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U.S. Hits Five Iranian Tankers, Sinks One as Tensions Escalate; War, Tariffs, Affordability Weigh Heavy on Voters; Firefighters Demand Answers on Records Revealing Toxic Air After 9/11. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 09, 2026 - 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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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, new escalation. The U.S. destroys five Iranian tankers. The new flashpoint and what could be next.

And new CNN investigation, resurfaced videos revealing a GOP candidate's crude comments about women, comparing feminists' weight to whales and nuclear bombs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But what if, out of self-defense, you had to take down something a lot bigger, like an elephant or a killer whale or an angry blue-haired Austin feminist?

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BROWN: This is Brandon Herrera, a Republican nominee for a key Texas Congressional district. Allie Gordon will be coming up to share her reporting.

Plus, key hearing. A case in Louisiana could end tele-health abortion nationwide. Will access be wiped out? We have the new reporting from inside the courtroom.

Also, inside the Clancy jury room, a juror's claim about the holdout that could reignite debate over the verdict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms. I was so excited.

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BROWN: And gate change, a 180 at the airport. You can now see your family off from the gate after the security check. What you need to know about the TSA program.

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

Happening now, fresh escalations. The U.S. hits five Iranian tankers after officials say Iran targeted a navy warship twice with ballistic missiles over the last two days. The IRGC claims it struck two U.S. Navy vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. military is disputing as, quote, completely false.

In this newly released video, you can see one of the ships in the Gulf of Oman on fire and ultimately sinking. Iran responded overnight by sending a barrage of missiles into Jordan, targeting a key air base used by U.S. forces. The Jordanian army says its air defenses successfully destroyed 18 of the 20 missiles.

The new strikes are sending global oil prices to their highest level since July, with Brent crude hitting $100 per barrel briefly. And gas prices surged by about seven cents today to a national average of $4.22 a gallon. That's the biggest one-day increase since May 1st. Researchers say the spike in both gas and diesel has cost Americans more than $101 billion since the war started.

CNN Senior National Security Reporter Zachary Cohen joins us now. Tell us more about what is so key for, for the U.S. striking these tankers, Zach.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Pam, these strikes are important on a few fronts. One, a U.S. official making clear to me that the striking of these tankers was intended to send a message to Iran that the U.S. is not going to tolerate Iran trying to target U.S. Navy vessels in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

And that's something that we saw from Iran for two consecutive days ahead of these U.S. strikes targeting the tankers. The U.S. officials say that Iran unsuccessfully tried to sink a U.S. Navy ship that was conducting operations in those key waters where the U.S. has really built up a significant presence as part of a new strategy that's really focused on three things. One is targeting and destroying Iranian assets around the Strait of Hormuz, enforcing that blockade that's been in place now for several months and also escorting tankers, commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in an effort to try to restore the flow of oil to somewhere close to pre-war levels.

And that's something that we know the U.S. military, and CENTCOM in particular, has been hyper-focused on here in the last few weeks. It does represent a shift in military strategy, somewhat all geared towards this economic stranglehold that they're trying to apply to the Iranian regime. But also significant, too, because Iran showing a willingness to escalate here by targeting U.S. Navy ships and also threatening to continue targeting U.S. bases in the region, as we saw in response to these U.S. strikes against the tankers around the Strait of Hormuz, launching a barrage of missiles at a U.S. base in Jordan.

So, we do seem to be seeing a back and forth here that doesn't show any signs of slowing down. The question is, how far will this escalate, and how far will the Iranians continue to push the envelope? BROWN: Yes, because it does seem like a significant escalation that the Iranians are using ballistic missiles now, targeting these U.S. warships.

I also understand you have some new reporting about construction happening at a suspected nuclear site, Pickax Mountain.

[10:05:05]

Tell us more about that and how the U.S. could potentially respond to that.

COHEN: Yes, Pam. We've heard even President Trump talk about Pickaxe Mountain as recently as last week, telling reporters that the U.S. could be targeting that site, a suspected nuclear site, very soon.

Now, that's something that -- this is a site that's been on the radar of intelligence agencies for a while now, and it's something that satellite imagery shows, according to analysis from CSIS, that there's been a lot of construction at this site over the last year coinciding with the Iran's war with the U.S. and Israel.

And now this is a site where some intelligence agencies believe Iran may have moved some of its nuclear components, things that they could potentially use to preserve its nuclear program in the future. But, again, this site still looms large given President Trump's promise that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.

BROWN: All right. Zachary Cohen, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

But issues like the war with Iran, tariffs, and overall affordability, they've driven President Trump's overall approval rating to just 35 percent. And in less than two months, voters will decide who will run Congress for the president's final two years in office.

Now, Republicans are pushing to the midterms full force, hosting a first of its kind convention in Dallas. President Trump will head to the Lone Star State today for that two-day event that will not only highlight his achievements while in office, but look ahead to the future of the party.

So, let's go live now to CNN Senior Reporter Steve Contorno, who's live for us in Dallas. Steve, the RNC is preparing for life without President Trump being front and center and in the White House. What is the message you're getting about the future of the GOP from the list of speakers and those skipping the event?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Pamela, there's two dynamics at play here this week in Dallas, and one is the unmistakable command that President Donald Trump still has over his party, that he can even summon them to Dallas and conceive of a midterm convention, require them all to come here. It just shows how he continues to just dominate the Republican Party and remain a central figure. This is an event that is by Donald Trump, for Donald Trump, and to keep Donald Trump's Republican Party in power beyond these midterm elections and for the last two years that he is in office. But there is also the reality that Republicans are increasingly confronting that this may be one of the last Trumpapaloozas. As soon as the midterms are over, the Republican Party will begin to think about its future. Is that person that is going to lead this party after Trump Vice President J.D. Vance? Well, he will be speaking tomorrow night.

And we're really getting that vibe from Republicans, and even from Trump himself more and more, that they are cognizant that his clock is ticking. I talked to Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservatives Union, who holds CPAC, and they have had to even think about already what it is like to hold those kind of events when Trump is no longer the main attraction. And he told me that even though he is in denial that Trump may soon be leaving the stage, it's something that Republicans are going to have to soon face head-on.

BROWN: All right. Steve Contorno, thank you so much for bringing us your latest reporting there from Dallas.

And happening now, these right here are live pictures from New York, where members of the Fire Department of New York and fire officers are demanding answers on newly released 9/11 air quality records.

New York City released more than 170,000 pages of documents revealing that officials repeatedly misled residents about toxic air quality levels after the attack on the World Trade Center. Those living near Ground Zero were repeatedly reassured by officials that the air was safe, despite internal data and residents' experiences that contradicted their claims.

We will, of course, monitor this event and bring you any updates as they come in.

And still ahead here in The Situation Room, gambling with our lives. Another A.I. employee issues a stark warning right after quitting his job over safety concerns. Why he says artificial intelligence could kill us all by the end of the decade.

Plus, scenes of destruction across parts of Hawaii after Hurricane Lowell lashes out at the island with powerful winds and dangerous surf.

You're in The Situation Room, and we'll be right back.

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BROWN: As we noted earlier leaders with the FDNY are speaking. I want to listen in to Lieutenant James Brosi about air quality reports that just came out. Let's listen.

LT. JAMES BROSI, PRESIDENT, FDNY UNIFORMED FIRE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION: Thank you very much. My name is Jim Brosi. I'm the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, and I want to thank all of you for being here today, and continuing to shed light on this very tragic situation, the, the events of 9/11 as well as the illnesses that followed.

I stand here in utter disbelief that we've lost nearly 1,000 members in total, both active and retired in the fire department, over 130 people in acute cancer care, three in hospice, and two funerals within the last seven days.

But the greater disbelief is the revealing of these documents and what it took to get what we already knew. Gale Brewer, through her political expertise, enforced city council provision to initiate an I.G. investigation against the city to force them to release these documents. They held these documents for years. We've known about them for a year after the I.G. requested that all documents relating to 9/11 be turned over.

And what you saw in the earliest drop of these documents, and 170,000 documents, and the documents that will follow, is at the earliest time of October, the city was making a fiduciary choice to prioritize the economic stability of Lower Manhattan over the health and safety of the firefighters, the police officers, the construction workers and the children that went back to school down there.

[10:15:15]

Now, people have told me, well, what did we learn that we didn't already know? What we learned was the air was as toxic as we said it was. What we learned is that we were dying with every breath we took down there. What we learned is that the city knew it and failed to prioritize, one, a public safety announcement, two, proper decon, three, preventing us from eating down there and digesting the toxins, four, not letting people volunteer to clean up, five, not letting people get a HEPA-filtered vacuum and get a credit for it from the government as they self-cleaned their own apartments.

The exponential impact of that has caused four times the amount of deaths since 9/11 from these illnesses. And these deaths do not calculate the loss. They don't calculate the trips to Sloan. They don't calculate the trepidation in each member going for a test and wondering if this is the test that pops again with cancer, or whether or not they are approved for a trial, or whether or not an authorization comes before the hospice notice shows up at their door.

It is appalling that they did this to us despite our willingness to knowingly go into that environment repeatedly for long-term exposures, long after the acute exposure of that day, to give dignity to the people that were lost, to give the greatest possible effort towards a recovery, and then hopes to put New York back on its firm footing that it was on the days before 9/11.

The fact that these are coming out in piecemeal, I guess, is a process of government. But if you could see the amount of days and hours both the UFA and the UFOA spent in Washington begging them to recognize this, 9/11 happened on '01. The Zadroga Bill didn't pass until 2010, and it didn't even pass with a cancer provision. 9/11 required to be refunded in '15, '19, '22 for Shanksville, and then once again in '26.

What do you think that would have taken had we had that information? How quickly could we have gotten early testing? How quickly could we have gotten proper screening? How quickly could we inform the children down there that they should enroll in a program despite not being symptomatic? Instead, 25 years later, we're on a search looking for the database of people that were down there. Because as their illnesses are happening at a very early age, they're not correlating them to their exposure while they were down here.

The federal government's job is to stand, and the city municipal government is to stand up when the tragedy is so overwhelming that the people can't stand up for themselves. When they tell you there wasn't air monitoring, we walked past the machines daily, and they were plugged in, and they were running, and they were taking air samples. It was an utter lie, and yet they never stopped making public safety announcements over the airwaves. They actually went so far as to say, come to Lower Manhattan and spend money. Bring friends and family.

I understand the fog of war. I understand the decisions made in the aftermath of 9/11. Once the site was stabilized, once all recovery was no longer possible, better decisions towards decon, better decisions towards screening, better decisions towards the people and the personnel you sent down there.

And while people might believe this is something we already know, they have no idea the impact of not having the substantial proof when trying to get the legislative changes that we needed and the recognition for all of the people that are suffering and will suffer in the years going forward.

So, while I am grateful that 25 years later we are still remembering, I'm grateful that all of you are still turning up to still shed light on the situation, but I am extremely frustrated on how we got here. I am extremely frustrated in the uphill battle we have all faced in proving something they knew the entire time.

And for all those people that said they would never forget, they went through great lengths to making sure you did not know the totality of the situation and what they knew when they made the choice to sacrifice its residents and its first responders for what they believed was the greater good. And that is the atrocity that happened after 9/11. Thank you.

ROBERT EUSTACE, PRESIDENT, FDNY UNIFORMED FIREFIGHTERS ASSOCIATION: We'll open up for any questions.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

We're going to have to go through this, see what comes out of it. Ben Chevat, 9/11 Health Commission, they're looking into this as much as possible to see what comes out of this. Unfortunately, it's all -- you know, the slow legal process of this and, you know, a lot of the games that we're playing. It's just --

[10:20:00]

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

EUSTACE: It might be. You know, it's just kind of disgusting in the end, you know? It -- sure.

BROSI: If I could add one thing?

EUSTACE: Yes.

BROSI: So even if you look at the earliest information, they talk about this building in John Street that still had asbestos. If you notice the date of the John Street asbestos finding, it's July of '02. The site closed, an application into 9/11 Health Watch program closed May 31st. Is that an injustice? City do a proper cleanup? Should the cutoff been May 31st, or was that just an economic decision based on the liability of the program?

How many people were left out? How much asbestos was in that Deutsche Bank building when it ended up catching fire years later that still existed on the rooftop? How many other chemicals will we find that are more relatable to these diseases? We just had three other applications designed for autoimmune disease and for cardiac, where there was some overwhelming evidence, and to which the only justification for not adding it was the economic cost related to it, and yet the statistics were overwhelming.

So, I hope that the expansion of the records and the expansion of the testing and the amount of contaminants they know down there not only expands the timeframe, but also expands the number of illnesses that are not necessarily in the program right now.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

BROSI: I think it would probably pressure to the federal government to address them. I mean, as far as, like, what the city's legal liability is in relation to the victims' compensation fund that already exists is, I'm not sure, and I'm not even sure the city is sure. Which I'm-- but I would say it was the basis for four administrations turning their back to all of us when we requested the documents.

Thankfully, this administration did not let liability outweigh the importance of releasing the documents to the victims of that day.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

BROSI: Like I said, my hope is that we find more definitive chemicals that were in the air that we don't already know, right? The standard asbestos, lime from the crushed concrete, things along those lines, you know, I think we all know, high levels of benzene, which also have some other effects. But most diseases are correlated to specific exposures.

You saw in the fire department study produced a specific number of cancers that are in the 9/11 healthcare program because of the prevalence inside the fire department.

Here's the other thing most people don't realize. Most of the world does not have a baseline on its own health. The fire department took the initiative in the early -- mid-'90s to start giving annual medicals to their members, and as a result, the year following 9/11, everyone got another physical, and you could see an immediate health decline from that baseline.

I'm not sure had we not had that data, we would've been able to make that claim. I'm not sure we would've been able to convince the federal government, here is the respiratory decline in all of our young healthy members. But we could because we already gave them a breathing test while they were employees prior to the event.

Most agencies don't have the wherewithal or the money to do that. Fire department prioritizes their health in a way that I think most agencies don't. But without that information, I think we're finished.

And so what I hope is, one, I'm not looking for restitution from the people that lied to us, but I would like the world to know. I would like the world to know that somebody made a conscious choice. And not only did people make a conscious choice not to tell us, they made a conscious choice to keep their own family members from the exposure. And they definitely made this choice over the economic viability.

There was an insane coincidence between the day we recovered the $200 million of precious metals in the Trade Center, and the following day, we were going to reduce staffing from 300 firefighters at the pile down to 25, to which we vehemently opposed because of the manner in which they were going to grapple people out of the pile.

Now, I'm not saying we wouldn't have still vehemently opposed it. What I'm saying is, once we hit the stabilization of the site to that point, had they been more transparent about those toxins, we probably would have stalled recovery, got better decon, set up better facilities, set up better work rotations so that we could have limited the exposure.

But instead, we used the shadow of the removal of the money, followed by the massive reduction, and us being told the air was clean, we were literally protesting. A thousand members showed up at the site to protest. 15 of them got arrested because that's how strongly we felt about the rescue and recovery of our members and all other New Yorkers.

But what that meant was that site was stable at that point. And at that point, we could have taken a pause. We could have stopped, and we could have properly deconned. We could have stopped putting people in city buses filled with asbestos and driving for an hour back to city, back to Shea Stadium.

[10:25:04]

We could have stopped letting people get in their personal cars and take the gear home to their children. We could have stopped getting them to bring gear back to their firehouse and then work with it inside a cab for 24 hours, only to return to the site the next day.

So, when people tell me what could have been done, everything could have been done. Would we have still incurred the same risk? Absolutely. We incurred this risk on a daily basis, and we hedge bets. We know what we got ourselves into. We know what our role is. We know what we're paid for, and we know why we took this job.

And we don't do that with hesitation. But we do it with some understanding that while we're incurring insane personal risk, somebody else is watching the things we can't see. Somebody else is watching our blind side. Somebody else is saying, we will not put you in an area that we can control unnecessarily, and we won't lie to you to do it.

And to be fair, they didn't have to lie to us, because had they been more honest, we probably still would've done it. We would've just taken better precautions after the fact.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

BROSI: Initially, I just want to see more of the documents released in a manner in which they're more searchable and easily to summarize, so we can truly see what's the depths of the exposure. Before I'm -- you know, I'm not calling for anyone's head, I'm not asking for any changes to the healthcare program. I just want to see is what we've already been able to establish through the healthcare program and through the Zadroga Bill, does that cover the entirety of what we were exposed to?

REPORTER: Is there anything that can be done now?

BROSI: We could amend the bill. We could expand the timeframe. You know, look, we have firefighters that are -- were exposed to contaminated apparatus for years after the event. They're related to 9/11, except some of those members don't qualify for the Zadroga Bill. They're exposed to 9/11 contaminants through their work at the academy, through their work through a contaminated apparatus. But some of that occurred after May 31st, to which excludes them from the program.

So, do I think this greater liability should give us the opportunity that anyone who was exposed to be covered? Yes. And when people talk about the monetary liability 25 years later after four times the amount of people have died since that day, I don't care. They made an economic decision not to tell us. They made an economic decision to prioritize Lower Manhattan over the citizens that live there, and now it's time to pay the bill.

And to be fair, like I said, I don't -- the litigation part is irrelevant to me. It's never solved one problem. My father died of 9/11 cancer. I could tell you where the money he got from the Trade Center still sits. It doesn't help. It has zero relevance to this argument. The relevance is the dignity in people not having to go through hoops to prove that you tried to kill them, to prove that you prioritized the health of the city over the health of their citizens.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

EUSTACE: We've adjusted over time. You know, there's nothing that we're going to change more than we've adjusted over time. We've changed up a lot from things like Ebola to COVID, to a lot of different outbreaks that we've changed here. So, the department has evolved tremendously. You know, we've talked about this where, you know, post 9/11 to our safety precautions have evolved. You know, our command structure has evolved. We've changed tremendously i-in a lot of positive ways for what we've done. But similar to what Jim said, we're still going to show up, and we're still going to respond no matter what the call is. That's what we do every day. But we just hope that we're given the best resources at all times.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

EUSTACE: Well, similar to what I said in my opening remarks, never forget is something that we talk about for every family, that we never forget. And for September 11th, it's something like we buried someone just yesterday, and we have thousands of members, thousands that are sick, that we're going to continue to do that.

So, we always never forget, you know? There's mandatory days in the FDNY.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

EUSTACE: Everybody. We hope that everybody never forgets. We hope that. We hope that you always for, you know, remember that sacrifice. You know, it's something that people say, are you looking back at 9/11? I said, well, there hasn't been no look back. It's been every day. It's been nonstop. You know, when you bury 450 people. That's-- it just doesn't stop. It just continues, and it will continue.

So, it's something that we hope people realize that this is not 200 people in the last five years.

[10:30:04]

That's a lot. It's a lot of people. This is something that continues to go on.