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U.S. Troop Deaths Raise Fear Of Wider War In Middle East; CENTCOM: U.S. Forces Conclude Ninth Night Of Strikes On Iran. Cockroach Janta Party March Turns Violent. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired July 20, 2026 - 04:30   ET

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

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[04:32:33]

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. The U.S.-Iran strikes, they are ramping up, but President Donald Trump's top diplomat says that the U.S. is still open to diplomacy. Meanwhile, the recent deaths of American service members in the Middle East are raising some fears that the war with Iran could expand. Here's CNN's Julia Benbrook with more.

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In brief remarks, President Donald Trump said that he believes that Iran has been damaged very, very badly. And he reiterated a point that he has made throughout this now nearly five-month conflict that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. This came just shortly after U.S. central command had announced that they were carrying out another wave of strikes against Iran, saying this in a statement that CENTCOM began conducting a new wave of strikes against Iran at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Sunday.

This is the ninth consecutive night. The strikes will continue, degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This continues days of escalation in the region. Again, the ninth consecutive night of U.S. dtrikes as well as waves of Iranian drones and missiles fired at a widening number of targets in countries with U.S. bases.

Now, this also comes after the news that two U.S. service members were killed in an attack in Jordan. Another service member was categorized as missing an active action. They've provided a bit of an update there saying that they did find remains in that area, but they are waiting on the verification process and things there.

Now, there was another service member killed in northern Iraq. They say that this happened during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone. This brings the total number of U.S. service members killed during this month's long conflict to 17. Julia Benbrook, CNN, New Jersey.

SANDOVAL: Protesters led by India's Cockroach Janta Party turned violent after demonstrators clashed with police. Authorities hit protesters with canes as they demonstrated in New Delhi. This despite being denied a permit to assemble. Well, the government's decision to forcibly hospitalize a hunger striking activist has helped to galvanize this movement.

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The Cockroach Janta party was founded due to issues like high youth unemployment and also a scandal involving leaked college exam questions. Police are denying any use of force and say that the protest is being handled professionally, they claim.

Let's Go now to CNN's Ivan Watson, who joins me live from Hong Kong. So, Ivan, you've covered this movement extensively. I'm curious if you could just tell our viewers a little bit more about it and also just what could potentially address some, some of the concerns of these protesters?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, the branding here is pretty remarkable. This kind of erupted as an online movement a bit more than a month ago when you had a judge in India kind of appear to criticize young unemployed people and call them cockroaches. He's since tried to walk that back a little bit, but that started with a grad student from Boston University in Boston at the time who said, hey, what if all the cockroaches unite?

And that turned into this massive online movement where something that calls itself the Cockroach Janta Party, which is a play on words with India's ruling BJP, erupted and has an Instagram account with some 22 million followers. And then it has grown into a sit in the Indian capital that has gone on for several weeks.

Now, the numbers there didn't translate from the millions online, even thousands really on the streets until this weekend when a prominent kind of academic and educator named Sonam Wangchuk, who had joined in and gone on hunger strike alongside these demonstrators in their sit in. He was approaching really a dangerous point in his health and in this hunger strike when the Indian police swept in and took him away from the scene forcibly and took him to a government hospital.

And that happened over the weekend and has swelled the number, numbers of demonstrators into the thousands. Particularly today where the organizers said they intended to march towards parliament. The Indian police said that is not allowed. This is the largest number of people we've seen now.

Thousands and thousands, in case some estimates of tens of thousands of demonstrators on the streets of the Indian capital. At some points there have been skirmishes with the Indian security forces who said there were no permits issued for them to carry out this protest. At one point, the founder of the Cockroach Party, so called Cockroach Party, announced to the crowd that he had gotten a message from the health minister to engage in a meeting and he called on everybody to sit down. There were cheers among the demonstrators.

We've reached out to the Indian government, to the BJP, to the health minister, to get confirmation of this. If in fact there are negotiations or some kind of meeting underway. We believe it would be the first time that this protest movement would have some kind of face-to-face meeting with the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And let's get back to what the point of the protests are.

They're protesting against youth unemployment, against a number of scandals involving exams for placement in schools that have been leaked online and led to people who've studied and spent money for these exams having their results annulled. And basically, a chronic problem in India of high youth unemployment, one such that it has driven people to despair and illegally traveling overseas, even trying to migrate to the U.S. illegally to try to find alternative sources of employment. Back to you.

SANDOVAL: Yes. Just remarkable how many of these youth led movements we've seen around the world with so many people feeling frustrated with their government. Ivan Watson, thank you so much for following that for us.

All right, let's get to some of your other big stories. The brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, they are expected to appear in Miami in a federal court there later today following their arrests by U.S. marshals. The Social media influencers, they are facing extradition to the United Kingdom where they are facing rape and sex trafficking charges. And those are just the latest accusations that have been filed against them. CNN's Rafael Romo tells us more.

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The arrests of both Tate brothers stemmed from a case focusing on alleged sexual abuse of women in the east of England region just north of London between 2010 and 2017. U.S. marshals arrested both brothers in Miami on Saturday on an extradition request from the United Kingdom. Andrew Tate, seen here on the left, is a 39-year-old U.S. born professional fighter turned media personality known for his rants about male dominance, female submission and wealth. A controversial personality that has earned him billions of views online.

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He was initially arrested and Bucharest in December 2022 together with his younger brother Tristan Tate, and Romanian prosecutors have accused them of trafficking and exploiting women. The brothers have repeatedly rejected the allegations made against them in that case and they were allowed to leave Romania after authorities in the Eastern European country lifted travel restrictions on them arriving in Florida in February 2025.

Authorities say the brothers, who have dual American and British citizenship, face dozens of new charges added onto previous charges brought by the Crown Prosecution Service after evidence was submitted by Bedfordshire police. According to the UK Crown Prosecution Service and Bedfordshire Police, Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist, faces 42 charges including rape, human trafficking, indecent images of a child and assault.

According to the same officials, his brother Tristan Tate faces 17 charges including sexual assault, rape and trafficking. In a statement, Malcolm McAfee, head of the Special Crime Division at the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK, said the following. "We have decided to prosecute Andrew and Tristan Tate for further offenses including rape, arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation and offenses relating to indecent images of a child. These charging decisions followed receipt of a further file of evidence from Bedfordshire Police and bring the total number of alleged the victims in this case to seven."

An attorney for the brothers said they are innocent and criticized the UK's move to seek extradition. There is a long-standing agreement between the UK and Romanian governments that the UK would not seek extradition while the Romanian proceedings are pending. Attorney Joseph McBride said, "Those proceedings are ongoing right now. That agreement exists because no nation gets to trample the judicial sovereignty of another force for political convenience."

In addition to these new charges and the case pending in Romania, Andrew Tate is also facing a civil suit in the UK, which is being brought by four women who accused a social media influencer of rape. A spokesperson for Tate previously told CNN that their client categorically denies what he called unproven and untested allegations. Rafael Romo, CNN, Atlanta.

SANDOVAL: And still to come this hour, chasing a dream that seems further and further out of reach. CNN speaks with residents in Cleveland, Ohio who are struggling to afford rent or even buy a home. And they say that they're being priced out of a promise of a better future. Stay with us.

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SANDOVAL: While President Trump has been touting what he calls the golden age of America, a new Washington Post Ipsos poll is finding that many Americans, they don't share the president's rosy outlook. In fact, just 33 percent approve of how he's handling the economy, according to that poll. Here's CNN's Phil Mattingly to show you how some people are grappling with the nation's affordability crisis.

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JOLENE SIMECEK, RENTER: It's not affordable to live on your own as a single person anymore.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): For generations, Cleveland was the promise kept, one of the last places a family of almost any income could own a home that was theirs.

SIMECEK: I wanted, you know, a yard for my kid and just the normal American dream, just a house, a picket fence, a yard. And it just seems that that's more and more not. It's out of touch, not reality.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): For Jolene Simic, that deal has come undone. A working mom and a nursing student, she's always had a job, but she can't keep up with the skyrocketing rents in her Cleveland suburb. SIMECEK: It went from 785 to nearly $1,600 a month.

MATTINGLY: Your rent effectively doubled.

SIMECEK: Yes.

MATTINGLY: Over what, seven years?

SIMECEK: Yes. Yes.

MATTINGLY: Six years, seven years.

SIMECEK: Yes.

MATTINGLY: And your income presumably did not follow the same path over that period of time?

SIMECEK: No, it did not go up at that rate at all.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Her next best option, a room in her sister's basement.

SIMECEK: They were lucky enough to rent it to me for 450 a month.

MATTINGLY: 450? Okay.

SIMECEK: Yes.

MATTINGLY: The alternative was roughly 1,600-ish.

SIMECEK: 1,600 or yes, sleep in my little hatchback, so.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Nearly one in four Clevelanders now hand over more than half of what they earn just to stay housed.

SIMECEK: I've already paid a quarter million dollars in rent in my life, you know. I should already have the home with the equity paid off. But I didn't make the right decisions, you know. If you rent, that's what you get.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): So how did it get this bad? Frank Ford has spent decades tracing the forces that shaped these streets. It starts with redlining. Lenders starving black neighborhoods of home loans.

FRANK FORD, SENIOR POLICY ADVISER, CLEVELAND FAIR HOUSING CENTER: There's a shift that took place in the late 90s where some mortgage lenders flipped that and realized, well, wait a minute. Instead of denying people loans because we perceive them as high risk, what if we make loans and use that perception as the reason to raise interest rates?

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Those predatory loans inflated a bubble that burst in 2007.

FORD: The banks found themselves sitting on 600 homes in Cleveland, 800 homes in Cleveland. They started to offload those properties for pennies on the dollar to investors.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Thousands of homes swept up by phantom investors, charging market rent while letting them rot. The paradox of a broken market. Homes are cheap because families can't buy them. But the rents stay high.

The spread is a magnet for out of state LLCs. Buy all cash, collect rent, ignore the repairs. Nowhere is it clearer than Shaker Square.

ANDERSON WALDON, SHAKER SQUARE RESIDENT: Okay, this is my one bedroom. These are the water blisters that dried out I told you about. These here are the holes where all the water came through.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Anderson Waldon came here in 2020 to retire somewhere safe and walkable. Instead, three of every four neighbors left, and the buildings crumbled around the few who did stay.

WALDON: I have my drills. I've tried to fix everything myself because I can't wait till it gets done, because it never gets done.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Drive 20 miles west and it's a different universe where families priced out of the city now compete fiercely for every home.

STEPHEN MILLER, RESIDENT: Before this, we lived in the city and wanted to buy in the city and in the specific neighborhood that we were in the cost of housing has exploded in those places.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Stephen Miller and his wife are working professionals who embody what for decades represented the first rung of the housing ladder. But home prices in Cleveland have surged nearly 60 percent in six years, among the fastest in the country.

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MILLER: We were looking for probably about a year for what eventually kind of became our unicorn, I guess, which never fruition. And then, you know, over time, we just kind of gave up and started kind of expanding that search.

MATTINGLY (voiceover): Battling all cash investors, waiving inspections, they eventually closed miles from where they wanted to be.

MILLER: We live in a lovely suburb now that's right on the lake. It's great. But that was never in the plans, to say the least. It's frankly astounding. There's some phantom outside buyer that comes in the last second, 50 grand over the asking price. It's just, it's absolutely brutal out there.

SIMECEK: The Midwest was like the secret where you can live comfortably. And it's not that way anymore. Back in Parma, Jolene made clear she's not asking for a handout. She's only wondering, how did it get this hard for the people who did everything they were told to do? Phil Mattingly, CNN, Cleveland, Ohio.

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SANDOVAL: Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey opening big at the box office this weekend. Coming up, the success that paved the way for the director's latest epic hit.

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SANDOVAL: Well, this year's World Cup final, it featured its first ever halftime show. It brought a Super Bowl style spectacle to soccer's biggest stage. Madonna kicking off the star-studded production entering the stadium of course in a dune buggy. And it was driven by Brazilian soccer legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho.

K-Pop stars BTS then took the stage to perform their hit Dynamite. And the stars of the feel-good soccer comedy, Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt. They made an appearance in character introducing Justin Bieber. And they also delivered one of their famous pep talks.

And after that, Shakira, a Nigerian musician Burna boy performing the official World cup anthem with some great dancers. And the show of course also featuring the Muppets. It was part of a big arrangement of the White Stripes Seven Nation army, probably my favorite.

And then of course Coldplay frontman Chris Martin joining Shakira along with an elementary school chorus and the Sesame street gang for the grand finale. And if you weren't watching the World Cup, you probably were. Or maybe you were in an IMAX theater catching the new film adaptation of the Odyssey. David Daniel looking at why it could be the smash hit of the summer.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're a man who needs to control his fate.

DAVID DANIEL, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER (voiceover): The Odyssey Writer director Christopher Nolan says his Oscar winning blockbuster Oppenheimer paved the way for his new film.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, DIRECTOR, "THE ODYSSEY": Coming out of Oppenheimer, which was a much bigger success than we'd ever hoped for. And you know, obviously that was thrilling and is its own reward, but it also presents you with an opportunity, you know, you know, when something like that works, it means you, you've kind of bought yourself the opportunity to make something you wouldn't be able to make otherwise.

DANIEL (voiceover): The Odyssey opened with an estimated $264 million worldwide. The biggest global debut of Nolan's career.

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SANDOVAL: I want to thank you so much for joining me the last hour. I'm post Sandoval New York. Our coverage continues with CNN Headline Express.

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