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Escalating Tensions in Chicago After Car Chase Involving Feds Leads to Crash; Supreme Court Hearing Case That Could Gut Voting Rights Act; Hamas Delays Return of 21 Deceased Hostages to Israel. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 15, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, escalating tensions. A tense standoff in Chicago, a car chase and crash involving federal agents. And there's video. You see it right here. This morning, the Illinois governor is calling ICE and out of control, danger to our peaceful communities.

Plus, a threat, Israel is telling the United Nations that it will limit or delay how many humanitarian shipments, humanitarian shipments it will allow into Gaza, as fury grows over the limited number of deceased toss released by Hamas.

And then later, ATM scam, a Situation Room special report into how Americans are losing millions with even police unable to get victims their money back.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Pamela Brown. Wolf Blitzer is off today, and you're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with public anger building in Chicago this morning, as the Trump administration escalates its immigration crackdown. This is security camera footage showing the moment federal agents yesterday crashed into a car, they say, it was being driven by an undocumented immigrant.

Now, Homeland Security says the car hit them first. That led to this. Dozens of protesters descended on that scene of the accident leading to a chaotic confrontation. The tense standoff spiraled after officials say objects were thrown at them, forcing the deployment of tear gas that further inflamed tensions with residents.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEATRIZ PONCE DE LEON, CHICAGO DEPUTY MAYOR OF IMMIGRANT, MIGRANT AND REFUGEE RIGHTS: There's absolutely no reason to have this kind of chaos happening in our communities, putting people at risk, putting people in harm's way, and just exacerbating the fear that people feel right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Today, two people accused of hitting a federal agent's car in Chicago earlier this month are set to appear in court.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is outside the courthouse. He joins us now by phone. Omar, there are growing inconsistencies about what actually happened. What more are you learning?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, we're getting ready to head into an arraignment -- excuse me, an arraignment hearing for this woman who is accused of ramming her vehicle into a Customs and Border Protection vehicle a little bit earlier this month. And then after that ramming, agents got out and shot this woman multiple times. And so the accusation is that, again, she was following these CBP vehicles in the southwest neighborhood of Chicago and then rammed her vehicle.

Now, we've been speaking to her defense attorney and reading some of their court filings. The defense attorney completely disputes that and essentially says that, at this point, he's seen body camera, video footage, and he says that based on what he's seen, it seems that it is the agents that turn their vehicle into him -- or into her, excuse me. And so that's part of what he's arguing in court.

And the other clue that we sort of got from the filing at this point was that he said that the credibility of DHS agents' descriptions of the events at issue will be the focal point of the defense at trial. And the reason I bring that up is because, for folks that have been following along here, if you remember, when a separate judge put a temporary restraining order on deploying National Guard troops to the city of Chicago, the judge in that case said that that case came down to the credibility of Department of Homeland Security allegations. And there, the judge didn't believe they were credible.

So, it's interesting to see both of those arguments sort of pop up in two different cases. But, again, this arraignment hearing should be pretty quick, but we will get a little bit more insight into this narrative that the defense says does not match up with what DHS has put out to this point. The narrative from the defense is that it was the agents that turned their vehicle into her and it amounted to what the attorney described to me as essentially a paint job accident as opposed to this really intense impact.

BROWN: All right. I know you'll be back with us next hour after the hearing ends to bring us the news of what happened inside court. Thank you so much, Omar.

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Happening now, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider a case that could gut the nation's landmark Voting Rights Act. In today's case from Louisiana, the justices could erase decades of court decisions and bar states from considering race when drawing up new Congressional districts. The 1965 law signed by President Lyndon Johnson aimed to protect the voting power of minorities by targeting the discriminatory drawing of districts.

And this morning, there are protests, as you see right outside the Supreme Court. The oral arguments are due to begin at any moment now.

Joining us is CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, a former state and federal prosecutor, to talk more about this. Also, he's the author of the new book, When You Come at the King, Inside DOJ's Pursuit of the President, from Nixon to Trump.

All right, so, Elie, tell us how do we get to this point and what arguments should we expect from the parties today?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So, Pam, this centers on the state of Louisiana, which after the 2020 election, had to redraw its Congressional map. Now, Louisiana has six Congressional districts, and about one third of the state's population is black. The first Congressional map that came out had one majority minority district out of the six. That was challenged by a group of black voters. And the lower federal court said that map violates the Voting Rights Act because it essentially dilutes the power of black voters in the state.

Louisiana then had to go back to the drawing board, they came up with a new map that had two of the six districts were majority minority. That map was then challenged by a group of voters calling themselves non-African American voters. The lower federal court said that is unconstitutional because it violates the 14th Amendment, because if you're taking race into consideration at all, even to the benefit of a minority group, that violates the 14th Amendment.

So, that's the fundamental clash, Pam, before the Supreme Court today. You have the Voting Rights Act, which is intended to protect the rights of minority voters versus the 14th Amendment, which, under recent Supreme Court precedent, says you cannot take race into consideration at all.

BROWN: So, this is a Louisiana case, but the outcome of this case will be hugely important, not just for minority voters who are protected under the Voting Rights Act, but also next year's midterm elections, right? Tell us about that.

HONIG: Oh, for sure. We are seeing redistricting battles break out all over the country. In Texas, at Donald Trump's urging, the state is in the process of redrawing its district lines to try to engineer more Republican districts. In California, the opposite is happening. Voters there are about to vote on a referendum that would redraw lines that would yield more Democratic seats in the House and other states are lining up to do the same thing.

So, Pam, you can rest assure many or all of those cases will result in federal lawsuits, some of them may end up at the Supreme Court. And that's why this decision that's going to come out of today's argument, this will tell us where the Supreme Court stands on this issue of redistricting and how the issue of race has to be factored in.

BROWN: And it's interesting too because this was argued last term, and this is essentially a re-argument, which is highly unusual.

Elie Honig, thank you so much.

HONIG: Thanks, Pam.

BROWN: Happening now, there is growing anger in Israel over the failure of Hamas to return the remains of all hostages. And that failure could jeopardize the fragile ceasefire. This is the return of four bodies to Israel overnight. Adding to the outrage, the Israeli military says one of those bodies is not an Israeli hostage. So, that means has surrendered only 7 of the 28 deceased hostages.

Humanitarian aid of food and medical supplies is still flowing in the Gaza, as you see here, but Israel is restricting some of it in retaliation for Hamas not returning all the remains. Palestinian civilians say they're caught in the middle of all of this and just struggling to survive.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is no work, no food, no drinks, no housing, and now winter is coming. By God Almighty, I'm telling you. I swear we don't have blankets. I have nothing, nothing at all. I left and my house was destroyed, and I'm still in the same situation, and now we're suffering.

Where are we supposed to live? Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? There are about 36 of us here, me, my grandchildren, my daughters-in-law, and my children, and we don't know where to go or where to turn.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Let's go live now to CNN's Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv. Jeremy, we've heard these recent comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump showing they're on the same page when it comes to dealing with Hamas. What more can you tell us?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, the negotiations are now underway in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh to negotiate the next phase of this ceasefire agreement. We saw, of course, that Hamas and Israel reached this phase one agreement, and President Trump then declared that this did mark indeed an end to the war in Gaza.

But as we've learned, the details of the next phases, whether it is Hamas disarming, or Hamas giving a power in Gaza, Israel withdrawing from the territory, none of those points have actually been agreed to between both sides. But both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are now making clear that regardless of how those negotiations go, an absolute necessity is indeed Hamas disarming.

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Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: First, Hamas has to give up its arms. And second, we want to make sure that there are no weapons factories inside Gaza, there's no smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: If they don't disarm, we will disarm them. And it'll happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm. Do you understand me?

REPORTER: Yes. You say --

TRUMP: Because you always -- everyone says, oh, well, they won't disarm. They will disarm. And I spoke to Hamas. And I said, you're going to disarm, right? Yes, sir, we're going to disarm. That's what they told me. They will disarm or we will disarm them. Got it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DIAMOND: And now, listen, we still haven't heard publicly from Hamas whether or not they are indeed willing to disarm, although we've gotten some indication that they're willing to at least give up their large weapons, keep their small arms. That is still going to be subject, of course, to those negotiations. Pam?

BROWN: And, Jeremy, the United Nations is confirming that Israel is in fact reducing the number of aid trucks in the Gaza. What more are you learning about that, what that aid reduction looks like for the Palestinians?

DIAMOND: Yes, that's right. I mean, we were supposed to see some 600 trucks of aid per day surging into the Gaza Strip to try and alleviate the desperate humanitarian situation that is unfolding there. But now Israel is saying that because of Hamas' slow pace of sending back the bodies of those hostages, only returning 7 so far of the 28, that they are going to be reducing or delaying the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip.

And this comes at a time when we are hearing from the United Nations relief chief, Tom Fletcher, he is calling for all of this surge of aid to be implemented immediately from more crossings to be opened, and saying that humanitarian age should simply not be used as a bargaining chip when it is affecting so many civilians in Gaza, particularly at a time when we are hearing from so many of these civilians, whether it is in Gaza City or in other parts of the strip, who are returning to areas that have been absolutely devastated by Israeli military attacks there and there simply is not enough food, not enough shelter, not enough medicine. All of that desperately needed in Gaza right now. Pam?

BROWN: Yes. And as we hear from the one Palestinian woman, they're really worried about winter coming as well and not having the resources needed.

Jeremy Diamond, thank you so much.

Still ahead, new measles cases being reported in South Carolina, where officials are saying the latest exposure happened as cases are hitting a nearly 30-year high.

And then later, CNN investigates a growing scam across America where victims, often retirees, are being tricked into feeding their hard earned cash into crypto ATMs and police can't get it back.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I should have known better. I should have known better. I was stupid enough. I fell for it.

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BROWN: Happening now, House Speaker Mike Johnson, as you see, and other Republicans are holding a news conference marking day 15 of the government shutdown. There is still no end in sight.

Joining us to discuss this and more as Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, he is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Thank you for coming on.

You've heard the House speaker say, look, this is a clean C.R. There's nothing to negotiate here. President Trump says his administration, for his part, will release a list on Friday of, quote, Democrat programs it plans to cut permanently during the shutdown, but will spare, quote, Republican programs. I want to get your response to that.

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): Yes, well, I mean, two things to say about that, right? I mean, the American people can look at what the president has said and the American people can decide whether they like a federal government, the most powerful entity on the planet, that will, I guess, from now on, and someday there will be a Democratic president too, be devoted to hurting those communities that represent the other party. So, again, people can make their own judgments about whether they want that to be the future of this country.

You know, with respect to the shutdown, you know, what the speaker and what my Republican friends want is they want the total power that they were granted by the American electorate last November when the American electorate gave them the Senate, it gave them the House and it gave them the White House, but they don't want any of the responsibility. So, as a result, you hear this ludicrous blaming of the Democrats for this shutdown, even though -- and Americans feel this in their bones, even though they have every lever of power here in the U.S. Congress.

BROWN: Well, they say, look, the Senate Democrats aren't getting on board because they're saying that it's about the ACA subsidies. This is a clean C.R. You voted for short-term funding bills in the past. You've also criticized them and advocated for a thorough appropriations process. But with the White House now using the shutdown to lay off workers, why not vote to end the shutdown and the suffering?

HIMES: Well, what's different about this moment right now is two things. Number one, the president has shown, and the Republicans in the Congress have completely acquiesced that he has no respect for Congress' budgeting authority. It's right there in the Constitution, in black and white. Congress gets to make the decisions about where dollars go. That's not acknowledged in the White House.

So, as you might imagine in the minority party, in the Democratic Party, we say, wait a second, if we pass a budget, what guarantee, if any, do we have that the deal we made gets kept? Because the deal that we made in the last go-round of the C.R. with Kevin McCarthy, a continuing resolution, a C.R., for which he lost his job as speaker, they just obliterated it and said, no, sorry, we're not abiding by that agreement.

The other thing that is happening, Pam, and this is what really matters, after years of Republicans trying to shut down the government in order to take away healthcare, we are now watching, and as we speak, people are getting letters in their mailboxes saying, your premiums will double. Your healthcare insurance premiums will double. They will triple. That is happening right now. And the Democrats are just saying, hey, we heard the president say that this is something that he worries about. Let's fix it now. People need to make decisions about health insurance in the next couple of weeks.

So, the speaker's idea that, oh, yes, we'll open the government and maybe we'll negotiate with you in December, that is way too late for millions of Americans who are going to see their health insurance go away if we don't solve this problem right now.

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BROWN: Certainly, healthcare subsidies are important to voters, both Democrat and Republicans, but how much is this issue being used by Democrats to show the base that you're fighting back against President Trump?

HIMES: This issue is about healthcare insurance, right? There is nothing amusing or partisan or political about saying we should not force 10 million Americans off their health insurance, or put them in a position where they've got to stop paying their mortgage in order to form to pay their health insurance. There is nothing political about that.

It is also -- there is also no question, though it is separate, that when you see DHS officers slamming into a car of an individual and then ripping the woman whose car they have hit out of that car and forcing her to the ground. Yes, there are a lot of Americans who were saying, this is not what we want in our country. This is not what we voted for, maybe in Chile, under the dictatorship, maybe in other dictatorships, like North Korea and China and Iran. But in this country we don't have masked armed agents ripping civilians out of their cars. And so, yes, of course, there is a upwelling of desire that the opposition party, that's my party, say, hey, this is not consistent with American values and it must stop.

BROWN: Speaker Johnson, as I noted, is talking and he is blaming Democrats for the shutdown. So, I want to listen to what he said and get your reaction.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): I will just say this. There's something that should be remembered by everyone. Democrats say that even missed paychecks for U.S. troops won't be enough to end this shutdown. The Democrats, who we just demonstrated, represent thousands and thousands of the most heroic men and women on the Earth, refuse to put their unserious partisan demands to the side and pay the troops.

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BROWN: What do you say to that?

HIMES: Well, I mean, I'll say what I said two minutes ago, which is the American people at some level are not -- you know, they get this, right? The Republicans have the Senate, they have the House, they have the White House. So, for the speaker of the House to point at the Democrats and say, though, we control every level of power in D.C., it's those darn Democrats that are holding us up.

The American people understand how absurd that is. And as a result, and you can look at the polling, and at the end of the day, this is about pain being visited on air traffic controllers, on the military, just as you pointed out. But if you look at the polling, the American people are not so stupid as to believe the speaker, that even though he controls everything, the White House, the Senate, and the House, this is really the Democrats' fault. Look nobody's buying that.

BROWN: Before we let you go, I want to turn to the situation in the Middle East and play some of what President Trump recently said about Hamas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If they don't disarm, we will disarm them. And it'll happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm. Do you understand me?

REPORTER: Yes. You say --

TRUMP: Because you always -- everyone says, oh, well, they won't disarm, they will disarm. And I spoke to Hamas and I said, you're going to disarm, right? Yes, sir, we're going to disarm. That's what they told me. They will disarm or we will disarm them. Got it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Should the United States disarm Hamas even through force, if it doesn't disarm itself?

HIMES: You know, that sounds an awful lot like boots on the ground. You don't have to be a military expert to know that if you're going to disarm thousands of people who have AK-47s in basements and tunnels, it probably involves boots on the ground, which I think is not something the American people are ready for it. Look, I understand what the president is doing. This is a very sensitive moment. And, by the way, kudos to the administration. I'm usually pretty critical of this administration, but kudos to the administration for negotiating this deal. But for this deal to survive, two things must happen. Hamas must abide by its obligations to hand over the remaining hostage and Israel must abide by its obligation to pull back behind a determined line and to let aid in. Right now, neither of those two things seem to be happening as intensely as they should be happening.

So, I don't blame the President for saying, you guys got to abide by what you said you would do, but Americans should make no mistake. And, by the way, I don't really believe that. You know, whatever I think of Donald Trump, he's a guy who has his, you know, finger on the pulse, certainly of his own political base. And his own political base, if you went to MAGA and said, we're going to put a bunch of infantry on the ground in Gaza, they would laugh you out of the room. They would do worse than laugh you out of the room. They would throw you out of the room.

BROWN: Yes. And as part of the peace plan, there's no troops on the ground in Gaza, but there is still a question of how do you disarm Hamas by force, of course.

Just that you brought up, you know, both sides are sort of not upholding their end of the bargain here. Israel told the United Nations, and the United Nations confirmed that Israel is pulling back on aid into Gaza, food, medical supplies, that kind of thing, because they say Hamas isn't turning over the remains of those who are deceased, the deceased hostages. What do you think about that? What is your message to Israel on that?

HIMES: Look, I think two things. Number one, I think both sides need to give -- you know, the Israelis and Hamas need to give each other a little bit of room.

[10:25:02]

You have one of the most chaotic, you know, apocalyptic landscapes on the planet. So, if Hamas says, we can't locate two bodies, because those bodies, those individuals were in a, you know, bombed out zone where we can't locate them, the Israelis need to give them a little bit of room to do that. And by the same token, you can't simply turn a military around on a dime. So, Hamas and everyone else need to give the Israelis time to safely pull back to the lines that they've agreed to do so.

Now, what is not okay, what is not okay is using that aid as a bargaining chip, right? So, this aid is food and medicines and clean water that is going to a civilian population. So, it is not okay for the Israelis to say, well, if Hamas is not complying with their obligations, we're going to take it out on the civilians and Gaza.

That is actually what Hamas does. Hamas is the group that uses the Palestinian civilian population as shields, and the Israelis should not be tempted to go in that direction. BROWN: Very quickly, President Trump said that he had talked directly to Hamas about disarming. What is your reaction to that?

HIMES: Yes, I was a little taken aback by that. You know, my understanding was that that our conversations had been indirect with Hamas. But you're right, I'd love to know the facts about whether the president actually spoke to designated terrorists.

I guess I was a little caught up in his promise that we would disarm them, right? You know, again, there's sort of an aversion to yet another land war in the Middle East around here. So, I caught that, but I was sort of more concerned with his promise that we would be disarming a terrorist organization, you know, hiding in tunnels and burnt out buildings in Gaza.

BROWN: All right. Congressman Jim Himes, thank you so much.

HIMES: Thanks so much.

And coming up in our next hour, we'll be joined by Republican Congressman Mike Lawler to talk about the shutdown and recent confrontations with Democratic colleagues.

And tonight, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez join Kaitlan Collins for a live town hall as the shutdown drags on. That's at 9:00 P.M. Eastern, right here on CNN.

We'll be right back.

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