear wasps, radioactive wasps. Now we're talking about a nuclear reactor on the moon, which raises some safety concerns.

Joe, your reaction to this plan?

JOE CIRINCIONE, NUCLEAR POLICY ANALYST: Well, if the purpose of this announcement was to distract attention from the Epstein files, it briefly succeeded. Sean Duffy was trending on social media for the last 24 hours, right behind Ghislaine Maxwell. But if it's to propose a serious plan for the human colonization of Mars, I think it fails the test.

People have been proposing nuclear reactors for many years, decades, small, modular, launchable nuclear reactors. In fact, Sean Duffy's announcement actually resets the timeline that NASA set just five years ago of being able to have a nuclear reactor ready to launch by 2026. It's failed to do that.

[14:35:00]

It wanted a flight system, a small reactor and launch vehicle ready to go next year. It's not going to make that. Now he's proposing 2030 for a bigger reactor. About 10 times the size of the one that was originally proposed several years ago.

I just don't see the technology available. I don't think we're going to be able to make this technological leap.

But we are certainly going to spend billions of dollars trying to do so, probably at the expense of other vital NASA missions.

SANCHEZ: I wonder if you could, in layman's terms, explain why. What is it about the technology at this point and in the near future that's insufficient to accomplish this mission?

CIRINCIONE: Sure. Nice to see you, Boris. You know, we've used nuclear materials for power in space for a very long time.

That's why you hear people talk about a nuclear-powered spacecraft or nuclear-generated electricity. But what they mean by that is radioisotopes, small amounts of plutonium, tens of pounds of plutonium, generating heat as they decay and generating electricity in some of our long-term probes. Our rovers on Mars use some of this to power them, for example.

These are often supplemental to the main energy source, the solar panels that are used in these vehicles. But we don't use nuclear reactors. And one of the reasons is that during the 1960s and 70s, this was all the trend.

The Soviet Union launched a nuclear reactor into space. The satellite lasted about 40, 50 days. And then it reentered the Earth's atmosphere, disintegrated, and spread 400 miles of radioactive debris across Canada. It took eight or nine months to clean it up.

That chastened people. Nuclear reactors on the Moon would be much larger, require a launch vehicle that doesn't yet exist, require a reactor that doesn't yet exist, and pose some serious safety hazards themselves, like the risk of failure of the system, the explosion of the system, or another launch failure as they try to put this in orbit and then onto the Moon.

I don't think the risks are worth it. Solar power does offer an alternative. It is at least as likely that we can create batteries that can store the solar energy during the lunar day and use it during the long lunar nights as it is that we can develop a nuclear reactor that can work on the Moon.

KEILAR: Joe, you are the right guy. Again, nuclear nightmares to talk about the potential for this. And distraction from the Epstein files or not, Joe, it's fascinating to speak with you about.

So thank you for being with us.

SANCHEZ: If the radioactive wasps are bad, just imagine what the aliens would be like being radioactive. Joe, thank you so much for joining us.

CIRINCIONE: My pleasure, Boris. Thanks for having me on. Bye, Brianna.

KEILAR: Bye. All right, still to come, a new CNN analysis looking at federal agents and the arrest of undocumented immigrants. And it uncovers a stark difference in their tactics depending on whether they're in a red or blue state.

Stay with us.

[14:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: A new CNN analysis has found a stark split in where federal agents are arresting immigrants in red and blue states. Data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that while more immigrants are being arrested in states that voted for President Trump, 59 percent of those arrests took place in prisons and jails. By contrast, in Democratic-leaning states, 70 percent of ICE arrests happen in the community.

That means that agents are showing up with their faces covered, picking up immigrants from work sites, streets, and mass roundups. All that has sparked protests. Trump officials say that the differing tactics are simply a downstream effect of sanctuary city policies in many Democratic-controlled states, which can limit prisons and jails from cooperating with ICE.

Local officials often can't hold migrants in custody based on ICE orders alone, so many times they're released before immigration officials can arrest them.

Let's discuss this and more with Chad Wolf. He's a former acting Homeland Security secretary under President Trump.

Chad, thank you so much for being with us. I wanted to ask you about one aspect of this analysis of ICE data. In some states, like Massachusetts, 78 percent of those arrested in community raids had no criminal record.

So I wonder how sweeping up these non-criminals makes communities safer.

CHAD WOLF, FORMER ACTING HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY UNDER TRUMP: Well, look, I think the Trump administration has been very clear from the start, which is they're going to continue to prioritize criminals, but they're not going to exempt anyone else from immigration law, right? We saw that during four years of the Biden administration, where they said we're not going to deport, we're not going to arrest and therefore deport certain classes of illegal aliens here in the United States. And unfortunately, what that does is it just encourages more and more of those types of individuals to come to the country, knowing that they'll never be deported.

So the Trump administration says, look, everyone's on the table, but we're going to continue to prioritize certain or I should say criminal illegal aliens. And, of course, certain communities have more of that than others. So it's hard to compare and contrast certain states to other states or certain cities to other cities.

[14:45:00]

SANCHEZ: Understood. If this is about deterrence, as you alluded to, and you're detaining students and folks that don't have priors that are here in the United States, just living the American dream and working and may have overstayed a visa, which is a civil offense, not a criminal one. Then what exactly are you deterring? Because those folks aren't a public safety threat, right?

WOLF: Well, I think what you're deterring here is the fact that individuals knowingly break U.S. law, knowingly stay in the United States when they have no legal right to be here. I think that's what -- that's the type of behavior that you want to deter. You want folks to come into -- not only to have folks come into the United States illegally, but to stay here legally.

So if your visa does expire, you have an obligation as that visa holder to leave the country or to get it renewed, obviously, in the in the appropriate time frame. So there's a whole number of ways in which just because you you don't perhaps commit an additional crime, there are other ways that you're here in the United States illegally.

And I think what the Trump administration is saying is that regardless that you are you are here without a legal right in the United States. And so you are removable. And we are not going to say that some people, you know, broke the law more than others. And so, therefore, they have to -- they're going to be removed and only them.

They're saying, look, everyone's removable. (INAUDIBLE) prioritize that they have a limited amount of resources. They've gotten (INAUDIBLE) and the reconciliation bill, but they're going to have -- they have to prioritize that. And I think that's what you see them doing today.

SANCHEZ: Just to be clear for our viewers, immigration violations are civil offenses, not criminal ones. I do want to ask you about something that President Trump said on CNBC today. Let's go ahead and play that clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These people that they're -- you can't replace them very easily. You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They're just not doing that work. And they've tried. We've tried. Everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally, naturally. I said, what happens if they get it to a farmer?

What happens if they get a bad back? He said they don't get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: I wonder what you make of that remark, whether you think immigrants come by hard labor naturally.

WOLF: Well, I don't know the context of that remark or what the president you showed me a clip of that. I will say that I think that we continue to be a country of immigrants. And I think President Trump has said that.

Make sure that as folks do come here, that they come legally. And the big concern I think that the Trump administration has, and we certainly did during the first administration, are those individuals that come here legally that want to stay in the United States illegally. That's the concern that we have, because as folks come in and you can't vet them, you don't know who they are. That's the main problem. It's a national security issue just as much as any other type of issue. And I think that's over the last six or seven months, as you say now, that's the issue that the Trump administration is trying to be dealing with.

And then the last point I would make is you can't forget about the four years of the Biden administration when you had millions, over 10 million individuals come into the country. A big subset of those individuals have stayed here in the United States and we don't know who they are.

And I think they're trying to deal with that that issue as well.

SANCHEZ: I do want to give you the context of what the president was talking about there. He was asked about previous remarks that he's made regarding American farmers and their reliance on undocumented labor. In other words, people that are here in the United States who don't have papers, who are doing hard labor.

The president says that they come by it naturally, that they can't replace them. He's saying that they're doing jobs that Americans won't do. So if the president says that we need them, our food supply depends on them.

Why are they then being targeted and not given a pathway to obtain citizenship?

WOLF: Well, I would disagree with you. I don't know that they're being targeted. These groups like any other group --

SANCHEZ: I mean, ICE is raiding farms.

WOLF: ICE has been given a mandate by the United States Congress to remove individuals that don't have a legal right to be here in the United States. It's their job. Now, if Congress doesn't want them to do that, they should change the law and have them only focus on a subset of individuals that are here, perhaps only criminals.

That's not their job right now. Their job is to remove individuals, all individuals that don't have a legal right to be here. Now, look, I've heard the president talk about the ag industry and farm workers and the need for that. He's talked about perhaps doing something in that vein. I don't have any information on that, so I'll wait, like you will, to see what comes of that.

But I think it's important to know that, again, ICE is doing its job, which is to say they are removing individuals that don't have a legal right to be here. They're focusing on criminals, but they're not excluding any group of individuals.

SANCHEZ: ICE does decide, ultimately, who they're going to target.

[14:50:00]

So I go back to the broader question of if you're seeing that a lot of these folks are non-criminals, they are students, the kinds of workers that the president says the country needs, who come about hard labor naturally, in his words, then why go after these folks and why round them up when there are folks out there who have committed crimes and who likely would be -- their removal likely would make the community safer. Why go after just a blanket population of folks when you don't actually know if they've done something wrong?

WOLF: Again, I feel like I've answered this three times. Again, the Trump administration is actually targeting both groups that you described there, both the ones that are criminal illegal aliens and those that perhaps have not committed a crime but still reside here in the United States.

SANCHEZ: I guess my question is, why go after both?

WOLF: I think anytime that you exclude (INAUDIBLE). I think anytime you exclude a population such as you indicated, students that may have overstayed a visa or any other groups of individuals, what you have seen over in history is that more and more of these individuals will come to the United States, will overstay their visa because they know that there is no repercussion. They know that the federal government is not going to do anything about it. And so you will see visa overstay rates shoot through the roof because there is no enforcement mechanism here.

So the Trump administration has said we saw that during four years of Biden. We didn't like it. We didn't like the border crisis that it caused.

And so we are actually going to do our job. We're going to remove individuals. We're going to focus on the criminal illegal aliens. But we're not going to exclude any population set from the law.

SANCHEZ: I guess the issue is that those folks that you just described as not being criminals in the sense that they don't commit violent offenses and their essential violation is not having a piece of paper, they wind up in facilities alongside criminals detained for an undetermined amount of time and they face serious repercussions with their lives for not having a piece of paper or overstaying a visa. Nevertheless, Chad Wolf, we appreciate the time. Thanks for joining us.

WOLF: OK, thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks so much for being with us, Chad. We'll be right back.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: There's an alarming trend that's emerging in step with the summer temperatures and humidity. New CDC data shows that more people are seeking emergency care for tick bites and levels that we haven't seen since 2017. Experts say that could be due to climate change, expanding the range where ticks thrive, mainly in the summer heat with humidity above 85 percent.

CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard is joining us now with the details. Tell us about this rise, Jacqueline.

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Brianna, well, since due to climate change, we are seeing the natural habitat for ticks shift. We're seeing them more prevalent here in the United States and even in Canada as well. And because of this prevalence of where ticks are now thriving, that's leading to more tick exposures, more tick bites and as a result, more cases of Lyme disease.

And this correlation between ticks and Lyme disease, ticks can actually transmit Lyme disease through their bites. That's how Lyme disease spreads. And we do know that each year in the United States, it's estimated there are about 476,000 cases of Lyme disease each year.

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection. So it often if you are bitten by a tick, it can be treated with antibiotics. But we are seeing this increase in cases, and that's what has many public health experts concerned, because with climate change, they say that these numbers could increase even more.

Now, Lyme disease is typically difficult to diagnose. But when you do present with symptoms, they present in three different stages. The first stage is often a fever, headache or the classic bull's eye rash. That's often a telltale sign that you have a tick bite.

The second stage you may experience days or months later, dizziness, chest pain or even facial palsy.

And the third stage is where we tend to see neurological symptoms or cardiac symptoms.

So, again, this is something to keep in mind as we see this increase in tick bites emerge due to a changing climate -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Jacqueline, thank you so much for that.

Still to come, a damning new report on the Titan submersible disaster that killed five people trying to visit the Titanic. One of the Coast Guard's main takeaways, it was preventable, should not have happened.

We'll have details just ahead.

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