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Prosecution Calls Final Rebuttal Witnesses in Clancy Murder Trial, Closing Arguments Expected Tomorrow; Confusion After Supreme Court Sides With Trump on Mail Ballots; Supreme Court Allows Trump to Pursue DHS List of Eligible Voters; FDA Approves Another Alzheimer's Blood Test; Target Apologizes for Offensive Halloween Costume. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 25, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: -- I can't take this anymore. They were right there, right to her wheelchair. So they come out first and they sit in the front row, and then a court officer actually wheels her in the wheelchair. And the camera does not capture this. You do not see this. And they put her at the defendant's table. She's got a large wheelchair with big, big wheels, and then she actually backed herself up and organized herself better how she wanted to be at the defense table.

After that, the jury walks in, and what I saw was middle age and maybe a little bit older, parents conceivably, grandparents conceivably, many more women, 12 women, six men. And then when the witness started testifying, this is expert testimony, and they've heard a lot of expert testimony, right? Notebooks come out. They start writing. It's predominantly women that are writing.

I saw one man writing, but the men are listening. They're all dressed very comfortably but very nicely. There is one man that has a vest on and a shirt and a tie he's wearing.

And one other thing about Lindsay Clancy, she looked at the jury as they came in. She's watching them, so she is comprehending that the jury is coming in, and she's watching them. At one point, the defense attorney, Keith Reddington, went over to Lindsay.

I haven't seen him do this before in the trial, but I watched it in person. And he puts his hands on her shoulders, and he's cross- examining, and you think this woman right here, and he was very aggressive. And I looked at the jury, and they were still focused on the expert witness because he was right in the middle of saying something.

And it's a packed courtroom. I mean, absolutely packed. You wait in line. You get in. I was lucky enough to get in. But it was very interesting to be in there.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Jean, what should we expect is coming up this afternoon? CASAREZ: This is what we know. We know that the prosecution has one more rebuttal witness. We believe it will be an expert witness.

And just to be honest, as you said, and Boris, the sides are so differentiated here because it is either psychosis and psychotic and like a puppet on a string with a voice commanding her, or it is that the action she did that day from the beginning when she took her daughter to the doctor, it was deliberate. She had a plan. The course of her day was as a normal day.

The expert witness taking one child down at the time into the basement was deliberate actions. And when her husband came home and he said what happened, she said, I tried to commit suicide very close in time, that it showed that she knew right from wrong. A deliberate mind made deliberate decisions.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah. Jean, thank you so much for sharing your vantage point with us. We do appreciate it.

What a new Supreme Court decision means for mail-in voting as some states are just days away from sending out ballots.

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[13:37:08]

SANCHEZ: The Supreme Court's latest ruling on mail ballots is causing major confusion, as some states are just days away from sending them to voters. North Carolinas, for example, are going out next Friday.

Now, this is important. The justices made no call on whether President Trump's executive order on mail-in ballots is actually lawful. Rather, the conservative majority ruled that the president can proceed with much of what he wants to do as the legal process plays out, saying that the states who moved to stop it acted too early.

The majority opinion even said this, quote, "The court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell." The White House, though, is casting this decision as a win, while the Trump administration can, at least for now, create a list of voters deemed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state.

Let's turn now to David Becker. He's a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department, now Executive Director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. David, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

What is the impact of the court's decision in your eyes?

DAVID BECKER, FORMER VOTING RIGHTS LAWYER FOR THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Well, Boris, I think you summarized it really well in terms of what has happened, what this means, and what this doesn't mean, and I think there are two things going on here. One, the federal government, including the Supreme Court, appears to be really intent upon injecting as much chaos and confusion into the election process as possible.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

BECKER: We know that the federal government is trying to seize voter data, even though the DOJ has gone 0 in 23 in those cases. The president has signed two executive orders. The second order is the one that's at issue here. And that was signed after primaries already started.

And the federal government has dragged its feet on implementing this. And then once the DOJ appealed the order blocking this order, they took a month to decide this. And that's causing chaos and confusion for election officials, those that I'm talking to on both sides of the aisle.

But it's also true that, as you noted, this is a really narrow technical ruling. They made no ruling on the merits. They just said it's too early. There's another injunction already in place nationwide that blocks implementation of this order. There's some orders that are expected this week from that judge up in Boston (ph) on that.

And so I think it's very, very unlikely that we'll see any parts of this order implemented for 2026 still. But it's unfortunate the Supreme Court wouldn't let the states attempt to be diligent and get an answer on this as early as possible, so they could go about their really important business of preparing the election.

SANCHEZ: So that question of the important business of preparing for November, how much lead-up time do these states actually need to adjust depending on what the court decides?

[13:40:00]

BECKER: Well, that question is largely now moot. We're in the middle of it in every single state. Ballots are being printed. Ballot envelopes are already printed and ready to go. Polling places have been determined. Instructions and procedures for the election are already well determined.

Training of those poll workers is going on. And as you noted, next week is when ballots start going out in some states. This is already happening. And it is honestly incredibly disrespectful to the public servants who run our elections all over the country, Republicans and Democrats, to try to radically change election policy this close to an election.

It's especially troubling where, as here, the federal government simply doesn't have this power. The Constitution is very clear that the states get to run elections. They have the primary authority on how to run elections. And the federal government, if it wants to intervene in any way, needs to get authority from Congress. The president has no power in this regard.

SANCHEZ: That was actually my next question, the idea that the federal government, through this process, is trying to infringe on the rights of states to determine how they administer elections. Can you walk us through how making this list of eligible voters does that and infringes on the rights of states?

BECKER: Yeah, it's not just making the list. That's not only what's in this executive order.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

BECKER: I mean, the federal government, I suppose, could try to make a federal list of voters, although Congress has not authorized it. And Congress has to authorize it. The founders were very clear. They did not want power to regulate elections centralized in a single authority, in a single person, in a single office. They want it decentralized all across the states.

That adds to our security. It makes it impossible for anyone to alter or change a national election. And that's a really incredible wisdom that came from the founders 250 years ago.

The Constitution is clear through the Elections Clause, Article 1, Section 4 on this. And so this executive order sought to tell DHS that it would create a list, basically a national voter list which, again, Congress hasn't authorized. DHS doesn't have the data for this. They themselves admit the data is flawed that they possess.

And then it would instruct the Postal Service to require states to tell them which voters they wanted to send mail ballots to. And the Postal Service could refuse to accept and deliver ballots to anyone that didn't match this flawed DHS list. That's incredibly dangerous. It puts the federal government, and particularly the Postal Service in this position that is not constitutionally authorized to determine eligibility of voters.

Only states have that authority. And so this basically creates this vast middleman of the Postal Service trying to interject itself into the voting process when they're already having troubles meeting their core responsibilities of just delivering the mail on time.

SANCHEZ: David Becker, great to get your perspective. Look forward to connecting again as this case moves forward.

BECKER: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

Still to come, the Trump administration is expanding its immigration crackdown as it prepares to target hundreds of thousands of foreigners who currently have legal visas.

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[13:47:46]

KEILAR: We're learning about a major development in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. The State Department is preparing for what could be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history.

CNN's Jennifer Hansler is looking into all of this. So Jennifer, tell us who's at risk here and when this could happen.

JENNIFER HANSLER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Brianna, we expect this to happen quite soon, and this could impact somewhere between 100,000, 200,000, even more people. This would impact folks who had come here on a short-term non-immigrant visa, B-1 or B-2 visa. These are applied to people who came here for business reasons, for example, if they came to visit family for tourist reasons, and then once they were here, applied for asylum.

Now, this is something that the State Department said was going to be done to combat what they described as visa fraud. State Department spokesperson, Tommy Pigott said that these types of visas are issued with the clear understanding that they are for those who intend to return home. Obtaining a visa in order to seek asylum is fraud, which is grounds for visa revocation.

Now, according to a source familiar that this would be done on a rolling basis, not in "one fell swoop." Now, we should note that in order to apply for asylum, you do have to be here in the United States and you have to be fleeing persecution. Now, this is, of course, all part and parcel of the Trump administration's broader crackdown on immigration, both in terms of who is coming to the United States as well as people who are already here.

Now, we saw back in April, the State Department was requiring folks to question those who were applying for these non-immigrant visas of whether they were going to apply for asylum, whether they feared persecution in their home country, and anyone who indicated that they were fearing persecution there would not be granted these visas.

Now, I just spoke with an immigration lawyer who described this move as largely symbolic because we would not see immediate deportation of the folks whose visas were revoked. If they have a pending asylum claim, they would have to go to an immigration court. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right, Jennifer Hansler, thank you for that. Boris?

SANCHEZ: So, seven months after federal immigration officers shot him to death, the family of Alex Pretti is demanding justice for what his parents call the murder of their son.

[13:50:00]

Michael and Susan Pretti and Alex's sister Micayla spoke to "Good Morning America" and they revealed they learned of Pretti's killing last January while watching coverage of the shooting on the news. Pretti, of course, was an American citizen and an ICU nurse. He died two weeks after Renee Good, another American citizen, killed by an ICE agent. The Pretti family says the names of the officers involved should be released.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN PRETTI, MOTHER OF ALEX PRETTI: I was not shocked that he helped somebody. My shock is, is that he was murdered and no one has given us the complete truth or anyone has been held accountable, and it's been seven months.

MICHAEL PRETTI, FATHER OF ALEX PRETTI: There was more effort in vilifying him than pursuing justice, investigating this.

S. PRETTI: We still hear those words about our child, a kid who is out observing something that should not be happening in this world today, in the United States. Why? What did he do to deserve to be murdered? To left cold, on the ground, dead, my child. What did he do?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: The family also says they received 2,000 cards in support of their son. The Justice Department says the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are still investigating the shooting.

Up next, see the moment a rear tornado swept through a village in France. The details on the video when we come back.

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[13:56:30]

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. First, a rare tornado hitting France. It ripped through a village in the southern countryside Monday afternoon and local authorities say at least 41 people were injured, 15 of whom had to be hospitalized. It's not the tornado itself that was rare here, France experiences a few dozen every year, but rather just how destructive it was, about 300 homes were damaged.

Also, the FDA clearing another blood test that can help detect signs of Alzheimer's. This test made by Roche and Eli Lilly can help identify signs of the disease in patients 55 and older with cognitive decline. It works by checking for biomarkers that strongly predict the buildup of sticky plaques associated with Alzheimer's. It's the fourth such test approved by the FDA in the last year.

We should note, it is not recommended as a standalone test for Alzheimer's, nor for people who do not have signs of the disease.

And Target is apologizing for a children's Halloween costume that ignited backlash on social media. And we want to warn you, some may find the product that we are about to show you offensive as critics say it evokes racist themes from minstrel shows. This is the costume in question. It was being sold as a kids' glows-under-black-light circus clown Halloween costume, but Target has now pulled it from store shelves. The retailer writing in a statement, quote, "As a company, we know we got this wrong and we are deeply sorry, the costume is offensive and should never have been part of our assortment." Boris? SANCHEZ: We are tracking several fast-moving wildfires across the country, including a new one spreading at a rate of 35 football fields a minute in North Texas. It's known as the Ross Fire and it's burning about an hour west of Fort Worth. Now, this is some of the damage done by the Hawk Fire near Reno, Nevada, more than 30 homes there have been destroyed, but firefighters fortunately are gaining some ground in their battle for containment.

CNN Meteorologist, Derek Van Dam is tracking all of this and joins us now with the latest. Derek?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, unfortunately, conditions could get worse before they get better for both the Hawk Fire and the Ross Fire just west of Dallas in the state of Texas. Look at the widespread fire activity across the western U.S., we're talking about dozens of fires. But of course, it's the Hawk Fire that has already destroyed buildings, jumped over highways and caused some of the destruction you've seen in your screens, just north and west of Reno.

This has been largely a wind-driven fire. You can see the southerly winds that tend to pick up and that's drawing in the flames further to the north and east. You can see the ignition point there. The winds relaxing overnight at night, as they typically do, but there are a few different weather patterns at play heading into the second half of this work week that will allow for the winds to pick up consistently. So, this is that narrow window of opportunity that firefighters on the ground and in the air need to get that final advantage on the front lines of the wildfire.

Now, the relative humidity, the amount of available moisture in the atmosphere, we do not want to see these numbers drop below 20 percent, especially below 15 and 10 percent. That is bone dry. The conditions on the ground are very, very dry. So that's not great. This is just being exacerbated by the ongoing drought over the western two-thirds of the country.

Both Reno and just west of Dallas, you can see the drought monitor here indicating the dry conditions and unfortunately, there is no rainfall in this forecast. So that is going to complicate the firefighting efforts on the ground, not to mention --