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Breakthrough New Path to End Shutdown Discussed; Iran Says Trump Lying about Talks Being Underway; Concerns Raised about LaGuardia's Safety Ahead of Crash. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 24, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:12]

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: OK, that's going to do it for us here today. Thanks for joining us. I'm Rahel Solomon, live in New York. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Some top Republicans think they have a plan to end long lines at the airport. The only wrench in the plan: the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Republicans do not settle with Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Could this be the breakthrough frustrated fliers have been waiting for?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REBECCA LIQUORI, AIR CANADA PASSENGER: I'm just grateful to be alive.

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CORNISH: So, some passengers speaking out after surviving a plane crash. Now there are questions. Were there warning signs that were missed?

And the president says there are points of agreement after talks with Iran. Tehran says they're not even negotiating. So, who exactly is Trump talking to?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The line goes in the parking garage, out of the terminal, into the parking garage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, people -- people deserve to get paid. You know, I hate to hold people hostage with their jobs for, you know, political purposes. It's ridiculous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People get sick. People get exhausted. And there's even talk about mass resignations, coming up in the near future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Long lines, thin patience. Is there a deal on the horizon to end the agony at the airport?

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish, and we're going to start with signs of possible life when it comes to a deal.

Top Senate Republicans emerged from a meeting at the White House Monday night with a new plan, and if accepted, the proposal would fund all of DHS except for a small portion of the immigration enforcement budget. That's a concession to Democrats.

Republicans would then fund ICE through what's called the reconciliation process.

Now, a person familiar with the talks is saying that Republicans feel the president is on board. Here's the thing. He was out in public saying this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Republicans do not settle with Democrats and let them out of this hole that they've buried themselves in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, is the situation going to get worse? TSA agents haven't been paid. Many are calling out, and now the administration has brought in ICE agents to help.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMERON COCHEMS, TSA OFFICER: All our officers care about is getting paid. You know, having ICE agents, officers at our airports, they're going to be sitting at the exit. They're going to be doing things that they can't be trained to do.

PASCUAL CONTRERAS, TSA OFFICER: Do I want them to leave? I'm not qualified to answer that question. Personally, yes. Professionally, I won't speak on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Now, we're actually tracking wait times at TSA checkpoints, if you head over to the CNN app. But right now, this is a live look at Houston. The wait time right now is more than 240 minutes.

And you can see other wait times at the bottom corner of the screen. And of course, as I said, on CNN.com.

Now today in the group chat, Sabrina Rodriguez, politics reporter at "The Wall Street Journal"; Doug Heye, Republican strategist and former communications director for the RNC; and Antjuan Seawright, Democratic strategist. Now, sometimes when lawmakers come out of a meeting and they're tight-

lipped, I think there's progress, because they don't want to mess up a deal. And so, I was thinking, oh, they're coming out and being like, oh, we don't know. And then Trump says, don't settle. Do we have a sense of what he means by settle?

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, POLITICS REPORTER, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": I mean, we've seen that the president is not the most inclined in this situation to reach a deal. And he's very focused on wanting to pass the SAVE America Act, very focused on trying to find a way to get that through the Senate.

So, I think that has been a primary focus for him and not so much the shutdown.

However, I think as we see more of the images that are coming from airports and seeing the delays that are taking place, it's no surprise that we are seeing conversations intensify. You know, it was just the end of last week -- while we've been in a shutdown for almost five weeks, it's only been just this last week. That was the first paycheck missed. I think it's no surprise the conversations --

CORNISH: Right around spring break, right? Yes.

RODRIGUEZ: Let's just keep in mind here. Congress wants to have their recess. That is supposed to be coming up at the end of this week. So, they want movement on this. They want to reach a deal so that they don't have to stay in Washington.

CORNISH: In the meantime, just a reminder, those TSA officer call-out rates at particular airports are quite high. Looking at JFK, 37 percent. Atlanta, which we've talked about all week, 42 percent.

[06:05:07]

So, it's not every airport, but some of these airports, the workers are really feeling it and are calling out as a result.

Now, when you talk to Democrats, you hear them saying things like, both sides are talking in a serious way. There's a conversation.

And yet, Antjuan, when I talk to you, you're -- you're saying no. What's going on?

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, it should not be shocked that the party who's been intentional about defunding government and pumping and pumping their chest about it is not seriously interested in opening up the government, these particular agencies.

Seven times, Democrats have offered a clean solution to fund these agencies, which would get the government open and moving.

CORNISH: And to translate, those are bills that would only fund the parts of DHS that they're not unhappy with. Everything but ICE. SEAWRIGHT: And Republicans have said no. Now, the pressure has built because of that very same reason. Now, they want to do a deal. And now the president is saying no.

And part of that, Doug and Sabrina, is because Donald Trump wants to make this about him. He wants to be the person to put together the deal.

What's, I think, frustrating for TSA agents and other everyday Americans is the fact you have ICE agents who are getting paid, who are going to stand beside and near TSA agents, 65,000 of them who are not getting paid.

I think Republicans own this. The pressure is building, and they know that.

CORNISH: Can we talk about the pressure for a second? Look at these lines building in Atlanta, in particular. And I'm pointing this out, because lawmakers have frequently used these shutdown moments where pressure builds with the public as leverage.

And one of the things that I'm seeing in the reporting is that the president wants to somehow tie this conversation about ICE tactics and DHS funding with something he really wants, which is changes to the nation's election laws through the SAVE Act.

I don't know how you tie these things together. Here's what Senator Chuck Schumer had to say about the possibility.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Democrats are going to keep working in good faith. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is trying to sabotage negotiations.

Donald Trump is now saying, We'll pay TSA only after Congress passes voter suppression. What a ridiculous thing to do. What a callous thing to do.

He doesn't give a damn about the American people. He cares about his own election. He thinks this SAVE Act, which isn't going to pass, will change how the election comes out. And he uses millions and millions of Americans as hostages.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: This would be linking a lot of disparate things into something he wants.

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes. Look, I think we're hearing the word "hostage: a lot in the past few weeks. We're hearing it whether we're talking about the SAVE Act. We're hearing about it if we're going to fund ICE or not. Everything is being held hostage.

And the reality is that also means for voters. They're in these lines, and they're questioning what is happening in Washington.

CORNISH: But why do you think he's doing that? Why would you drag the SAVE Act into this?

HEYE: Because it's one of Donald Trump's No. 1 priorities. And he's been very clear about that.

And I think the challenge for Republicans is they want to reach a deal. But Donald Trump, who may get his own coin very much "render unto Caesar." Ultimately, he wants to be like Caesar and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

And it's only a good deal for Donald Trump when he says it is. That puts Senate Republicans in a box.

SEAWRIGHT: And I'll remind you, TSA. Getting rid of TSA was in Project 2025. Also, doing something. rearranging the electric was in Project 2025.

Trump has a base problem at this point, so he needs to feed his base something. Give them a win from the campaign side. And so, I think these two things collide. And he does not fear this idea of there will be repercussions if TSA is not funded to this point.

CORNISH: OK.

SEAWRIGHT: And that's why he's using this as a negotiation tool.

CORNISH: That's Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Kentucky, saying, "We're back to square one."

And I'm sorry to say, folks, that means the same for you, in line at the airport right now.

Guys, stay with me. We've got a lot more to talk about.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about Iran and the U.S., and President Trump saying that there are talks that are going well between the two. And Iran saying, What talks?

Plus, pilots raised alarm about concerns at LaGuardia. So, was this an accident waiting to happen?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN DUFFY, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: And we put in precautions and policies to make sure that you are safe when you travel.

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[06:14:13]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, Iran's foreign ministry says you're not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations to end the war. TRUMP: Well, they're going to have to get themselves better public

relations people. We have had very, very strong talks. We'll see where they lead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, that's President Trump, who's saying that there are ongoing talks with Iran to end the war. Leaders in Tehran are telling a different story.

Iran's Parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, has called the claims fake news. He's accusing the president of saying this to try and manipulate the financial and oil markets, because this conflict is stretching into week four.

So, all this is going on while airstrikes continue. Israel intercepting a barrage of Iranian missiles overnight. We're bringing in CNN's Oren Liebermann, who joins me live now from Tel Aviv with more.

Oren, I want to talk to you about those missile strikes. But first, can we talk about potential talks? What is Israel saying about this? We know they have a sort of vital interest in who is next in Iran.

LIEBERMANN: Well, Audie, it's not very often I say something like this, but in this particular instance, it looks like Israel's position on these talks much more closely matches Iran's position.

That is, that there are no serious talks going on, and there's no apparent or imminent off-ramp to the war.

An Israeli official told us last night that Israel's position is that there is nothing tangible, likely, that will come from these discussions. There are third parties, other countries that are trying to mediate between Iran and the United States, but there's no concrete proposal -- proposal on the table yet.

And Israel believes that Iran isn't willing to make concessions. So, from Israel's perspective, this war very much continues.

And Defense Minister Israel Katz, this morning at a situation assessment, underscored that when he said Israel is still attacking Iran in full force. That's a position that -- that he's had since the weekend, where he said that the U.S. and Israel will have a significant expansion of strikes on Iran over the course of the coming week.

It's worth noting here that Israel's position on talks is basically unchanged, since even before the war. When the U.S. and Iran were in negotiations before the opening strikes of the war, Israel believed the negotiations would lead nowhere, and that remains Israel's position as we see the war escalating basically by the day here as we're into the fourth week, Audie.

CORNISH: In the midst of these talks, of course, Israel is still carrying out strikes. I saw Prime Minister Netanyahu talking about the fact that they went after two more nuclear scientists. Can you help us balance this? The military operations versus the move towards diplomatic negotiations?

LIEBERMANN: Well, Israel wouldn't be involved in any of the negotiations. So, from that perspective, Israel is continuing the war, as is the U.S. from -- from Israel's perspective.

Israel has carried out more waves of strikes on Tehran. They said, in the heart of Tehran, within about an hour of President Donald Trump saying -- making his first comments about purported negotiations.

Meanwhile, there is still Iranian incoming. We saw about seven rounds of incoming Iranian missiles in the span of about ten hours, and those were across the country.

In the Southern Israeli city of Beersheba, there were at least two different impact sites. In Tel Aviv here behind me, there were a number of different impact sites and several mildly injured as a result of what appears to be a cluster munition.

So, if we take the U.S. out of this for a second and claims about negotiations, the war is still very much on at an intense pace here.

And don't forget: it was Israel that just several days ago made the point that the military has thousands of targets left and at least several weeks more of plans for the operation.

CORNISH: OK, that's Oren Liebermann reporting to us from Tel Aviv. Thank you.

And after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about that deadly crash on the runway at LaGuardia Airport. Were there actually warning signs that were missed?

Plus, saving the SAVE Act. Is the attempt to tie the voter I.D. bill to homeland security funding, the right move for the president?

And a live look at those lines already growing at George Bush airport. This is in Houston. Right now, the wait time clocking in as much as four hours long.

And if you look at the bottom corner of your screen, we are going to be tracking wait times throughout the hour. So, stay with us.

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[06:22:41]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In all honesty, it's -- I'm a little shaken up by all this, but I'm really -- I feel grateful to be alive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Frightened and shaken. Passengers still reeling from the fatal crash at LaGuardia Airport that ended in the death of two pilots.

Now, new video is showing the moment when that Air Canada flight moving at about 104 miles per hour, actually crashed into an emergency fire truck on the runway. And one passenger tells CNN about the moments just after impact.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIQUORI: It was eerie -- an eerie couple of seconds, and then we realized, OK, the flight crew is not able to give us guidance. I was actually sitting next to the emergency exit door, so I opened the emergency exit, let out passengers, let myself out.

There was no slide, since the flight crew wasn't able to set that up. So, by the time I got out, an emergency personnel helped me jump off the wing of the plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: This crash is the first fatal incident at LaGuardia Airport in more than three decades. But there are now reports that there were potential warning signs at this airport ahead of this fatal collision.

So, to talk about that, CNN safety analyst David Soucie. He's a former FAA safety inspector. Good morning David. Thank you for being with us.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Good morning, Audie.

So, I want to talk to you about a piece of audio that has been floating around in the last 24 hours. This is audio from the controller. And I believe this is shortly after the accident. I want you to take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Frontier 4195, just stop there, please.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Truck one, stop, stop, stop.

Stop, Truck One. Stop! Stop, Truck One, stop!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: JAZZ 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can't move. Vehicles are responding to you now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That wasn't -- that wasn't good to watch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I know, I was here. I tried to reach out to my them. And we were dealing with an emergency earlier. I'm not messed up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, man. You did the best you could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:25:00] CORNISH: So, I don't want to read too much into that "I messed up," but lots of people are. So, what have you been thinking as this audio has surfaced?

SOUCIE: Well, you know, "I messed up." As an accident investigator, what we look at mostly is not just the individual. What we have to look at is why the individual made the decisions that they did.

And so, if you listen to that tape closely, you're going to hear the fact that he, the same person, was handling an emergency on the other side of the field. They were handling the traffic -- traffic on the ground. They were handling the aircraft coming in. It was -- appears to be the same person handling all three of those things.

Now, sometimes that's a good thing, because you don't want to hand off responsibilities.

CORNISH: Yes.

SOUCIE: But if you put all that together onto one person, that's a lot to have to deal with.

So, we can't just look at the one person and he said, "I messed up," and I'm sure he feels that way. And perhaps he did. But at this point, it's too early to say exactly what was on his plate and what happened.

There's more details here, even than we see in that video, that we might want to talk about, about how this actually happened.

CORNISH: You know, people are talking about the pace of operations at LaGuardia. This is something CNN found in its reporting: that there were some warning signs there where you essentially had someone saying, "Please do something. The pace of operations, buildings, the controllers are pushing the line. On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA before the accident there," referring to that accident over the Potomac. And that's reporting from a pilot who was speaking.

What are the issues they're trying to raise there when he says it reminds them of DCA?

SOUCIE: Well, I didn't see that report from him, honestly. So, I can't really comment on that specifically.

But what I do want to make sure that we do is keep these items separate. It's -- it's easy to say, hey, there was an accident. We knew this was coming. This is hindsight. People always look at that.

Every accident I've ever investigated, people have said, Well, why didn't we know this ahead of time? We knew this was going to happen.

So, that -- that type of mentality can get you in trouble, because you start reacting to things that may not have to be reacted to.

Now, if you look at this particular accident, what we have to look at is two things, primarily. One is the fact that that -- that truck was coming across the runway at an angle where they could not see what was going on, on the right.

So, every accident that I've investigated, again, has to do with more than one failure. So, to blame it specifically on-air traffic or that there were warning signs.

Now, I'm not saying there weren't warning signs at LaGuardia. What -- if you remember the air traffic control shortage just as much as a year ago, there was really trouble about how many people we had.

So, what the FAA said they would do and what Sean Duffy said that they would do is reduce the volume at these airports and which would make an imminent safety improvement. Everything would be improved on safety because there'd be fewer aircraft coming through the airport.

That, to my knowledge, has not really happened at LaGuardia. The traffic continues to increase, but yet, they're not putting restrictions on how many airplanes can come in and out. They're still keeping the pace way too fast there.

So, I would agree in that realm that every airport now, especially with the air traffic control shortage, we need to make sure that these airports are being restricted.

It's going to be very inconvenient for everybody. As you see, there's lines at every airport right now.

CORNISH: Yes.

SOUCIE: And that's a direct result of the fact that they're trying to throttle back that type of movement.

CORNISH: OK, that's David Soucie, formerly of the FAA. Thank you so much.

And straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, today, Senator Markwayne Mullin, he's actually getting his new gig. He's inheriting the mess at DHS. So, can he turn things around?

Plus, right now, we're nearing one month of the war with Iran. Why did President Trump decide to start talking with Iran now?

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