The Trump White House; Border Wall Battle
HOWELL: Good early Monday from the West Coast to the U.S. to the East. You're watching "CNN Newsroom." I'm George Howell.</s>CHURCH: I'm Rosemary Church. We want to check the headlines for you this hour. British Airways says it has cancelled almost all of its flights as pilots begin a 48-hour strike. B.A. says the biggest impact will be felt at its Heathrow hub, but flights worldwide will also be affected. The British Pilots Association is calling on the airline to share more of its profits with its pilots. B.A. has countered that a pay increase that has been offered was fair.</s>HOWELL: We continue to follow the devastation in the Bahamas. Take a look at this. We now know the death toll from Hurricane Dorian has climbed. Forty-five people lost their lives. We know that number could rise over the weeks and months to come. Hundreds of people are still missing. Seventy thousand people in the hardest hit areas, they are now homeless. Many of those people are trying to leave.</s>CHURCH: Rescue crews are searching for four South Koreans on board a cargo ship that overturned off the coast of Georgia on Sunday. Twenty other crew members, including other South Koreans and Filipino nationals, have been rescued. The cause of the incident is under investigation.</s>HOWELL: The peace deal that fell apart. The U.S. secretary of state says the U.S. still wants a peace deal with the Taliban. But those talks won't move ahead until the Taliban deliver on a number of commitments, one of them reducing the violence. President Trump says he cancelled a secret meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David in the U.S. after the militants took credit for a bombing, a bombing that killed a U.S. soldier.</s>CHURCH: Jessica Levinson joins me now from Los Angeles. She is a law professor at Loyola Law School. It is always great to have you with us.</s>JESSICA LEVINSON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL: Good to be with you.</s>CHURCH: So President Trump just cancelled a secret meeting at Camp David with Taliban leaders after they claimed responsibility for bombing that killed a U.S. soldier. Critics, many of them Republicans, are asking why Taliban leaders were ever scheduled to meet on U.S. soil just days before the 9/11 anniversary, particularly when they recently released a video reiterating their support for the 9/11 attack on this country. What was the president thinking?</s>LEVINSON: Well, I think the president was thinking that he is a master dealmaker and that he could make the deal with the Taliban. I think he was thinking that he could announce that we are going to draw down troops. You know he is famous for that. He thinks it is absurd and that there is no reason that there are all those U.S. troops there. I think, you know, at least he could get in there. He could use the negotiation skills that he claims he has. He could talk to the Taliban and say that they needed to reduce their violent attacks, which of course they've only actually ramped up recently. And he could announce, you know, I made this huge deal on the world stage. Now, of course, as you said in the introduction, optics of this is horrible. It is September 8th. We're coming up on the anniversary in 72 hours of September 11th. The idea that you would invite the leaders of the Taliban, that members of this administration have called the terrorist Taliban to Camp David, I think it's done something that President Trump really hasn't been able to do for much of his presidency, which is unite both Republicans and Democrats in their criticism of this decision.</s>CHURCH: Yeah, it has many scratching their heads for sure. And, of course, with Congress poised to reconvene after their August break, what progress, if any, will likely be made on gun control legislation, particularly in the wake of multiple deadly mass shootings in this country?</s>LEVINSON: Yeah, I mean, I think that the real answer is no progress. This time for the first time when I started my semester, we talked about the fact with my undergraduate students that people are advertising backpacks that are bullet-proof backpacks. We talked about what type of country we are living in now. And I think the response is that the people -- our behavior is changing. We're sending kindergartners who are coming home from school talking about shelter in place drills. We're sending middle schoolers who are talking about lockdown drills. And yet our representatives really -- I think it's almost guaranteed will not act on this issue. Mitch McConnell has been very clear that he will take President Trump's lead on this issue. I think President Trump has shown absolutely no appetite, although he has waffled at times, but really no appetite for gun control.</s>LEVINSON: I think this will continue to be an issue in the 2020 election, and I think it is one much those issues that could really motivate voters because it hits a lot of people where it matters. It hits them at home. It affects their daily lives.</s>CHURCH: Yeah, all this when the majority of Americans want to see some sort of progress on gun control legislation. I also want to ask you this because with the House Judiciary Committee preparing to vote to define a Trump impeachment inquiry, some Democrats feel such a move will only embolden the president politically, while liberal Democrats say it has to be done, it has to be done now. Where is this all going and where will it likely land, do you think?</s>LEVINSON: Yeah, I think that both are true. So, I think that critics of President Trump will say we absolutely need to go forward with impeachment. This is our job. This is our constitutional duty. Robert Mueller wrote us basically a letter saying, "Congress, I don't have a role here. I just have an investigatory role. It's up to you." I think that supporters of President Trump will say I cannot believe the Democrats can't just go to work for the American people. They keep beating this dead horse. And, you know, why are they such sore losers? Where is it going? I think we really have to look to the leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, very careful about wanting to start and initiate impeachment proceedings. I think she's going to have a talk with the caucus to see who is vulnerable in 2020. I think largely this will be not just a moral calculation, but of course it will be a political calculation to determine whether or not it is palpable to go forward.</s>CHURCH: We'll see where that goes. I did want to just very quickly ask you, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has announced he plans to challenge President Trump for the republican nomination next year along with two other Republicans. But given Mr. Trump enjoys what, about 90 percent approval rating within his own party, what's the point of doing this and what impact might it have?</s>LEVINSON: I think the impact is very little. I feel like this has been the answer that I've had to all your questions, which is nothing is going to happen. The impact will be little. I think it's largely true. Mark Sanford is not a strong candidate. He's not a strong candidate against this president who, as you said, enjoys large support in the Republican Party. This challenge is going nowhere. I think largely it is either just a vanity exercise or it's for people who want to set up a run for 2024. But if you look at the primary states, if you look at how energized the republican primary voters are, I don't think this is going anywhere.</s>CHURCH: All right. Jessica Levinson, always a pleasure to chat with you. Many thanks.</s>LEVINSON: Thank you.</s>HOWELL: One of the president's big campaign promises was to make Mexico pay for a border wall along the southern U.S. border.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are going to build a great border wall. And who's going to pay for the wall?</s>CROWD: Mexico!</s>TRUMP: Who is going to pay for the wall?</s>CROWD: Mexico!</s>TRUMP: Who?</s>CROWD: Mexico!</s>CHURCH: But despite that promise, he made so many times as a candidate, Mexico still isn't paying for the wall. Instead, the Pentagon is diverting about $3.6 billion in military construction funds to help build that wall. It's sparking bipartisan anger from lawmakers and others. CNN's Alex Marquardt has more.</s>ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Norfolk, Virginia is home to the U.S. Navy's Atlantic fleet and the largest naval base in the world. The area's central and vital role, the military operations and national security, hasn't stopped the Trump administrations from naming four different military projects here, whose almost $80 million in funding will be diverted to pay for the border wall.</s>REP. BOBBY SCOTT (D-VA): All of these projects are being lost for a wall that makes no sense and everybody knows it.</s>MARQUARDT (voice-over): Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott has represented the district for almost three decades and says President Trump's decision is costing his constituents jobs.</s>SCOTT: It means that the jobs that could have come to the area won't come to the area. Tens of millions of dollars-worth of construction. That's a lot of economic impact to this area that we're going to lose for a wall that is not needed.</s>MARQUARDT (voice-over): In all, $3.6 billion in military funds are being taken to help pay for the wall, 127 projects, from firing ranges to aircraft hangers to child care, both at home and abroad, whose budgets are being gutted. In Virginia, the four that are losing $77 million in funding are: A naval ship maintenance facility, two hazardous materials warehouse projects, and cyber operations facility. In a place with such a historic and important military heritage, where 40 percent of the economy is related to military funding, that hurts both financially and emotionally.</s>BRUCE STURK, RETIRED COLONEL, FEDERAL FACILITIES SUPPORT: Our community is the fabric built on military veterans and very healthy military population here in Hamptons region, so I think there's a general sense of disappointment.</s>MARQUARDT (voice-over): Bruce Sturk retired from the Air Force as a colonel, last serving at Langley Air Force Base, which is now being stripped of $10 million for that cyber operations and training facility, at a time when cyberattacks are one of the greatest threats to national security, along with others that will now be ignored, says Democratic Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a retired naval commander whose district is also affected.</s>REP. ELAINE LURIA (D-VA): I know firsthand from having spoken to the commanders at the bases where this impact is going to happen that is going to impact our mission and our security.</s>MARQUARDT (voice-over): Not just the security of the nation but those serving it, whose priorities now may not be addressed.</s>LURIA: It's like your husband, it's your neighbor, it's your wife who is going on a deployment and you don't want to think that their ship wasn't maintained properly or they didn't have the right tools that they needed to do their jobs. So, it hits home a lot in a community like this where everyone is so tied to the military.</s>MARQUARDT: The Pentagon is pushing back on this idea that these projects have been defunded. They say they have just been deferred for now, that they will get their funding back at a later date. But this $3.6 billion had been specifically appropriated by Congress for these projects and so it is getting political. Democrats say this is exactly why you have congressional approval. And now, to get those projects refunded, the money needs to be reapproved by Congress, which is far from certain. Alex Marquardt, CNN, Washington.</s>CHURCH: We will take a short break. Still to come, a controversial layover by U.S. Service members is raising ethics questions. How the Air Force is responding after crew members booked to stay at a Trump resort. We will be back in just a moment.