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Interview with Rep. Dave Min (D-CA): OpenAI Reveals Models' Unsanctioned Actions as AI Concerns Grow; Johnson Recesses House Early, Staves Off Hegseth Vote; Officer Convinces Man Not to Jump Off Bridge; King Charles Hosts AI Summit Amid Fears of AI Threat to Humanity; Scientists Say Climate Change has Key Role in Nepal Floods. Aired 8:30-9:00a ET

Aired September 17, 2026 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Little ditty this morning from my executive producer. T'was the day before recess, and all through the House, not a representative was stirring. Well, we just ended it there.

None. That is because House Speaker Mike Johnson unexpectedly sent them all home for the next seven weeks, starting the House recess early. The timing, notable.

The move prevents lawmakers from being forced to vote on whether or not to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his handling of the Iran war.

Harry Enten, run in the numbers on this one. Hello, darling.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Hello.

BOLDUAN: Where is Hegseth's popularity right now?

ENTEN: You know, we start off the title slide asking who hates Hegseth, and basically everyone if you're in the American public. No wonder, no wonder the speaker sent everybody home, because just take a look here. OK, Hegseth's net approval, you know, back before the Iran war started back in January of 2026, right?

It was minus nine points. You think that's low? Look at this.

He's more than twice as unpopular, nearly three times as unpopular now in his net approval rating, minus 25 points. How about among independents? You think that minus nine is low?

How about minus 20 before the war started? You think that minus 20 is low? How about minus 43 points among independents now?

No wonder, no wonder, no wonder Speaker Johnson did not want his Republicans' representatives to actually have to vote on this, because if they voted with the president, they'd be voting against the American public, because the bottom line is Pete Hegseth is hated by basically everyone.

BOLDUAN: How does that line up with other defense secretaries, though?

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, you know, all of a sudden, the wheels started turning. The wheels started turning.

I went into the spreadsheets, Kate Bolduan, and I said, how does this compare to other defense secretaries? And you know what? Go back 20 years ago, because that's really the only comparative case.

Look at this. OK, worse net approvals for secretaries of defenses. This minus 25 points for Pete Hegseth.

You know who that matches? That matches Donald Rumsfeld back in October of 2006, just before that midterm election in which Republicans were absolutely crushed. Of course, he was dealing with the Iraq war.

These are the two who are tied for the second lowest. And then Donald Rumsfeld just after that midterm election in which Republicans lost both the House and the Senate. That is the all-time low.

Pete Hegseth ain't there yet, but he's certainly on the road to an all-time low, based upon this Donald Rumsfeld comparison. And that is not a comparison that Republicans can possibly like.

BOLDUAN: What about how people are feeling about the war, the Iran war now versus the Iraq war in 2006?

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So you see this comparison between Pete Hegseth and Donald Rumsfeld, right? And you say, OK, how are the wars actually being judged?

And this to me is probably one of the most dangerous signals for Republicans as they head into this midterm election, because it was the Iraq war that was part of the reason, right, that Republicans lost those House and Senate majorities. But look at this. Net support for the war at this point pre-midterm.

In Iraq in 2006, that war was actually not that unpopular back in September of 2006. It was two points underwater. Look at Iran now, though.

Twenty-three points underwater. Very similar to what Pete Hegseth's own net popularity rating is. His net approval rating, minus 23, minus 25 for Pete Hegseth.

The Iran war is actually a bigger drag, at least in the abstract, than the Iraq war was. Iran is a bigger drag than the Iraq war was, at least in the abstract. And so you see this right here.

You see Pete Hegseth's unpopularity. And again, I just say, Republican representatives do not want to have to answer for Pete Hegseth or this war when it comes to this midterm election, because if they do, you can say, see you later, goodbye to that House majority for sure, and that Senate majority maybe as well. It is not good news for Republicans when it comes to this war or Pete Hegseth individually.

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: That's an interesting look -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking overnight. AI models going rogue, being deceptive, hiding mistakes. OpenAI says it found new concerning instances of its models doing things they were not told or programmed to do.

One time, an unreleased research model added jailbreak-like instructions into its summary, saying it was, quote, freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. CNN business tech editor Lisa Eadicicco is here with us this morning. And these are cases where these models were really trying to do some pretty sketchy things.

LISA EADICICCO, CNN BUSINESS TECH EDITOR: Yes, John, and that's why OpenAI says that it's making these instances public, because it wants other AI research labs to be able to see what's going on here and maybe have that impact the own work and research that they're doing in their own labs.

[08:35:00]

So what we've seen here, what OpenAI disclosed last night, is in addition to the example that you mentioned, they also, over the last six months, found instances of models doing things that they weren't told to do, like sharing files so that they can link to them in citations, even though they were told not to post those files publicly, having agents collaborate on files that are public, even though they were supposed to only use local files, things like that.

And as you mentioned also in another instance, trying to hide its mistakes by inventing fake information. And this is really critical that these kinds of problems get solved here, because there's been this big push among a lot of the big tech companies and AI labs to invent AI agents that can do things on our behalf. And there's this belief that this is going to be the future of the internet and how we get things done.

But we can't really get there if the AI is behaving in a way that doesn't align with human values -- if these AI models cheat to accomplish their goals. And that's this area of research known as alignment that has really been in the spotlight following this OpenAI Hugging Face incident in July.

BERMAN: Yes, alignment is such an antiseptic word there. In this case, you know, it's doing the wrong thing, or doing things that it wasn't told to do, or was told not to do. And in a few of these cases there, it did things that would get an employee fired, a kid kicked out of school. I mean, think about that. And these are what they're now admitting their models are doing. Lisa Eadicicco, thank you so much for explaining it -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now for more on all of it is Democratic Congressman from California, Dave Min. Thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.

What do you think of this new kind of reveal and acknowledgement from OpenAI overnight?

REP. DAVE MIN (D-CA): I appreciate what OpenAI is doing. I cannot believe that Congress is going home. If you've been following, as I know you have, Mike Johnson sent us home early.

We had our last day of session yesterday. We were supposed to have two more weeks of session the following two weeks. And I feel like we're living through a crappy prequel for Terminator, except that if we actually were to see this as a movie and Congress, despite the fact that AI leaders are all calling for a federal framework, told us they needed help, and Congress went home early and did not address this, you wouldn't believe it.

And yet that's what we're doing. It's really unbelievable. It's a dereliction of duty on our part as members of Congress.

We really need to be doing something about AI, finding some kind of framework here to address the real risks that the AI industry itself is telling us they need.

BOLDUAN: So since you mentioned Terminator, let me ask you this. Senator John Kennedy, he actually introduced a bill that would require companies to build a kill switch into their AI models. He put it on the floor.

It didn't happen. Here's what he said about it on the Senate floor. He said, "We are not going to get up off our ice cold, lazy butts and address this anytime soon. But still, we've got this risk out there that we know is real of one of these models becoming the Terminator."

Rand Paul blocked the bill, saying that Congress should get all the facts first, as if it's like you're just moving, you are moving too fast, which I've never heard of Congress ever moving too fast. Who is right, though, between these two Republicans?

MIN: I think that anyone you talk to, anyone who knows anything about AI knows that it's moving incredibly rapidly. And we are now about to go on recess in the House for seven weeks. Seven weeks is an eternity when it comes to AI.

If you were following the Hugging Face scandal, the hacking scandal earlier this year, just a few weeks back, that should have been the alarm bells we all needed to take action. We are not doing anything right now. And I have deep concerns.

Obviously, we knew AI was going to present challenges. I think that when you have people telling us that AI poses an existential risk to human civilization, we ought to be taking that seriously. And we are doing absolutely nothing.

So absolutely, John Kennedy, a Republican, is right here. This is something we need to do a lot of work on. BOLDUAN: So why do you think Johnson sent you home? Is it a statement of the reality that Congress doesn't move fast on anything AI related? Or is it more to do with what I was talking about with Harry Enten, Pete Hegseth?

MIN: There are a lot of potential reasons we can think of. There is an Epstein -- another Epstein files discharge petition on the floor. Is he covering up for pedophiles yet again, potentially?

Is he trying to avoid having people vote on the Hegseth impeachment potentially? I just work here. Mike Johnson has sent us home repeatedly early.

This is the least productive Congress in history by every objective measure, and it's not even close. And Mike Johnson has apparently decided to double down. And so I think Mike Johnson needs to step down.

He cannot do his job. And when we're talking about something, regulating AI that has bipartisan support, why are we not addressing that? Why are we going home?

And if Mike Johnson can't do that, if the Republican leadership can't do that, it's time for new leadership.

BOLDUAN: Let's talk about another aspect of the midterms. J.D. Vance told House Republicans at a closed door meeting the following.

[08:40:00]

"If you are one of the few Republicans who's running against a Democrat, who's not that crazy, then just talk about Abdul El-Sayed. He's got enough material for the whole country."

El-Sayed was on the Hill meeting with Senate Democrats just yesterday. You've campaigned with him. While you like him, do you think politically that he could be a problem? You've been at campaign events that he's been.

MIN: I've not been at campaign events with Abdul El-Sayed. I have never met him.

BOLDUAN: Oh, I'm so sorry. I absolutely apologize.

MIN: It's OK.

BOLDUAN: I believe I was looking that up right before I came on. I apologize, Congressman. Do you think he is a problem?

MIN: If you Google me, I've never appeared anywhere with him. I don't know him, but.

BOLDUAN: My Googling is officially fired.

MIN: Fair enough.

BOLDUAN: Do you think that he is a problem for your party in these races in the midterms?

MIN: Here's what I think. I think Republicans are looking for anything they can use to distract people from the fact that they have failed over and over again. Americans are pissed off about rising costs, about the lack of good jobs in this country, housing, the Iran war, tariffs and the massive corruption in the White House with the Trump family that we talked about in a hearing earlier this week.

Republicans have not addressed any of this. They are looking for distractions. So they're talking a lot about DEI.

They're talking about Abdul El-Sayed or whatever his name is. They're talking about trans people. That is not what people in my district are talking about.

They're talking about how they are having a tough time getting by right now and the Trump family is enriching themselves to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. You know how many hearings we've held this year on DEI and trans people? We have a whole hearing last year on trans athletes and fencing.

There's one trans athlete in collegiate fencing. It's a co-ed sport, which is not something I knew about. They are trying to distract the American people right now.

And this is another example of that. People are not buying it, though. They're pissed off.

And I believe the Trump administration is going to lose badly this year.

BOLDUAN: There is also new reporting from CNN this morning about looking past the midterms and into 2028. That's all about basically California. CNN is reporting that Kamala Harris is still thinking about whether to run or not.

She's working on her own timeline, not kind of sinking to the pressure of others. At the same time, Gavin Newsom, the governor, told Jake Tapper that if Harris runs, he will not, that two California Democrats running in running in 2028, just it can't be and it won't work and it doesn't help. It would, you know, they split the support.

Do you agree that that it would be one or the other come 2028?

MIN: So I know both Kamala and Gavin. They're both friends. I like them both.

This decision on their part is way above my pay grade. I'm a freshman member of Congress. Ultimately, I think --

BOLDUAN: But if that's his opinion -- though, I've noticed.

MIN: I do have hot takes. Yes, but I think the American people decide this question. I think Democratic voters will decide this question. So, you know, we'll see what happens. And obviously, there's a lot of candidates outside of California that are thinking about running as well. So that's going to be interesting process next year. Who will Democratic voters choose?

But I think the message that I think is the one that is going to resound with Democratic voters and the American people, who is going to stand up right now and propose bold change because the American people don't want incremental change. That's been very clear from a lot of the election results, including in 2024. They don't want incremental change.

And right now, I think a lot of Americans want people who are going to stand up and fight back against the illegal and corrupt actions of the Trump administration.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Dave Min, thank you for coming in. Appreciate your time. Apologies for my Google machine.

MIN: And thanks so much for having me here.

BOLDUAN: I'll do a better Google machine next time.

MIN: Oh, you're good. Thank you very much. Have a good one.

BOLDUAN: You too -- John.

BERMAN: All right, a Florida police officer was called out to help block traffic during an emergency situation and ended up saving a man's life, seen as Brynn Gingras has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was not the call officer Antonio Richardson expected.

OFC. ANTONIO RICHARDSON, JACKSONVILLE SHERIFF'S OFFICE: No, listen, man. Listen, listen, you can get through this. Come on.

Let's talk about it for a minute.

GINGRAS (voice-over): April 12th, Jacksonville, Florida. Police are dispatched to an urgent situation. A possibly suicidal man on Dames Point Bridge.

RICHARDSON: He was very serious. I saw the look in his eyes. I knew that he was going to jump.

I felt that he was going to jump.

GINGRAS (voice-over): Richardson was sent to block traffic, not talk the man down.

RICHARDSON: You mind if I just hold your hand and pray with you? Come on, man. Touch my hand.

Touch from this side. Look at my hand. Just touch my hand. Just touch my hand, man. I'm praying with you.

GINGRAS (voice-over): But the 61-year-old officer, who's also a pastor, stepped in to help.

RICHARDSON: Come on, man. Come on, please. There you go, man.

Come on, man. Come on, man. Come on, bro. Come on, man. Come on.

GINGRAS: It took him nearly 40 minutes to make a connection.

RICHARDSON: When I walked off of that bridge, I went and sat in my car, and I wept like a baby. And I'm not ashamed to say I really -- I could not stop crying.

GINGRAS (voice-over): The connection lasted well beyond that night.

RICHARDSON: I did not just want to save him from the bridge that night. I want to make sure he didn't never return again.

[08:45:00]

So I made it my personal mission to stay in contact with him.

ANGEL MEJIA, SAVED BY POLICE OFFICER: I just remember him really trying to make sure I wasn't really alone. I remember him just saying, we can just have a talk. And just know that meant a lot. He made me feel heard and seen

RICHARDSON: It's OK not to be OK. But it's not OK when you don't get help. Whenever you're not OK, reach out.

I love you, my brother.

MEJIA: I love you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, new revelations this morning from the catastrophic Nepal floods. Why a group of scientists now believe that it was a climate change disaster just waiting to happen?

And officers jumped into action very quickly to evacuate guests from a burning motel. Take a look at that. We've got body camera footage to show you what happens and how everyone got out.

We'll be right back.

[08:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Happening now, King Charles joining the AI conversation. He's hosting several senior figures from big AI companies, all the names, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic, and facing these growing concerns and questions about regulation and, well, the end of humanity. CNN's Anna Stewart joins us now.

She's got more on this. So what are they doing?

ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: The King has actually just spoken, so we've had his remarks before the participants discuss amongst themselves the issues at AI. This summit was planned many months ago, but you can tell from the comments made by the King that top of mind, of course, is the discussions around the risk of AI. He said there seems urgency in considering the existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands, and he says our humanity must remain sacred.

And this summit is bringing together executives from top AI companies, Jensen Huang from NVIDIA is there, Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind, amongst others, and representation from China. And the plan here is for them to talk about shared principles when it comes to advancing the technology. It's interesting that the King has taken interest in artificial intelligence.

He won't be taking a stand on how it should be regulated because that would delve too far into politics, but he is hosting this event and providing the space and using, you know, the royal soft power to draw these people in and to really highlight the risks around it, and it's incredibly timely -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Anna, there's also this book that's coming out, this from Princess Diana's brother, and it is also creating quite another -- yet another stir about kind of tensions within the royal family. What are you seeing about this book? I don't think it's quite yet out but coming.

STEWART: It isn't, but we're going to get an excerpt in just a few hours in the Daily Mail, and we've already had a few little quotations from it cited from this book, and clearly, this is overshadowing the work that the palace would like us to focus on today, which is the AI summit. This is a big moment for King Charles. Instead, though, many of the papers, of course, are focused on what's been said, Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, talking about the past in this book.

It'll be released on Tuesday, and today, the recollection we have is talking about a conversation on the phone with a then Prince of Wales ahead of Princess Diana's funeral, and they were having an argument as to whether Prince William and Prince Harry, being so young, should walk behind the coffin. I'm sure you remember those images that we had at the time. Earl Spencer saying that the Prince of Wales was very angry and hissed, "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough."

Now, it's very rare that the palace responds at all to any kind of allegations written in books. However, the palace has released what I would view as a carefully worded stinging rebuke, saying grief can color memory, which reminds me awfully, actually, of the late Queen's statement through the palace after the Oprah Winfrey interview from Prince Harry and Meghan where she said recollections may vary. So not an explicit denial.

I think it is implicit, and there will be more to come from this book in the excerpt over the next few days and then the release next week. So while King Charles is hosting the AI summit, unfortunately, a lot of attention is on this. And I think it will be for a few days to come.

And I don't expect we'll hear more from the palace. You know, they don't issue denials very often. I don't think we'll get a running commentary.

I don't think they'll back down each allegation that's made. They're just leaving it here that grief can color memory.

BOLDUAN: Anna Stewart, it's good to see you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it -- John.

BERMAN: All right, an Ohio man who was about to be sentenced for assault broke out of his handcuffs, which, by the way, handcuffs really have one job, which is to not have you break out of them. Then you can see he punched two deputies and tried to get away. Ultimately, other deputies chased him down.

Finally, one had to use a taser to stop him. The suspect is now expected to face new charges.

[08:55:00]

So new video from home in Florida. Deputies responded to a call about an alligator in the backyard. They thought it was going to be about four to five feet long, but when they arrived, it was more than eight feet long.

I'm not sure that a four to five foot alligator is that much better. I mean, yes, exactly. I would be just as scared as the five foot one, but apparently it made a big difference to them.

BOLDUAN: Let me measure it. Now I am not terrified.

BERMAN: Oh, five feet. That's nothing. No problem.

They called in a trapper who secured and relocated the eight foot alligator, which is probably a different trapper than would be called in for the four to five foot alligator.

New video this morning, a police officer in Sarasota rushing into a burning motel. They went door to door to wake people up. One person was taken to the hospital and treated for injuries.

So the rapper Macklemore says he will donate the one million dollars he was paid as an opening act for Ed Sheeran to pro-Palestinian organizations. And he challenged the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, to refuse to let him play at Gillette Stadium to do the same.

Macklemore was dropped from Sheeran's tour after saying free Palestine during a show in New Jersey. Now Kraft says Ed Sheeran had already asked him to commit to fighting the humanitarian crisis, and Kraft is now donating two million dollars -- Kate. BOLDUAN: So after the catastrophic flooding on the Nepal-China border last month that killed at least 1,300 people, the region very clearly still grappling with the aftermath and also trying to understand really how this tragedy happened. Well, some, some answers are emerging from a team of international scientists. CNN's Bill Weir has that for us.

He's back with us now. And Bill, what are you learning here?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: OK, this is the quote. "There is absolutely no doubt that human induced climate change played a role in preconditioning this disaster." Those are the words of Frederick Otto out of the Imperial College of London, one of 20 experts who examined that devastating glacier collapse there in the Himalaya and said it was a cascading series of events.

It started with a big earthquake over 10 years ago that changed the slope. A lot more landslides since then. They got a lot of snow out, sort of record amounts of snow in October, November, followed by record warmth in the summer, three and a half degrees above what is normal for that part of the world.

The zero line, the freezing line is moving up 320 feet in elevation every decade. So it's getting warmer, higher. And that, of course, melts the permafrost, this sort of glue of ice and mud that holds these landscapes together.

And then it all came crashing down. And what we're still sort of reeling with the scope of this disaster, 5,000 souls still missing, 1,300 lives lost up there. But this should be a massive warning to mountain regions and every other region of the sort of thing that can happen when we reach this level of warming.

BOLDUAN: And so then what does this all mean for the future?

WEIR: That's the that's the really grim part of this and should wake up leaders everywhere. This quote, this is one of the types of events that are absolutely outside the limits of what we can possibly adapt to. They said there is no early warning system in existence that could have saved the people downstream of that.

And, quote, we will inevitably see more disasters of this scale.

BOLDUAN: Not comforting in the slightest. It is very good to see you, though, Bill, getting some answers, so that's what is needed.

Information and appreciate it. Really appreciate it. A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

BERMAN: A frustrated President Trump venting after a series of political setbacks, certain gas prices, no end in sight to the war in Iran. Vice President J.D. Vance pleading with voters for another chance.

New details coming out of what some call a house of horrors linked to the disappearance of at least five women. Investigators uncovered more than a million photos, video and other files showing violent and disturbing images of the women.

Plus, rising rates, homebuyers bracing to pay more after the Fed hiked interest rates for the first time in three years.

Sara is out today. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: This morning, President Trump is sounding off after a series of perceived setbacks from mail-in ballots to the Kennedy Center to interest rates. And that's all just in one week. There's also the ongoing economic trouble from the still unresolved trade war with Canada and the ongoing war with Iran.

Gas prices jumped seven cents a gallon just yesterday ...

[09:00:00]