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Trump Order Creates Specialized National Guard Units to Address Crime; Illinois Gov. Pritzker Warns Trump: Do Not Come to Chicago; House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Epstein Estate for Birthday Book; String of Shooting Hoaxes Creates Chaos at Several Campuses; Massive Dust Storm Sweeps Across Arizona. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 26, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

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ROB ADELSON, SON OF DEFENDANT: You know, there's no response and I said it, you know, at least two or three times that, you know, they, they arrested me, they made an arrest, they got the guy who killed Danny, you know, and then her response was, you know, I've got to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Her son, Charles, is set to testify in this trial, along with the actual hit man that pulled the trigger. So there's a lot to come here, but the prosecution wants to show that Donna Adelson was the mastermind of this whole plot to kill her son- in-law.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And there are already people in jail serving sentences for this. Jean Casarez, thank you very much for being with us.

A lot going on this morning, a brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, President Donald Trump pushing the limits of his presidential power, signing an executive order, creating specialized National Guard units to deploy to cities across America. This has Democrats vowed to fight what one mayor calls a potential military occupation.

Plus a wall of dust like you have never seen before. The skies over Phoenix completely engulfed, causing near zero visibility, grounding flights and knocking out power to thousands.

And this, a home explosion causing massive destruction in a neighborhood near St. Louis. Multiple people injured and dozens left with no place to live.

I'm Danny Freeman with John Berman. Kate and Sara are out. And this is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: This morning do not come here. That is the message from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker after President Trump signaled Chicago could be the next U.S. city where he will deploy troops in the name of fighting crime. And he is now signing an executive order to expand the military's reach even further.

It directs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to create specialized National Guard units in each state equipped to deal with quote, public order issues. And it comes after he ordered troops in Washington, D.C. in a federal takeover of the city's police force. Some of those troops are now armed while on patrol.

Speaking of the Pentagon, the president also floated the idea of changing the Department of Defense back to its old name, the Department of War. In the Oval Office, he said the Department of Defense sounds too defensive. Congress would likely need to approve the name change, but the president said, quote, we're just going to do it.

Let's get to CNN's Zach Cohen for the latest from Washington. Let's start with these specialized units, Zach. What would that change?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, John, this EO is a clear sign of what the president wants to do. And he wants to use Washington, D.C., as a model for sending the National Guard to other cities. We know from White House sources that President Trump likes what he sees as far as the National Guard patrolling the streets of the nation's capital.

And he wants to replicate that in this executive order that he signed yesterday is really a clear sign of how he's ramping up to potentially take that step. This executive order does direct Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, to create these specialized units, really to act as a law enforcement entity and one that could be rapidly deployed nationwide. It establishes a quick reaction force for that purpose, pulling National Guard units from other states and basically creating this specialized unit for that purpose.

And look, this is -- there's a lot of questions about how this would actually work and function and the authorities that Donald Trump would need to use and implement these special units. At the same time, this political fight is really ramping up. And in the meantime, we have Democrats in these cities and in these states really pushing back on the idea of the U.S. military acting as a domestic law enforcement entity in their cities. Listen to what Donald Trump said though, just after the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, said that he did not want Donald Trump to come to Chicago. Trump was asked what would he do if those governors did not ask for federal help?

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you prepared to order National Guard troops, though, into American cities if those governors don't request the federal deployment?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am. But I also think that, look, Chicago, everybody knows how bad it is. Everybody standing there knows. We know. You don't have to be doing any studies. They should be saying, please come in.

Pritzker should be saying that.

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COHEN: So we know the Trump administration has been making plans for weeks now to send the National Guard to Chicago. Only time will tell, though, if and when Donald Trump ultimately takes that step.

BERMAN: The House Oversight Committee is now sort of piggybacking on the president's call for an investigation into Washington, D.C., and how they keep crime statistics.

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COHEN: Yes, John, we're seeing the Republican allies of Donald Trump in Congress sort of aiding this effort to crack down on crime nationwide and specifically investigating the alleged manipulation of crime stats in D.C. Obviously, this comes as city officials are pushing back on Donald Trump's claim that D.C. is a crime-ridden cesspool of sorts, saying that crime actually went down over the last several years.

This investigation does appear intended to cast doubt on that claim and is going to interview several D.C. police commanders about this crime data. And, you know, we've seen James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, launch these sort of investigations before. So it remains to be seen what ultimately that investigation will produce.

But we do know that there is sort of a collective effort now, including members of Congress, sort of paddling in the same direction as the president.

BERMAN: All right, Zach Cohen for us on the streets of Washington, D.C., thank you very much -- Danny.

FREEMAN: This morning, the GOP-led House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, searching for a slew of documents, including Epstein's so-called birthday book. Now, the book is a collection of letters from high-profile figures gifted to Epstein on his 50th birthday, and it reportedly includes a personal note from Trump before he was president. Trump has repeatedly denied writing the note and sued The Wall Street Journal, which first reported it, for defamation.

With me now is political reporter for The Washington Post, Kadia Goba. Thank you so much for being with us this morning to talk about this. Let's start here.

What do you understand the Oversight Committee hopes to get from this supposed birthday book?

KADIA GOBA, POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, I think this is a direct response from some Democrats who have been pushing back and saying that the tranche of information they got last week or the week before from the Justice Department, I think it was about 33,000 pages, just wasn't enough and doesn't fill the gaps in this so- called investigation into the sex trafficking scheme that Jeffrey Epstein and his then-partner Ghislaine Maxwell, you know, conspired. So I think this is Comer responding to that and saying, OK, you want more? We're going to subpoena now the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.

FREEMAN: You know, a key figure in the Jeffrey Epstein story is said to be questioned also by Congress. The House Oversight Committee just announced it will interview Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. He oversaw Epstein's 2008 plea deal, but he actually resigned as labor secretary over questions about his handling of the Epstein case back in the first Trump administration.

So I guess what I want to get your perspective on is how important will it be for this committee to hear from Acosta?

GOBA: I think it will be quite important. I mean, we saw on the original -- when Comer originally pushed out a bunch of subpoenas, he omitted Acosta. So there was some pushback from, in particular, the victim's attorneys who said, how can you possibly conduct an investigation on an investigation without including Acosta?

Because he received a bunch of -- a lot of criticism back then for giving Jeffrey Epstein this sort of sweetheart deal, where, you know, it allowed him to stay in a county jail or in his home or leave the county jail for work every day. So there is a lot of question around that. And I think, again, you see Comer responding to some of the criticism that some people have said about how he's conducting this investigation.

FREEMAN: Kadia Goba, thank you so much for breaking that all down. A lot to look ahead to today. Appreciate it.

BERMAN: So a deeply troubling wave of actor shooter hoaxes brings panic to universities across the country just as kids are showing up to school.

And then we have incredible video that shows just this intense dust storm that swept through Arizona, a haboob it's called. We're going to try to show you what it was like to be in the middle of all of that.

And a traffic stop takes a wrong turn. A police car crashes through a fence while trying to pull someone over. Goes for a swim in someone's pool.

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BERMAN: All right, this morning, a new concern about what appears to be a wave of active shooter hoaxes at colleges just beginning their terms. In some cases, when new students arrive for orientation, the latest happened at the University of South Carolina at Villanova. They had two in just a matter of days, people calling in hoax threats. And a source tells CNN an incident at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is also being reported as a hoax. Let's get right to CNN security correspondent Josh Campbell for the

latest on this. What's going on here, Josh?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, you know, a sad reality in this country is that back to school can mean back to school shootings. And now we're seeing this other type of sinister crime, so- called swatting, where someone calls in to authorities reporting some type of violent incident in progress that prompting a massive police response. We've seen this in numerous incidents, this current wave last week at -- in Chattanooga, the University of Tennessee.

Authorities were dispatched after being told that a man with an AR-15 had opened fire.

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A few hours later at Villanova University just outside Philadelphia, the same thing. This causing widespread panic, people fleeing, people injured at times. You can imagine just the chaos.

Take a listen here to the local district attorney there outside of Pennsylvania speaking right after that incident.

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BRIAN STOLLSTEIMER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY FOR DELAWARE COUNTY, PA: I think literally thousands of people here today who are here because their kids are being dropped off for school, right? And it should be a joyous occasion, was ruined by somebody.

My office, criminal investigation division, the FBI, we're all going to work to try to get to the bottom of who might have done this because if this was indeed a cruel hoax, this is a crime and we will track you down if it's the last thing we do.

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CAMPBELL: Now authorities take this so seriously because even if no one went to shot again, there could still be injuries. And we've also seen in the past, at least one man was killed when police responded to an incident. You can imagine the stress, the stress hormones coursing through an officer's body as they're rushing to a scene, not knowing if a threat is around the corner.

And so again, although these are fake hoax threats, they can often be very dangerous.

BERMAN: Hey Josh, since we've been on with you, police in West Virginia say that a hoax was called into the University of West Virginia. They determined it to be a hoax. It was a call saying there was an active shooter there, a hoax they say. So that's now at least four.

I know kids who've been showing up to school for their freshman year where this has happened. When you talk about the effect on police, I can tell you the effect on students. It has been chilling. And one of the issues here is that there's like this new sophistication sometimes with the way these calls are working. What's going on?

CAMPBELL: Yes, that's right. I mean, there were at least six of these that happened yesterday alone. So this is certainly something that's proliferating. As far as why these are so hard to investigate because of the sophistications.

Oftentimes these callers are using voiceover internet to make these calls from overseas oftentimes. Now authorities have tried to identify some key indicators, including if someone is making the call to a non- emergency line, for example, instead of calling 9-1-1 because those voiceover internet calls often can't actually dial the 9-1-1 system. That could be a red flag.

If there's only one person calling in an active shooter threat, that a potential red flag. We know in these -- this era, so many people flood 9-1-1 whenever a real incident happens. And then lastly, authorities have seen in so many of these incidents, sometimes the tone of voice of the person calling doesn't actually match the urgency of the moment.

So again, this is something they're trying to get their arms around. We know the FBI created this massive task force across the country trying to help different departments understand if the same threat that they are seeing is actually coming from one individual. And it's worth pointing out, authorities say that they are increasing penalties.

We know that this year, for example, a California teen, for his part in a wave of fake threats across the country, he was sentenced, John, to four years in federal prison.

BERMAN: Well, it is an awful trend. Josh Campbell, thank you so much for filling us in on the very latest -- Danny.

FREEMAN: Up ahead, the search for a man accused of killing his three young daughters nears the three-month mark. The FBI now taking the lead on the manhunt. We have new details on the case.

Plus, this morning, responding to the backlash, Cracker Barrel has a message to those upset about its logo change. Stay with us.

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BERMAN: So in Arizona this morning, people are still feeling the impact of this huge dust storm known as a haboob, by the way. The wall of dust just seemed to swallow up Phoenix and its surrounding area. The storm darkened the sky and nearly blinded drivers.

We have some video of what it looked like on the roads, near zero visibility for drivers.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are in the middle of a haboob.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can see headlights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't see anything. We're in the middle of the haboob. We're in our car.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's going up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can see a little bit in front of us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think there's a car behind us, but we're kind of, OK, I can see the house on the corner here.

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BERMAN: It's like end of days, you can't see anything from inside. All right, we have other new video that shows kind of just how dark things got as it moved in. Just look at that.

At Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, the storm's 70-mile-per-hour wind gust shredded a connector bridge and caused major delays. You really can't get over just how tall that wall of dust is there.

There was a weekend dust storm in Nevada, too, that blew through the Burning Man Arts Festival. Unclear if the people who were actually there realized what was happening. That's a different story.

CNN Meteorologist Allison Chinchar joins us now with the latest. I do have to say that the video of what's happening or what happened in Arizona and Phoenix is just extraordinary.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is. And the thing is, these happen sometimes in the desert southwest because you have that combination of those strong thunderstorms that will come in, but also all of that dust that's laying there. Take a look at this time-lapse video behind me.

You can see that wall of dust coming racing into the city. But then once the dust clears, then guess what we get? That's right, raindrops. Because the rest of the actual storm is now starting to come through. Because that's what causes all of this. It all stems from an actual thunderstorm that is moving into the area.

So let's talk about this. Yes, the official name is called a haboob. And basically what it is, is that you get the outflow from these particular thunderstorms that come through.

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And what it's doing is it's picking up all of that dust that's basically on the ground and it's starting to churn it and spin it and push it in the same direction that the thunderstorm is also going in. So you get that big wave of dust out ahead and then you get the thunderstorm back on the other side of it. So let's take a look at the breakdown. This is last night around the

time of the storm.

So this is Monday at 8:30 p.m. You can see this is the thunderstorm in question. The temperature at that point was 101 degrees, OK. Gusting winds, maybe about 20 to 23 miles per hour.

Then you fast forward about 15 minutes. The temperature has now dropped down to 91 degrees. Winds jumping up to around the 60 mile per hour range.

Then you get a few minutes later, 79 degrees. And look at those winds, 70 miles an hour. Again, the temperature in 30 minutes dropping 35 degrees and those winds jumping all the way up to 70 miles per hour.

And then just a few minutes later, you then also get the rain that comes through on the other side of the system.

And again, here is a look at the forecast for you. Again, you can see we are going to still have the potential for some of those showers and thunderstorms yet again today.

Not just for Phoenix, but for a lot of the surrounding areas, which means you could in turn get more images just like this one that you see right behind me.

BERMAN: Really stunning to see. I have questions for our guy Pete Muntean, too. What happens to these airplanes once they're covered in dust? Can they take off? I mean, do flights get off? Boy, quite a thing.

All right, Allison Chinchar, thank you very much for all of that.

The chair of the Democratic National Committee says he's sick and tired of how Democrats are pushing back on the Republican agenda. Why he says Democrats cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore.

And game-changing weight loss pills could soon be hitting the market. The new reporting this morning about when, when you might see them on store shelves.

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