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CNN This Morning
Air Traffic Shortages Trigger Delays Amid Shutdown; Trump Floats Using Insurrection Act if Courts Block Troops; Questions Mount Over Handling of Kyren Lacy Case. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired October 07, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:00:15]
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Turbulence at the airport today. Hundreds of flight delays, thanks to sick calls in the control tower. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're serving the public, and public lives are at stake.
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CORNISH: Air traffic controllers working without pay during the government shutdown. Some of them have already had enough.
And a frightening scene on a California freeway. Drivers watch helplessly as a helicopter plunges to the pavement.
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GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D), ILLINOIS: This escalation of violence is targeted and intentional and premeditated.
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CORNISH: Peaceful protests or criminal insurrection? How the White House wants to use a 19th Century law to deploy troops on U.S. soil.
And Israel marks two years since the October 7th attacks. Could Trump's Gaza plan end the war in a matter of days? A=
And blockbuster new evidence in the tragic case of a college football star? Did police get it wrong about LSU's Kyren Lacy?
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ZACH BRYAN, COUNTRY SINGER (singing): And ICE is going to come, bust down your door. Try to build a House; no one builds no more.
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CORNISH: A country star takes a defiant stand and divides fans. Zach Bryan sings about what he calls the fading of the red, white, and blue.
It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast, and here is a live look at the memorial at the site of the Nova Music Festival in Israel, a place where many Israelis were killed two years ago when Hamas attacked.
It's Tuesday, October 7th. I want to thank you for waking up with me. I'm Audie Cornish, and here's where we begin.
The government shutdown, no longer just a Washington problem. It's now landed at an airport near you. Last night, an air traffic control tower sat unmanned for hours at Hollywood Burbank Airport.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It doesn't make me happy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are, in essence, the same as firefighters, police. They're -- they're serving the public, and public lives are at stake. So, I'd rather see some resolution be reached.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have no other way to show that it's hurting not just them, but us.
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CORNISH: Travelers were stuck for more than 2.5 hours yesterday after the FAA closed the tower there because of a staffing shortage.
Yesterday, nearly 6,000 flights were delayed and even more are piling up this morning, with 356 delays listed already.
The FAA says more than 13,000 air traffic controllers are expected to continue working through the government shutdown, but they're not getting paid. And some are starting to not show up.
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SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: And if someone has to take sick leave to drive Uber to make the difference, those are decisions they're going to make themselves. But of course, that's concerning for us.
I don't want them driving Uber. I don't want them finding a second job to pay the bills. I want them to get paid for the work they're doing today, keeping our planes in the air and our skies safe.
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CORNISH: Joining us now to discuss, Harvey Scolnick. He's a former FAA air traffic controller.
Good morning, Harvey. Thanks for being with us.
HARVEY SCOLNICK, FORMER FAA AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Good morning, Audie. Thanks for having me. CORNISH: So, I feel like I've been talking to you off and on for
several months now about air traffic control. Right? And the concerns that they have long had with staffing. How is this compounding, this government shutdown, compounding the problem?
SCOLNICK: Well, staffing has always been a problem with the FAA, as I've mentioned earlier. Burbank, for instance, which closed yesterday, is supposed to have 24 controllers. I think they only have 17. Of those 17, I'm not sure how many of those are fully certified.
But anytime a facility is not staffed to -- to what is preferred by the FAA, normally it has an effect on brakes. It has an effect on controllers getting time off. It has an effect on training.
And they know the job is tough enough as it is. And when you have to work six days a week, and now you're not getting paid on time. So, everything has a cumulative effect on the FAA.
CORNISH: You know, the government says that it actually met its goal of hiring some 2,000 air traffic controllers this year. According to Reuters, it plans to hire another 2,200 next year.
[06:05:04]
But how do you think the government shutdown kind of complicates those goals for recruitment or even the hiring itself?
SCOLNICK: Well, as of right now, everything is as normal, given this shutdown. Other shutdowns, the FAA has stopped the hiring process. They've stopped the school in Oklahoma City. And they stopped training at the facilities.
So, so far as I know, the government still has funding until -- until the end of the month. So, if things get settled, then it won't have that much of -- of an impact.
But if we do have to go to a -- to that stage where we need to actually ask people to stay home, administrative staff and otherwise, controllers themselves are accepted and do come to work. But if it comes to a point where people have to stay home, and support services are not available, that will have an effect.
CORNISH: Do you think that -- I'm just thinking of morale here. Are air traffic controllers kind of fed up? I mean, people who are calling in, not coming in. There's been so much pressure and concerns, right, about collisions and things like that. Do you think some people are reaching their breaking point?
SCOLNICK: I think they may be. I've been talking to some of my friends, some of the people that I've trained over the years, and I've been in contact with them. They're at various facilities around the country, and they are reporting an issue with morale.
And so, look, I mean, you know, controllers back in the day, when you're required to maintain separation from other airplanes; and sometimes that separation may have been questionable. A supervisor might come over and say, did you have three miles there? And you say, I did, and that would be the end of it.
Today, any time there's a question, everybody with a cell phone is immediately aware of it. So, you're -- you're under the gun all the time.
The job is difficult enough as it is. And now you're telling people that they might not get their paycheck when it's due. So, I'm sure morale is going to be affected.
CORNISH: It's Harvey Scolnick. Thank you so much.
SCOLNICK: Thank you.
CORNISH: And coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, talk from the White House of an insurrection. Or is this just the Trump administration's plan to get around the courts? The group chat is going to have some thoughts on that after the break.
Plus, we're learning of a secret list of targets justifying deadly strikes against cartels. And today, Attorney General Pam Bondi may have to answer for it on Capitol Hill.
And they were hurt by his tariffs. Now the president might bail farmers out. We'll talk live to a member of the House Committee on Agriculture.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A little bit of a self-inflicted wound here. For a lot of producers, it's trying to survive until the next growing season.
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CORNISH: It's looking like the Trump administration wants to do something that hasn't been done in decades: invoke the Insurrection Act in places where courts and local leaders have said no.
Red-state governors are embracing the idea. Texas Greg Abbott sent out this photo last night showing Texas Guardsmen boarding a flight set for Portland.
The president has already authorized the deployment of 300 Illinois National Guardsmen to Chicago for the next 60 days, and city and state leaders there have sued him to stop.
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PRITZKER: There was never an insurrection or an invasion on the ground that justified the deployment of the military to our American city. Donald Trump's deranged depiction of Chicago as a hellhole, a war
zone, and the worst and most dangerous city in the world, was just complete B.S.
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CORNISH: The administration official officially says that protests against ICE tactics in these cities are an insurrection, which could lay the groundwork to ignore court orders barring the White House from sending those troops.
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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think that's all insurrection. I really think that's really criminal insurrection.
STEPHEN MILLER, DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: It is domestic terrorism. It is insurrection. And no amount of insane, hyperventilating lies from Pritzker or Johnson or any other Democratic official will change our minds on that.
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CORNISH: Joining me now in the group chat, Zach Wolf, CNN senior politics writer, author of the "What Matters" newsletter; Chuck Rocha, Democratic strategist and senior advisor to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns; and Ashley Davis, Republican strategist and former White House official under George W. Bush.
Zach, I want to start with you, because you told me you actually had to go read up on the Insurrection Act, which, if any of you do, it's not that long. So --
ZACH WOLF, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER: Yes. It's only, like, four paragraphs long. It does sort of suggest that presidents should be asking governors to bring troops into their -- you know, into their state.
But there are clauses that say, if there's an insurrection, like, basically, it seems like Stephen Miller watching him just now, he read the Insurrection Act, ripped that language for his interview with Boris yesterday. And they're clearly, at least in the way they're phrasing things, laying the groundwork to cite this law that was passed in the -- in the 18th Century, in the -- 1798 was the first version of it. Hasn't been updated since Reconstruction.
And it hasn't been used since the '90s with the Rodney King riots. And before that, I think, more applicable would be when it was used for, like, school integrations. Like, Eisenhower used it to -- to, you know, integrate schools in Little Rock in the '50s.
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CORNISH: I want to talk about the way they're talking about this. What does it mean to be calling everything terrorism? ASHLEY DAVIS, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I think it takes away from
the word "terrorism," then. I mean, like, terrorists, as we know, and we've talked about a lot --
CORNISH: Yes.
DAVIS: -- like 9/11. I actually do think the drug cartels being considered terrorists is like --
CORNISH: Yes. We're going to talk about that today.
DAVIS: Yes. I mean, I think that is fine.
But listen, I just don't understand why the governor and the mayors are falling on this issue. I mean, I get it. They're looking like they're strong to -- to beat back Trump on this issue. But it is a law-and-order issue that I just think is really difficult.
CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Let me tell you what's going on here as far as politics go.
There's an over -- there's an overarching theme here. One is the Texas governor would love to be the president in three years. So, he wants to go out and say, look what I'm doing to help President Trump.
CORNISH: Right.
ROCHA: J.B. Pritzker --
CORNISH: He's also the one who put migrants on buses to Chicago. So, the antagonization.
ROCHA: That's a great analogy.
Also, J.B. Pritzker, who y'all just saw on your camera, wants to run for president. There's all of this overarching theatrics going on. But there's real people's lives at stake when they're one -- trying to one up each other to be the toughest one in the room.
CORNISH: I want to play for you the Oregon attorney general. His name is Dan Rayfield, and he is trying to appeal directly to the public to help them understand what's going on here. Here's what he had to say.
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DAN RAYFIELD, OREGON ATTORNEY GENERAL: The United States military does not belong on our streets unless it's extreme circumstances. That's what the judge found, right?
We don't have a rebellion here in Oregon. We don't have an insurrection. We don't have an invasion. We certainly don't have a place where the president can execute the laws of the United States.
So, you want to be creative, Mr. President? We'll be creative right back, and we'll meet you in court.
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CORNISH: To your point, I don't understand why you're saying they shouldn't fight this.
DAVIS: I just don't -- I just think it's -- why are they -- why not agree with him and try to work with him? I get it: you're going against him, because everyone hates Trump if you're a Democrat. I get that. But I just think this is a failing issue.
Do you want to go live in Portland? Do you want to live in Chicago? I mean, Chicago had five murders this weekend, and 25 severe -- people were harmed in hospital.
CORNISH: Here's someone from Portland who's a protester. Here's what they had to say. I think the name is Leilani Payne (ph).
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LEILANI PAYNE (ph), PROTESTOR: Lovely people who are just happy and they listen to music. They dance. They have a good time. We're always just -- we're a family. This is not -- this is not any form of war. This is just people actually exercising their rights.
And you know -- you know, there has been violent protests. This isn't it.
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CORNISH: This is something I want to raise, because I cannot show you a massive picture of Watts level, desegregation level. I cannot show you those images, because they do not exist. That is different from crime.
So, I do want to understand what you're trying to say here about at what point is it an insurrection versus that crime problem seems not so great.
DAVIS: I mean, I don't know. I mean, you're the expert on insurrection, obviously.
CORNISH: But we have to use our eyes at a certain point. And this is what's being confusing for me.
DAVIS: We all live in D.C.
CORNISH: Yes.
DAVIS: I live in the city. You live in the city. You live in the city. Do you feel that the city is safer now than it was six months ago? Or two years ago?
CORNISH: I feel that I never have in the last six months, walked through a mass riot of people that would justify armored tanks.
WOLF: You're saying, do I feel more comfortable, now that the National Guard has been deployed in the cities? No. Not really. DAVIS: Do you think it's safer?
WOLF: I mean, I ride my bike along the Mall, and I see National Guardsmen out there. And they don't seem to be that busy. But I'm not in, you know, neighborhoods, you know, where I'm probably going to get carjacked. And at 3 a.m. So --
CORNISH: But I think we end up turning an insurrection and a rioting argument into a crime argument. Do you know what I mean?
DAVIS: Yes. I agree with you on that. Yes.
CORNISH: And I find that confusing. Here's another thing that's confusing: Homeland Security. Here's one of their recent tweets. That says, "RECAPTURE OUR NATIONAL IDENTITY!"
WOLF: Right.
CORNISH: Not mugging, not crime, not like -- what? That's a whole other idea of what we need to be doing.
DAVIS: I think what you're saying, like you're going -- they're going further than just trying to make the city safe.
ROCHA: This is not about any of this, in my opinion. This is about making a TV commercial for the midterms. Republicans are desperate to not have to talk about the price of eggs, the price of whatever the thing is. Inflation is going up a little bit.
They want to be able to say, we cleaned up these, excuse me, these blank-hole cities, and we've gotten things back to calm. We made promises, and we kept promises. If we have to use the Insurrection Act, which we don't think is even legal, we'll use it so we can make this commercial and say, look at us. We're strong. We've got America back on track. Vote Republican.
CORNISH: But I don't mean to drag this out. Ashley, when I think about how under the Bush administration, the entire security apparatus of this country reoriented around fighting terrorism, specifically what it believed to be Muslim terrorism, it changed policing.
DAVIS: Yes.
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CORNISH: This is going to change policing. This is going to change how we use our military -- like, it creates a different infrastructure, to be deployed at any given time at the president's whim.
DAVIS: Well, I also think that it goes back to citizens not -- or hating the police, or ICE, or whoever it is. I mean, there is going to be a major issue between the two groups.
ROCHA: You're going to see more of that when you see -- when you keep seeing masked men disappearing people on the streets. Whether you like that or not, I promise you, more people don't like that. I know we're going to talk about it later.
But this is spilling over in lots of ways where even Republicans are being, look, we're all for law and order, but not masked men taking folks.
CORNISH: All right. We're going to talk about more in a bit. I just want to mention that a moment ago, I mentioned that the Texas Guard troops are boarding a plane to Portland. It turns out they're actually headed to Chicago, as we talked about that.
You guys stay with us. We've got a lot more to talk about this hour.
And for more of Zach's writing, please subscribe to his newsletter. It's called "What Matters." It comes out every weekday.
After the break on CNN THIS MORNING, the Louisiana attorney general will review the case against the late LSU star Kyren Lacy after new evidence came to light appearing to clear his name.
Plus, two years after the October 7th attack, could the president's Gaza plan finally end Israel's war against Hamas?
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[06:25:40]
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: False allegations, falsely reported. Changed his entire life. And then now we're finding out after he's dead that he didn't do anything. It's like sad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a damn shame, man. That man lost his life on some lies.
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CORNISH: New evidence may show Kyren Lacy, the late LSU football star, did not cause a car crash that resulted in the death of a 78-year-old man.
His attorney says newly reviewed surveillance video shows Lacy's car was more than 70 yards behind the impact; not involved in the collision itself.
The news comes too late for the 24-year-old. Lacy took his life in the days before the case was set to go to court. Charges at that time included negligent homicide.
His attorney says the case was misrepresented from the start.
Lacy was known for his impressive football career at LSU. His talents would surely have taken him to the NFL, and that was not lost on ESPN host Ryan Clark, who called for accountability in the case, live after "Monday Night Football."
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RYAN CLARK, ESPN HOST: They changed his joy. They changed his life. And eventually, he took his own life.
This was supposed to be a career, but at least he was supposed to be here. At some point throughout his career. I would expect to have said his name, so I'm going to say his name tonight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amen.
CLARK: Kyren Lacy was innocent. Kyren Lacy should be here with us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: And this is a growing scandal that has Louisiana's attorney general calling for an independent review of the case and state police on the defense.
CNN affiliate WDSU reports the department is preparing to release their own investigative video.
Joining me now to discuss is CNN contributor, Cari Champion. Good morning, Cari. Thank you for being with me.
CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
This is such a sad story. Very sad. And I just want to underscore what you just played for your viewers tonight so they understand.
"Monday Night Football" is one of the largest audiences that you can have during the football season. For Ryan Clark to take the time out to say that Lacy was innocent, and he wanted to call for some sort of justice really speaks volumes to how that community has rallied around this story. Because they cannot understand why someone -- you know, it was such a tragic loss of life.
CORNISH: Yes, we should say that we've seen some athletes react online. Lots of posts on X and including people like Angel Reese calling for justice, a former teammate of Lacy's, as well. The LSU offensive coordinator saying that Lacy had been slandered.
Can you talk about what's driving this emotion? On ESPN, Ryan sort of got at the idea that this -- this story played everywhere at the time, and he felt like he needed to correct a record within the sports press.
CHAMPION: Yes. Ryan was speaking from someone who lives in that community, went to LSU. So, he can talk about it in so many ways.
Lacy, during the time, according to all the reports and locally reported, it seemed as if he was guilty in the way in which it was being characterized and talked about, which is why his name fell from the draft, the scouting combine, and not on the draft boards.
You would hear at the time, at his funeral, which was in April, his teammates were like, he was supposed to be here with us. This is so unfortunate. We just don't know what happened. How did he get here?
And taking the story a bit forward, his mother has now turned into some sort of -- in terms of helping out, a mental health advocate. Because she was saying the toll that it took on his life clearly was evident in him taking his own life. Just in the months after, him trying to figure out how he ended up in this place, instead of getting ready to prepare for the NFL draft.
CORNISH: I want to be clear that, as we said, an independent review is going to be underway. The state police are gathering their materials to make public.
The LSU coach, Brian Kelly, was asked about this new video at a press conference. And I want to play for you what he said.
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BRIAN KELLY, LSU COACH: Let's just be patient and make sure that all the information gets out. He's loved by us. Was loved before and is loved after.
So, you know, there's not really a need to talk to our team. They follow it. They loved Kyren. He was a great teammate. And is going to be missed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Yes. I hear you're responding there, because he's obviously taking a more patient and cautious stance than some of the players.
CHAMPION: Much more measured. And as a coach, I think that's where he should live; in a much more measured place.
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