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Early Start with Rahel Solomon
At Least 120 Dead, 160 Plus Missing After Texas Flood; Greg Abbott's Football Analogy On Flood Response; All Residents Accounted For After Deadly New Mexico Floods; Trump Resumes Weapons Deliveries To Ukraine; Starmer And Macron Host Coalition Of The Willing In London; Key Players Indicate Progress In Gaza Ceasefire Talks; Houthis Killed And Kidnapped Cargo Ship Crew Following Attack In Red Sea. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired July 10, 2025 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MJ LEE, SENIOR NATIONAL ENTERPRISE CORRESPONDENT: And welcome to our viewers joining us from the United States and all around the world. Rahel Solomon is off. I'm MJ Lee. It's Thursday, July 10, 4:00 a.m. here in Washington, D.C. and straight ahead on Early Starts.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Search and rescue teams are on day six of this exhaustive search.
UNDIENTIFIED MALE: Questions remain about how much officials were prepared, how much officials anticipated here in Texas in the lead up to the storms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New internal policy enacted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requiring her personal approval on any expense above $100,000.
KRISTI NOEM, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We're cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA streamlining it. Much like your vision of how FEMA should operate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Italy is hosting this Thursday and Friday the 4th Ukraine Recovery Conference.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump also talked about potentially sending more Patriot missiles to Ukraine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: We begin in the U.S. state of Texas where recovery efforts continue in the wake of deadly flash flooding over the weekend. Officials report at least 120 people have died in the floods and more than 160 people remain missing. Volunteer rescue crews say searching for victims along the Guadalupe River could take days, if not weeks. But crews are already feeling the mental toll of the disaster.
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CHIEF DANA BACCUS, INGRAM FIRE DEPARTMENT: I saw RVs being slammed up against trees and literally exploding. I saw children floating in the water begging for help that we could not reach. And that takes it out of you.
TAMMY LANDIN, RETIRED FIREFIGHTER: At the time you deal with it later on. It's going to hit everybody. I was born and raised here pretty bad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: New questions are emerging about the local emergency alert systems. CNN affiliate KSAT reports that ahead of the flooding, a local firefighter asked for a warning to be sent to the public. But Kerr County officials took nearly six hours to do so. The county sheriff says answers to those questions have to be answered in time.
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SHERIFF LARRY LEITHA, KERR COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE: I believe those questions need to be answered to the family of the missed loved ones, to the public, you know, to the people that put me in this office. Those need to be and I want that answer. And we're going to get that answer, and I know that's going to be asked over and over.
Please understand that, you know, we don't have. We're not running. We're not going to hide from anything that's going to be checked into at a later time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: CNN's Ed Lavandera is in Texas with the latest on the recovery efforts.
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ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Guadalupe River has turned into a graveyard of despair. The river stretches for roughly 35 miles through Kerr County alone, and most of it is now a daunting search area for the missing, which brought us to this riverfront spot along Rowland Road under cypress trees. This was once the home to popular RV park. The river took families into its grip and didn't let go.
LORENA GUILLEN, RESCUED PEOPLE FROM FLOODS: Dozens of vehicles just getting washed away. You can see the windows of the campers with people banging against the windows and the screams. The screams is what hunts me every time I close my eyes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Lorena Guillen said the cars and cabins would get sucked into the water and the screaming would stop.
LAVANDERA: This is what the search for victims in the Guadalupe River flooding has come to. We're downstream from where there was an RV park. Hundreds of people filled it for the July 4th weekend. The trailers and cars were swept away and mangled. It all rushed downstream.
You can see here as crews and volunteers have been trying to clean up this mess. Several of the volunteers who are out here looking for victims have said that they're worried that many of the victims still might be submerged underwater and that in many cases they're simply finding body parts.
I know it's difficult to hear, but that is the reality of what many of these volunteers and search and rescue teams are dealing with right now.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): We found Joe Rigelsky leading a volunteer search team, sifting through mounds of thick mud and debris on their hands and knees, looking to bring the missing home.
[04:05:06]
Meticulously searching the devastation with dogs trained to find human remains.
JOE RIGELSKY, UPSTREAM INTERNATIONAL: You walk the banks. You got divers in the water, swimming upstream. This area was riddled. First day was probably 20 plus vehicles pulled just out of this three block stretch, so breaking windows, searching first for anything that's in there. Then a cadaver dog comes.
LAVANDERA: These people over here are looking for the missing.
RIGELSKY: So this, right now, we're days into this. So there's foul odors. So you've got a lot of livestock, you got deer, you got everything else, but you also don't know if it's human part of the missing.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Officials in Central Texas are managing multiple agencies and more than 2,100 volunteers in Kerr County from across the United States and even Mexico. They're asking search teams to take a delicate approach.
SGT. JONATHAN LAMB, KERRVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT: We have large debris piles. We ask them not to use heavy equipment to take down those debris piles until they've been checked by a search party because it's possible there are victims in that debris pile. We don't want to disturb that.
LAVANDERA (voice-over: The rubble is piling up from roadways, homes and the immense countryside here.
LAVANDERA: This is just staggering. The river's over here. This entire bed leading up to the river was filled with water. And you look up into the tree limbs and you see debris, parts of vehicles, clothing, tents, 20, 30, almost 40 feet high up in the trees. Gives you a sense you can actually see, in some places, you can actually see the water line about 30 feet high up into the trees here. LAVANDERA (voice-over): Trees ripped from their roots, mangled cars
and trucks left submerged in the Guadalupe River's path. These search teams know a victim could be anywhere waiting to be found.
LAVANDERA: Texas officials say that the search for the missing now extends some 200 miles from Kerr County to the east. And as we walk the banks of the Guadalupe River, you could really sense the gravity of this moment among the search teams and the volunteers that are out there and that they know that. This search could very well take days if not weeks to complete. Ed Lavendera, CNN, Kerrville, Texas.
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LEE: Multiple officials inside FEMA tell CNN they were ready to deploy search and rescue teams and other life-saving resources to Texas over the weekend. But new protocols forced them to wait more than three days after the flooding began.
Those officials point to new internal policy enacted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, requiring her personal approval on any expense above $100,000. Officials say that threshold means executive sign off is necessary for relatively small expenditures, since disaster response costs often soar into the billions. Here's how Secretary Noem relayed the agency's progress to President Trump on Tuesday.
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NOEM: We're still there in presence and FEMA has been deployed. And we're cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA, streamlining it, much like your vision of how FEMA should operate. And it's been a much better response to help these families get through this terrible situation.
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LEE: For years, the Hunt Store served the community of Hunt, Texas, as more than just a place to buy groceries. It was also a local hangout, a restaurant and a music venue. Part of it is still standing despite being heavily damaged in the floods.
The sign out front now reads Hunt Strong. The general manager lived in an apartment above the store with her daughter. They escaped to the roof, where they were able to ride out the worst of the flooding, but their home on the second floor was lost when the roof collapsed. This is how she described the ordeal.
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COURTNEY GARRISON, SURVIVED TEXAS FLOODS: We actually were a little bit higher on the roof. We were sitting right where it had collapsed there for a while, but I felt it start shifting. So I had her move Stella and I moved over where I knew there was more support.
One of the local cops had come down and he was talking to us on his bullhorn. Couldn't really understand everything he was saying, but I knew he was there. We knew, you know, he knew were there. So that made me feel better. But even though he was there, nobody could still get to us for a couple hours after that.
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LEE: And she became emotional when she spoke about rebuilding.
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GARRISON: This door is going to be rebuilt, absolutely. We have one of the strongest communities I've ever seen come together. It's going to make me cry. I'm sorry. It's been absolutely amazing, the support, and I know that it's going to be rebuilt and it's going to better.
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LEE: A Texas lawmaker is criticizing the state's governor for likening his government's response to the disaster to a football game. The lawmaker is asking the Trump administration for a thorough investigation into what happened with the response when Governor Greg Abbott was asked Tuesday who was to blame for the deadly flooding, he said this.
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GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R) TEXAS: Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who's to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, don't worry man, we got this. We're going to make sure that we go score again, then we're going to win this game. The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions.
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LEE: Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett says that's an unacceptable way to respond to a disaster that left more than 100 people dead, and he wants to know if cuts to weather agencies like the National Weather Service impacted emergency warnings or the state's government's response to the flooding.
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REP. LLOYD DOGGETT (D-TX): For the governor to treat this as if it were a football game, this is not a game. People's lives are at stake and there's so much more that should have been done. And the losers are the ones that don't learn from the mistakes, that don't hold people accountable.
In this case, I think there are accountable issues at every level of government and as I mentioned, I think the impact of the Trump administration has to be considered.
(END VIDEO CLIP) LEE: North Carolina is grappling with heavy rain and flash flooding in some parts of the state. On Wednesday, streets in the city of Durham were seen underwater with drains bubbling up, struggling to control the downpour. There have been reports of several cars stranded and a handful of water rescues in the area, according to Raleigh's National Weather Service.
Another round of severe storms overnight put parts of the state under a flash flood warning some counties are still recovering from floods caused on Sunday by Tropical Depression Chantal.
And further west in the state of New Mexico, officials say everyone is accounted for after deadly floods that killed three people there on Tuesday. The area has gone through forest fires and flooding in the past year, and residents have hardly had any time to recover. Natasha Chen has more.
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NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These terrifying images emerged in New Mexico as the Rio Ruidoso swelled from under 2 feet to over 20 feet in less than one hour. It came on the heels of devastatingly deadly floods in Texas. This one claimed at least three lives, including two children.
CHIEF STEVEN MINNER, RUIDOSO POLICE: All three victims were reported missing from the same area, which was an RV park, and they were all found downriver anywhere from a quarter mile to two miles downriver.
CHEN (voice-over): Emergency crews made dozens of swiftwater rescues. Businesses like this trading post were destroyed. Katilyn Carpenter (ph) was on her motorcycle and says she pulled over to take shelter when the intense downpour started.
KAITLYN CARPENTER, WITNESSED FLOODING: It kind of just went from bad to worse. The flood started and then a really big flood just came, like a wall of flood.
Oh my gosh, y'all. Oh no.
CHEN (voice-over): She started filming the devastation, then saw a close friend's house being whisked away by the rushing river.
CARPENTER: She's actually out of town. So it was kind of heartbreaking to be filming and then to see my best friend's house that I have memories in.
CHEN (voice-over): The catastrophic flooding occurred in an area scorched by wildfires last summer.
CARPENTER: There's no trees anymore to soak up all the water running off of the mountain.
CHEN (voice-over): Since June of last year, there have been at least 12 separate flash flood emergencies like this one in the area, putting residents in extreme swings from fires to floods. CARPENTER: It just got worse because there's nothing to soak up any of
the water.
CHEN (voice-over): Natasha Chen, CNN, Los Angeles.
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LEE: The threat of more flooding remains. Here's a look at some of the alerts across the Eastern seaboard at this hour. So what's behind the recent flash flood events across parts of the U.S. CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam takes a look.
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DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: So many unimaginable flash flood events have unfolded across the country recently. From the Texas Hill country where a summer's worth of rain fell from the sky in a matter of hours, to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where up to 10 inches of rain fell, equating to roughly a 1 in 1,000 year rainfall event. And then there's Ruidoso, New Mexico, where record river levels prompted flash flood emergencies across the region.
So why are we seeing this increase in flash flood events across the country? Well, it's thanks in part to our atmosphere being juiced up by this Bermuda high driving in deep tropical moisture from the south, you're looking at precipitable water. Think of this as the amount of fuel in your car's gas tank. The more fuel you have, the further you can drive.
The more precipitable water that the atmosphere has to work with, the more ability it has to produce these heavy rainfall events.
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And when it falls on a parched, very dry, drought stricken landscape, just like what's unfolded here recently across the Texas Hill country in New Mexico, that's a recipe for disaster. We call that weather whiplash, going from flood to drought or drought to flood.
So, we have had just since the 4th of July, over 225 reports of flash flooding across 20 separate states. That really puts it into context. This is, by the way, the wettest time of the year. The atmosphere typically, climatologically speaking, has the most moisture to work with between the months of April to September. So we anticipate these flash flooding events to occur. But of course, we've got a warming world to work with.
And we have seen a marked increase in not only the intensity but also the frequency of these heavy rain events. Something we can expect to continue into the future. Back to you.
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LEE: World leaders are gathering at two major summits this hour to help Ukraine. Details on those conferences in Rome and London after the break. Plus, a powerful picture illustrates the crisis facing hospitals in
Gaza. Four babies sharing an incubator that's meant for only one. As negotiations on a deal to end the war press on.
And later, Elon Musk's AI chat bot is making headlines for all the wrong reasons responding to its users with antisemitic tropes. How the company is responding to that controversy.
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LEE: International efforts to help Ukraine are underway right now at two major meetings. First, there's the Ukraine Recovery Conference happening in Rome. It's focused on a whole of society approach to helping Ukraine, with governments, international groups, businesses and civil society working together. We expect to hear from host country Italy's prime minister as well as the European Commission president and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
And meanwhile in London, the U.K. and France are hosting a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are set to speak with allies and partners in a video conference clearance later today.
U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine have now resumed, according to a senior official. That's after the Defense Department paused some deliveries last week, including critical air defense systems. The lingering questions about U.S. support are looming over the Ukraine Recovery Conference that's underway in Rome. CNN's Ben Wedeman is there and has our report.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Italy is hosting this Thursday and Friday, the fourth Ukraine Recovery Conference. What's different this time is that one of the participants, the United States, is under new management, a Trump administration that is highly unpredictable. It recently announced, for instance, it was suspending the supply of weapons to Ukraine. But then, as multiple sources have told CNN, the Defense Department had not informed the White House of the suspension, and President Trump came out on Tuesday and insisted the U.S. will continue to provide defensive weapons to Kyiv.
The American president, who vowed to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war on his first day in office, appears to be increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Overnight Tuesday, Russia fired more than 700 drones at Ukraine, the biggest such attacks that since the start of the war.
This spring, the Trump administration briefly suspended the provision of weapons and intelligence to Ukraine shortly after that stormy Oval Office meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Almost six months into the second Trump administration, it's clear European leaders aren't confident of the kind of U.S. support they've taken for granted since the end of World War II. This week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it bluntly. We cannot, she said, rely on others to defend Europe. I'm Ben Wedeman, CNN, reporting from Rome.
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LEE: Let's bring in CNN's international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson in London, where the leaders of the U.K. and France are hosting a Coalition of the Willing. Nic, what is at the top of the age for this summit? And talk to us about the significance of the timing, too.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: I think the timing of the two Ukraine conferences going on the same day speaks to the sort of position that Europe wants to take and the lead role, if we remember that many that disastrous Zelenskyy-Trump meeting in the Oval Office back in February that Ben was mentioning that immediately -- that immediately brought a large level of support it immediately brought a large level of support for, from the U.K. and France for really this is a continuation of that, a virtual conference here in the U.K. rather than the type of conference that we've seen before in the weeks after that Oval Office meeting when both Macron and Starmer met together and brought in other leaders.
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It will be a virtual meeting, but I think it would be the backdrop of this meeting that is sort of the substantive part. A joint command headquarters is expected to be the backdrop where the message will be very much about Europe taking up the slack, Europe defending itself, Europe, you know, patrolling the maritime waters of the Baltic Sea, for example, where Russian malfeasance, cable cutting is suspected, that it will be a symbolic message and an actual message as well of how Europe can work together in the absence of the United States.
But obviously, a key question today will be how much does Europe actually trust the United States to continue with these important weapons shipments that have been announced so -- to continue by the White House?
But it will be really, I think the fact that these two meetings happen together. But let's not lose sight of this, that although Macron and Starmer have worked together to lead the Coalition of the Willing, we've not had that many meetings recently. And I think the footing of that is stabilizing. But the headlines, I think announcements that we've seen in the past may not be there to match.
LEE: Nic Robertson in London, thank you for that update.
Key players are indicating they're making some progress on trying to bring at least a temporary end to the brutal war in Gaza. U.S. President Donald Trump now says negotiators are very close to striking a deal on a 60-day ceasefire, while Hamas says it's working, quote, diligently and positively to overcome obstacles at the ongoing talks in Qatar. It's also confirming earlier reports that the deal would involve the release of 10 living hostages, since CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's no question that there is progress being made in those negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a potential ceasefire and hostage release deal, both in the Qatari capital of Doha, where those proximity talks are taking place, but also in Washington, D.C. where critical negotiations are taking place between the Israeli prime minister and his team and President Trump and his administration.
But the fact that we saw President Trump speaking sitting down with Prime Minister Netanyahu last night for the second time this week, but not inviting cameras in, not delivering any kind of statement afterwards, suggests that there's still quite a lot of work to be done and puts into question whether or not this deal can actually get done by the end of this week, as President Trump has repeatedly said he believes is possible.
The U.S. Special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said yesterday that three of the four main sticking points have been closed out over the course of the last few days of those proximity talks but a sticking point still remains, and my sources have told me that one of the main issues here is the timeline and the location to which Israeli troops would withdraw during that 60-day ceasefire. One of the main arguments that has arisen as both parties try and close out this agreement.
We know that the United States and President Trump in particular, have provided assurances to the mediators, to Hamas, ultimately that Israel will remain at the negotiating table and that the ultimate goal here during this 60-day ceasefire is indeed to reach a deal over an end to the war altogether, and the release of all of the remaining hostages being held there.
But there's no question that time is running out, not only for those hostages whose families and former hostages we have heard remind the world that their situation is urgent, that every single additional day they remain in captivity is another danger to their lives, but also for the people of Gaza, who continue to suffer very intense Israeli bombardment. And also not only food shortages, but fuel shortages that are also affecting hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
This image right here shows four newborn babies at Al Helu Hospital in Gaza, all crammed into one incubator that would normally be closed and normally just be for one premature baby. But this is the kind of situation that Gaza's hospitals, after being decimated over the course of this war, are facing. Not enough NICUs and now fuel that is really posing a threat to the ability of these incubators to function.
We have seen hospitals like Al Shifa Hospital shutting down its dialysis center. And United Nations says hospitals are rationing fuel, ambulances are stalling, and water systems are on the brink. They say they urgently need fuel to get into Gaza. We've reached out to COGAT, the Israeli authorities responsible for coordinating that aid. They have yet to respond to our request for comment. Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv. (END VIDEOTAPE)
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LEE: The U.S. Embassy in Yemen is accusing Houthi rebels of kidnapping crew members from one of the cargo ships they've attacked in the Red Sea this week. They're also accused of killing other crew members.
