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The Situation Room

Interview With Author Maya Shankar; Golden Globes; Trump Threatens Action Against Iran. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired January 12, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: And, at the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the justices pulled back on the 2020 ruling when they ruled by a 6-3 vote -- we now have the six-justice conservative supermajority -- that states could in those cases pass bans on any kind of transgender medical care for youths who wanted to transition.

[11:30:08]

So, they were going kind of in the opposite direction, and that involving children. But, also, we have seen the Supreme Court allow President Trump to take several of his anti-trans initiatives.

He ran on really much an agenda being against trans rights, and the court so far has allowed him to stop transgender soldiers from serving, and also to stop individuals who -- prior policy from the State Department for passports for travelers in the U.S. to be able to say what their gender identity is, and now it has to be their sex at birth.

So we have seen a real momentum pushing in the opposite direction. So, tomorrow will be interesting. I have to say, Pamela, when you raised the question of the case involving trans rights in the workplace...

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Yes.

BISKUPIC: ... what we have seen is that, when it comes to adults, the justices might be of a different mind-set than when it comes to trans youth.

They seem to be especially scrutinizing, and again, walking back from where they were once before.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: I know you will be in the Supreme Court tomorrow during the session hearing the various arguments before the justices.

BISKUPIC: That's right. And we expect, because there are two cases, and the justices tend to go longer with their hearings, I think this one is going to go past noon, so we can catch up the following day during the show.

BROWN: OK. You're welcome back. Sounds perfect.

BLITZER: She's always welcome.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: Thank you very much, Joan.

BISKUPIC: Sure.

BROWN: And just ahead here in THE SITUATION ROOM: President Trump is threatening potential military action against Iran as the regime there cracks down on protesters. What could that look like? Our military analyst weighs in next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:36:06]

BLITZER: Happening now: President Trump says he's weighing all options, including potential military action, as the Iranian regime cracks down on dissent.

A U.S.-based human rights group says more than 500 anti-government demonstrators have been killed in Iran over the past couple of weeks. CNN cannot independently verify these numbers. The president has warned the regime that, if the protesters continue to be killed, the U.S. might intervene.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it. And we're looking at some very strong options. We will make a determination.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, if they do that, we will consider things, targets they wouldn't -- that they wouldn't believe. If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they have never been hit before. They won't even believe it. I have options that are so strong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And joining us now, CNN military analyst retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

Colonel, thanks so much for joining us.

You just heard the president say he has some very strong options when it comes to striking Iran. What do you believe those realistic options are?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: One of the key things, Wolf, is that it could very well be an attempt at a decapitation strike. That would mean the headquarters of the Iranian regime, perhaps the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, the police forces. Those are the kinds of things that would be very serious strikes to undertake. It might be a replication somewhat of the Maduro strike, but that would be a very extreme measure to take at this particular point in time.

So that would be the extreme option. Other options would include cyberattacks that could potentially degrade the infrastructure of Iran, the ability of the Iranians to communicate with each other. That would be another key thing. And the other aspect, of course, would be to provide protection to some of the protesters.

But that's a very difficult thing to do, especially without boots on the ground.

BLITZER: When the U.S. struck Iran last year, as you and I well remember, there was some Iranian retaliation. What is your top concern for the hundreds, if not thousands of U.S. troops who are still nearby in the Persian Gulf region, whether in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, or Bahrain, the home of the Fifth Fleet, for example?

What are your concerns about these U.S. troops if they come under attack from Iran?

LEIGHTON: I'm very concerned from a force protection standpoint, Wolf, that they would actually be impacted by not just missile strikes, which the Iranians could easily mount against those areas.

But the other thing that would be, of course, very important would be to look at the possibility of guerrilla attacks against -- terrorist attacks against places like Al Udeid Air Base or As Sayliyah, or the installations in the United Arab Emirates, or in Kuwait, as well as Bahrain.

So those are the kinds of things that would really be part of the Iranian playbook. And if the Iranians did that, that, of course, would serve to escalate the tensions, not only in the Middle East, but perhaps beyond that region in other areas of the world.

BLITZER: People don't necessarily realize how close to Iran those air and Naval and ground bases that the U.S. has from the Central Command in that Persian Gulf area are to Iran.

LEIGHTON: That's right.

And it's just really a hop, skip and a jump from Qatar to Iran, for example, to the Iranian coastline. And a lot of people in Qatar also speak Farsi. So there is an ethnic relationship there between those two countries, as well as, of course, the geographic distance that you mentioned.

That's going to make it very difficult for the U.S. to continue to protect its bases if it doesn't have a good force protection plan in place. BLITZER: And I thought it was significant that China is now weighing

in on the protests, saying that the United States should stay out of it.

A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign affairs saying, and I'm quoting now, "We consistently oppose interference in other countries' internal affairs."

[11:40:01]

How big of a threat is China in all of this, especially if Iran attacks U.S. assets?

LEIGHTON: Yes, so, China can play a very interesting role here.

First of all, there's a lot of -- there's a big relationship between the Iranians and the Chinese. The Chinese are exercising a lot of influence in Iran, along with the Russians. And that is going to have a significant impact, because what the Chinese could potentially do is, they could not only provide Iran with war material, with weapons, but they could also provide them with other support, especially intelligence support.

And that's specifically what the Chinese will probably do.

BLITZER: And sources are now telling CNN that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke Saturday about the ongoing protests in Iran.

The IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, saying it is monitoring developments. What do you think could prompt Israel to take direct action against Iran?

LEIGHTON: I think one of the key things that Israel is looking at is, are the Iranians going to attack Israel in one way or another?

One of the possibilities is their medium- and long-range missiles. The Iranians have reconstituted a lot of that missile capability since June of this of this past year. And that's one thing that the Israelis would be looking for. They would also try to find any excuse, for example, if Hezbollah were to reconstitute in Lebanon and serve as an Iranian proxy and attack Israeli targets.

That could also be used as an excuse by the Israelis to go after the Iranians. So those are the kinds of things that would be a possibility. Another thing to look out for is what's going on in Iraq, because Iran is still very active in Iraq, influencing everything that's going on in that country.

BLITZER: And, historically, as you and I well know, Israel's history is that, when they sense there's a threat coming in, they launch a preemptive strike.

LEIGHTON: Absolutely.

BLITZER: And that's certainly not being ruled out against Iran right now.

LEIGHTON: That's exactly right. Preemption is basically part of the Israeli military doctrine.

BLITZER: Yes.

LEIGHTON: And they will use that to great effect. And they have a big supporter in the White House right now.

And they're going to take advantage of that fact. In the past, the U.S. has prevented the Israelis from going after targets in Iran. That is no longer the case. At least, it doesn't appear to be.

BLITZER: The Iranians should be sensitive to that as well.

LEIGHTON: Yes.

BLITZER: All right, Cedric Leighton, Colonel, thank you very, very much.

LEIGHTON: You bet, Wolf.

BLITZER: And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:46:41]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI GLASER, COMEDIAN AND ACTRESS: Yes, the Golden Globes, without a doubt the most important thing that's happening in the world right now.

(LAUGHTER)

GLASER: Ariana, I would listen to you sing the phone book. Grab the one Kevin Hart is sitting on tonight. The Rock is nominated tonight. And luckily for him, the TV show "The Paper" is not. So he might win. He might win.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That was comedian Nikki Glaser officially kicking off Hollywood's awards season.

BROWN: Last night's Golden Globes ceremony was full of big wins, surprises and memorable moments.

Our Stephanie Elam was in the room.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIA ROBERTS, ACTRESS: The winner is "One Battle After Another." (CROSSTALK)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A huge night for "One Battle After Another," winning four awards, including best musical or comedy, but not for star Leonardo DiCaprio.

Instead...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Timothee Chalamet.

ELAM: ... Timothee Chalamet topped industry titans Leo and George Clooney for his role in "Marty Supreme."

TIMOTHEE CHALAMET, ACTOR: If you would have told me when I was 19 years old I'd be making Mr. Wonderful from "Shark Tank."

(LAUGHTER)

ELAM: Another fresh face, Teyana Taylor bringing the emotion.

TEYANA TAYLOR, ACTRESS: I almost didn't even write a speech because I didn't think I would get this.

ELAM: She won best female actor in a supporting role for "One Battle After Another."

TAYLOR: To my brown sisters and little brown girls watching tonight, we belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "The Pitt"!

ELAM: "The Pitt" won top TV drama and unofficial "E.R." reunion, as star Noah Wyle hugged George Clooney.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody wants to see George and Noah together again in the "E.R."

JEAN SMART, ACTRESS: I said my rant on the red carpet, so I won't do it here.

ELAM: Jean Smart, who wore a "Be Good" pin in honor of Renee Good shot by ICE in Minneapolis, called for compassion after her win for "Hacks."

SMART: I think everybody in their hearts knows what the right thing is to do, so let's do the right thing.

GLASER: Best editing goes to the Justice Department.

ELAM: Host Nikki Glaser took on the headlines, including Jeffrey Epstein.

GLASER: There are so many A-listers. And by A-listers, I do mean people who are on a list that has been heavily redacted.

ELAM: And while on CBS, Glaser roasted the network for controversy over new leadership at CBS News.

GLASER: CBS News, America's newest place to see B.S. news.

ELAM: But Glaser mostly stuck to roasting the stars with the famously private DiCaprio bearing the brunt.

GLASER: The most in-depth interview you have ever given was in "Teen Beat" magazine in 1991. Is your favorite food still pasta, pasta and more pasta?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM: And inside the ballroom, it seemed the crowd was there for Nikki Glaser's second turn as host of the Golden Globes.

Also worth mentioning, "Adolescence," which had another phenomenal night, winning four awards for its lead actor, Owen Cooper, the young man, and best supporting actor Stephen Graham as well for the best limited series as well, so a great night for that show on the TV side.

And, overall, it's giving us an idea of who may be up for the next awards as we head down through awards season and make our way to the Oscars.

BROWN: All right, Stephanie Elam, thanks for wrapping it up for us. We appreciate it.

BLITZER: Good wrap-up indeed.

And there's more happy and very exciting news coming out of Hollywood right now. It's an exclusive from CNN entertainment correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister and her husband, Michael. They have welcomed their first child, Harry.

[11:50:05]

Both mom and baby are happy, healthy, and doing well, thank God. A huge congratulations from our entire team and, as we say, mazel tov.

BROWN: And welcome to the Wolf pack, Harry.

All right, life rarely goes according to plan, but change doesn't have to mean chaos. Coming up, Maya Shankar is here with her new book on finding meaning when everything feels up in the air.

We will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:55:09]

BROWN: And now to a SITUATION ROOM special report.

With a new year comes new changes, and 2026 has already brought a lot of them. Artificial intelligence is rapidly shaping industries and the news cycle is moving faster than we can all keep up with. Navigating these changes can be intimidating, even scary, but our next guest says there is an easier way to manage it all.

Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the author of the new book "The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans." And it is out tomorrow.

I love that you wrote this book because I think every single person could really benefit from reading it, especially at this time, when there's this rapidity of change in society. So tell us more about why you wrote it and how it can help the everyday American navigating this crazy time we're in.

MAYA SHANKAR, AUTHOR, "THE OTHER SIDE OF CHANGE: WHO WE BECOME WHEN LIFE MAKES OTHER PLANS": Yes, I wrote "The Other Side of Change" because change is a very scary thing to navigate psychologically.

I have had a lot of formative changes in my life. And I would so often hear this mantra that, while you can't control what happens to you, you can control your response to what happens. And it's meant to be empowering, Pam, but, in my weakest moments, when I felt despair and anxiety, I'm like, OK, that sounds nice, but how the heck am I supposed to actually do that, right?

How am I supposed to feel and think differently about the changes, right, in my life? There's no switch in my brain that I can just flip on that suddenly makes me feel more peaceful or hopeful or more enlightened. And so I wrote the book because I wanted to give people a concrete guide filled with powerful stories of change, science-backed strategies, so that they actually have a companion during the hardest moments in their lives and can actually renew their relationship with what's happened to them.

BROWN: I love that because I have suffered from really bad anxiety. I have had -- after the birth of my second child, I had postpartum OCD, and I think -- I was diagnosed with that.

And I think a lot of it was just, I was struggling with the uncertainty, like the uncertainty that I needed to know that my baby, in this example, was safe every second of the day. And uncertainty, what I have learned through my process, my personal process, was it breeds anxiety.

And then the more you give credence to that anxiety, the bigger it grows, the bigger it grows. And so tell us more about the tools that your book gives for people in that situation when there's so much uncertainty and they're having so much anxiety that just gets bigger and bigger.

SHANKAR: Yes, I mean, you have identified one of the fundamental reasons why change is so destabilizing.

It's accompanied by so much uncertainty. And we know from research that our brains are not wired to enjoy uncertainty. So one of my favorite research studies shows that we are more stressed when we're told we have a 50 percent chance of getting an electric shock than when we're told we have a 100 percent chance of getting that shock. And so... BROWN: Wow. That's fascinating.

SHANKAR: Isn't that wild?

BROWN: Yes.

SHANKAR: I mean, we would rather be certain that a negative thing is going to happen than to have to grapple with any ambiguity or uncertainty.

BROWN: Yes.

SHANKAR: We as humans just love black-and-white answers.

And so I give examples of stories of cases where people had to grapple with that uncertainty and find peace with it. And then I also outlined strategies that we can use to manage that unrest we feel in the face of uncertainty.

One really quick thing people can do is to invite awe-inspiring experiences into their life. So we can feel awe in the presence of anything that is vast and that transcends our understanding of the world. And what awe does to us is that it quiets the parts of our brain that are associated with self-immersion and allows us to step outside of our individual wants and needs and anxieties, so that we can see our problems with more perspective and gain the kind of clarity we need to move forward.

BROWN: I love that. I think sometimes we all get caught up in our own head, right?

SHANKAR: Yes.

BROWN: And that's never a good place to be for too long.

(CROSSTALK)

SHANKAR: It's a very unsafe place. It's a very unsafe place.

BROWN: It is. And we have all been there and can all relate to it.

And I was thinking about when I was preparing for this segment just how politically divided the country is. And I'm wondering, do you think the rapidity of change could be influencing this at all? And what I mean, by that is it could cause people to maybe double down or go to their corner, their safe corner, to have their views reaffirmed and stick to their viewpoint because it's giving them some certainty.

Maybe it's an illusion, but it's giving them some certainty in this sort of uncertain world we're living in.

SHANKAR: Yes.

I mean, it's such a brilliant observation. One of the things I talk about in "The Other side of Change" is that change can serve as a moment of revelation for us. It reveals things to us about what our attitudes and beliefs are about the world. And as we contend with uncertainty, exactly like you said, we can actually double down on those points of view because we are so anxious about what the future holds.

And so I do give people strategies to try to unlock some degree of mental freedom where they can stop seeing their beliefs as these sacred immutable truths, but actually as things that are worthy of interrogation, as things that we can revisit.

[12:00:00]

And what I have seen time and time again is that these hard moments in our lives where the carpet is pulled out from under us, like, those are the critical moments in which that sort of interrogation is likely to happen, because it's bringing our belief systems into the light.

BROWN: Yes. And embrace it, rather than push it away.

SHANKAR: Exactly.

BROWN: I always think exactly these things happen for you, not to you, right?

SHANKAR: Yes.

BROWN: I mean, it's another way to look at it.

I could go on all day with you, Maya. Thank you so much. Great having you on.

SHANKAR: Thanks so much for having me.

BLITZER: Great discussion. Congratulations on the excellent new book.

BROWN: Congratulations. By the way, "The Other Side of Change," here's the book. Everyone, go out and get it.

BLITZER: Good idea.

BROWN: Because I'm certainly going to...

BLITZER: And, to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

BROWN: "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" with our friend and colleague Dana Bash starts right now.