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18 People Injured in Shuttle Vehicle Crash at D.C.'s Dulles Airport; Man in Neck Brace, Limping With Cane Robs Louisiana Bank; House Expected to Vote Tomorrow on Deal to End Shutdown; Trump Proposes Trumpcare to Replace Obamacare; Experts Say Flight Disruptions Could Last Long After Shutdown Ends; FAA Increasing Flight Cuts Today to Six Percent Across 40 Airports. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired November 11, 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": -- Washington Dulles Airport crashed into a terminal drop-off dock. It's unclear what led this vehicle, which is also known as a mobile lounge, to hit the dock. Officials say all the passengers who were hurt had non-life threatening injuries and they were treated at the hospital.

And police in Louisiana need help identifying this man. They say he went into a bank with a limp, a cane, wearing a neck brace on Friday. Then moments later, he handed the teller a note and shouted, he was robbing the place. After taking an unknown amount of money, he took off without a limp. Investigators think he may have gotten away in a vehicle.

And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Take it to the House. Lawmakers close to pulling the plug on the longest government shutdown ever after the Senate approves a funding bill, but it will still take weeks, especially at airports to get back to normal Plus, pushed out, how a decorated female Navy officer's military career ended after her promotion got canceled. Why some are pointing to Secretary Hegseth's rhetoric about women in service. CNN's exclusive reporting just ahead.

And Mother Nature did not get the memo. It's not even Thanksgiving and cities are breaking temperature records in an early Arctic blast. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming your way right here on "CNN News Central."

42 days in, the longest government shutdown in history is on the verge of being over. House Lawmakers who've been at home for more than a month now are scrambling to get back to Washington after seven Democratic Senators sided with the Republicans late last night and voted to reopen the government. House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, tell CNN his caucus will not support the measure because it doesn't address Democrats' central demand, the extension of Obamacare subsidies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAKEEM JEFFRIES, (D) MINORITY LEADER OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: On December 31st, the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire. And dozens of House Republicans have been claiming over the last few weeks that they know that is something that needs to be addressed. And now, we're going to have to see some action or whether it was just talk from these House Republicans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Unlike the Senate, Democrats don't have the numbers in the House to block tomorrow's vote. And also unlike the Senate House, Speaker Mike Johnson is not guaranteeing a vote on the expiring subsidies. Meaning that right now, the majority of Americans enrolled in Obamacare are less than two months away from seeing their health insurance premiums more than double on average, something that has estimated to price millions out of their healthcare plans.

The president was asked about the issue last night and he offered this solution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I want, instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people where the people buy their own health insurance. It's so good. The insurance will be better. It'll cost less. Everybody's going to be happy. They're going to feel like entrepreneurs. They are actually able to go out and negotiate their own health insurance. And they can use it only for that reason. That's the beauty -- only for that purpose. And if we did that, that would be so exciting. Call it Trumpcare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Republican Congressman, Mike Lawler of New York is joining us now. Thank you so much for being with us. And first, on what's happening right now in the House, you say that the Speaker should bring a vote for a one-year extension on Obamacare subsidies. If he doesn't do that, are these extensions important enough to you that you'd support a discharge petition that would circumvent leadership to get a vote?

REP. MIKE LAWLER, (R-NY): Well, first of all, let's start with the simple fact, which is that after over 40 days, the federal government will finally reopen after the Schumer shutdown. The American people have suffered as a result of the disastrous decision by Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats to vote 15 times to shut the government down, not pay our troops, not pay our air traffic controllers, defund critical programs like SNAP and WIC. And so, I will be going down to D.C. to vote tomorrow to reopen the government, as I have every time, regardless of who the president is.

Now, I've been very clear about supporting a one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies that were put in place during COVID, that the Democrats slated to expire at the end of this year, because they viewed it as a temporary measure during COVID to support families. Obviously, we don't want to see a healthcare premium spike. But let's be clear, since Obamacare took effect in 2010, healthcare premiums on the whole have risen by 96 percent. And Obamacare healthcare premiums, the ACA open market has risen anywhere from 114 to 124 percent over this 15-year span.

[14:05:00]

So, Obamacare has failed to deliver affordable healthcare for Americans and the only way, seemingly, is for the federal government to subsidize the insurance companies. That's what this enhanced tax credit does. It takes federal dollars and pays the insurance companies. I am open to an extension for a year. There's going to be a negotiation. The Senate, obviously, is going to have a vote. The House is going to certainly have a lot of discussions over these coming weeks as to what can be done.

For instance, many of my colleagues are open to extending it, but they want the income threshold lowered, so that somebody making $600,000 is not being subsidized by taxpayers to buy a healthcare plan. So there's a lot to discuss. I am certainly open to taking action. My hope is that we will be able to negotiate something. If not, then I will evaluate what additional steps might need to be taken, including a discharge petition. But I think that's premature at the moment, now that we are coming back after the Democrats shut the government down for over 40 days.

KEILAR: So, you're a co-sponsor on this very bipartisan bill introduced in September by a Republican to extend the subsidies for a year. Would that pass if the Speaker put it on the floor?

LAWLER: I think it would have broad bipartisan support. We already have more than enough Republicans on it, assuming that every Democrat voted for it. But I'll remind you, this is the same bill that I asked Hakeem Jeffries a month ago to co-sponsor and to sign onto, and he declined in a very public confrontation in the hallway, said he was not interested in supporting that bill, and now seemingly, he's finally open to it after wasting a month's time shutting the government down.

So, that is something that I do think would pass, a one-year extension, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem which is that health insurance premiums continue to rise despite the promise of Obamacare. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, they all told us that healthcare would be more affordable if Obamacare passed, but unfortunately, that has not happened. As I said, health insurance premiums have risen by 96 percent on average and in the Obamacare market, by over 114 percent over these past 15 years. So, there's a lot of work to do. There's a short-term issue of extending the premium tax credit and a longer-term issue of how we actually reduce the cost of healthcare in America.

KEILAR: Yeah, I mean, people are certainly aware of what you're saying there. The increase in premiums, even if you don't get subsidies, is pretty nuts, right? People understand that. But at this point, you are about almost a year, let's say, into this presidency. You have about a year to the -- you've got a year to the midterms. How do you tackle that incredibly difficult political issue in what is really going into political season, even if you have a year respite from these subsidies --

LAWLER: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- which is what this bill is calling for. How do you tackle that monumental issue of affordability, an issue that a solution has alluded Congress for so many years?

LAWLER: Well, let' see. Health insurance obviously is one of the most complex issues facing the country. We've seen, obviously, the difficulty in addressing costs with Obamacare. But to me, there's a number of pieces of legislation that we should be looking at. For instance, PBM reform, that is something that is bipartisan, that we were able to negotiate language at the end of last Congress. It almost passed and then got blown up by Elon Musk in the final weeks of the 118th.

We should be bringing that legislation back to the floor, to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. When you look at what the president is doing right now on most favored nation, we should enshrine that into law to make sure that the American people are not paying more for prescription drugs developed and manufactured here in the United States than our European counterparts, for instance.

When you look at health insurance, we need more competition. If you only have three, four, five insurance companies available in your state and you're not actually allowing the free market to work, that drives up costs. So people should be able to purchase health insurance plans across state lines. When you talk about small businesses and wanting employers to provide health coverage, we need to increase the ability for --

(CROSSTALK)

[14:10:00]

KEILAR: Sir, I do just want to stop you because we have a limited amount of time here and I hear your ideas, but I mean, I've been covering -- I covered the passage of Obamacare as a congressional correspondent, which sort of dates me. But these ideas, a lot of them, they aren't new. Congress has had a lot of time to tackle these. Republicans certainly have this idea of repeal and replace, replace with what, right?

Speaker Johnson told CNN's Kaitlan Collins a couple weeks ago that Republicans have proposals ready to address healthcare subsidies. Have you seen anything of substance that is actually ready to go rather than just kind of throwing out ideas? Because that's really tough to make into action at this point in time.

LAWLER: Well, again, I was walking through a series of bills that we can actually bring forth immediately. And I would support -- I'm not advocating for repealing and replacing Obamacare.

(CROSSTALK) KEILAR: But those proposal -- he's talking about proposals that --

LAWLER: Hold on, excuse me.

KEILAR: There's a difference between bills -- well, let me --

LAWLER: Excuse me.

KEILAR: No. Excuse me because I've let you talk a lot. So I want to ask you this. He's talking about proposals that are --

LAWLER: Go ahead.

KEILAR: -- ready to address subsidies and this idea of proposals, is there anything like on paper that is ready to go? Not just ideas of bills that could be introduced. I mean, is there stuff that's ready to go out the gate?

LAWLER: Well, again, we have multiple committees that deal with healthcare and health insurance, energy and commerce, and ways and means. Both of which have --

KEILAR: And how far are they from a markup?

LAWLER: -- hundreds of bills. Both of -- OK. Can you let me answer the question? Both of which have hundreds of bills that have been introduced that can absolutely be brought to markup. When you're talking about these issues, they are extremely complex and trying to unwind, frankly, the damage that has been done to the insurance market by many of the provisions of Obamacare is no small task.

I'm not advocating to repeal and replace because we're 15 years into this and doing so will create more harm than good. I think the question is how do you actually fix the insurance industry and the insurance markets? They need to be regulated. For instance, United Healthcare owns a primary care practice. That should be prohibited. That should not happen. You should not have an insurance company owning a healthcare practice.

So there are things that I think we need to look at as to how we actually reduce the size and scope of these challenges. The health insurance industry, for instance, needs to be better regulated. A lot of this is regulated at the state level, which I think is part of the problem here. And so, there's more that needs to be done. But this is not something you're going to wave a magic wand and it's all going to be fixed tomorrow. It requires really tackling substantively, these issues, whether it's the workforce, whether it's the insurance companies, whether it's the drug and pharmaceutical industry, which does -- we need to go after the price situation there.

Price controls in Europe have been a big driver of why Americans are paying more because we're subsidizing the Europeans. That is a major factor that the president is dealing with, with most favored nation status. We should be enshrining that into law. So there's a lot that we can tackle. I believe we need to tackle. It's a long-term issue that needs to be dealt with during the remainder of this Congress, and it requires bipartisan cooperation. If Democrats just want to scream and yell and say that there's a healthcare crisis, but not participate in actually working to pass legislation, then that's on them. But we absolutely need to advance legislation in this Congress to reduce the overall cost of healthcare in America.

KEILAR: Yeah. I'm very curious, to see where this goes because I've been hearing some of these ideas for years and years and years now. Congressman Mike Lawler, really appreciate you talking about policy with us. Thank you.

LAWLER: Appreciate it. Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come, the Trump administration saying it may keep ordering airlines to cut flights even after the government opens. Experts warning the current travel turmoil may not be over by the Thanksgiving holiday. Plus, my exclusive reporting with my colleague, Haley Britzky, how Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth's policies are pushing qualified women out of the military. And then later, the face of President Trump's immigration crackdown expected to leave Chicago as soon as this week. We'll have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:19:22]

SANCHEZ: When the government shutdown ends, it appears that air travel issues will linger, at least not in a say -- rather, I should say they won't get fixed right away. Some experts actually warn the disruptions could last months, possibly years. But for Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, that depends on two big factors, whether the government reopens this week and whether air traffic controllers come back to work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN DUFFY, (R) UNITED STATES TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: We are at the cusp of hopefully having the government reopened. I'm concerned that we're not going to have on day one, controllers come back into the towers right away. I'm asking them to do that.

[14:20:00]

President Trump has asked them to do that. It is their jobs and they will be paid, but it might not be immediate that they come back in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: With the shutdown ongoing, the FAA is cutting six percent of flights today, over 1,200 so far, canceled more than 2,100 now delayed. CNN's Gloria Pazmino is live at Newark International Airport, one of the airports feeling this the most. What are you seeing there, Gloria?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Boris, many of the travelers that we have spoken to here throughout the day have been talking about the possibility that delays and cancellations will actually get worse as the week goes on. And the reason for that is because of that emergency order you just mentioned by the FAA, they have to reduce flights up to 10 percent by the end of this week on Friday. Today, they're at 6 percent. So, people who are traveling today are already thinking about the potential for those cancellations later in the week.

And many of them told me today that they're actually trying to take advantage of the flexibility that many of the airlines are providing right now in order to rearrange their travel plans. For the most part, people here have been patient. People have arrived early. They know that cancellations and delays are a possibility. But many of the travelers also noted that the airlines have been pretty good about communicating ahead of time, so they kind of know exactly what to expect.

So, traffic here inside the airport has been flowing nicely throughout the day and most of the people that we have spoken to have told us that they have not faced any major issues. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we just arrived from Geneva, Switzerland on United and it was brilliant, right on time, and we just ticked our flight to Palm Beach and it's right on time as well. So --

PAZMINO: So no problem so far?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No impact, except we're watching carefully.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm lucky so far. We'll see.

PAZMINO: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm on time so far.

PAZMINO: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming in -- coming here, I was on time. Going, it's supposed to be. Got my fingers crossed.

(LAUGH)

PAZMINO: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open the government please guys, please.

(LAUGH)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAZMINO: I even spoke to some folks, Boris, earlier today who were certain that they're going to get to their destination today, but they're not so sure about their flight coming back. But they're just happy to be getting out of here, especially for people who are traveling to warmer destinations as it gets very cold here up on the East Coast. So people for the most part have impatient so far. More than 1,200 cancellations across the country so far. And that number likely to rise as the FAA continues to scale up to 10 percent by Friday. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Gloria Pazmino live for us at Newark, thank you so much. Next, colleagues say a Navy Captain who served in combat in Iraq was awarded the Purple Heart and oversaw SEAL Team Six, had her promotion yanked despite being "the best man for the job." Some suspect it's because the Navy Captain is a she. CNN's exclusive reporting right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:40]

KEILAR: She's a badass, the best man for the job. That's how a former colleague and member of SEAL Team Xix formerly described a female naval officer who had her command canceled just days before a formal change of command ceremony in a very unconventional way, through a series of phone calls from the Pentagon without a paper trail or a clear explanation why, sources told us. Now, under the Navy's up or out policy, her two-decade-long career is effectively over and many in the tight-knit naval special warfare community, home to the Navy Seals, point to Secretary Pete Hegseth's policies and rhetoric. Here's what he had to say in September to the military's top brass.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, (R) UNITED STATES DEFENSE SECRETARY: Every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard only. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: His positions on women in the military were well known before he became Secretary of Defense. In his 2024 book on military culture, Hegseth wrote "The gender integration of the military is a huge part of our modern confusion about the goals of war. And we need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units." CNN National Security Reporter, Haley Britzky and I spoke to a dozen active-duty women across different branches about what they're experiencing, along with some of our colleagues, we spoke to them.

All right, Haley, let's talk first about this specific naval officer. What have we learned?

HALEY BRITZKY, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yeah. So Brianna, as you know, I mean this Navy Captain had a distinguished career before being up for this command. This is someone who was meeting the physical standards, which Secretary Hegseth has spoken about so frequently. She was chosen by SEAL officers, leaders in that community, to take this command. She is Purple Heart recipient who was injured in an IED blast in a combat tour.

I mean, she has checked the boxes in all of these ways, in a way that she was very excited to take this command. And it seemed like a very natural next step for her. And as one navy special operations source who was familiar with all of this said, it pisses me off because it is clearly someone who is capable and has done extraordinary things and is being punished because of, and I hate that I have to say it this way, weak ass men.

KEILAR: Yeah, pretty blunt there, some of the folks said, and we also spoke to more than a dozen active-duty women, along with our colleagues, Izzy, (inaudible) and Nic Robertson, or Nicky Robertson and Andrew Seger. And --