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NASA Selects 10 New Astronauts, Bold Plans for Moon and Mars; Trump to Address United Nations General Assembly Amid Divide on Palestinian Statehood; Jimmy Kimmel to Address Suspension in Return to Air Tonight; Secret Service Uncovers 300 Servers While Tracing Swatting Targets. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired September 23, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE ANALYST: These NASA astronauts or these NASA astronaut candidates just selected, while they may be the best and the brightest, as the acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy said, it may be that commercial and private astronauts get a chance to fly before them, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, best and the brightest and already been there, done that for at least one of them.

FISHER: Right.

BOLDUAN: Today also NASA is expected to make announcements about its Artemis 2 mission. This is a mission around the moon next year. What are you expecting to learn today?

FISHER: I'm really hoping to get some clarity on the timing because it's been all over the place, which is to be expected for a mission of this size and scope and magnitude. But the official word, Kate, is that it's no earlier than April of 2026. But there's been a lot of chatter within the Johnson Space Center that they could be flying as early as February.

But then you have people like former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine testifying before Congress and saying that, you know, he thinks that China is going to beat the United States and NASA back to the moon as part of Artemis 3. And you also had a NASA safety plant panel just a few days ago, Kate, saying that they think that SpaceX is Starship which is supposed to land these astronauts on the moon as part of Artemis 3 is going to be delayed by several years costing the United States that edge against China.

So I don't expect too much on that Artemis 3 today but I'd love to get some clarity on when realistically NASA and the acting administrator think that Artemis 2 is going to fly -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes, as you're just pointing out timing isn't just that it is everything when it comes to this space race and what they're what they're trying to pull off first. It's great to see you Kristin thank you so much.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Trump versus the world. This morning, President Trump is expected to deliver his message to global leaders at the United Nations General Assembly ahead of a meeting with Ukraine's president. His stance on many issues at odds with the vast majority of countries gathered.

Plus, Jimmy Kimmel is back. His late night show returns to air tonight after a nearly week-long suspension, but not all of ABC's stations will be airing it.

And China racing for a mega storm. Megacities are being brought to a standstill as Typhoon Ragasa threatens to make landfall once again after battering the Philippines.

I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: Just about two hours from now, President Trump is set to take the stage to speak to the United Nations General Assembly, his first address before the global body since being reelected, and it comes as he continues to upend America's role among those world powers.

The US has long been the UN's biggest financial backer, but since Trump has retaken office, the White House has refused to make any payments, triggering a cash crunch for the UN. And on top of that, President Trump has pulled the United States out of UN agencies, including the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, and the World Health Organization.

Today's address, according to the White House, will focus on American strength around the world and provide his, quote, straightforward and constructive vision for the world. The president will be taking the podium, of course, with many conflicts and issues to address and deal with, but especially two complex conflicts demanding world leaders attention right now. Russia's war on Ukraine and Israel's ongoing military operation in Gaza against Hamas.

CNN's Kylie Atwood is at the United Nations for us this morning, joins us right now. Kylie, what are you hearing from your sources? What's the goal? What are the stakes? What's expected?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, we heard from the White House press secretary yesterday that President Trump is going to target global institutions. Obviously, the United Nations being one of them. In the eyes of the Trump administration, these institutions have contributed to the decaying world order. And President Trump is going to lay out his vision for the world. Talk about his wins today after being in office for eight months now.

This comes on the heels, however, Kate, of a two-state solution conference for the conflict in Gaza, which just happened here at the United Nations yesterday. More than 140 of the 193 member nations here at the United Nations were supporting that conference. Part of that conference was recognizing a Palestinian state for the first time from many countries, including close allies of the United States. But the U.S. did not participate in it, and they were opposed to these countries taking this action at this time.

It does isolate the United States on the world stage right now when it comes to the way forward for Gaza.

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There are questions about how legitimate these ideas are that were put yesterday, but the United States is really isolated. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked just this morning on NBC if he's worried about the U.S. being isolated on this front. He showed no concern.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: No, I'm not concerned at all. None of the countries you just mentioned really will play much of a role in bringing about the end of this conflict in Gaza. That's why we continue to be engaged. Everybody continues to come to us to make a difference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ATWOOD: He went on in another interview to say that that conference yesterday was irrelevant, that it was a vanity project for world leaders that want to remain relevant, really taking swipes at some of the closest American allies at this moment, where it is unclear how that war in Gaza is going to come to a conclusion.

Later today, however, we will see President Trump partake in sort of some counter-programming, if you will. There will be another meeting of some of those Gulf nations involved in the war in Gaza that President Trump is leading, so we'll watch to see if they have concrete ideas that come out of that -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Kylie Atwood, thank you so much for starting us off this hour -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, the question is, what will Jimmy Kimmel say with what could be one of the biggest audiences in late night in years? Disney, ABC lifted his temporary suspension six days after they put it in place after pressure from the Trump administration. Overnight, we heard from Kimmel's fellow late night hosts on the decision, including Stephen Colbert, whose own show is going away in May.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, CBS, THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT: Our long national late nightmare is over. Because Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to air on ABC tomorrow, Tuesday night. Come on!

(CHEERING)

COLBERT: Once more, I am the only martyr in late nights.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Not everyone will see Kimmel's come back. Conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns dozens of ABC affiliates, says it will continue to preempt him.

With us now, CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter. So how is it that Kimmel's back six days after being pulled?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Well. I think Disney CEO Bob Iger and his deputies always wanted to bring Kimmel back. It was a question of how. They are, you know, listening to the reactions, reading the temperature in the proverbial room, and now deciding that it benefits ABC to bring Kimmel back more than it hurts ABC.

But there are both upsides and downsides here, and I think it's worth paying close attention to both of those in the days to come. You know, we have heard many liberal voices, some free speech groups, Hollywood stars cheering Kimmel's return. We've also heard MAGA media influencers denouncing Kimmel and ABC and saying that Disney is opposed to conservative values.

So this is exactly where a media company like Disney doesn't want to be, in the middle of the proverbial culture wars. Disney's been here before, for example, fights in Florida. over a bill that many would describe as an anti-gay bill a number of years ago. But here, once again, Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC very much in the middle of a political battle with some Trump allies saying they want to see Disney punished for bringing Kimmel back on the air. But look, all of that's the mood music for whatever Kimmel decides to say tonight, right, John?

BERMAN: Exactly. And I have to believe this is going to be one of the biggest audiences that any late-night show has had in some time. Do we have any idea what Kimmel is going to do with it?

STELTER: You know, I can make one confident prediction, and that is that he's not going to genuinely, sincerely apologize for anything. You know, Sinclair has demanded an apology. Sinclair has about 30 ABC- affiliated stations. It says it's not going to run the show tonight. It's in discussions with ABC about a path forward. We don't know what Nexstar, another big station owner, is going to do. Both those companies have pending business before the government. So there's very much still a situation here where media companies are feeling the pressure from the government and making decisions accordingly.

But that's why Disney's being cheered by free speech and free expression groups for bringing Kimmel back on the air. And it'll be really interesting to see how much does Kimmel lean into his identity here as a free speech leader and someone who's under pressure. Or how much does he just try to get on with the show, get on with the program, get back to normal? I'm not sure normal is possible at a moment like now, John, but we'll see tonight.

BERMAN: A lot of people are going to stay up a little bit later than usual. Brian Stelter, good to see you this morning. Thank you very much -- Sara. SIDNER: All right, a massive network for spies, hackers, and organized crime discovered in the U.S., and officials think it's being used by foreign governments and criminals. What they could have managed to do is terrifying. We'll have that story in a minute.

And also this morning, fallout from an eye-popping announcement linking Tylenol use to autism. That's what Donald Trump says, how the medical community is reacting this morning.

[08:10:00]

Plus, Kamala Harris sharing new details about her run for president and slamming her former president, Biden.

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BERMAN: All right, we do have breaking news this morning. CNN just learned the Secret Service disrupted a plot that could have overwhelmed the cellular communication system for New York City right in the middle of the UN General Assembly. This was a big plot at a crucial time.

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It all started as an investigation into fake calls, so-called swatting of Trump administration officials and well, or people with affiliate -- affiliated with the Trump administration. There you can see several former and current lawmakers. It ended up way, way bigger than that.

Joining us now, John Miller, CNN, chief law enforcement and intelligence analysts here. So what's going on?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So this is quite an amazing story and nothing like we've seen before. But the Secret Service investigating these swatting calls traced these phone signals down to a number of locations in basically a circle, a 35-mile donut around New York City. And when they hit these apartments, they found 300 servers connected to 100,000 SIM cards. This machinery was able to, on command, put out 300 million phone calls within 12 minutes.

What does that mean? What that means is it could have flooded the cellular systems with volume, basically a denial of service attack that would have made other calls not able to get through. And when you try to trace that back to who's behind it with 100,000 SIM cards, that's 100,000 different phone numbers you're trying to sort through to figure out, well, which ones do we block? It would have been a stunning attack, but there's something more behind this.

Because as they started to examine who those -- some of those SIM cards -- they've got a lot to go through with 100,000 -- had been communicating with. They found foreign agents from hostile foreign powers, including China, talking to criminal organizations, including Mexican drug cartels, along with swatters, along with terrorist organizations. So whoever built this network of hubs was either a hostile foreign

power or some criminal genius who decided to give them a massive switchboard with incredible power.

BERMAN: I mean, this is a huge operation. Just give us a sense, again, of what this could have done to New York and also whether or not there are any more, I guess, networks out there, but I'm not sure that's even the right question, given how big this operation was.

MILLER: So let's think about that on 2 levels. And, you know, if you go to the pictures of what these places look like. You hit an apartment, the apartment is empty. There's no furniture, there's no person, there's no nothing. There's just servers, a storage area. There's shelves and shelves of servers with SIM cards, an empty office. I mean, they rented places that were out of the way, gave them some anonymity.

But the power of this thing could be if you did a massive set of hundreds of millions of calls into the New York cellular system and were able to disable it. And you did it at the same time while you launched a kinetic attack, a bombing, a mass shooting, something like that, where authorities would need to communicate with each other right away to respond. Breaking the communication system that's core to that, the cellular system, during another event is something that when I was Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, we worried about both, but we worried about the combination more.

BERMAN: Yes, the implications there are simply huge and terrifying. And the scale of this operation enormous and concerning. Obviously, I think we need to learn a lot more here.

MILLER: And if that was done, while the 150 world leaders were all in a 10 square block area of Manhattan has other implications. So they're still looking at so far, no arrests.

BERMAN: All right, keep us posted on these developments. John Miller, good to see you with us this morning.

All right, two hurricanes churning in the Atlantic. Sort of the hurricane highway is upon us. We will tell you where they're heading.

And Donald Trump basically wanted her to prove her race. What she said she'd show to prove she is a woman, one of the funnier passages in the new book from former Vice President Kamala Harris.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: All right, well, China braces for the largest storm on the planet so far this year. We're also tracking several storms in the tropics. Hurricane Gabrielle is now a category four storm with winds up to 140 mph.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is tracking the tropics for us. We see it there pretty far away from Bermuda but looking huge. Is it expected to make landfall? It doesn't look like it.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, something about it, though, Gabrielle has really awoken the tropics across the Atlantic, and things are starting to change after a very sluggish start to the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.

So here it is, Hurricane Gabrielle, 300 miles east of Bermuda. If you know your geography, that means it's way east of the East Coast, but there are still some indirect impacts for beachgoers. We'll talk about that in just one moment. But it's Cat 4 right now, looking impressive on satellite, last few images, not so -- starting to degrade a little bit. So we do expect this weakening trend going forward.

But this is just amazing. Bear with me for a second. So hurricanes they're the great engine mechanism of the planet. They're point really is to distribute heat from the tropics northward into the poles. And you could track this storm all the way from the West Coast of Africa and then look at that recurve as it heads towards the Azores and eventually into Portugal by this weekend.

So quite a loop de loop across the Atlantic Ocean, bypassing many land masses, including North America. But the indirect impacts are the big swells and the waves that it will generate because this is a large storm system and that means it'll propagate the waves all the way to the eastern seaboard, which they already have been.

[08:25:00]

In fact, we've been experiencing some rough seas, Atlantic City, for instance, into Virginia Beach, the Outer Banks perhaps. Right along this area here, the coastal areas of Maryland into New Jersey. These areas could have 4 to 7 foot Breakers on the shoreline, so keep that in mind if you're heading to the beaches today.

Talked about how this is awoken something in the Atlantic development region. While we're tracking two different tropical waves, one has a high likelihood of development here within the next seven days. We've put an X on both of the areas that the National Hurricane Center are monitoring.

Now we're going to take it forward into the future. This is 1 version. This is the European model and you can see kind of a dominant feature here behind it. But there's also this sneaky little feature that could bring some showers and thunderstorms, maybe some tropical mischief by the end of the weekend for the Outer Banks into the Carolinas. But that's something we still need to determine going forward.

Sara, one last thing. I'm so happy to see you back on our TV screens. Welcome, welcome back.

SIDNER: Thank you. It was a long medical recovery and I am so glad to be back talking to actual --

VAN DAM: We love you being here.

SIDNER: -- humans instead of my wall. I also enjoy geeking out with you over weather. I grew up in Florida, so I have always been interested in the way weather and climate works and hurricanes. They're so destructive, but they can also be so incredibly beautiful at the same time, what they do to the skies, what they do to the water, But you know, obviously --

VAN DAM: I'll geek out with you any day. Sara, welcome.

SIDNER: I love it. And hurricane season is nowhere near over though, right? It goes into November.

VAN DAM: Yes, that's right. This is just kind of about 35 percent left of the peak. So well, we just had the peak in September. Now we're working our way towards the end of the season, which ends at the end of November. Really, we've got several more weeks to go. And if history tells us anything, we could still have some hurricane impacts here in the U.S. going forward.

SIDNER: Let's hope we don't. Anyway, stay out there.

VAN DAM: Right.

SIDNER: Stay out into the waters of the Atlantic.

VAN DAM: You got it.

SIDNER: Thank you so much, Derek Van Dam. Appreciate you.

All right, ahead. Remember the story of the mystery drones in New Jersey? People were freaking out about that for a couple of weeks. Well, now drone sightings are causing a travel nightmare for thousands of passengers at two of Europe's busiest airports.

And do or do not, there is no try. We have a look at the first Star Wars movie in seven years.

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