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Mediation Talks Resume on Gaza Ceasefire Plan; Israel Marks Second Anniversary of October 7 Hamas Attack; Texas National Guard Arrives Near Chicago; Trump to Permanently Cut Government Programs Amid Shutdown; Bystanders Help Free Victim Trapped in Helicopter Wreckage; Gold Hits $4,000 Per Ounce for First. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 07, 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]

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Between Israel and Hamas, whether those gaps can indeed be bridged over the course of these negotiations this week. As we expect, the President Trump's son- in-law, Jared Kushner and the Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff, to soon travel to Egypt, we are also learning that Ron Dermer, the Head of the Israeli Delegation, is likely to travel to Egypt soon as well, perhaps as early as tomorrow.

And that will give us a sense that these negotiations are reaching their most critical stage where the kind of senior-most members of all of these negotiating teams will need to be in the same place in order to apply the necessary pressure in order to get to a deal. There's no question that from the American and the Israeli point of view, they want to get this done in a matter of days, but we still know, again, Hamas has yet to publicly indicate whether they are willing to disarm. That is, of course, a requirement of the Israeli government to end this war.

And so, we will see whether that is something that can be bridged or whether it's something that holds up these negotiations from becoming a reality here in the Middle East.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And Jeremy, what are people in Gaza saying about these talks?

Diamond: Well, just as here in Israel, people are commemorating the two-year anniversary of October 7th. In Gaza, today marks two years of war, two years of destruction there, as we have seen, the majority of the population displaced many of multiple times in many cases, more than 67,000 people have been killed according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the majority of whom are civilians. And in Gaza, people have simply had enough of this death and this destruction. And we have been hearing from Palestinians in Gaza today, who are also hopeful that these negotiations will lead to an end of the war, will lead to an end of their suffering as well, some of them even sounding off on that question of disarmament saying that they believe it is time for Hamas to give up its weapons if that's what it takes to get to an end of the war. They simply want this war to end. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Jeremy Diamond, live for us in Tel Aviv. Thank you so much. Coming up, Texas National Guard members have arrived near Chicago. We have the latest on what comes next and a very tense situation in the windy city.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:36:27]

ERICA HILL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Staying on top of our Breaking News now, a source telling CNN Texas National Guard troops have now arrived near Chicago. This of course, as President Trump mobilizes forces in Illinois against the governor's wishes. President Trump today was asked if he would invoke the Insurrection Act in the city, which he has talked about doing. Here's his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Yeah, well, it's been invoked before, as you know. If you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there's a lot of crime and if the governor can't do the job, we'll do the job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Joining us now, former JAG officer, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Rachel VanLandingham. She's also a Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School. It's good to have you with us. So taking the step by step here, just based on the facts of what we know about the situation on the ground in Chicago, does that meet the legal requirements for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act?

LT. COL. RACHEL VANLANDINGHAM, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Absolutely not. The governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago and the Chicago police are providing law and order in the city of Chicago. This is nowhere near the $1 billion worth of property damage and over 60 individuals that were killed during the L.A. riots back here in Los Angeles in 1992. When then Governor Wilson of California asked President Bush to invoke the Insurrection Act, so that the president could federalize National Guard troops to help the massive riots in Los Angeles. This is nothing near that.

HILL: So Stephen Miller, over the weekend, called the decision by an Oregon judge to block President Trump's plan to send troops to Portland "a legal insurrection." So number one, is that even a thing? And number two, if so, would it meet some of the requirements that you and I were just talking about in terms of the threshold that needs to be met?

VANLANDINGHAM: Just like in Chicago and Oregon, the facts on the ground are just not there to either abuse authority by federalizing Oregonian National Guard troops or by deploying National Guard troops from California as the president tried to. And in fact, there's no legal insurrection. The only insurrection against the rule of law in the United States is by Stephen Miller, is by the President Trump and his administration who are trying to circumvent very -- some very clear federal law that protects we the people from having the federal government use the military against us. Our country has a long and proud tradition of not liking military intrusion into civilian lives unless it's absolutely necessary. And it's not necessary, the facts simply aren't there. They're trying to make up facts and use them as a pretext to send in the military against the American people.

HILL: So, you've said what you see here is the president potentially trying to circumvent the law. At the end of the day though, who would have to decide on the legality if the president wanted to move forward? Is it the Attorney General? Would it be Pam Bondi?

VANLANDINGHAM: Well, we have separation of powers and we have the Supreme Court that ultimately decides what the law is, not Pam Bondi. And we already have a federal judge, as you know, in Oregon that has said that the president's threatened deployment of Oregonian troops is not allowed and it's been enjoined. That's going to go to the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit, it's already been appealed to the 9th Circuit. And then that eventually will be appealable to the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court is going to have to weigh in regarding where the clear lines are regarding the president's ability to use the United States military, including federalized National Guard troops, in our cities when it's not necessary.

HILL: When we look at what is happening in this moment, Governor Abbott activating the Texas National Guards, or they could be deployed to Illinois on the president's orders.

[13:40:00]

Of course, President Trump tried to do the same with troops in California, to send them to Oregon. We know what happened there. We just talked about that. Do you believe that the president is using the nation's service members as political pawns? And I ask that in a reaction to what we have heard from both the governor of and the senior Senator from Illinois who have both made that suggestion?

VANLANDINGHAM: Well, absolutely. When you couple in the threats to use our American cities as training grounds for our United States Military that is turning the United States Military against we the people, coupled with the president's comments on Sunday in celebration of our proud Navy's 250th anniversary, calling it a political rally. The speech suppression that we see going on within the military right now, anyone that doesn't toe the line regarding the MAGA etiology, absolutely the American Military has been used -- is being used as a political pawn.

These National Guardsmen, men and women who are called up, they have day jobs. They're the classic citizen soldier. The president is resting them away from their day job, so they can go pick up garbage in Washington, D.C. or stand around a bunch of federal buildings in Chicago or in Portland, and completely waste their time and abuse them. So this is an abuse of power, not only legally, but also abusive of authority over those National Guardsmen and women.

HILL: Lieutenant Colonel Rachel VanLandingham, appreciate your time this afternoon. Thank you. Well, President Trump says he will soon announce just which government programs he plans to permanently cut due to the government shutdown. Could Project 2025 offer some clues as to what is on the chopping block?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:46:20]

SANCHEZ: Over the last several days, President Trump has been threatening mass firings of federal workers. And minutes ago, he said he will soon announce which programs he plans to permanently cut. If he carries all of this out, he will be taking a page from the controversial conservative playbook that he kept his distance from for months during the Presidential Campaign, Project 2025. Our next guest, David Graham, wrote the book, "The Project, How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America." He's also a Staff Writer for The Atlantic.

David, thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. President Trump recently referred to Russ Vought, the OMB Director, as being of Project 2025 fame. Can you walk us through what his contributions were to the project?

DAVID GRAHAM, AUTHOR, "THE PROJECT, HOW PROJECT 2025 IS RESHAPING AMERICA": Yeah, sure. So Vought is -- I often describe him as being sort of the intellectual center of Project 2025, and it's a very broad document that has plans for many parts of the government. But at the core of that, is a plan to grab more power for the president, to increase executive power through a bunch of means. And Russell Vought is the person who laid out a lot of those plans. Someone who has a lot of experience in government understands how the federal government works and has long wanted to shrink the federal government.

So when you see, talk about Trump have new powers, taking powers from Congress or about laying off workers and shrinking the government, many of those things are plans laid out by Russ Vought.

SANCHEZ: And what exactly did Project 2025 lay out regarding layoffs of federal workers?

GRAHAM: Well Vought came out of the first Trump administration, which he served, believing that the bureaucracy was a real problem for Trump, that people who worked for the federal government were either intentionally sort of sandbagging Trump because they were liberals or simply just didn't want to change the way they did things. And so he wanted to make this federal workforce a lot smaller and also exert more power over it. So that included mass layoffs and it also included reducing protections for people, so the president could lay them off more easily or making them into political appointees, so president would get rid of them or choose them at his will. So all of these ways in which, there'd be fewer federal employees and the president could do more to change them than any president could in the past.

SANCHEZ: And the president has described wanting to make cuts at so- called Democrat agencies. He describes rampant waste, fraud, and abuse. This is on top of all the work that DOGE supposedly did to eliminate what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse. I wonder what specific areas you think might be targeted during the shutdown.

GRAHAM: You know, I think it's so hard to say what specifically they might go for because there's so many things that Vought believes are a problem. We've seen cuts to places like the State Department, but I would expect to see more of that. We expect to see Trump continuing to try to hollow out the Department of Education, looking after things like the Labor Department potentially. The thing is that there's a lot of plans that Trump has and that Project 2025 have for the government and that requires people in positions to use that power. So there's a little bit of a tension between their desire to do more with the government and also to have fewer people working for the government.

SANCHEZ: David, does it surprise you at all that despite distancing himself from it in the heat of the 2024 campaign, President Trump seems to be not only following much of the Project 2025 playbook, but also touting some of his advisers as being famous for their work on this project?

[13:50:00]

GRAHAM: It was really striking to see Trump describing Vought as of Project 2025 fame. It's a really direct statement from him and kind of taking ownership. But I think that also, sort of, makes explicit what he's been doing for a long time. Although he did distance himself from Project 2025 during the presidential campaign, I don't think that was ever all that credible. People who wrote Project 2025, a quarter of the named authors, were in his first administration. Many of them were cabinet members. Russ Vought was a top official and is again, Russ Vought worked on his platform committee for the 2024 presidential race.

And then once Trump entered office, he hired many of these people into top jobs and he also started executing on the things they've done. So I think it's been striking how closely he's followed the playbook since January. And I think it's striking that he's now saying it explicitly, but I think this matches the actions we've been able to see for some time now.

SANCHEZ: David Graham, appreciate the analysis. Thanks for joining us. Erica?

GRAHAM: Thank you.

HILL: Let's (inaudible) caught up on some of the other headlines we are watching this hour. Bystanders jumping into action after a medical helicopter crashed on a California highway, one of the victims was rescued after being trapped underneath that wreckage. Three people were injured ultimately, two women and a man who were on board the helicopter. A driver started filming the helicopter as it approached the highway, saying he could tell it was coming, but couldn't get away.

The price of gold for the first time ever hitting a record high, $4,000 per ounce. That's an increase of 51 percent so far this year. So gold is often seen as a safe investment in turbulent economic times. Goldman Sachs forecasting gold could actually rise to nearly $5,000 an ounce by the end of next year.

And if you're tired of turning down the volume during commercials, well, California has heard you, loud and clear. A new law signed on Monday would require that ads played while streaming content cannot be louder than the level of the original programming. This bill is on a law already in place for broadcast and cable companies. The bill itself was inspired by one lawmaker's baby and so -- and dedicated to parents who finally got their babies to sleep, only to have them woken up by a loud ad. Lot of sympathy for them.

Up next year, an ethical hacker taking CNN inside the world of deep fakes to reveal just how easy it's to scam companies out of millions.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:57:15]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS & TECH REPORTER: Hey, thanks for jumping on so fast. Can you remind me of our password for our shared drive? I need it for an interview starting in 30 seconds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: That looks kind of real, doesn't it? That is a deepfake of our Tech Reporter, Clare Duffy. But, imagine if that was the face of your boss or a loved one asking for a sensitive password. Could you be fooled? This is the latest deepfake scam that's cheating some companies out of millions of dollars. The real Clare Duffy joins us now. And Clare, you looked into this. How easy is it to create one of these deepfakes?

DUFFY: Yeah, Boris, I worked with Ethical Hacker and SocialProof Security CEO, Rachel Tobac. She created that deepfake of me with software commonly used by hackers. She used a video of me posted on YouTube. And as you can see there, because A.I. technology has improved so much, these deepfakes have gotten remarkably convincing. We are already seeing hackers target businesses and scam them.

In one case, one company was scammed out of $25 million because a finance worker thought they were talking to the company's CFO. Now, as you watch that video, you can see that there are little red flags in there, sort of unnatural movements that the deepfake version of me makes. But a lot of times in the real world, when this happens, the hackers will set up a scenario where they've told the target that the CEO or their boss is calling, they're on the road, they need some piece of information or some money urgently. Oh, and by the way, the connection is bad. So ignore any glitches that you might see.

So you can understand how people might be fooled by a phone call or video call like this. Now, Rachel says there are steps that people can take to avoid falling victim to these kinds of scams. Take a listen to what she told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RACHEL TOBAC, ETHICAL HACKER: You and the people around you have to be politely paranoid. So essentially, verify that people are who they say they are before taking action on their sensitive request. So before sending a wire transfer, giving a code, giving access to a password or a document, if you do that after the fact because it felt weird, it's already too late.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DUFFY: And that does seem like advice that increasingly we all have to think about in so many areas of life. As A.I. technology improves, we all need to slow down a little bit and take a little bit of extra care in making sure that what we're seeing is in fact something that's real and not an A.I. deepfake.

SANCHEZ: Sounds like good advice. Clare Duffy, thank you so much. The next hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

HILL: As the government shutdown drags on, a new worry today for government workers, the possibility they will not be paid for their time while furloughed. What the president just said about it. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Capitol Hill getting press on troop deployments in American cities, mass firings at the DOJ --