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Israel Under Pressure To Let Aid Into Gaza; Elon Musk Says He Will Step Back From Politics And Government; Israel Preparing For Possible Strike On Iran Nuclear Sites; Trump Details Plan To Build Golden Dome Missile Shield By End Of Term; Pope Leo Steps Into Ukraine War With Offer To Host Talks; Lawyers Accuse Trump Admin Of Deporting Migrants To South Sudan, Violating Court Order; Romania's Far-Right Leader Challenges Election Results, Alleges Foreign Interference; WHO Adopts Pact To Better Prepare For Future Pandemics; Trump's Cuts Could Mean More Vulnerability To Natural Disasters; Study: World's Ice Sheets On Track For Runaway Melting; Elon Musk To Spend "A Lot Less" Money On Politics; Interview With Deep Vellum CEO Will Evans. Aired 1- 2a ET

Aired May 21, 2025 - 01:00   ET

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

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[01:00:26]

MJ LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello and welcome to CNN Newsroom. I'm MJ Lee live in Washington. Ahead for us this hour, Israel under pressure. European leaders are taking political and economic action against what they call horrific decisions in the Gaza Strip.

From the Oval Office back to Tesla white tech billionaire Elon Musk says he's planning to pull back on his political spending and celebrating the best books in translated fiction. We'll discuss this year's winner of the International Booker Prize.

And we begin this hour in the Middle East where Israel is under growing pressure to end the aid blockade in Gaza and its new offensive. The U.K. is saying that it has paused trade negotiations with Israel with while the European Union is reviewing its trade deal with the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAJA KALLAS, EU'S FOREIGN POLICY CHIEF: It is clear from today's discussion that there is a strong majority in favor of review of Article 2 of our association agreement with Israel. So, we will launch this exercise and in the meantime, it is up to Israel to unblock the humanitarian aid. Saving lives must be our top priority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Article 2 of the E.U.-Israel Association Agreement says in part, relations between the parties shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles. Any pause in trade with Europe would hit Israel hard. The E.U. is Israel's biggest trading partner, accounting for nearly one third of Israel's total trade last year. Israel allowed limited humanitarian deliveries to resume this week after a nearly three month long blockade on Gaza plan. But some world leaders say it is not enough.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: The recent announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza, a basic quantity is totally and utterly inadequate. So we must coordinate our response because this war has gone on for far too long.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: On Tuesday, the U.N. said Israel had given permission for dozens of aid trucks to enter Gaza. But aid groups say at least 500 aid trucks are needed daily to address the humanitarian crisis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANE DUJARRIC, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL'S SPOKESPERSON: So just to make it clear, while more supplies have come in to the Gaza Strip, we have not been able to secure the arrival of those supplies into our warehouses and delivery points.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Despite all this, Israel continues to escalate military action in Gaza. This is video of explosions smoke over Gaza's skyline from just a few hours ago.

The U.N. is warning that Gaza's entire population, more than 2 million people, is facing the risk of famine with one in five people in the enclave facing starvation. For some, food scarcity is not only a daily reality, but battle to survive. CNN's Abeer Salman has the story of a 12-year-old.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANA AL-SKEIFI, GAZA RESIDENT My dad has no on also. I'm the one who carries the water. We wait for hours just to fill up, and oftentimes we only fill a bucket. I want to be strong so my father doesn't suffer.

ABEER SALMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the story of one 12-year old girl, Jana Als Kaifi and her family. But it's also the story of so many others in Gaza today, where days are punctuated by the never ending search for water and food and where the death of one pushes a family to endure unimaginable hardships.

AL-SKEIFI: My brother head a women begging for help, her children were terrified. He learned down to point a way out and was shot by a sniper. It entered into his chest and came out.

MOHAMED AL-SKEIFI, LOST SON IN GAZA: The bullet entered here in the chest, and it came out of his back here. We took off the coat and buried him. He was our only son. His death broke us. SALMAN (voice-over): After her brother was killed, it was Jana who stepped up, becoming her family's guardian and caretaker.

AL-SKEIFI: My mother has cancer. If my father tires to carry the bucket, he'll fall. I have to carry all this and my d ad does his best to help.

SALMAN (voice-over): It's a burden made worse by Israel's punishing 11-week blockade of food and aid on the Gaza Strip. Israel says the blockade was designed to bring about the release of all of the hostages and pressure Hamas. So far neither has happened.

Instead, despite aid now trickling in, the U.N. says 20 percent of the population faces starvation, calling it atrocious and beyond humane.

AL-SKEIFI: I sued to play with my niece all the time. She was malnourished, and couldn't be treated here. They told us she had to be evacuated. This is when she was dying. God bless her.

AYA AL-SKEIFI, GAZA RESIDENT: I didn't even want to travel abroad. I just wanted someone to bring her milk. I stopped eating, drinking, moving. I couldn't even go to the bathroom because I was afraid she would slip away.

At five in the morning, I realized she was passed. It felt like someone took my heart away, or stabbed me with a knife. I couldn't process the feeling.

SALMAN (voice-over): A baby born and perished surrounded by starvation, her three brief months of life sustained by a child. Before the war, Gaza survived on food deliveries from hundreds of trucks a day. Now, with the Israeli military pledging to take over the entire Gaza Strip, whatever makes it through will almost certainly not be enough. Abeer Salman, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: Sources tell CNN Israel may be considering a major move that could propel the Middle east into a broader war. CNN's chief U.S. Security analyst Jim Sciutto has those details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF U.S. SECURITY ANALYST: Myself and my colleagues Katie Bolillis and Natasha Bertrand have new reporting tonight that the U.S. has obtained new intelligence suggesting that Israel is making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

These officials caution it is not clear Israeli leaders have made a final decision and there is deep disagreement within the U.S. government about the likelihood of such an attack. However, this new U.S. intelligence assessment is based on both intercepted Israeli communications and on Israeli military activity.

And that activity includes the movement of air munitions and the completion of an air exercise. One person familiar with the U.S. intelligence told us, quote, the chance of an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility has gone up significantly in recent months.

And the prospect of a Trump negotiated U.S.-Iran deal that does not remove all of Iran's uranium makes the chance of a strike more likely. An Israeli source told me that if the U.S. were to make what this source described as a bad deal, Israel may very well decide to strike Iran on its own. And that's a key dynamic here, that the U.S. and Israel might be at odds on a potential outcome of President Trump's negotiations with Iran. And now, as we noted, new US Intelligence indicates that Israel is at least making preparations for military action. Jim Sciutto, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: U.S. President Donald Trump's vision for the Golden Dome missile defense system is moving closer to reality. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out some of the details on Tuesday, including the $175 billion. He also says he believes it could be completed by the end of his term.

The system would be similar to Israel's Iron Dome, protecting the U.S. by intercepting long range missiles. The Congress office estimates the project could cost more than $500 billion over the next 20 years.

Italy's prime minister says Pope Leo is still eager to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Last week, the Vatican offered to hold the next round of negotiations, but Moscow has given no sign that it is ready for peace. Instead, it's continuing to bombard Ukraine with drone strikes.

The European Union and U.K. are presenting a united front, announcing a round of sanctions against Russia. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Europe for its support, but he's also urging the U.S. to remain committed and involved in the peace process and in pressuring Vladimir Putin.

[01:10:07]

The Trump administration, though, is now walking back its promises of further sanctions on Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Our belief, the president's belief is he doesn't. He believes that right now, if you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking and there's value in us being able to talk to them and drive them to get to the table.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: CNN has obtained exclusive drone footage and radio intercepts appearing to show Russian troops executing a group of Ukrainian soldiers even though they had just surrendered. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has that story and will warn you some of the images in his report are graphic.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Before even this moment of surrender, the fate of these six Ukrainian troops was sealed. Ukrainian drone images from the southern front last November show the horror that comes after defeat.

A Russian hiding in the bushes shoots one Ukrainian in the head. Ukrainian officials gave CNN intercepts of Russian radio orders from their commanders to their troops here. We can't verify them independently, but they help paint a chilling picture of what appear to be executions to order of a plan to kill prisoners given from above.

The Russian in the bushes seems to fit a mask and then emerge. He's joined by another Russian. They talk. There's no visible threat from their prisoners. And one captive Ukrainian seems to gesture at them. But nothing changes his fate. Shot in the head. Calmly. Another Ukrainian gets up, presumably the commander, and takes off his armor.

But the voice on the radio is impatient. The commander is led away. In total, six times the order to kill was given, according to the intercepts.

WALSH: A forensic study for CNN, the files and audio found no reason they weren't authentic. And a Western intelligence official described him to us as credible. We've geolocated the footage of the killing to this tree line just outside of Novodarivka in Zaporizhzhia region, where fierce fighting raged late last year.

Ukrainian prosecutors say the executions of surrendering Ukrainian troops by Russians are increasing. They say they opened eight cases in all of 2023, 39 for all of last year and in just the first four months of this year, 20.

YURII BIELOUSOV, OFFICE OF THE PROSECUTOR-GENERAL OF UKRAINE: It's a well-coordinated and well planned policy and execution of prisoners of war as well as other war crimes which have been committed in Ukraine. I think that goes up to the president of Russian Federation, who, for example, when it was the example of Kursk area, when he conducted like a military meeting or something, and when he said that we should treat them as terrorists, and everyone knows how Putin treats people who they call terrorists so it's almost synonym for us to execute.

WALSH: The U.N. Special Rapporteur and extrajudicial killing told CNN the executions would not happen in such numbers and frequency without orders or at the very least consent from highest military commanders, which in Russia means the presidency.

Another video supplied to CNN by a Western intelligence official shows a similar scene also from Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainians are surrounded and surrendering to Russians with red tape on their helmets. But two others join them. White tape on their helmets.

They appear to use their radios. And then a white helmet opens fire. As the smoke clears, a red reloads his weapon and shoots another Ukrainian in the head. There's no radio intercept here. But a Western intelligence official told CNN the order to kill likely came from the white to the red killings, aimed at hitting Ukrainian morale, but also cynically, just at easing Russian logistics.

This affects the morale and psychological state of our guys, he says. We have facts. When the Russian military and political leadership directly gave verbal instructions not to take prisoners and to shoot those captured on the spot because it complicates military logistics from their point of view.

A stark window into Moscow's mindset, surrender means nothing, and mercy is not an option. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Kyiv, Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[10:15:00]

LEE: And coming up, Romania's president elect speaks with CNN about his surprise victory as well as Europe's role in ending the war in Ukraine.

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LEE: It is 1:19am on the U.S. East Coast and on Capitol Hill here in Washington, the U.S. House Rules Committee is meeting right now to find some way to push through President Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda bill. The President met with Republican lawmakers more than an hour on Tuesday, then told reporters it was just a pep talk. But the stakes are very high with infighting within the party over key sticking points in the legislative package.

[01:20:02]

Sources tell CNN Trump tried to strong arm the holdouts who are blocking the bill's path to the Senate. It's still unclear if he did enough with just days left until the Memorial Day deadline set by House Speaker Mike Johnson. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a preliminary analysis of the impacts of the bill and found it would increase the budget deficit by nearly $4 trillion between 2026 and 2034.

Attorneys for Vietnamese and Burmese migrants are accusing the Trump administration of violating a court order by deporting them to South Sudan. At least a dozen migrants were sent to South Sudan this week. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All of this unfolded very quickly over the course of the day. We initially saw those court filings earlier this afternoon, but this is something that began on Monday and really took off on Tuesday. Here's what the court documents say.

There are declarations from attorneys of the Burmese national you're referring to there and a Vietnamese national. But they say that there could be 10 others who were on this flight, they say, to South Sudan. Now, in the case of the Burmese national, what the attorney for that national says is that on Monday he was notified that he was going to be deported to South Sudan. He's not proficient in English. He was advised or he was notified by ICE while he was in detention of this without an interpreter.

And this really set off a chain of events of his attorneys trying to figure out why he would be sent to South Sudan. He did have a removal order, but to his own country, not to another one.

Now, his attorney says that she set up an appointment to meet with him virtually this morning when she checked the detainer locator this morning. That's essentially the detention system to see where people are. He was no longer there. And when she emailed ICE, they said the officer responded, quote, South Sudan, when she asked where he was removed to.

So you can see why there is so much confusion as to where these detainees who just yesterday were in the detention system are now no longer there.

Now, the attorneys are trying to scramble to figure this out because even though some of these migrants did have removal orders and could be deported, the question here is where were they deported to? Because if they are sent to a third country, in this case South Sudan, then they would have had to go through a process. They would have had to be notified. They would have had an ability to contest the removal to this country.

Now, all of that appears to not have happened, which is why we are seeing all of this unfold in these court filings and in the courtroom.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: Priscilla Alvarez, thank you. The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly confirmed the deportations. The U.S. currently has a do not travel advisory for South Sudan amid the ongoing conflict there.

Romania's far-right presidential candidate is asking the country's top court to annul his rival's victory. Nicusor Dan won the presidency with nearly 54 percent of the vote in the runoff election. George Simeon initially conceded the race but is now alleging there was foreign interference and manipulation in Sunday's vote. CNN's Max Foster spoke with President-Elect Dan in his first international interview since the election and asked him about his victory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICUSOR DAN, ROMANIAN PRESIDENT-ELECT: Of course, I'm very pleased of the result. It's not mine. It's the result of the society. There have been a very, very strong mobilization of pro occidental Romanian. They want to keep the European direction. They want to keep the commitment that Romania have inside NATO.

I think that Europe must take his own security in his hands and Romania must be part of it. MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: But there's an issue, isn't there, within the

E.U., that some country, many countries feel very strongly about supporting Ukraine, but they haven't got the resources. Many of those countries are the closest to the Ukrainian border.

So it's left to countries like France and Germany, along with the U.K. to put the most money into that system. But do you think that's fair? Fair when many countries like yours are much closer to the battle lines?

DAN: Yes. So I'm very happy that the European countries, the European leaders understand the danger that Russia is for the whole Europe and all the discussion that have took place until now, in all that discussion, the European countries agreed, with very few exceptions, agreed that they have to contribute in a balanced way to that European owned security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Dan is the current mayor of Romania's capital, Bucharest. Domestically, he has vowed to crack down on corruption.

And still ahead, a new study warns of the possibility of catastrophic rise in sea levels. The global pledges to curb global warming aren't enough to save them.

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[01:30:47]

M.J. LEE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm M.J. Lee.

The World Health Organization, without the United States, has adopted an agreement to better prepare for future pandemics. WHO members meeting in Geneva applauded when the legally-binding pact was approved, which comes after three years of negotiations.

The U.S. left discussions about the accord after President Trump took office in January and immediately began the process of withdrawing from the agency.

Global health officials were shown a video message from the U.S. Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., where he slammed the WHO. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. U.S. HEALTH SECRETARY: We want to free international health cooperation from the straitjacket of political interference by corrupting influences of the pharmaceutical companies of adversarial nations and their NGO proxies.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite my fellow health ministers around the world into a new era of cooperation. We don't have to suffer the limits of a more abundant WHO. (END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: This new WHO pact is meant to ensure that drugs, therapeutics and vaccines are accessible around the world during the next pandemic.

There are growing concerns that the scientists who monitor for natural disasters are being let go, as the Trump administration slashes federal spending, potentially leaving Americans even more vulnerable to things like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes.

CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: We have been hearing from scientists in all corners of federal agencies living in this culture of fear after the (INAUDIBLE) layoffs from DOGE and now the new so- called Big Beautiful Bill which threatens even deeper cuts right now.

And especially for those people who spend their nights worrying about the biggest disasters like a 9.0 earthquake on the West Coast. FEMA predicts that would kill over 13,000 people and injure 100,000. So for emergency managers, that is the big one.

But experts tell us now as a result of these cuts and the looming cuts, the United States is less prepared than ever before in modern times to prepare for it.

Harold Tobin, who runs the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and also the Shake Alert System, explains that these seismographs, there are hundreds of them, in the -- in the West. They're up at the end of logging roads and on top of mountains that need to be maintained.

That network is what gives scientists and the National Weather Service and then the public early warnings of coming quakes or big ones that has just happened or tsunamis and the critical minutes it takes to warn people before tsunami waves reach shore where people live.

Corina Allen was just laid off. She was the tsunami program leader at the National Weather Service. She told my colleague, Ella Nilsen (ph), we're already underprepared for these events.

And now being able to detect these sorts of things literally save hundreds if not thousands of lives. That is the impact, that is the risk we face by reducing the capacity of work at NOAA.

The U.S. Geological Survey, who also monitors volcanoes in places like Hawaii and Alaska, says they remain committed as well, but they have lost a lot of their early warning systems and -- personnel around these.

And folks who study solar storms. That whole set of scientists is moving to a different agency, adding confusion and a culture of fear there as well.

Of course, solar storms can upset our telecommunications and -- a lot of the modern economies that rely on electronics right now.

But bottom line, this is yet another cry from the scientific community trying to warn the public that the guardians who are keeping an eye out on these physical events that can have devastating effects are being stripped back. And the public is all the less safe for it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[01:34:44]

LEE: The world's ice sheets are on course for a runaway melting, potentially leading to a catastrophic rise in sea levels. That's according to a new study by a group of international scientists. They wanted to find out what level of global warming would allow for the survival of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

The most worrying finding is that even if the world manages to hit a pledged target of 1.5 degrees of warming, it likely won't be enough. Scientists found the current level, 1.2 degrees, could still trigger ice sheet retreat and dramatic sea level rise.

The world is currently on track for up to 2.9 degrees of warming in the next 75 years.

Let's get more on this now from Alexander Kaufman, who is joining me live from New York. He's a reporter who has been covering climate stories for over a decade.

Alexander, it's great to have you. The picture that this new research is painting is really dire -- sea levels rising by multiple feet, even in a more optimistic scenario.

Alexander, for starters, how did we get here?

ALEXANDER KAUFMAN, REPORTER: Well, we got here through centuries of burning fossil fuels. That's the main thing.

There are other factors that are involved in climate change but there is a clear correlation between the fossil fuels that have been burned since the beginning of the industrial age and have picked up in speed as we've seen greater development across the world and the warming that we're beginning to experience today in pretty severe form already.

And here in the U.S., Alexander, between basically 2016 up until now, the U.S. has signed on to the Paris Climate Accord, then left it, rejoined it, and recently left it again.

How has the U.S.' vacillating commitment to tackling climate change in recent years affected other countries' commitment?

KAUFMAN: So you've already begun to see a rollback of certain climate targets that countries had adopted in the wake of President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords once again. What's notable is that compared to last time when there was a waiting

period that essentially expired right around the time of the 2020 election, meaning that President-Elect Biden at that time could clearly indicate that one of his first actions in office would be to rejoin.

This time the withdrawal process will only take a year which makes it much easier for the Trump administration to make this a more permanent withdrawal.

You're seeing countries like Indonesia, which is experiencing a large coal build out, reduce its climate ambitions right now, and even rich countries that were previously quite supportive of the climate goals that they were adopting like Austria, are now looking to walk away from some of those targets that they supported until recently.

LEE: So talk to us about what kinds of interventions are likely to be floated, and also some of the risks that are associated with those ideas.

KAUFMAN: That's right. So they range from a wide variety of technologies with a broad spectrum of support in different regions of the world and different parts of the political spectrum.

So on one end, you know, you are going to see a lot more talk of things like carbon removal technologies -- technologies that can essentially vacuum or suck CO2 out of the atmosphere which -- where it circulates for hundreds of years.

You know, those are things that you're going to see a lot more talk about and a lot more investment in with the hope that they can scale up in the 2030s when they're necessary.

On the more radical end of things, I think you're going to hear a lot more conversation -- you already are -- about things like geoengineering and the most common form of that that is discussed is called solar radiation management.

It essentially involves spraying aerosols of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect that you get from a volcanic eruption.

And while that is very simple and straightforward at least in what it's trying to accomplish, there are a host of very concerning and controversial factors that are involved in maintaining a regime of pumping this stuff into the atmosphere regularly.

They range from termination shock, where you could suddenly have a bounce back of all of the warming that was being hidden if it were to stop suddenly, and potential negative effects in different parts of the world.

So this is a very complicated issue, and one that we are not yet at the point of having a global regulatory system for yet.

LEE: All right. Alexander Kaufman, thank you so much. KAUFMAN: Thank you for having me.

LEE: Tightening the political purse strings. Why the world's richest person says he is going to scale back his spending on U.S. politics.

[01:39:37]

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LEE: Tech billionaire Elon Musk says he's planning to pull back on his political spending and refocus on his companies. Tesla has struggled since Musk joined forces with the Trump administration, and is now seen by many as politically polarizing brand.

CNN's Hadas Gold has the details on Musk's announcement.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Elon Musk made these comments about stepping away from political spending while speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum and hosted by a Bloomberg anchor.

[01:44:51]

GOLD: And these comments are pretty stunning, considering that they're coming from the man who spent more than $290 million to help President Donald Trump and other Republicans get elected in 2024. And he has spent more money since then, specifically on a race in Wisconsin.

But take a listen to how he's saying he plans to spend his money in politics now.

ELON MUSK, TESLA CEO: I think in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And why is that?

MUSK: I think I've done enough.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is it -- is it because of blowback?

MUSK: Well, if I see a reason to political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.

GOLD: I'm sure many Republicans in Congress are concerned with those statements, because to them, there is a good reason to spend more money, especially with midterm elections coming up in the next year and a half or so. And Republicans have a slim majority in Congress that could easily flip.

Theres also, of course, the concerns about what Elon Musk had said in the past about how getting these types of people elected to Congress is for the best of humanity, for the best of the future. And of course, what about Elon Musk's own interest in the Department of Government Efficiency that he is -- he is still sort of quasi-leading, even though he's spending less and less time in Washington. Part of -- one of the reasons that we can look into as to why Elon

Musk might be stepping back is not only did the candidate that he supported in that Wisconsin race ultimately lose that race, but some of Elon Musk's companies have faced an absolute battering as a direct result of his -- of his involvement in politics.

You look at Tesla's stock prices and its sales have all plummeted as a direct result to Elon Musk's involvement in politics. And especially when you look at Elon Musk's own personal approval rating, you can see that in this poll in February 2025, his approval rating -- his disapproval rating was at 49 percent. And in just a couple of months in April, it shot up to 57 percent while his approval rating did not really move.

But Elon Musk did leave the door open just a little bit to getting back involved in politics, and he is still involved in Washington. He has said very publicly that he plans to spend 1 to 2 days a week on his work in DOGE and come back to Washington occasionally.

And in that interview at the Qatar Economic Forum, he did say that actually this week he will be in Washington to have dinner with President Trump and to meet with several cabinet secretaries.

So while he is saying that he is not planning to spend any money on politics anytime soon, it does not yet appear that he is fully leaving politics behind.

Hadas Gold, CNN -- New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: After nearly five years, the wildly popular video game Fortnite is back on Apple's app store in the U.S. The multiplayer shooter game became a massive hit when it launched in 2017, drawing millions of players from all around the world.

But Apple banned Fortnite from its store in 2020, accusing the game's maker of violating its policies by giving players a way to circumvent Apple's in-app payment system.

French police have recovered a sculpture of The Doors frontman Jim Morrison that vanished from his Paris gravesite 37 years ago. Authorities say the stolen bust was found by chance during a court- ordered search.

The Jim Morrison estate told "Rolling Stone Magazine" that the statue is a piece of history and that its recovery is gratifying. Morrison died in 1971 at the age of 27, and his grave is one of the most popular in the French capital. Crowds gather there every year on July 3rd, the anniversary of his death.

And still to come, celebrating the best books in translated fiction. I'll speak with a book publisher about the International Booker Prize and the importance of recognizing literature from non-English communities.

[01:48:47]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BANU MUSHTAQ, AUTHOR, "HEART LAMP": This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small, that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole.

In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: That was author Banu Mushtaq, speaking after she was awarded the International Booker Prize for "Heart Lamp", a collection of short stories.

The award celebrates achievements in translated fiction, and "Heart Lamp" is the first ever book written in Kannada language to win the prize.

In the book, Mushtaq writes about the lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities in southern India. She shares the award and the prize money with translator Deepa Basti.

I'd like to now bring in Will Evans. He is the founder and CEO of Deep Vellum, the largest publisher of translated literature in the U.S. They also have a bookstore in Dallas, Texas.

Will, it is great to talk to you. Let's first talk about the winning work, "Heart Lamp" by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Basti. It is a collection of 12 stories that highlight -- there you go -- the experiences of girls and women in southern India.

What stands out to you about this book? And what about it do you think clearly resonated with the judges?

WILL EVANS, CEO, DEEP VELLUM: I think that "Heart Lamp" is an inspired choice by the judges. I want to commend the jury who helped select this book, and I want to commend the publisher and other stories who have done extraordinary work for years, bringing languages like Kannada -- this is the first book ever to win this award. Translated from the Kannada language of southern India.

It's an extraordinary testament to the vision of independent publishing with storytelling that is bold and innovative in showing us a part of the world that we don't often get to see, bringing us into connection from a country far away like India to the U.K., to readers in the U.S.

It's an extraordinary book. It's written with great human universality, and it's the kind of stories that really remind us all of what the power of literature is and what it can do. And it's really -- this book is an inspired choice for it being a

short story collection. And that's the first time this award has ever gone to a story collection.

And when you read them in total, you're able to see a composite picture of what the world is like, rather than the novel form which has dominated this award and many of the awards for years.

It's really -- something really powerful to award it to short fiction, too.

LEE: Yes. Many firsts with this selection. I watched the award ceremony, Will. And Max Porter, who is the chair of the judges, said this. "Translated literature is a way of communicating over a border, under a wall, beyond an algorithm's reach." And he said, "In these books we search for and find news of the human elsewhere."

I found that to be quite poetic. How do you see literature as a tool for amplifying marginalized voices? Obviously, in this case, through stories that address issues like gender inequality, religious oppression, the caste system.

EVANS: Literature is one of the great universal art forms. It's been a part of the human condition ever since humans created the language millennia ago. And it's something really beautiful to see.

Literature in translation is it offers the opportunity to take what is foreign and to bring it to us and to bring us to the foreign in a true dialog -- literature and translation.

Thanks to great translators like Deepa, it's an amazing opportunity to get to tear down the walls of misunderstanding, to get to meet the other, to humanize and to really celebrate these beautiful differences that make us who we are as a part of one big world.

It's everything about dialog. It's what brings us together to literature. It's what inspires us at deep Vellum. It's what inspires publishers like And Other Stories and Max, of course, said it better than any of us could. That's a testament to him as an extraordinary writer as well.

LEE: And you mentioned the role of the translator, you know, the International Booker Prize awards translated fiction, which is different from the Booker Prize, which awards fiction written in English.

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LEE: The award money is split between the author and the translator. "Heart Lamp" was, as you said, originally published in the Kannada language, a language that probably many people have never even heard of.

How important is this kind of recognition, do you think, for the translator? EVANS: I think that this is a testament to work that's gone on for

years behind the scenes, right. This is an extraordinary moment for a language and a culture to meet the world.

And this is what the beauty of translated literature and independent publishers with vision like And Other Stories can do.

You are able to go meet a literature that has been excluded from the corporate publishing landscape forever. We have five publishers in the U.S. and U.K. that control 90 percent of the books that come out. And yet 11 of the 12 books on the long list this year for the Booker Prize, The International Booker, were published by small and independent publishers, including two nominations for And Other Stories, richly deserved, and another one for Tilted Axis Books, which is a really beautiful story.

Their founder was Deborah Smith, who won the International Booker Prize in 2013 for her translation of "The Vegetarian" by Hong Kong. And she used her prize money to create Tilted Axis Press, which went on to win the prize a few years ago for the first book ever to win translated from Hindi.

So I think that maybe now we have the opportunity to go meet South Asian literature and the literature of the Indian subcontinent for the first time, and to not treat this as a literature of the other, or for some colonial periphery, but to realize that this work is extraordinary.

And maybe the poles of the world and the literary world are able to shift enough so that we can actually learn from each other and go learn from what's happening in India, and to learn from languages like Hindi and Kannada that did not have a huge amount of translations coming out in the U.K. or U.S. before recent years, all thanks to small publishers like Tilted Axis and And Other Stories.

LEE: I'm going to have a lot more reading to do in the coming days. Will Evans, thank you so much for joining us.

EVANS: An honor to be here. And congratulations again to all the winners, the translators, the publishers and the authors of the shortlisted books and the long list of books as well.

LEE: And thank you so much for watching. I'm M.J. Lee.

CNN NEWSROOM continues with Rosemary Church after this short break.

See you tomorrow.

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