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FDA Advisers Support Easing Restrictions On Six Peptides; Trump Meets With Cabinet At Camp David Amid War With Iran; Cyber Attack Hits Water Systems In Several States; Anthropic Says A.I. Modes Hacked Three Companies During Testing; Passenger Who Witnessed Fatal ICE Shooting Says DHS Account Is A Lie. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired July 31, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: No one knows when that might happen. But Erica, Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a big proponent of this. He's been advocating for this to happen, so he could expedite that process. We have to wait to see.

ERICA HILL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We will be watching, and I know you'll be there to help us walk us through it as well. Jacqueline, appreciate it. Thank you.

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

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": The cabinet convenes. President Trump huddling with top members of his administration at Camp David, see what he had to say about the war with Iran, the DOJ's anti-weaponization fund, and the future of his Attorney General pick, Todd Blanche.

Plus, a cyber slip-up. Anthropic becomes the latest tech giant to find out that it's A.I. models hacked into another company's systems during testing. And a deadly border rush, tens of thousands of Moroccan migrants pouring into a North African Spanish enclave. We've the latest on an ongoing crisis as we follow these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

Right now, President Trump and his cabinet are meeting at Camp David in Maryland and the president is touting a long list of what he's calling historic achievements under his leadership, Including what Trump is describing as a breakthrough disarmament deal with Hamas though few details are known right now and it's unclear if Israel will sign on.

The president is also urging the Senate to confirm his former personal attorney, Todd Blanche as Attorney General, even though there's been some resistance among Republicans in the Senate. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Todd Blanche is a very, very good man, and he shouldn't be in the middle of this. He should get approved because you will never get anybody like him. You're never going to get anybody, and to make him a pawn in this whole thing, this is being done by a Senator. And I don't really blame him to be honest.

I endorsed his opponent and as soon as I endorsed his opponent, his opponent went through the roof and he won the primary election in Texas for Senate. And the man that lost, the man that I didn't endorse has become very angry and that's OK. I understand that. I probably would do the same thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We should note, it wasn't just one Republican Senator, there were several and they continue to say that resistance to Todd Blanche and this anti-weaponization fund extends just beyond those that Trump has primaried. The president also addressing a list of other domestic and international Issues that he's dealing with, including the war with Iran which appears to be drawing in more countries and potentially expanding.

Let's go now to the White House with CNN Senior White House Reporter, Kevin Liptak. Kevin, walk us through your takeaways of this meeting.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, and you know, the president summoned his cabinet up there to Camp David at what is unquestionably a difficult moment for him. You know, the polls are not good. The war in Iran seems to be dragging on without a clear endgame. And it was interesting on that front to listen to how the president sort of characterized the state of diplomacy, you know, he has gone sort of back and forth. He has Insisted that a deal is close and that the Iranians are begging for talks and then you see the pendulum swinging completely in the other direction.

And the president saying that the Iranians were stringing the U.S. along, that they weren't being truthful in how they were characterizing the diplomacy, and really casting some very serious doubt that any deal can be produced from these discussions. And it was that area where the president was today , that is kind of where his head was at in terms of trying to figure out how to get the Iranians to agree to end the conflict. Listen to what he said on that front.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They'll make a deal. As an example, we'll talk about nuclear and we'll be in there talking about nuclear for seven hours. I say why is it -- why do you need seven? You can take ten minutes. You have five minutes, we should solve it. But seven hours and then they'll go out, and I'll say they discussed nuclear. And they'll go out and they'll say, we never discussed nuclear. And I said, why -- what did they say? All they do is make me angry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: So that's a very different tone from what we heard from the president just earlier this week that said -- when he said that the two sides were very deep in negotiations and that potentially something could be happening quickly. You know, the concerns that he's voicing there are the same concerns that we've been hearing from officials behind the scenes.

They are worried that the Revolutionary Guards in Iran are the ones who are calling the shots, that the political figures that the U.S. is dealing with through these negotiations are simple figureheads. And then there's the concern about divisions in the IRGC itself as the commanders are jockeying for power and influence, which makes it very difficult a position for the president to negotiate from.

The question, of course, is what he does next. And when the president was asked in this meeting If he planned to go big, meaning does he plan to choose an escalation option to target Iran? He said, we're going big. We've already gone big. And he said his ultimate goal was that we just want to win.

[14:05:00]

And so, not providing a lot of clarity about where this very unpopular war, at this point, seems to be heading.

SANCHEZ: Kevin Liptak, live for us at the White House, thank you so much for that. Erica?

HILL: Well, also at that cabinet meeting, President Trump downplayed any Iranian connection to cyber attacks this week in American water systems. So officials at this point haven't publicly blamed anyone for the hacks on water infrastructure. This happened in at least six states we know. The attack however, the most serious in years, is putting national security experts on edge.

So this week, Minnesota reported 30 of its water systems were hacked. The president though, in talking about this, this morning at that cabinet meeting, he directly blamed the state government and Democrats for the problem. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you rule out that Iran is behind that cyber attack?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: No, I don't think so. No, I think that Minnesota is behind it. Do you know who's behind it? Minnesota, because they're grossly incompetent. I think the governor is behind it. I don't think there was an Iranian cyber attack. I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CNN Cybersecurity Reporter, Sean Lyngaas joining us now with the details.

So we should point out there haven't been any reports of contamination, right, when it comes to this attack? SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: That's right Erica, thankfully not. I mean, what happened -- unfortunately, this happens not infrequently where you have industrial computers that control the safety functions of water plants and other, you know, critical infrastructure facilities.

They're sitting online when they shouldn't be. Some of these facilities don't have the money or necessarily the staffing to really be on top of the cybersecurity stuff, so it's opportunistic. What's unusual here is that the sweeping nature of it.

We're talking about six or seven states, dozens of systems, all at the same time earlier this week. And it was not Tim Walz who did this. Our reporting shows that Iran is a suspect. U.S. officials haven't nailed down with certainty, but given the geopolitical environment we're in.

HILL: Yeah. But just to be clear, as you said, it wasn't Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. The president seems to think it is. The officials who you're talking with are trying to nail it down. Just so we can rule everything out, is Minnesota even on their list of possibilities?

LYNGAAS: It's not. They're not blaming Minnesota. They're trying to help Minnesota. And I spoke with the top cyber official in Minnesota earlier this week, and he told me that he really wants to raise awareness. They were sort of the first victim, but there are a number of victims in other states.

And you know, people like to focus understandably on who did it, which matters of course for the politics. But in terms of recovering from it and making sure there's no ill effects, that doesn't really matter if you're trying to just get things back online.

HILL: Yeah, you just don't want something bad to happen, right? It's the most important.

I also wanted to ask you about, and important to note, this is not about a specific hack, but of course as we're getting closer to the midterm elections, I know there have been some developments that you're following when it comes to election security.

LYNGAAS: Yeah, I've covered election security since the 2016 Russian influence campaign, and we've seen that. We first saw this big increase in staffing after that and focus from the Department of Homeland Security in helping support election officials. That was actually under Trump 1.0, the first administration, and they won bipartisan praise for that.

Since he returned to power, Trump has fired a lot of those experts, and what we're seeing now is with less than a hundred days to the midterms, when election season is already in full swing, and it's kind of too late to take a lot of federal support, because election officials have their plans in place. Now the Trump administration is saying, let's try to essentially fix what we broke. Obviously they wouldn't phrase it like that, but that's a way that a lot of credible folks in the community see it. So they're unveiling this plan that follows up on Trump's speech from

the other day, the declassified documents to basically say, we're here to support you, we want to build trust. The problem is that that trust has been shattered by the last several months.

HILL: It's important. Sean, good to see you. Thank you.

Still ahead here, Anthropic now says one of its A.I. models accessed systems at three other companies. It's (ph) calling the incident a misunderstanding at what it actually means for the future of A.I. Plus, A.I. driven health influencers are getting millions of views, pushing questionable products and medical advice. The new reporting this hour about the dangers as more people look to A.I. for health advice.

And some Federal Reserve Committee members say the Central Bank's latest decision on interest rates was a mistake. So what does this mean when it comes to the fight against rising prices? We'll take a closer look at that and much more, ahead on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:14:09]

SANCHEZ: Anthropic says some of its A.I. models accessed the open Internet and hacked into three separate organizations during routine security testing. The company says the models weren't supposed to be online, but a misunderstanding with a testing partner gave them access.

The discovery came only after rival OpenAI disclosed a similar incident last week where some of its test models hacked into the systems of A.I. platform, Hugging Face. Now this morning, the Hugging Face CEO told CNN his company is working with OpenAI on this issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLEMENT DELANGUE, CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, HUGGING FACE: It was a very unprecedented event, right? Like, everyone has to remember that a cyber attack is a crime. This is illegal. And we have to find a way to make sure these things don't happen more regularly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:15:00]

SANCHEZ: Both OpenAI and Anthropic have since suspended all cyber testing. CNN A.I. Correspondent, Hadas Gold joins us now. So Hadas, walk us through exactly what happened here, this misunderstanding, and how Anthropic's A.I. models ended up doing this.

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so after OpenAI disclosed that their own model escaped its testing environment, Anthropic said that they decided to look through their own history to see if their models had done something similar. They said they reviewed more than 140,000 evaluations, and they did find that in three instances, their A.I. models did end up hacking into other organizations.

They say that in these situations, all three of them, the models were given a capture-the-flag challenge, where in a testing environment, they were supposed to -- they were being told to go find secret information on another machine and hack into it and retrieve that information.

But due to a misunderstanding, as you noted, they actually had access to the open internet, and these models hacked into three different organizations' real live systems to try and ostensibly field this information.

Now, like the OpenAI situation, the safety guardrails on these models were lowered because they're supposed to be in a test environment, so they could assess their full capabilities. But unlike the OpenAI situation, Anthropic says all of their models still thought that they were in a simulation, and they say that one of their most advanced models actually stopped itself once it realized that it was actually in a real company's systems.

OpenAI's model knowingly broke out of its sandbox, finding a way to go ahead and cheat on its exam. We've been reaching out now to other A.I. companies to see if there's other models out there that have done the same, because we now have two of the leading frontier A.I. labs that ostensibly should have the best safety measurements in place while testing their really advanced models have had this happen to them. It's very likely that other companies have done the same.

SANCHEZ: Tell us about the three organizations that the Anthropic models got into. Did they cause any harm?

GOLD: So Anthropic did not name these three organizations, but they have said that they've been trying to get in touch with them or have already been in touch with them to try and work with them on what happened. They did say that their models used kind of, in some ways, kind of basic cybersecurity, weak passwords in some ways to get access to them.

What is interesting in these three cases, that's again different than the OpenAI case, is that none of the companies were seemingly aware that they had been breached. And the earliest known incident of one of Anthropic's models breaching a company is actually all the way back in April.

In the OpenAI case, Hugging Face recognized first, before OpenAI even knew it was going on, that they were being hacked and figured out a way to stem the hack. So in this case, these companies may not have even been aware. Maybe that's because the models were just trying to, you know, retrieve information, not necessarily do anything else.

But we're still waiting to hear about these companies, and maybe there was further damage we just don't know about. But as the Hugging Face CEO said, this is technically a crime. Hacking into another company's system is a crime. These companies could essentially take legal action if they wanted to.

SANCHEZ: Wow, Hadas Gold, thank you so much for that report.

Still to come, a CNN Exclusive. We speak with a witness who was inside the van when an ICE agent shot and killed a driver, a Houston father. What that witness says actually happened.

Plus, with important primary races set to be decided, we examine the growing power of progressives inside the Democratic Party. That and much more coming your way in just moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:23:07]

HILL: A man who witnessed the deadly July 7th ICE shooting in Houston is now speaking exclusively to CNN. Jose Trinidad says Lorenzo Salgado never posed a threat to officers and that he was going to surrender when his van was stopped. Now, his account contradicts the government's, which claims that Salgado rammed a law enforcement vehicle and refused officers commands.

CNN's Ed Lavandera has this exclusive interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSE TRINIDAD ROJAS PLIEGO, WITNESSED TEXAS ICE SHOOTING (through translator): I feel a bit traumatized or something like that. I'm sad about what happened, and especially what I saw, since I was the one who witnessed it all.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jose Trinidad says things will never be the same, that he's traumatized by the shooting because he saw it all. The 52-year-old construction worker witnessed the final moments of Lorenzo Salgado's life from inside the van driven by the man he simply called El Patron, the boss.

It was just before 7 a.m. on July 7th when ICE officers in unmarked cars started pursuing the four-men crew of construction workers in East Houston. Trinidad says he was sitting a few feet behind Salgado in the van.

Jose tells me during the pursuit, he heard the men upfront say they were being chased by ICE officers. Videos show ICE officers pursuing Salgado's van in unmarked cars, at one point, racing past the van on Canal Street. The last video shows ICE officers taking the three other men into custody and Salgado on the ground, handcuffed just after being shot.

LAVANDERA: When the ICE officer shot, where was he standing?

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO (through translator): On the side.

LAVANDERA (through translator): Who's side?

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO (through translator): Of his brother.

LAVANDERA (through translator): On the passenger side?

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO (through translator): The passenger side.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Trinidad says the ICE officer shot Salgado through the passenger window. The Department of Homeland Security says, during the chase, Salgado attempted to evade arrest, then weaponized his vehicle and tried to run over an ICE officer, and that's when an agent opened fire in self-defense.

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO (through translator): That's a lie.

LAVANDERA (through translator): That's a lie?

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO (through translator): Yes.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Trinidad says the DHS statement is a lie.

[14:25:00]

There are no known videos that capture the moment of the shooting. The ICE officers were not wearing body cameras.

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO: [Foreign Language].

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Trinidad says ICE agents were never in front of or behind the van, and that Lorenzo was about to turn himself over to the officers.

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO: [Foreign Language].

LAVANDERA (voice-over): The three men with Salgado inside the van have been in custody since the shooting. But this week, a judge ordered Trinidad's release, and this is the first time he's spoken publicly in detail about what happened.

After his release, Trinidad paid tribute to his friend at the memorial honoring Lorenzo Salgado on Canal Street and then prayed at his friend's gravesite.

TRINIDAD ROJAS PILEGO: [Foreign Language].

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Jose Trinidad says he and the other men in the van were simply going to work and that he's speaking out in hopes of getting Lorenzo Salgado and his family justice.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (on camera): We asked the Department of Homeland Security to respond to Jose Trinidad's allegations that their version of events in the shooting was a "lie." DHS referred all questions to the FBI, which is investigating the shooting.

The other two men that were in the white van with Trinidad, they remain in immigration custody. Trinidad is out, but there are terms of his release which dictate he must check in regularly with ICE. He has to wear an ankle monitor, and he is not allowed to work in the U.S. Ed Lavandera, CNN, Houston, Texas.

HILL: Still ahead here, shocking images from overseas, Spain facing a deepening immigration crisis after a mass crossing from Morocco to a Spanish enclave, one that has left dozens dead. That's up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)