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FCC Chairman Facing Backlash Over Partisan Comments; TSA Employees Start Collecting Back Pay; Confusion Grows Over Iran Negotiations. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 30, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The first American pope and Chicago pope didn't name names, but his comments appear aimed at the Trump administration's war in Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in particular frequently evokes Jesus when defending the war.

Thanks for joining "INSIDE POLITICS."

CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Chaos diplomacy, President Trump threatening to obliterate Iran's energy sources if there is no deal to open the critical Strait of Hormuz. We will tell you how Tehran is now responding.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Paid at last. TSA workers start receiving the back pay that they have been missing out on for weeks, but lawmakers are showing no signs of ending this shutdown. We're following the latest on that.

And doctors reconsider advice that they have given heart attack survivors for decades. It's a change that could help people avoid side effects and also save some money.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: Breaking news on the war with Iran.

At any moment, the White House is set to begin its press briefing after the president threatened to completely obliterate Iran's power plants, oil wells and Kharg Island if Tehran fails to reach a deal soon and refuses to open the Strait of Hormuz immediately. Iran is pushing back against the president's claim that it's agreed to most of his 15-point plan.

There are also questions about who the U.S. is even negotiating with after President Trump said they're working with a new and more reasonable regime. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm not going to disclose to you who those people are, because I probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran. Look, there's some fractures going on there internally.

And if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world. But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability that that is not the case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto is live for us in Tel Aviv as we await that White House briefing.

Jim, what are you hearing?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'm hearing a lot of contradictions, frankly, Boris, because the president is saying the regime is effectively changed, that they have people that they're dealing with there and can negotiate with.

But you heard from his own secretary of state there saying it's a probability that those people do not represent a significant change. That's a major difference. Another major difference is just a simple statement of today's goals for this war, right?

Because you and I have heard those goals change over time. Secretary of State Rubio, he said today that there are four goals essentially, destroy or severely weaken Iran's navy, its air force, its missile capabilities, and its factories. Doesn't specify what kind of factories.

President Trump at other times has said complete regime change is one of his goals, but also debilitating Iran's nuclear program. And, by the way, that's one of those 15 points that the U.S. has presented to the Iranians. And the president says they have agreed to most of those points.

But the fact is, there's a lot of skepticism as to how they would, right, given that those points include things like decommissioning their nuclear sites. I will tell you this as well when you speak of contradiction, Boris. Here in Israel, a -- not just a weakening, but a destruction of Iran's nuclear program is very much a goal.

And many Israeli officials will say this war is not a victory unless that program is reduced or eliminated. So what are the answers to those contradictions? Are they speaking to the people actually running the country? We don't know. The secretary of state says unlikely.

What are the goals of this war? Have they been reduced from dismantling the missile program and regime change down to those more achievable goals? And then really the final question is, are there any actual substantive negotiations to bring the two sides closer on issues, including opening the strait?

Because, yes, a few ships have gone through, but Iran to date maintains the ability to close it. It's -- I mean, you said confusing diplomacy, Boris. I think that's fair to say.

SANCHEZ: Yes, no doubt that Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, is going to be asked about this. We will bring you that briefing as it happens live.

Jim Sciutto in Tel Aviv for us, thank you so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Today, tens of thousands of TSA employees are finally seeing money hitting their bank accounts again.

After working without pay for more than six weeks, we're told employees are now receiving some of their back pay, and that includes the two full paychecks that they missed this month. But they're apparently still waiting to collect the rest of a partial payment from late February, keeping in mind some of their paychecks were $9, $13 then.

So we're really talking about almost three paychecks here that they are looking to collect. So how did we get here? Well, on Friday, President Trump ordered DHS to immediately pay those TSA employees as funding talks broke down on Capitol Hill.

[13:05:08]

Sources telling CNN that DHS is pulling money from Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, that sweeping spending package that he signed last summer. And now those miserably long security lines at the nation's airports are starting to ease.

But keep in mind that, throughout this whole debacle, about 500 TSA employees have quit through this shutdown.

CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean is on the scene at BWI Airport in Baltimore.

Peter, are you seeing any of that easing there?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and the woman who brought her own folding chair here, thinking she was going to be stuck in hours-long lines, when she saw all of this mess unfolding on TV, is probably not going to have to use it today.

This is what we're talking about now here at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. There is essentially no line when it comes to the TSA security seat checkpoint here. It took people three hours, in some cases, simply to get to this point on Friday.

I want you to listen now to Wanda Pharris. She got here at 11:00 a.m. to get back to a flight to Huntsville tonight at 8:00 p.m., so worried that she was going to be caught in all of this mess. The good news is now these TSA workers are getting paid. And she's acutely aware, though, that the long-term fix here will have to come from Congress. Listen to what she told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WANDA PHARRIS, AIR TRAVELER: Yes, it's at 8:00 p.m. tonight, but I must be home. And I couldn't stand in the lines that long. So I did, in fact -- I had a back chair to bring with me in case I had to stand.

MUNTEAN: OK.

PHARRIS: I think our lawmakers need to really come together and remember why you are in Washington, D.C. You're for the people. You're here to work for us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: Begs pointing out that ICE was deployed here to BWI starting on Saturday. There are some officers still here doing primarily crowd control, although there's not really much of a crowd now to speak of.

Hope Wanda's at an airport bar right now, by the way, watching CNN. She's got some time to kill, clearly. And I have to mention, as a Marylander, one of my favorite things to do here at BWI is to lay a sacrifice of the giant ceramic crab upstairs in Terminal A. That's how you get good travel luck.

You can thank me for that because I laid my sacrifice there on Friday. We serve it, so it serves us. Things have really changed here at BWI, and it seems that things are going to go smoothly at least for the time being.

We will see, though. It's only back pay. So we will see in the long term if this really sticks.

KEILAR: So that's why it happened. It was your sacrifice at the big ceramic crab.

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: No, shout-out to Wanda, though, because, look, she speaks for a lot of people. She sure does.

Pete Muntean, thank you so much live for us at BWI.

And any minute now, we are expecting to hear from the White House about the DHS shutdown and President Trump's latest threats toward Iran. We're also tracking oil prices. They surged to $116 a barrel after the president said he wants to -- quote -- "take the oil in Iran."

Up next, what that means for prices at the pump. Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:12:40]

SANCHEZ: The global price of oil crossed a high of $116 a barrel today after President Trump said he wants to take Iran's oil. He told "The Financial Times" yesterday -- quote -- "My favorite thing

is to take the oil in Iran. But some stupid people back in the U.S. say, why are you doing that? But they're stupid people."

Before the war with Iran began on February 28, Brent, the global benchmark for crude, was at about $73 a barrel.

Let's talk about this with Gregory Brew. He's a senior analyst covering Iran and oil for the Eurasia Group.

Gregory, thank you so much for being with us.

How would the U.S., as Trump says is his preference, take Iran's oil?

GREGORY BREW, SENIOR ANALYST, EURASIA GROUP: Well, thanks so much for having me on.

There's really one location in Iran that matters when it comes to Iran's oil exports, and that's Kharg Island. It's a small island off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, and it's Iran's main crude export terminal. Iran exports around 90 percent of its crude oil from Kharg Island.

So I think, when the president is thinking about taking the oil, he's thinking about seizing Kharg Island and reducing Iran's ability to export oil.

SANCHEZ: Trump is comparing what he's trying to accomplish in Iran to what the U.S. has done in Venezuela, but the differences there are stark, right?

Namely, Iran is a theocracy, in which martyrdom is revered for the cause of defending against the West. So they would likely rather die, I think it's fair to say, the leadership, than surrender the way that Trump wants.

Given that, is any outcome similar to Venezuela actually possible?

BREW: Well, I'm not sure that that outcome is really possible now.

I think the administration had some hopes that, after killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the beginning of the war, that some new leaders would arise in Iran and opt to cooperate with the United States. I think that was a pretty fundamental misreading of the Islamic Republic.

As you know, it's based around resistance to the West, and there's a very, very strong resistance to anything that looks like surrender or capitulation. So even if Trump were to go after Kharg Island, even if he were to seize Iran's oil, take the oil, as he says, I think the response from the Iranians would be more resistance, more defiance, and they would take the financial hit, rather than surrendering.

[13:15:00]

SANCHEZ: And even as prices in the U.S. have gone up dramatically, over a dollar in the past month or so since the war began, around the world, the effects are much more pronounced. The Philippines just declared a national emergency. Poland, South Korea, China, Croatia, Hungary have all introduced price caps on oil, even as, again, prices rise in the United States.

Do you think it was part of the calculus of the administration to essentially test the global economy and say, the United States can endure this, and try to pressure Tehran into change? Was that a safe calculation?

BREW: Well, I think, when the war began, there was an expectation in the administration that it would be short, that it was something that they could even wrap up in a couple of days. Obviously,that has not been the case.

I think, right now, the administration is still focusing on trying to secure a more decisive win. Like the Iranians, President Trump and the rest of the administration don't want to appear to be backing down from pressure, Iran's success at closing the Strait of Hormuz. They don't want to back down. They don't want to blink first.

But the shock from the closure of the Persian Gulf, it's really like a tidal wave. It's rolling across the world. It's affecting South Asia and Asia first. Very soon, it's going to start affecting Europe in a more profound way. And the United States, despite being a major oil and gas producer, it won't be spared the effects.

SANCHEZ: Do you think the war could weaken the U.S. dollar and its standing as the world's reserve currency?

BREW: Well, it'll be an interesting thing to watch, given that, in times of crisis, like what we're seeing now, very often, the dollar and U.S. Treasuries and other assets are seen as being a safe haven for investment.

The nature of the connection between the U.S. dollar and oil has changed because the U.S. has become such a large exporter, a large producer of oil. But given that this is a war that's being driven in many ways by the United States, the attack on Iran, the focus now on perhaps seizing Iranian territory, I think that might raise new questions as to the security of the dollar, the security of investing in the U.S. unless the war ends soon.

SANCHEZ: Gregory Brew, thanks so much for showing your perspective. Appreciate your time.

BREW: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come this afternoon: The FCC chairman breaks with the agency's independent tradition. We're going to bring you the comments that are drawing backlash.

And thieves break off with more than just a piece of a Kit Kat bar. Try 12 tons. We have details on this Kit Kat caper when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [13:22:01]

KEILAR: FCC Chair Brendan Carr is facing criticism from experts for describing recent shakeups in the news industry as President Trump winning.

He said that on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, what he said and where he said it marking a sharp break from past FCC chairs. They traditionally run the agency as an independent body.

CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter is with us now.

That is certainly not how Brendan Carr runs it. What more did he say, Brian?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes, very far from it. He likes to be regarded as President Trump's media pit bull.

He says he's countering media bias, but many observers say he's really trying to make the media Trumpier and cause media companies to submit and self-censor with no regard for the truth.

But let's play it in his own words. Here's what Carr said on stage at CPAC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRENDAN CARR, CHAIR, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION: President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far, PBS defunded, NPR defunded, Joy Reid gone from MSNBC.

(LAUGHTER)

CARR: Sleepy eyes Chuck Todd gone, Jim Acosta gone, John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough CNN is going to have new ownership as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: Now, the FCC has little, actually nothing to do with those anchor changes on random channels and various channels. However, the FCC does have overview of CBS and did approve the CBS merger, the deal that resulted new ownership for Paramount last year.

CNN and the rest of Warner Bros. Discovery now being pursued by Paramount, the government now reviewing that potential deal. So, Carr using his bully pulpit trying to show that he has influence. Even though he has limited actual government power, he does have that power of persuasion. And he is arguing that Trump is using that to reshape the media, Brianna.

KEILAR: And we are right now monitoring the White House press briefing this hour. I wonder what you think, Brian, because the Pentagon, which, obviously,you would expect would have regular press briefings in the middle of a war, actually has not held a press briefing for about a week-and-a-half.

It's pretty unusual.

STELTER: That's right, more than a week. I'm starting to keep a daily tally over here. It's been 11 days since there's been a briefing at the Pentagon.

During past wars in the Middle East, especially the early stages, U.S. military officials stuck to a regular briefing schedule. There were basically daily updates. It doesn't seem that the Trump administration believes that it has an obligation to do that, perhaps because of Trump's repeated boast that MAGA Republicans are backing the war.

But there's very little effort we're seeing from the Trump White House, the Department of Defense, the State Department to persuade the rest of the American people to provide daily updates about the state of the war. What we have seen from Karoline Leavitt during past White House briefings is a whole lot of rhetoric, at times, I would argue, even propagandistic commentary coming from the White House podium, very little information about the state of the war effort.

We will see if that's any different today.

KEILAR: All right, Brian Stelter, thank you so much.

Still ahead: Some TSA agents are starting to collect their back pay that is owed to them, but is it enough, considering how they experienced two government shutdowns just months apart?

[13:25:08]

We're going to ask a TSA worker how things are going next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: These are live images coming from the White House press briefing. As you can see, Karoline Leavitt has started briefing reporters. She says that talks with Iran are ongoing, and going well, she adds. We're going to keep monitoring this and bring it to you live as she takes questions from reporters.

No doubt she is going to be asked about the partial government shutdown, especially with Congress on a two-week break now and talks to end that shutdown at an impasse. There are growing questions about when exactly the stalemate is going to end. Today, though, TSA employees are finally collecting some of that back pay that they're owed.