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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

CNN Talks With Family Of Boat Strike Survivor In Ecuador; No End In Sight For Air Traffic Control Staffing Shortages; King Charles Set For Historic Prayer With Pope Leo XIV. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired October 23, 2025 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD LYONS, ACTING ICE DIRECTOR: But I will tell you that it's definitely intelligence driven. It's not random. We're just not pulling people off the street. There was a specific reason based on criminal intelligence and criminal activity that we showed up on Canal Street.

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DANNY FREEMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Switching gears now. President Trump says he believes the U.S. has legal authority to launch strikes in international waters when targeting drug cartels. Those comments come as the U.S. Secretary of Defense announced military strikes on two separate boats in the eastern Pacific. Officials said two people were killed in the first strike and three killed in the second. Now, that makes nine known strikes by the U.S. military since the start of September.

Well, CNN traveled to Ecuador to try and find one of the few people to actually survive one of those strikes. Our David Culver filed this report before the news of he most recent strike in the Pacific. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): In this small Ecuadorian coastal town nearly everyone knows someone who has left for work and never come back.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking foreign language).

CULVER: This is all her brother Andres' clothes. The mattress where he slept up until nearly a year ago. She says he was desperate for work. That he was concerned about providing for his six kids and he said he needed to go to work. And like many in this small coastal town he is a fisherman. The thing is -- and this is what she found odd -- he left behind all of his fishing gear. She says he's a good person and that he was just trying to make ends meet.

President Trump says your brother is a terrorist. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. (Speaking foreign language).

CULVER (voiceover): Her brother, Andres Tufina Chila, isn't a stranger to U.S. law enforcement. Court records show he was arrested, convicted, and jailed in 2020 for smuggling drugs off Mexico's coast before being deported. Now, after surviving the latest U.S. strike on a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, he's believed to be back in Ecuador and free. Officials here say they have no evidence he broke local laws and released him.

Yet his case has put a spotlight on a broader question: Who and what exactly are these U.S. strikes trying to stop?

Since early September the U.S. has carried out at least seven strikes off Venezuela's coast. The Trump administration says they were about saving American lives from drug overdoses, yet most U.S. overdose deaths aren't from cocaine. They're from fentanyl, largely produced in Mexico and smuggled over the border often by U.S. citizens.

It's not clear where exactly the U.S. has been targeting suspected drug-running boats. But our analysis of U.S. military flight data shows dozens of surveillance flights just north of Venezuela in the Caribbean far from Ecuador's shores where cocaine from Colombia in the north and Peru in the south pours in before moving out to sea, using Ecuador essentially as a transit hub to the Pacific. This is how about 70 percent of the world's cocaine supply gets to the U.S. and Europe, and beyond.

And the drug runners -- the ones risking it all at sea -- mostly are not gang members. They're fishermen often seen as expendable by the gangs that control them.

Ecuadorian officials say they're also cracking down, even with limited resources. Still, many here say the trade feels impossible to escape.

CULVER: When you ask them about the amount of involvement in narco and drug trafficking some were hesitant to disclose it.

He says as he looks at it, probably 25 to 30 percent are working in illicit drug trafficking.

CULVER (voiceover): Some say they have no choice.

In 2023, gangs ambushed a fishing village in the north targeting those who refused to pay extortion. Nine were killed, dozens wounded.

Others say the money makes it worth the risk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We put a box in the hull of the boat to hide the drugs. As a fisherman, I could make $300 a month but doing an illegal run up to just off the coast of Mexico, I can make $30,000 to $60,000 a month. It's good month.

CULVER (voiceover): If you survive the trip.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking foreign language). CULVER (voiceover): Since 2024, (INAUDIBLE) group has documented more than 2,800 Ecuadorian fishermen missing, dead, or detained abroad. These women, some two dozen who wanted to share their stories with us, know their loved ones broke the law but they also know why.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking foreign language).

CULVER (voiceover): "We don't have work. We don't have any way to support ourselves," she says.

As the U.S. strikes continue far from these shores the ones caught in the crossfire are rarely cartel leaders but the men who take the risk for them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking foreign language).

[05:35:00]

CULVER: She says she really wants to talk to her brother Andres. She's grateful that at least he's alive, especially considering her other two brothers are both in prison -- one here in Ecuador, the other in the U.S. Both of them accused of being fishermen turned drug runners.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREEMAN: And incredible reporting from David Culver there.

All right. Coming up, delays have become part of the drill for U.S. airline passengers during the government shutdown, and the bad news is the underlying cause is not going away anytime soon. That story and much more coming up ahead.

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[05:40:05]

FREEMAN: Welcome back to EARLY START. This is your business breakout.

Let's take a look at U.S. futures ahead of the opening bell. The Dow looking down a little bit. The S&P and Nasdaq looking a little bit up, but it seems teetering right there. Investors watching for third- quarter earnings reports from companies including T-Mobile and Intel, and waiting for consumer inflation data for September, which is expected to come out on Friday after being delayed due to the government shutdown.

All right, let's check in on some of today's business headlines meanwhile.

First, more workers in the U.S. with job-based health insurance are using weight loss drugs. KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group, said nearly 60 percent of large firms had a higher use of weight loss drugs among employees than predicted. Some employers say that's costing them a fortune and many are now rethinking the kinds of drug coverage they're going to offer employees. We're also taking a look at Tesla beating their best quarter of the year, though not impressing investors. Elon Musk's car company sold nearly half a million vehicles in Q3, a new record for Tesla as Americans rush to buy electric vehicles before a federal tax credit expired. But the carmaker's income is down nearly 30 percent from a year ago -- a steeper drop than analysts had anticipated.

And General Motors says it will introduce -- get this -- eyes-off driving on new Cadillac Escalades starting in 2028. Now, the new system will allegedly let passengers read a book, for instance, and take their eyes off the road. GM hopes to be the first to make personal self-driving cars a mainstream hit. We'll keep an eye on that.

To the air now. Patience is your friend if you are set to take a flight in the U.S. these days. The FAA reported staffing shortages in at least three air traffic control facilities last night, which now has become common during the government shutdown.

And as Pete Muntean reports, passengers should brace for even more delays.

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PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: The short staffing means the Federal Aviation Administration sometimes has no choice but to put delays in place to keep things safe. It all added up to thousands of delayed flights on Tuesday night. The reality is this will likely get worse before it gets better.

There's already a major shortage of air traffic controllers nationwide. They are reporting to work without pay during this government shutdown. And all it takes is a handful of them calling out sick to trigger a ripple effect across the air travel system.

Tuesday night's staffing shortages hit United Airlines hard. Newark and Houston are among the airline's biggest hubs. About 16 percent of all United flights nationwide were delayed on Tuesday.

Southwest also hit hard. The shortages caused Houston Hobby, a Southwest hub, to go into a ground stop for part of the evening. The airline ended the day with just over 500 delays nationwide.

Most of the shortages Tuesday night were at FAA terminal radar approach control facilities, which handle flights at lower altitudes near major airports. But the problems were limited to just five facilities. Less than two percent of all FAA facilities nationwide. Just one more example of the outsized impact of these shortages.

A lot of people have said staffing is a problem for the FAA all the time, and that is true. But we ran the numbers and so far, there have been 193 air traffic control staffing shortages during this government shutdown, more than four times the number over the same period a year ago.

Controllers got a partial paycheck last Tuesday. They'll get their first zero paycheck this coming Tuesday.

And we'll see if the shutdown ends by Thanksgiving when air travel is expected to break records and the system will be pushed to its limits.

Pete Muntean, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREEMAN: Thank you, Pete.

All right. Coming up in just a moment, King Charles is about to pray with Pope Leo at the Vatican. Still ahead we'll tell you why this is such a historic event.

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[05:48:25]

FREEMAN: Welcome back. I'm Danny Freeman. Here are some of the top stories we are watching today.

First, President Trump is moving along with the demolition of the East Wing in order to build a huge ballroom at the White House, but critics question whether he has the legal authority to tear down parts of the historic mansion. The cost of the renovation has soared from $200 million to an estimated $300 million.

And the Trump administration has slapped new sanctions on Russia targeting the country's two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, and almost three dozen of their affiliates. Now the U.S. wants Moscow to agree to an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. President Donald Trump says he's canceled an anticipated meeting with Russian President Putin.

And to a scary story. A car plowed into a group of children near a primary school in China on Wednesday. And we've got to warn you that some people may find the next video disturbing. It's not clear how many casualties there were in this incident, but multiple children were seen lying unresponsive. CNN Geo located the scene from videos on social media to Shiyan city in China's central Hubei Province.

Meanwhile, experts are warning the $100 million in jewelry taken from the Louvre Museum in a brazen daylight heist are likely to be dismantled for their precious gems and metals, destroying artifacts dating back to the time of Napoleon.

And as the investigators search for the jewels and the thieves, the head of the Louvre has revealed no security cameras were monitoring the balcony where they entered the museum.

[05:50:00]

CNN's Melissa Bell has more on the fallout for the heist.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The director of France's Louvre Museum has been defending herself in front of a Senate committee explaining that she tendered her resignation in the wake of Sunday morning's dramatic heist. It has been refused, she said, by the culture minister.

Both women are saying -- the culture minister and the director of the Louvre -- that the security systems function, defending their record. This is in the face of a great deal of criticism and calls for both their resignations. There have been questions, of course, about the security breach itself on Sunday morning. How robbers could have got in with such rudimentary tools to what should have been some of the best guarded crown jewels in the country.

But there is also a not-yet-published report that has emerged in parts of the French press by France's highest auditing body that was critical specifically of what it described as security lapses in the museum between 2019 and '24. The lack, for instance, of CCTV cameras in a number of the museum's rooms. So all of these have been pounced upon by the French press.

In the meantime, the manhunt continues as does the hunt for the jewels themselves. More than 100 French investigators are working on the case, we understand, and continue to gather clues. A scooter left behind by the robbers, a glove, a motorcycle helmet, and, of course, the truck that was used with its mechanical ladder on it that is being scoured for any fingerprints. Any evidence they can find to try and help them track down the robbers.

But, of course, with every day, every hour that passes the hopes that will happen grow slimmer.

Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREEMAN: Thank you, Melissa.

All right. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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[05:56:00]

FREEMAN: In the next hour we'll see something that hasn't happened for nearly 500 years. King Charles is set to pray with Pope Leo at the Vatican. Charles will become the first British monarch to publicly pray with a pope since 1534 -- an event that signals closer ties between the Church of England and the Catholic Church about five centuries after their historic split.

Let's get more now from CNN's Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb. He joins us live from Rome. Christopher, break down this historic moment.

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well Danny, yes, it is truly an historic visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla to see Pope Leo XIV. You're just seeing them arrive just about an hour ago. They're in the Vatican now. The king has been meeting with the pope.

And then in a few moments time, as you said, the historic moment of an English king and a pope praying together for the first time in at least 500 years will take place in the Sistine Chapel behind me. That historic chapel which is decorated with the Michaelangelo frescos and where the election of a pope takes place. The king and the pope will pray in a service that emphasizes care for creation; something that is a longstanding concern of King Charles and obviously a priority for Pope Leo.

But broadly speaking, this visit is about emphasizing unity. About the possibility of overcoming divisions. Of course, it was 500 years ago when King Henry VIII broke with Rome and established himself as the leader of the Church of England. And the relationship in the papacy and the English monarchy was one of suspicion, conflict, and tension.

And now we have a king, King Charles, the leader of the Church of England, praying with the leader of the Catholic Church together, sending a signal that unity is possible and that divisions don't need to define the future. That's a big concern for Pope Leo.

King Charles will be given an honor by the church. He's going to be made a confrater of the papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls -- a major church here in Rome. And King Charles has also made Pope Leo a confrater of St. George's Windsor in the U.K. and given him a British chivalric title.

So there's a strong sense here of unity between the king and the monarchy and the Catholic and Anglican churches -- Danny.

FREEMAN: And just incredible where you have a story that truly is centuries in the making.

Christopher Lamb, glad we have you out there for it -- appreciate it.

All right, a few more things now.

Pro sports betting is becoming fair game for college athletes in the U.S. The National Collegiate Athletic Association decided on Wednesday to allow student-athletes and athletic department staff to bet on professional sports. Now, the change goes into effect on November 1 and comes after a recent increase in the number of sports betting violations.

The NCAA clarified it still does not endorse though sports betting and this rule change will not allow student-athletes to bet on college sports or share information about college competitions with betters.

Meanwhile, despite a backlash, the National Football League is standing by its decision to have the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny headline the Super Bowl LX's halftime show.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said on Wednesday that he's "confident it's going to be a great show that will be a united moment." Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROGER GOODELL, NFL COMMISSIONER: He's one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world. That's what we try to achieve. It's an important stage for us. It's an important element to the entertainment value. It's carefully thought through. I would say that I'm not sure we've ever selected an artist where we didn't have some blowback or criticism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:00:00]

FREEMAN: Bad Bunny -- real name Benito Ocasio -- has criticized Trump immigration policies and has promoted LGBTQ policies. Now, some critics in the U.S. have painted him as a Trump hater and anti- American even though he is, of course, an American citizen.

Super Bowl LX will take place on Sunday, February 8.

All right, thank you so much for joining us here this morning on EARLY START. I'm Danny Freeman in New York. "CNN THIS MORNING" will start in a moment.