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Dangerous Tornado Outbreak Slams Illinois And Indiana; Iran Has Agreed To Invite IAEA Inspectors Back Into Country; President Trump Blames Vandalism For Reflecting Pool Issues; Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan Dies At 100; Over 200 Recruits Fall Ill As Flu Outbreak Grows At Texas Air Force Base. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired June 22, 2026 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:32:10]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, residents in Illinois and Indiana waking up to assess the damage after multiple tornadoes ripped through the Midwest. Take a look at this.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Honey. No. Why the -- why are we driving to it? Everyone's getting off the interstate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, dear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's a tornado.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: She's asking the right questions. Why are they driving to it? Authorities said two people were killed in two separate mobile homes in rural Illinois. And that storm system? Not over.

CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar joining me now. Where is all this headed? That is an incredibly large tornado. My goodness.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is. Yes. The one behind me. This is a wedge tornado. This was in southern Illinois from yesterday. Again, one of many tornadoes that kind of impacted this particular area here. Again, you can see that clear shot right through there. Again, very large tornado. But as we mentioned, this was one of many tornadoes from yesterday.

And not just tornadoes. We had hail reports, some even bigger than 10 tennis ball size yesterday, as well as damaging wind reports. These are all the storm reports that came in just the last 24 hours, again in several different areas of the country.

Now we look at where the radar shows the storms right now. You've got that first cluster kind of making its way through Cleveland, Pittsburgh area and into the Northeast. But you have the stronger section that is a little bit farther down to the south areas of Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma. And there is a tremendous amount of lightning with a lot of these storms.

In addition to that, you have several severe thunderstorm warnings and even tornado warnings ongoing. We've had them ongoing the last few hours and they are still going to continue as we go through the next several hours as that line begins to progress eastward.

You also have these dark red boxes here. These are the flash flood warnings because even before these storms came in a lot of this area, the ground was already saturated from days of previous rain. Now this system very, very slow moving, it's adding more rain on top of that and that is just exacerbating the flooding concerns in a lot of these areas.

Here you can see the green and red shaded areas. That's where you have the flood watches and the flash flood warnings on the map. Many of those are expected to continue for the rest of the day today.

Now, in terms of where we anticipate the rest of severe thunderstorms today, it's kind of this U shape that you have here kind of going through the Rocky Mountains, down through the Southeast and up into the Mid Atlantic. Damaging winds is going to be the prime threat for today, but we still could have some large hail and even some isolated tornadoes.

The big concern is as this storm slides off to the east, we do have two World cup games tonight, one in Philadelphia and one in New York that could have some stormy conditions around the time of each of those games.

SIDNER: Allison Chinchar, we're going to be watching this. Those tornadoes were stunningly large. Thank you so much for your reporting on this.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: The president says the reflecting pool needs to be drained again.

[07:35:00]

This multimillion dollar project is still fighting the algae problem. And now the president's trying to blame vandals for all of the setbacks and a major flu outbreak at a U.S. Air Force base and not even in peak flu season. Why it's putting the spotlight once again on the Defense Secretary's decision to change vaccine requirements among troops. We'll be back.

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Breaking this morning, moments ago, Vice President JD Vance said that Iran has agreed to now allow nuclear inspectors back inside that country. Vance also said the two sides made good progress during talks in Geneva and laid a foundation for a future final deal. [07:40:01]

Oil prices are dropping. This morning, what they see as encouraging signs out of these talks.

With us now, CNN national security analysts Alex Plitsas and Beth Sanner. And Alex, I want to start with you.

If I'm not mistaken, there were weapons inspectors inside Iran as recently as a year or so ago. Was the significance of around Iran now saying they can come back in immediately? This was mentioned in the memorandum of understanding.

ALEX PLITSAS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYSTS: So it's part of the overall, I guess, implementation of the MoU is how I'll put it. We still haven't gotten to the technical details. So the inspectors coming back is good, obviously, because since the strikes, there hasn't really been anybody in place to see what the condition is on the ground. So having them come back is an important step.

But overall, again, this is really just the high level implementation portion without actually getting into the technical details of how we're going to solve some of the thorniest issues.

BERMAN: Beth, what have we seen so far in terms of leverage and who seems to have more of it in these talks?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, you know, I think that it was very interesting that President Trump came in with this threat of, I mean, almost a threat to assassinate the group who was negotiating saying that they may not make it back to their country if they didn't stop Hezbollah in Lebanon from initiating actions. And I think that this is so important in terms of this leverage. Right. But then Vance had to walk it back.

So, you know, when you have leverage like that and you try to use it, but no one believes that you will actually follow through with it, then you don't really have leverage. Right. So I think that, you know, when you -- when you look at what leverage we have, it's mainly about economics, right? It's really about the dangling of the carrot because the stick is almost completely irrelevant right now and not believable.

And I want to make one additional point on this idea of inspectors. We can't forget that Iran is actually obligated, treaty obligated to have IAEA inspectors in Iran. So what we're asking them to do is literally, yes, fulfill the MoU. But that's nothing to do with the fact that they already are under that treaty obligation.

So again, you know, we're kind of getting concessions for things that they're supposed to already be doing.

BERMAN: Or are we getting concessions at all? Alex, are we seeing Iran give anything they're not more than willing to give so far in these talks? PLITSAS: So far there hasn't been anything of substance. You know, to best point, they were granted the oil waivers. You know, things are starting to flow there. But we haven't seen any movement in terms of the technical details.

The main issues the President wanted, which is particularly along the nuclear file. Again, from what we're hearing that came out of day one of the talks, this was really what I would call the next level below the MoU. If the MoU was, hey, we've agreed to talk about these topics. What was set forth is a framework over 60 days for how they would get those done in a very tight timeline that would quite frankly be unprecedented, and then some deconfliction mechanisms for potential regional hotspots for conflict. But other than that, Iran hasn't agreed. It looks at this point, due to major concessions of any kind.

BERMAN: On the one hand, talking is talking, which is good. I mean, you would rather have every side talking than not talking. There is another side of this, though, Beth, which is that the Iranians, they're good at talking. And the longer the talking goes on, it seems it benefits them.

So when they go back, when these negotiators go back to Iran, how do you think they'll explain it to the higher ups there and how will it be received?

SANNER: Well, they've already put out some statements that, as Vice President Vance indicated, are slightly divergent from the U.S. understanding. For example, on the frozen assets, where the foreign minister of Iran has put out that there was this movement on the frozen assets, and the central bank governor of Iran said that they signed agreements about getting the frozen assets underway and transferred.

So, they are saying that this is all positive, that they're getting things, specifically the money and they want the money. So there is some leverage there. But, you know, again, time is something that is probably more on Iran's side than our side as we're really trying to get the strait open.

And as Alex said, this is all about getting the strait open and then getting that money moving. So -- and the mechanics for doing that, the Lebanon part we haven't talked about, but having this kind of board or group overseeing the confliction is very important because that is the thing that could spoil this quickly.

BERMAN: It can and has in the past. And every day, every day, it's a huge risk to all sides there. Alex Plitsas, Beth Sanner. Great to see both you. Thank you. Sara.

[07:45:01]

SIDNER: All right. This whole thing with the Reflecting Pool renovation is turned into a hot green mess. Now President Trump is claiming vandals have damaged the algae plague reflecting pool on the National Mall. He posted online that multiple people have been arrested. A senior administration official told CNN that police arrested five people and issued citations to five others. Among those arrested, a three time U.S. Olympian. Now the Olympian said that he didn't damage anything. All he says he did was touch the stuff that was floating up from the bottom of the pool.

Trump also posted that he inspected the pool blaming vandals, saying that they put a 250 foot long gash in the structure and poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the water. There is no evidence that either of those things happened. Kate.

BOLDUAN: And joining us now to talk about where this is CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for the New York Times Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Washington bureau chief at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Tia Mitchell. It's good to see you guys.

Zolan, this is the like the strange presidential fixation that just won't quit is turning into at least. Can you bring everyone outside of D.C. inside to what this story, this issue, this multimillion dollar project, what this really is about that you think, is it a distraction, a story of distraction or something else?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is a piece of a much broader story, right? And that broader story is President Trump's willingness effort to push boundaries, to reshape government institutions, Washington institutions, to reshape them in his own image, to his own liking.

You see the Reflecting Pool, I see that as a -- as a data point that could also be grouped with the ballroom renovations, the Oval Office and sort of putting a new Mar-a-Lago look on that as well. Just in the past couple of days he had a big announcement to unveil the new Air Force One, that the jet that was donated by the Qataris as well, which obviously prompted a lot of scrutiny there.

And I talk about push boundaries, push limits. Well, how -- how does that apply to here? You know, the president is pointing to vandals as being the reason for the clouds of algae and the pieces of paint that are now floating up. I mean, there's little evidence behind that. It also doesn't explain the hurried process that we saw for this project. That's what's prompted scrutiny here.

The president basically what the administration to get this done quickly invoked this exemption to award essentially a no bid contract to a company with ties to a Trump donor to then do this work. Right. That's what's prompted a lot of scrutiny here. And by the way, that exemption only supposed to be used when you can justify that the work is being done because an administration official or government worker has an injury. That wasn't the reason the administration used here.

Rather, the justification they used for awarding this no big contract was they wanted this to be done before July 4th. The President has been wanting to do all these projects to make a big show for America 250 for July 4th. All of that adding into some of the different legacy projects that we've seen him really prioritize over the past year. BOLDUAN: And you add that together, Tia, and the millions of dollars as Zolan just laid out, and possibly now, millions of dollars more to redo, drain and do over, if you will, is this something, something that readers of the AJC see as a pressing issue for the federal government right now? Like it's always kind of this conversation of is this breaking through more than just flooding people's Twitter feeds?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: So I think it's breaking through kind of for the reasons that Zolan outlined. So at the end of the day, I think most people agree that they wanted, you know, a Nice America 250 celebration. It's a big deal, 250 years. They know there would be some costs for beautification.

But where this is becoming a story is because of that, you know, it's just another metaphor for the Trump administration where he oversells. It's part of his myth making. It's part of him trying to shape things to his own liking.

And then what happens? Well, there's the appearance of cronyism and not following the rules. Now it's oversold and under delivered. It ultimately is backfiring. And then when you get on the back end is instead of the administration saying, oh, we made a mistake or things didn't go as planned, there's now the blaming others in coming up with excuses that can't be verified.

And I think that's what frustrates a lot of Americans when they see that from the Trump administration, just the lack of transparency, the lack of evidence that makes them think that they're not being told the truth. That's what this reflecting pool saga is becoming.

[07:50:02]

BOLDUAN: Yes. And just yet another. And also just kind of the fatigue and exhaustion that people have over yet another thing that is a crisis and in us versus them and just more division around yet another thing that it's like a mad libs of projects that you could come up with of like this is going to be the next big fight. The reflecting pool.

It's good to see you both. I really appreciate it. John.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. Delicate and dangerous. How doctors manage one of the most complex surgeries out there to separate conjoined twins and Taurus stranded after a raging fire at a beach resort. Look at that.

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BERMAN: All right, the breaking news. The former head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, has died. That's according to his wife, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. He was 100 years old. One of the most influential financial minds of the last 100 years here in the United States. Greenspan served five terms as Fed chair. He served under four separate presidents. A mammoth contribution to the country and the entire financial structure we now live under. May his memory be a blessing. Kate.

[07:55:00]

BOLDUAN: An investigation is underway into a deadly fire at a resort in the Dominican Republic. You probably saw these images. It's just really wild. It happened Friday morning. One woman, a tourist from Italy, died in this.

Three others were rushed to hospitals and nearly 1,700 people were evacuated because of this. Officials believe that the flames spread so quickly because, well, the straw roofs that you see right there. And also they were experiencing windy conditions that day. It's not clear yet, though, what actually started this fire. Just look at that.

And the good side of artificial intelligence to start off the week. Don't worry, we'll bring you the bad shortly. But here's the good. Twin sisters Mercy and Goodness were born as conjoined twins in Nigeria. Their skulls fused together.

Now, after successful surgery with the help of some pioneering AI, the now three year olds can finally look each other in the eye. Doctors say they presented an especially hard case because it's not just their skulls were fused. They shared brain tissue, they shared blood vessels.

The team used this technology to develop a custom skull implant for each, which had never been used before in a case like this. They also use virtual reality and other simulations to prep and plan for the complex procedures. In all, it took more than 40 hours over a period of four months, with the final surgery lasting 12 hours.

Now doctors say Little Mercy and Goodness have made a full recovery and are back home in Nigeria. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Thank you so much, Kate. New this morning, two diseases are raising fresh public health concerns across the United States. First, a flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas has reportedly sickened more than 200 recruits. According to Representative Joaquin Castro, it has been two months since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended the military's annual flu vaccine requirement, calling it absurd and overreaching.

And then you have what's going on in Utah, health officials are marking one year since a measles outbreak there with hundreds of cases reported and no end in sight.

Joining me now, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University. I mean, I guess the first question to you is this any surprise? I mean, when you look at what's happening, first with Hegseth saying that the flu vaccine is no longer required or it's made optional.

And secondly, way that the administration has been quite skeptical of vaccines.

DR. JONATHAN S. REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: No, this is, this is an expected outcome and it's an unforced error. Vaccinating our troops has been a part of the United States military doctrine for 249 years. February 1977, 1777, General George Washington mandated smallpox inoculation for the entire Continental Army. So this has been part of the requirement for our troops for almost 250 years.

And it's a force protection measure. Our troops are often in very close confines. They often sleep, particularly recruits. They sleep in open bunks in large areas. They eat meals together. And if you have a large number of unvaccinated people and you get an aggressive strain of flu like the H3N2 strain that is circulating now in Texas, it can wreak havoc. And that's what's happening now. It was completely unnecessary.

And the Air Force has requested and received a waiver on requiring recruits to be vaccinated. They are now being vaccinated. Hegseth's order should be rescinded.

As for measles in Utah, the current leadership of HHS has spent the last 20 years casting doubt on the safety of that vaccine. And as a result, in the United States, on average, only about 92 percent of kindergartners are vaccinated for the vaccine, and we need 95 percent for community immunity. In Utah, it's 88 percent.

So again, when a very opportunistic virus like the measles virus enters a community with large numbers of children who have not been vaccinated, this is what happens. And this outbreak will continue until we vaccinate all those kids who have not yet received the MMR vaccine.

And it's a major process. It's a major problem, and it's going to continue throughout the United States. We are about to lose. The United States is about to lose our designation as having eradicated measles in this country. That will happen this fall.

SIDNER: It is so disturbing because we know the children have died, particularly in Texas, from measles, something that was eradicated. And a lot of us kind of ignore the flu because we're like, oh, we'll do treatment, and you can -- you can get a vaccine for it. It's fine.

[08:00:04]

But you can see what a huge problem it can create.