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Fear & Anxiety Grow Among Military Families 30 Days Into the Government Shutdown; Millions at Risk of Losing Food Benefits; Dems and GOP Trade Blame as Government Shutdown Drags Into Day 30; Melissa Heads Toward Bermuda After Devastating Caribbean Islands; Sources Say Three-star General Pushed Out Amid Tensions With Hegseth. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired October 30, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- breaking its covenant with service members to meet their basic needs and those of their family members, so that they can focus on protecting the country, it shouldn't be surprising. But in our nation, which relies on an all-volunteer force, it should be beyond alarming.

And you can read more about what military families are going through in my column that is out today at cnn.com/homefront.

A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

Around 42 million Americans are on the verge of losing their ability to buy enough food for their families. But now a judge indicates that she'll intervene in the fight over food stamp benefits.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Plus, pressure at the Pentagon. Sources say a three-star general serving on the joint staff has been pushed out after months of tension with Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. We have CNN's exclusive reporting just ahead.

And a former Virginia teacher who was shot by her six-year-old student taking the stand, accusing a former assistant principal of ignoring warning signs in the lead up to her shooting. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

A major development this afternoon as millions of Americans are preparing to lose government food assistance. A federal judge now says she may intervene to compel the Trump administration into using emergency funds to keep the SNAP program open. If not, 42 million Americans will begin to lose their benefits starting on Saturday.

KEILAR: It is Day 30 of the government shutdown and as the pain sets in for so many, lawmakers are scrambling. Today, Republican leaders are blasting Democrat's push for a partial reopening. Here's what House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R-LA) HOUSE SPEAKER: If you deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government, Chuck Schumer and the radicals over there will continue to play games with people's paychecks, their livelihoods. And if you do just part of this, it will reduce the pressure for them to do all of it, to do their basic job, and that is reopen the government. This is very real and very serious, and they can end it today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN's Rene Marsh and Danny Freeman are following all of this for us. Rene, what more is the judge saying in this effort to keep SNAP money flowing?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, there's this pot of more than $5 billion in emergency funds just sitting at the USDA and the Trump administration said in court today that the agency was prohibited from tapping into those emergency funds to keep the assistance benefits flowing to those 42 million Americans who rely on it. The Trump administration's lawyers also said that the agency didn't want to use those funds, and the judge really pressed them pretty hard on this, asking where in the law does it prohibit using these funds to prevent the suspension of SNAP benefits. Which by the way, SNAP benefits have never been suspended or reduced before.

But the administration's lawyers struggled to really give a clear and even convincing reason for why they needed to suspend these benefits. The judge at one point was so confused by the administration's arguments that she said, "Congress has put money in an emergency fund for an emergency and it's hard for me to understand how this isn't an emergency when there's no money and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits." And that really was a key moment.

The judge indicated that she may ask the agency to explore reducing benefits because of the dwindling amount of available funds as opposed to stopping the benefits altogether. That would be complicated because the USDA would have to recalculate how much specific states will get. Then states will have to recalculate how much individuals will get. But here's the bottom line, come November 1st, the SNAP benefits will not be available for the people who rely on them.

The judge says that she's going to be working quickly to come up with an emergency decision, but she clearly was not buying the Trump administration's argument that they had no choice other than to stop these benefits during the shutdown.

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much for that report, Rene. Let's go now to Danny Freeman because Danny is at a food pantry in the Philadelphia suburb of Prospect Park. How are folks there preparing as so many of their neighbors are about to lose benefits?

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Boris, I'll be honest with you, it's incredibly stressful for a lot of people that we've been speaking with, who have had to come here because their last SNAP check came weeks ago and they're not expecting it to come when this Saturday begins. And you've seen the strain because they're people who have kids. We spoke to a woman who has four kids and she needs to put foot on the table, which is why she ended up coming here.

So, we're at Loaves & Fishes. It's a food pantry like you noted, in Delaware County, Delco, just outside of Philadelphia. And I want to actually bring in Pastor Chris, you are the Director here. Thank you for being with us.

REV. CHRISTOPHER HEISEY-TERRELL, PASTOR, PROSPECT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH: Absolutely.

FREEMAN: So tell me, what have -- what has the impact been that this community has felt because of this impending expiration of these SNAP benefits?

[14:05:00]

HEISEY-TERRELL: Sure. So we've probably seen an increase of about 30 percent in our families just in the last couple of weeks that are coming for a visit. So folks in anticipation of what's going on with SNAP.

FREEMAN: And again, they're telling you specifically it's because of this SNAP expiration?

HEISEY-TERRELL: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the reality is that I think, the figure is that for every one meal that a food pantry can provide, SNAP provides not. And so we're extremely grateful, like the community outpouring has been huge in terms of donations and volunteers, certainly could always use more, but you can't make up that kind of a difference. Like you can't make up those nine meals just with that.

FREEMAN: Well, and I read that you had said before that, again, keeping the pantry stocked has been a challenge or a concern, right?

HEISEY-TERRELL: Sure. We could open up like another distribution so we could serve more people, but if we don't have additional food and resources to do that, then it doesn't -- then there's no way. It's not sustainable and we want to be sustainable. And so it really is a community effort. Government, the local community, both those things work in partnership to make pantries work and having that equation is just missing, and there's no way to make up that gap by ourselves.

FREEMAN: You've been doing this for over a decade here.

HEISEY-TERRELL: 25 years. Pantry has been here for 25 years. I've been here for five.

FREEMAN: Right. So, have you seen this amount of all of a sudden stress come in like this before?

HEISEY-TERRELL: So I've told people last Thursday, and I think just because of everything that's going on, last Thursday was probably the first day in my time that I was scared because there's this sense that there's all this need. Even during the pandemic --

FREEMAN: Yeah. HEISEY-TERRELL: -- we knew that there were additional resources that were coming in.

FREEMAN: Right.

HEISEY-TERRELL: But we're facing that kind of need again, and you don't have the security of those resources.

FREEMAN: Thank you for the work you do, Pastor Chris, I really appreciate you.

HEISEY-TERRELL: Thank you. Thanks for telling our story.

FREEMAN: No, of course. So you get that, Boris, this is the stress that folks are feeling here and also the importance of food pantries like this to really hold communities together as they're facing this, again, impending SNAP expiration on Saturday. Boris?

KEILAR: Yeah. And the limitations that they have, as he so clearly lays out. Danny, thank you so much for bringing that to us.

Still to come, Hurricane Melissa is now headed toward Bermuda after unleashing a trail of destruction in the Caribbean. The rescue efforts now underway as we begin to see the extensive damage on the islands that have been hit by the storm.

SANCHEZ: Plus, a trade truce with China, how it could help soybean farmers here in the United States. And as the shutdown drags on, federal workers at America's national parks are facing raucous crowds and destruction. A report when we come back.

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[14:12:06]

SANCHEZ: Officials say the full toll of Hurricane Melissa may take days, even weeks to be determined. Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, all still reeling from the impact of one of the most powerful storms ever in the Atlantic.

KEILAR: In Jamaica, emergency crews and rescuers have been desperately trying to reach coastal communities that took a direct hit when Melissa slammed onshore Tuesday as a Category 5. There's destruction as far as the eye can see. You can see it from this drone footage here. And right now, Melissa is still a very strong storm, a Category 2 hurricane. CNN's Allison Chinchar is tracking that for us. Allison, where's the storm headed?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right. So you can see it's basically out over the open Atlantic right now. It has weakened considerably from where it was just 48 hours ago, but still quite a potent storm and it's not over just yet. Sustained winds of 105 miles per hour as it slides off to northeast, kind of right in between the United States and Bermuda. Now, it'll be closer to Bermuda than it is to the U.S. and that will actually give them a chance to have some of the impacts from the storm as it slides by. That's why they have that hurricane warning in place because while we do expect some additional weakening here in about the next 12 hours, it's not going to be dramatic drop. This thing isn't going to drop -- just drop down to a tropical storm here in about the next three hours. So because it is still anticipated to be a hurricane as it slides by, you can see some of those outer bands expected to cross over late this afternoon, through the evening and overnight hours.

But by Friday morning, finally exiting off to the north side and taking with it all of the threats that it will still have. One of those is also going to be winds. You can see that here. Again, some of those strong winds sliding right there by Bermuda, even though they will not take a direct hit, they could still see 80, a hundred, even up to about 80 to a hundred mile per hour wind gusts at times. The other thing to note too is that as it weakens and it slides up, it's going to expand a little bit in size and that allows for a lot of those wave heights to kind of spread out too.

So again, even though it's not going to be a direct hit, Bermuda is still likely to have some pretty large waves, especially on the north and western side of the island. Now one thing to note is, do you see this blue cold front right through here? This is one of the factors that is preventing Melissa from curving back closer to the United States. It's effectively kind of blocking it from getting too close to the U.S. However, with that said, it is still going to be close enough that you're going to have rip currents. You're going to have some high surf, and you can see a lot of those rip current risks. The red color indicating high, the yellow indicating moderate, pretty much up and down the eastern seaboard. And this, guys, is going to linger through the rest of the week.

SANCHEZ: Alison Chinchar, thank you so much for that update. Still to come this afternoon, a three-star general pushed out of his role at the Pentagon amid rising tensions with Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. CNN's exclusive reporting on the military push and pull that led to his retirement.

KEILAR: Plus, Democrats blasting the Trump administration after leaving them out of a classified briefing on the military strikes against alleged drug boats.

[14:15:00]

What went on inside that meeting and why lawmakers are calling foul?

SANCHEZ: And if you haven't heard, you can now stream CNN wherever you want in the United States, right in the CNN app. For more on the new experience, go to cnn.com/watch.

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[14:20:00]

KEILAR: Now to a CNN Exclusive, sources telling CNN a three-star general serving on the Pentagon's joint staff has been pushed out after months of tensions with Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. SANCHEZ: CNN's Zach Cohen is with us with his new reporting. Zach, what have you learned?'

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yeah, guys. Lieutenant General Joe McGee was a very senior official over at the Pentagon. He worked on the joint staff and he was responsible for effectively advising the top U.S. general on long-term military strategy and the risks of various plans and operations that they were putting together to carry out. Right? And so we're told that he was pushed out predominantly by Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, somebody who he had repeatedly clashed with over the last several months, dating back we are told by one source to the spring when the tensions were really starting to simmer.

And they clashed over a variety of issues including Russia and Ukraine strategy as well as these military strikes in the Caribbean and Latin America that have really raised a lot of questions both on the legal and strategy front. So, McGee is retiring early. He was only 18 months into his job, which effectively in military terms shows you he was pushed out of his role. And that's something that was reinforced by our sources that he was -- he is not leaving on his own accord.

But this is just the latest in a series of senior military officials, including generals, who have been pushed out under Hegseth and there's signs that more could be coming.

KEILAR: And talking about the targeting of those alleged drug boats, it's generally incumbent on the executive branch to keep Congress apprised of what's going on, right? But there's a lot of dissatisfaction coming from the Hill, especially Democrats, about what kind of information they're getting or if they're getting information at all. What are you hearing?

COHEN: Yeah, that's right. Senator Mark Warner, who's the Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is a member of the Gang of Eight. He's accusing the administration of failing to meet its legal obligation to provide information to these top-level members of both parties. He says that Democrats were excluded from a classified briefing on these boat strikes just this week. And he came out publicly and criticized the administration for that today. And he was pretty irate. Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER, (D-VA) VICE CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: If you're sitting in this room, getting clearly what had been prior Gang of Eight level classified information, didn't somebody raise their hand and say, well, holy crap, we're the Democrats. Who was willing to say, isn't there a constitutional obligation here? It is about separation of powers. For the folks who waived their constitution around, read the damn thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So some Republicans have come out today and said, yes, the Democrats should have been invited to that briefing and House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were also given a classified briefing today on these boat strikes. Democrats emerging though very unsatisfied with what they heard, saying that the administration effectively failed to provide a legal justification that was satisfactory for conducting these strikes.

One Democratic lawmaker was saying that the Department of Defense who was briefing lawmaker said that they didn't even need to know the identities of these individuals on the boats in order to carry out the strikes. And also saying that that's why they didn't feel the need to hold some of these survivors that have come out of these strikes because they didn't have the evidentiary -- or the evidence to meet that burden of proof if they did. So, a lot more questions, lawmakers are going to continue to demand answers from the administration, but so far they've resisted really giving them, at least to the lawmakers on both sides.

KEILAR: If you don't have the burden of proof to hold them, how do you have the burden of proof to kill them?

COHEN: Republicans and Democrats are asking that exact question.

KEILAR: Very interesting. Zach Cohen, thank you so much. Let's go now to outside the White House where the vice president is speaking.

J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: -- refuse to open the government. Now, I understand that a lot of Americans are sick of partisanship in Washington, D.C. Trust me, I've been here for nine months in this job. I am sick of partisanship in Washington, D.C. but this is very, very simple. Every partisan dispute, every policy disagreement, all of these things we can talk about, we can reason through, we can disagree, we can shake hands and compromise on some of those issues, hopefully.

But this is something that every single American, Democrat or Republican or independent, should be able to agree on, open the government. Stop this craziness and open the government. It's causing way too many problems, and some of the folks behind me are the people who are dealing with the problems. Now, let's just recap exactly what's happened politically in this town related to the government shutdown.

We have had now multiple votes to reopen the United States government. The House of Representatives has voted affirmatively to reopen the United States government. 52 Republicans and three Democrats consistently vote to reopen the United States government. But we need 60 votes. So, all we need to end the craziness, to pay the air traffic controllers, to pay the TSA agents, to pay the pilots, to make sure that food stamp benefits continue to go out to the American people who need them, all we need is five reasonable Democrats to join three moderate Democrats and 52 Republicans to reopen the government.

I want to let Sean Duffy say something. But before I do, I just want to say to any Democrat in the United States Senate, we are happy to talk about any policy issue. We're happy to talk about healthcare policy, we're happy to talk about tax policy. We're happy to talk about regulatory policy, but not at the point of a gun. [14:25:00]

You do not get to take the American people's government hostage and then demand that we give you everything you want in order to pay our air traffic controllers. It's a ridiculous set of demands. Let's reopen the government and then let's sit down and talk about how to compromise on policy for the American people. Sean?

SEAN DUFFY, (R) UNITED STATES TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Appreciate it, Mr. Vice President. So first, I want to thank you for calling this meeting of the aviation industry. We have a great coalition, bipartisan coalition. And so thank you for that. I just want to tell you, we look at the aviation system and we've seen blips and blurbs, whether it's LAX or it's Atlanta or it's Dallas, you're seeing impacts of this shutdown on our airspace. And that means, travelers are delayed, travelers are canceled. It has real problems.

So our air traffic controllers, their first paycheck they missed. Well, they got 90 percent, 80 percent of the paycheck, that was in early October. They just missed their full paycheck. And you got to think, well, then the second paycheck comes, that's not when we have real disruption because every single day, as all of you people know, as we all pay our bills, right, it's not just the mortgage and the car payment, which is very real. But they're buying food. They travel 30, 45 minutes into the towers or the centers. So you have to buy gas. They have kids that want to play football or volleyball or tennis, and they can't afford the very life expenses that they need those paychecks for.

And so though we've maintained the safety, I'm grateful for our controllers who are coming in every day, but I do think as this shutdown continues, you're going to see more pressure on controllers, more pressure on TSA workers, and that's going to have real impact. One group that you don't -- we don't talk about a lot is, we have technicians that work in our centers. I've talked to you all about how old our equipment is. We have technicians that come in every single day to make sure this equipment actually works. They too aren't getting paid.

And this is burning and it's having a real impact on our men and women who serve our airspace. And so I would join the vice president and say, don't hold us hostage. Don't hold American family's travel hostage. Don't hold air traffic controllers hostage. Open up the government, have a conversation, let's get it resolved. But again, every day it gets harder. Every day, there's going to be more challenges. And the last point I'll make before I turn it over to Sean O'Brien's, really great hair day today -- is the fact that a lot of our people can go through the miss of one paycheck. And it's hard for them, but a lot of them can get through it. None of them can get through two paychecks.

And so again, if Democrats don't get their act together very quickly, you're going to see huge problems. And again, I just -- I would come to them with a clean heart and say, open up the government and then let's have a conversation. I'll give it to Teamsters, Sean O'Brien. SANCHEZ: We've been listening to Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, as well as Vice President J.D. Vance close to the North Lawn at the White House. This is after a round table focused on how the government shutdown is impacting aviation. Obviously, a lot of air traffic controllers are going now weeks without being paid, as well as TSA agents. Vice president there with a direct message to lawmakers, specifically Democrats, saying that we're happy to talk about any issue, healthcare, taxes, regulatory policy, but not at the point of the gun. You can't take the government hostage. It's a ridiculous set of demands.

This, of course, coming as Republicans over the last decade or so have shut down the government multiple times. Interesting for the vice president to be making those remarks.

KEILAR: Yeah. so much at stake. The shoe is though on the other foot here, and there's so much pressure right now. We are really at this critical point where we're going to see might one side blink. We'll be watching.

And still ahead, new hope for hundreds of thousands of American soybean farmers as the U.S. announces a new trade deal with China. We'll talk to one of those farmers about the months-long struggle to sell their harvest, next.

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