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Feds Charge Man in Alleged Plot to Attack Mall of America; Trump Returning to Texas to Lift Paxton's Senate Campaign; Walmart Disputes New Report Raising Fears of Surveillance Pricing; Tropical Storm Isaias to Threaten Gulf Coast as Hurricane. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired October 07, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Here's some breaking news. The FBI says it's foiled an ISIS inspired mass casualty event targeting the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Federal prosecutors say 18 year old Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud was planning to carry out a mass shooting at this Minnesota shopping center, this huge shopping center later this month using an AK-47 and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

According to an affidavit that was just unsealed, Mohamud showed admiration for other terrorist related attacks including the shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia last year. Let's bring in former FBI counterintelligence operative Eric O'Neill. All right Eric, let's talk a little bit about some of the things that have been revealed here.

He allegedly said we're learning from this information that he'd hoped to join a foreign terrorist organization. He was essentially shopping for organizations and eventually kind of landed on carrying out a plot in the name of ISIS. How are you seeing this?

ERIC O'NEILL, FORMER FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE: Yes, well this is one of these examples of a homegrown terrorist or someone who becomes a lone-wolf terrorist. There really isn't any information or evidence that this was ISIS begun, that ISIS recruited him. This is more inspired and at one point he had in his discussions with an FBI informant thought about going to travel overseas to join al-Shabaab.

So this is someone who decided upon himself that he was going to commit this horrible terrorist act and fortunately for over two years the FBI was tracking him and making sure that he never actually did it.

[14:35:00]

KEILAR: He seemed inspired by other attacks, right? Bondi Beach in Australia, horrific, New Orleans which we saw in 2025. What is that, you know, what are you seeing in that and how those other events may have inspired this?

O'NEILL: Certainly, it follows a pretty normal tradecraft for such individuals. They get radicalized online, they are consuming extremist content, they feel inspired by these other attacks, they have foreign jihad aspirations and then they look for a domestic target if they can't get overseas to fight. So they select that target, they have their operational planning and then eventually they need to acquire a weapon, some way to harm -- to create this mass casualty event and to cause this harm and that looks like the plot of this story here.

KEILAR: What questions do you have about this investigation because we've learned it was quite long, it was two years long, the defendant here is 18 years old, the bulk of the evidence actually came from messages with this confidential human source. What questions do you have?

O'NEILL: Well it's interesting and I'm pleased to see that the FBI is taking these things that are said in chat rooms seriously. Here this started in December of 2024, so it's a little under two years old, with an individual who was saying radicalized things. Now when you're saying radical things, I mean we have freedom of speech here, that doesn't mean that you have the intent to take the next step.

And putting on my lawyer hat, that intent is critical here. Did this individual intend to take that weapon and go shoot up on the Mall of America? It sure seems that way, at least from the FBI's affidavit and the arrest.

And then, of course, you know, over two years this individual was a minor in the beginning and then of course by the time they arrested him, almost two years later, he had become an adult. So what are they learning from the individual? How far did he go?

I'd like to see a little bit about the conversations and of course the FBI is going to have to show, the Department of Justice is going to have to show, that at the end of the day no one was leading him there, that he was moving from these aspirations, these I would love to do this, into I am going to do this, I plan to do this, and I've got the plan in mind.

KEILAR: Eric O'Neill, thank you so much for your insights here, we appreciate it.

O'NEILL: Always good to be here.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: So President Trump is heading back to Texas for the second time in less than a week. He's going to be there with his pick for the Senate, Ken Paxton, who's fighting for his political life. Polls show that Paxton and Democrat James Talarico are neck-and- neck less than a month out from the midterms.

Controversy has been swirling around Paxton even before he got the GOP's nomination, and now there are leaked recordings of him blaming the Iran war and gas prices for the tight race his campaign is now facing. Here with us to discuss is Marc Short, he's the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, White House legislative affairs director during the first Trump administration, and currently the board chair of Advancing American Freedom. Marc set aside that somebody keeps surreptitiously recording Ken Paxton and then leaking the audio.

His campaign says this is a non-story that every American already knows that gas prices are high and that President Trump is doing everything he can to bring them down. Can Paxton actually outrun the baggage that Trump carries given the fact that his decisions led to these high gas prices?

MARC SHORT, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO VP MIKE PENCE: I think say it almost the reverse way, I mean I think the reality is that Ken Paxton had significant baggage and the one who was willing to support him and get behind in the primary was Donald Trump and so he needs Donald Trump and so it's a little bit ironic to talk about that baggage. But Boris, you know here we are less than four weeks out from Election Day and we're talking about Texas and Kansas and South Carolina and states that are reliably Republican, you have to ask you know how do we get here? I think the reality is that we can lament how radical some of these candidates are and Talarico is certainly out of line I think with Texas voters.

And here on the three-year anniversary of the attacks of October 7th you have a Democrat candidate in Michigan who's unwilling to distance himself from Hamas. It's wild. But when you control the House, the Senate and the White House it's a referendum on you.

It's really hard to make it about them regardless of how out of the mainstream they are and so you've had basically Republicans follow this president in pursuing an economic path of massive tariffs and number one issue is affordability and that's what the president's always talking about is his tariffs. He rarely talks about tax relief he provided and so if voters are looking for a place to put the blame that's where they're going to put it.

I think a second issue you see rising now how these polls has come more and more concerned about corruption and what's happening with the Trump family and the resources they're making a taxpayer expense.

SANCHEZ: Notably President Trump is departing the White House right now. It appears that he's answering reporters questions. We're monitoring his remarks and we'll bring you newsworthy bits as we get them.

[14:40:00]

The president again headed to Texas to campaign with Paxton. There's an interesting dynamic at play where if you look deep in the polling, as a CNN review recently did, we get them the president again headed to Texas to campaign with Paxton. There's an find that James Talarico is actually averaged 9 percent of the Republican vote.

So he's siphoning off Republican voters. This is according to high- quality polls. Fox News actually finds him pulling 22 percent of non MAGA Republicans.

So these are folks that are not necessarily aligned with President Trump but maybe somebody like Ken Paxton appeals to them. Does Trump visiting Texas for the third time since the end of August now start to bring some of those voters back?

SHORT: Look I think the reality is that Talarico doesn't really need to win those votes. All he needs is for Republican voters to be disenchanted and stay home. And if that happens and then he's going to succeed.

So having President Trump there to encourage people to come out to vote is I think a net positive for Paxton. But again I lament the fact that we're even in this situation because reality is that Republicans have had no distance on these economic policies that I think you're creating a lot of the anxiety for a lot of voters.

SANCHEZ: On Paxton's strategy on his own, I was watching football this weekend, not a Texas related game and Angela Paxton, his estranged ex- wife, is on the screen in a national ad not mentioning his name but saying that she's going to vote for the Republican ticket so tacitly endorsing him. What do you make of that ad and his approach to the controversies, the baggage that you said that he carries?

SHORT: Look there's obviously still a lot of supporters for Senator John Cornyn who I think are reluctant to support to Ken Paxton. So to have her in light of the infidelity of Ken Paxton come out and suggest that she's voting Republican I think was really intended to encourage those Cornyn voters to say hey if she can overcome that then they should be able to overcome it too, but I don't know we'll see if it's a salient message.

SANCHEZ: As someone who worked closely in the first Trump administration with the president, I'm curious to get your thoughts on his reaction to some of this reporting in the New York Times that two of his of his top aides James Blair and Chris LaCivita recently were over in the Balkans working for a pro-Russian government in their own election and their own campaigning. The president's saying that he's going to look into whether there were conflicts of interest he's going to ask them and if there were he's going to fire them. I think the curious part is that we're less than a month out from midterm elections in which Republicans are facing headwinds and here are two of his top people overseas.

SHORT: Look I think there's a long tradition of both Republican Democrat operatives working overseas those who have helped to be part of a presidential campaign I think that Chris LaCivita deserves enormous credit for that victory in 2024. I do separate a little bit because I think that the president publicly tapped James to leave the White House and say this is my man in charge of our midterm strategy this is the guy who's going to help us get there. And I think it's got to be disconcerting for Republicans on the ticket to see him actually helping to support a pro-Russian government one month out from Election Day.

I think that that is that is a difference. And look, you know, even in my commentary here on your network I've expressed my concern about what I think is coming this fall and how Republicans you know I have helped create this dynamic and James has been very critical of my commentary in your network to see him actually overseas helping to support pro-authoritarian regimes 30 days out from election. I think it's got to be disconcerting for Republican candidates.

SANCHEZ: We'll see how the conversation goes between the president and his two aides. Marc Short, thanks so much. Thanks for your analysis.

SHORT: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Still plenty more news to come when you shop are you actually paying what products cost or what stores know that you're willing to pay based on data that they've gathered from you. We'll discuss the anger over surveillance pricing when we come back.

[14:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: So Walmart is pushing back against fears about its pricing practices, specifically something called surveillance pricing. That's when a company uses information about you and your shopping habits to set your prices. A recent report by the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative says that Walmart won a patent in 2023 for digital price tags.

The group says this could mean that prices could change in seconds. So you could pay a different price at the register than what you saw on the shelf. It warns that you could also potentially be paying more than the person in front of you in line.

The digital price tags are said to be in place at all U.S. Walmart's by the end of this year. A top Walmart executive dismissed the report in a social media post, writing that digital shelf labels quote, "... do not identify customers, nor do they independently set prices. And a patent describes an invention and potential capabilities. It does not mean that Walmart has deployed a capability, used it with customers or decided to do so in the future."

On top of that, Groundwork Collaborative says that Walmart has talked up its AI powered shopping assistant called Sparky as having the ability to increase spending. Again, Walmart believes that the group's claims about the report draws unfounded conclusions and that they do not use AI to upcharge customers.

Joining us now is the president and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative, Lindsay Owens, also the author of the new book, "Gouged, The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet." Lindsay, thank you so much for being with us. So you heard there Walmart saying that it does not use personal data to set prices. Do you have evidence to the contrary that they've used some of our personal data to set different prices for customers?

LINDSAY OWENS, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE GROUNDWORK COLLABORATIVE: Yes, look, there are a lot of things that are driving prices up right now. The war in Iran is pushing up energy prices. The tariffs are rising the prices of imports, increasing the price of Halloween costumes this year.

[14:50:00]

But there's another reason, and that is companies are reaching deeper into our wallets. Pricing used to be simple. You figure out how much it costs to make something, you add your margin on top, you stick a sticker on it, and you leave it and forget it.

Not anymore. This is a highly engineered science now. Companies building electronic shelf labels to change prices dynamically from an algorithm at HQ to the retail location down the street from you.

Companies collecting your personal data and using that in pricing decisions. We call this surveillance pricing, the practice of spying on you to overcharge you. What my organization has identified is an arsenal of patents that Walmart has applied for and received for technologies that get better and better at learning more about you as a customer and technologies that could use that data in pricing decisions.

SANCHEZ: So this is more a warning about what may come rather than something that may necessarily be happening now. In other words, it could theoretically be prevented.

OWENS: Yes, we can't know, and it's been very confusing for Walmart to say one thing to investors, one thing to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and a different thing to consumers. I think if Walmart wants to set the record straight at a time of high economic anxiety, as well as a time of high technological anxiety for families, AI is creating a lot of uncertainty and fear, I think it would be good for them to pull back all of their pending patent applications and say, look, we made a mistake here, we're not going to go forward with this type of technology, to relinquish their existing patents, and frankly to get an independent audit from someone outside the company of how the dynamic pricing works, what information Sparky, their chat bot, has on us as consumers, and how they are planning to use it.

SANCHEZ: You talked about the sort of dual language that they're using, saying one thing to investors, one thing to consumers. We sort of heard what they're saying to consumers, what are they saying to investors?

OWENS: Look, they're crowing about the higher basket totals that Sparky, their chat assistant, is delivering. Initially they were saying 30 percent higher for Sparky users than non-Sparky users, now they're saying 40 percent higher. I think customers deserve to know how Sparky is making product decisions, recommendations, and what personal information Sparky uses in pricing decisions, if any.

You have to log in and give over a lot of information when you use Sparky on the Walmart app.

SANCHEZ: I wonder what your message is to consumers, and what you think that policymakers should be contemplating as we enter this new era where AI is, you know, potentially going off the rails.

OWENS: Yes, look, I really, from the bottom of my heart, do not believe it should be every consumer's job in this country to duck and dodge, and bob and weave, and beat the machine. Shopping is already too expensive. It is not fair for it to also be exhausting.

So there are certainly tips for consumers, updating how you comparison shop, not just comparing across stores, but looking at the app price, looking at the website price, looking at the brick-and-mortar price. But it is the role of policymakers to step in, particularly with AI shopping, before the horse is out of the barn, and ban practices like surveillance pricing outright.

SANCHEZ: Lindsay Owens, thank you so much for bringing this story to us, appreciate your time.

OWENS: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Still plenty more news to come this afternoon. The Gulf preparing for the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. We're tracking tropical storm Isaias. Isaias? I got to get that right.

A look at your forecast when we come back.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We could soon see the first hurricane of the year in the Atlantic Basin. Tropical storm Isaias is moving north, expected to rapidly gain power, and if it does become a hurricane, it would end a record-long wait for a storm of this magnitude in the Atlantic Basin.

SANCHEZ: Now, Allison Chinchar is watching the storm for us. So, Allison, what's the forecast look like?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right, and I think that's really the ultimate question, is people want to know, how is this going to impact my weekend plans? So we take a look at where the storm is now. You can see just north of the Bay of Campeche.

Sustained winds about 50 miles per hour, gusting up to 60. It is strengthening. We expect it to continue to strengthen over the next 24 to 48 hours as it continues to make its northward track.

In fact, we anticipate that it could get up to a Category 2 hurricane in just the next 36 hours or less. You already have some hurricane watches in effect right there along the Gulf Coast in anticipation of that storm continuing to slide north and likely making landfall late Friday, somewhere within that pink shaded area that you saw. Now, the ultimate question is where exactly does it go?

And the models very different differ a little bit. More the more traditional models, which you see in the blue lines here on the map are a little bit farther to the west. The AI models, which you see in the red shaded color, those are a little bit farther to the east.

So it's going to be a pretty thing to keep an eye on over the next couple of days to determine whether or not they do shift more in line with the traditional models or in line with the AI models. Now, here's a look at the intensity because that also varies. You tend to have more of the traditional models be a little bit more of a weaker storm, whereas the AI models are thinking more of a stronger storm.

So again, a lot of factors here that we will have to closely watch. Regardless, we do anticipate very heavy rainfall along the Gulf Coast as we start Friday, and then especially as we go into the day Saturday, more of that moisture than also starts to spread eastward into even some surrounding states like Georgia and the Carolinas as well as Tennessee. Storm surge is going to be a big concern ...

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