Latest news with #MargaretBrennan
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass says "I don't think that's a problem" as city lacks permanent fire chief
Six months after deadly wildfires that devastated the Los Angeles area, the city still lacks a permanent fire chief. "I don't think that's a problem," Mayor Karen Bass told "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," saying they are conducting a "nationwide search." Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Transcript: Rep. Jim Himes on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 20, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 20, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Jim Himes. He joins us from Connecticut. Good morning to you. Congressman, you are on the Financial Services Committee, so let's pick up right there. The Supreme Court indicated that the President of the United States does not have the authority to fire the Fed Chair unless there is cause. It sounds like the White House is trying to build a case that they have cause. If they go ahead with it, what happens? CONGRESSMAN JIM HIMES: Yeah, well, you know, Margaret, the last question you asked the Secretary, shows what a con man he is. And I just listened to his whole thing. And, you know, if you're over the age of five, you've dealt with hucksters and con men. Everything is going to be great in two weeks. By August 1st, we're going to have a deal. The American people are going to be so happy. Complete failure to understand the facts, right? He said that tariffs are paid by foreign countries. Tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. He said, Jay Powell is torturing the American people. Margaret, you didn't have the time, but if you'd had a minute, you would have said, wait a minute. There's a Federal Open Market Committee that is comprised of seven Fed governors, and all of the heads of the central bank offices around the country. That committee, comprised of people who have been appointed by Democratic and Republican Presidents, set the interest rates, right? So, this notion that Jay Powell is unilaterally stopping a decline in interest rates, which, by the way, in the of- in the face- for those of those folks who know a little bit about economics, in the face of up-ticking inflation, which we're seeing, would be absolutely bananas. So, what you just saw was a master class by a huckster and a con man who uses words like torture that are very, very dangerous words, not just for the economy, but for the physical safety of people like Jay Powell. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, just to be clear, that's why I said it's not the Chairman's unilateral decision for exactly the reason you raised, that there is a committee that makes the decision. The inflation rate for the CPI was 2.7% if you strip out food- energy and food, which is more volatile, it's up two-tenths of a percent. So, that economic data is what we are pointing to there, not opinion on pricing. But, is there congressional pushback that can be done? I mean, what happens if there's a tweet that says the Fed chair is gone? REP. HIMES: Well, interestingly, inside the White House, and I don't know who it is, my guess is it's maybe the Treasury Secretary is saying, and this is a very difficult thing to say to a person like Donald Trump, that if you fire the Fed chair, either illegally, which they're happy to do, or because you trump up some baloney-like-charge associated with a renovation of the headquarters, there is going to be a massive market reaction, because you cannot lie to the capital markets. We saw this the day after Liberation Day, before we all were familiarized with the TACO trade. The day after liberation day, the stock and the bond markets took a nosedive. So, my guess is that somebody is saying to the president because he doesn't care if he follows the law or not, and the law is very clear that he can't fire the Fed chair. But somebody is saying to the President, the economic instability that gets caused when the cornerstone of the global economy and capital markets all of the sudden has a politically driven interest rate policy. I think that's the one thing that's holding them off. MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman, we're going to take a quick break and continue our conversation on a variety of topics. We need to bring up with you on the other side of it, stay with us. [COMMERCIAL BREAK] MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation. We are continuing our conversation now with Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, who is the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee. Congressman, I want to pick up on that topic. Just a statement of fact here: A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation found that the US intelligence community assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election was correct. They deemed it to be so on a bipartisan basis. I'm saying that because today and yesterday, the director of the intelligence community, Tulsi Gabbard, has said that she is referring for prosecution former American officials she accused of treasonous conspiracy, a years-long coup against President Trump, because they assessed Russia had tried to influence the election. This is weeks after the CIA Director issued a report critiquing the tradecraft that went into that 2016 assessment. Is there any legal basis for any kind of prosecution here? REP. HIMES: None, absolutely none. Margaret, what you saw from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was not just a lie, but a very dangerous lie, because when you start throwing around language like sedition and treason, somebody is going to get hurt. Now, you pointed out that the Senate committee, then led by Marco Rubio, a Republican and now Secretary of State, found unanimously that Russia meddled in the election to try to assist Donald Trump. John Durham, special counsel appointed by Donald Trump, investigated this, found that the Senate report was correct. Now, what Tulsi is doing it's a little sleight of hand, but it's worth focusing on. She is saying that the Intelligence Committee, early on, said that the Russians could not use cyber tools to mess with the voting infrastructure, the machines that tally our votes. And that was true then, and it is true now, though the Russians tried to break into a couple of states, you know, election technical infrastructure. They didn't do it, but it is well known and well established that the Russians hacked into the DNC and undertook any number of other influence operations, including buying reams of Facebook ads to discredit Hillary Clinton. That is not in contention, right? And what is horrifying about this whole lie out of Gabbard is, number one, it puts people at risk. And right now, you know, the mouth-breathers on MAGA online are just going out of their minds based on a lie. And number two, the intelligence community is full of very, good people who do their jobs every single day, and now they're watching their leader do something that each and every one of them knows is dishonest and it is a really, really bad thing for the safety and security of the American people when that dynamic is- is out there. MARGARET BRENNAN: That Senate report is online, the findings are there, but I understand your distinction there, and it's an important one in influence versus physical hacking. You're-- REP. HIMES: -- By- by the way Margaret, if I may- if I may, you asked about the referral. Here's the test. This is Epstein all over again. Criminal referrals. We're going to prosecute Barack Obama, you know, treasonous and seditious. Here's the thing, and I hope that 4, 5, 6, weeks from now- don't take it from this Democrat. 4,5,6, weeks from now, let's see if this administration, Tulsi Gabbard, accusing a former president of treason. Let's see if they bring charges. They won't. They won't, because there's not a judge in the land, not a single judge who will treat this with anything other than laughter that will be heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific in this country. So the test of this is 4,5,6 weeks from now, is the DOJ bringing charges? And the answer to that is no. And now we're going to be in Epstein world. We're like, wait a minute, treasonous conspiracy by a former president. Why isn't the Department of Justice bringing charges? And the answer to that question is that it is a lie. MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. On the other topic, I want to ask you about as a Democrat, the New York Times-- the DNC-- is reporting the DNC examination of what went wrong in the last election is going to steer clear of the decisions made by the Biden turned Harris campaign. You were very direct early on in calling for then President Biden to drop out of this race. You don't parse your words normally. Do you actually think it is possible for your party to self-diagnose problems without looking at the presidential race itself in terms of the candidates? REP. HIMES: Look, we need to acknowledge and every- and all of America saw it on the night of that disastrous debate in the July before the election that Joe Biden was not going to win the election. That was not just evident in the debate. It was evident in the polling that his people were keeping from him. Okay, so that is a fact. Now, Democrats are a big tent party. We go from Joe Manchin, who's practically a Republican, to AOC who is a Democratic socialist. So, we always have a struggle in coming up with sort of one set of policies, one set of messaging, and it's particularly hard to do when we don't have a presidential candidate. You know, a presidential candidate, of course, attracts the attention, is sort of the one person who must run nationwide and speak for the party as a whole. Right now, we're having a lot of conversations with a lot of different views, and I understand that's enormously frustrating to Democrats who are so upset over the result of the election. But you know, other than fight back with the tools that we have right now, we've got to be introspective about what we have done wrong that resulted in a dramatic win by Donald Trump in 2020*. There's an awful lot of rage in the Democratic Party, and my message to my Democratic friends is fine. I get the rage, believe me. I was in the chamber on January 6, 2021, and worried for my own life. But the thing to do right now is to be introspective and ask yourself, what can we do better to appeal to more people, including those people that we have lost time and time again in elections. MARGARET BRENNAN: 15 months out from the midterm races. Congressman Jim Himes, thank you. We'll be right back. *President Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Former President Biden won the 2020 election. A new you: The science of redesigning your personality Would you go on a retirement cruise? ICE head Todd Lyons says agents will arrest anyone in U.S. illegally, not just criminals
CBS News
2 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Transcript: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 20, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 20, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Good morning, Madam Mayor. LOS ANGELES MAYOR KAREN BASS: Good morning, good morning. MARGARET BRENNAN: Glad you can hear me. We are looking at immigration issues six months in. You have had such a firsthand experience out in LA, given the deployment of U.S. troops. The President ordered the early release of nearly half of the National Guard from LA. Have they departed yet? What are the remaining ones doing? MAYOR BASS: Well, I believe they've departed, but they were never needed in the first place, and the remaining ones are doing what they were doing all along, which is essentially protecting two federal buildings, one of which in Westwood, where there never has been a big protest against the immigration raids. This is just such an incredible misuse of, not only taxpayers money, but of the young people who are in the National Guard, who have had to leave their families, their jobs and their education for this deployment that is completely unnecessary. 4,000 troops, my understanding, is, most of their time has been spent in complete boredom, playing video games and essentially waiting around. Because again, 4,000 deployed, and about 200 actually used. MARGARET BRENNAN: The White House, of course, argues they deployed them because there was interference with the operations of law enforcement in carrying out some of the roundups. There are still enforcement actions by ICE taking place. You have talked about your objections, as you described them to "masked men, unmarked cars, drawing guns, snatching people off the street." You filed a Freedom of Information request to quote, "know who these masked men are." Why, though, is their identity important to you? Do you plan to prosecute them? MAYOR BASS: Well, no, let me just explain, because you have people who are literally walking down the street, sitting at bus stops, are individual vendors selling fruit on the street. These masked men pull up in unmarked cars and jump out of the cars with rifles and detain people. So for the average citizen, it looks like it's a violent kidnapping. So you should never have that. They don't identify themselves. And furthermore, to your previous guest, how on earth do they know that they're a threat when they're just chasing random people through parking lots at Home Depots, going to car washes and rounding up people. It's difficult to get your car washed in Los Angeles now, because most of the car washes, the employees won't come to work out of fear that a raid will take place. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the acting director says that his agents, some of them fear that their families will be retaliated against, and that's why they are covering their faces, that they do wear markings for the agencies that they work with. How do you respond? MAYOR BASS: Well, well, first of all, let me just tell you that the masked men are not from Los Angeles, and so how their families could be retaliated against. And then what is that to say to local law enforcement, the Los Angeles Police Department, none of whom are ever masked who always identify themselves and even hand someone a business card. So that makes absolutely no sense at all. And I don't know, but I have a hard time believing that the woman selling pineapples on the corner is going to attack an ICE agent. And then when he says that there's identification, the problem is many of these men are in plain clothes with vests on that say 'police,' it looks like something that they could have gotten online. I think it's really important to point out the extreme nature of the randomness. And you know, Homan has said, he's mentioned a number of criteria for why they stop people. One of the points of criteria is physical appearance. Los Angeles is 3.8 million people, and about 50% of our population is Latino, so I guess that means 50% of Los Angeles could be possible suspects in an immigration raid. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Tom Homan has- Tom Homan has said physical description cannot be the sole factor for reasonable suspicion, but things like location, occupation, physical appearance add up, particularly if a person runs away, or if there's a tattoo or something. You don't seem to believe that. MAYOR BASS: Location, sitting at a- well, location, sitting at a bus stop, walking down the street, selling fruit? No, I do dispute that, absolutely. And you know, again, the National Guard should have never been deployed in the first place. We did not ask for them. This is the federal seizure of power from a governor deploying the National Guard when the National Guard were not even needed. We had protests at the end of the- at the end of the peaceful protest, there absolutely was some violence and some looting and vandalism, we brought that completely under control. The troops have never been involved in crowd control, never involved in the protest. They have been guarding a building. Our police department and our sheriff's department are the ones that brought the protests, when it devolved into violence, under control. We never needed the National Guard in the first place. This is a political stunt, a terrible misuse of taxpayers' dollars. MARGARET BRENNAN: There's more we could talk about here but I want to ask you about fires, because we are now officially in fire season. It was just six months ago we saw those blazes in LA, you fired the then fire chief for you said a failure to prepare. But you still don't have a permanent fire chief in that role. Isn't that a problem? Are you prepared? MAYOR BASS: No, no, I don't think that that's a problem at all. Our interim fire chief has 40 years of experience. In fact, he had just recently retired. I called him in, out of retirement, during the fires. He was doing the emergency operation center. So he stepped in, didn't miss a beat by taking over the fire department. And we are prepared. We do know that it's fire season. MARGARET BRENNAN: So is your plan to keep him in place since you brought him out of retirement?-- MAYOR BASS: --No-- MARGARET BRENNAN:--put him in an interim basis? MAYOR BASS: I'm sorry, no, we're doing a national search, and he is certainly open to apply. But the nation's second-largest city needs to make sure that we search the nation for the best talent. And I'm sure that there will be people in the department that apply, but we want to cast the net wide. We did the same type of search for our police chief-- MARGARET BRENNAN: --Well okay-- MAYOR BASS:--in the meantime he is more than capable of managing well. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, wish the city well. We will be watching as you move through fire season. Thank you-- MAYOR BASS:--Sure. MARGARET BRENNAN: --We'll be right back.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Family of Tampa man killed in West Bank wants more answers
Family members of American Saifullah Kamel Musallet are seeking updates on the investigation into the Tampa man's death last week in the Israel-occupied West Bank. CBS News' Margaret Brennan has the latest. Solve the daily Crossword
NDTV
23-06-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
"Irrelevant", Says Marco Rubio On Whether Iran Was Building Nuclear Weapon
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended President Donald Trump's decision to target Iran's three nuclear facilities despite intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s assessment that Tehran was in no position to have weapons. "It doesn't matter," he said, adding Tehran had all the elements needed to build a nuclear weapon. In an interview with host Margaret Brennan on the CBS' "Face The Nation", Mr Rubio dismissed if the US knew whether Iran's Supreme Leader formally ordered the weaponisation of uranium, questioning why Tehran was hiding its nuclear sites deep inside mountains if they were truly for peaceful energy. "It's irrelevant," he answered. Mr Rubio asked, "Why do you bury nuclear things in a mountain, 300 feet under the ground? Why do they have 60 per cent enriched uranium? MUST WATCH: @SecRubio schools Margaret Brennan on the Iranian regime's nuclear program. "Why do they have 60% enriched uranium? ... The only countries in the world that have uranium at 60% are countries that have nuclear weapons because they can quickly make it 90%!" — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 22, 2025 He stated that Iran might have been secretly planning to build a nuclear bomb because the country had enriched 60 per cent uranium, which can easily be increased to 90 per cent. Mr Rubio added: "You don't need 60 per cent uranium for peaceful energy." Mr Rubio further asked, "Why does Iran have a space program? Are they going to the moon?" He added, "No, they're trying to build an ICBM so they can one day put a warhead on it." He added if Iran weren't planning to carry nuclear warheads, then why were they developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM)? Why do they possess 8,000 short-range missiles and 2,000 to 3,000 mid-range missiles, he asked. When pressed again over intelligence on Iran's nuclear program, Mr Rubio said: "Well, we have intelligence that they had everything they need to build a nuclear weapon." "And that's more than enough," he added. On Sunday, the US dropped 14,000-kg bunker-buster bombs on Iran's key nuclear sites of Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The situation continued to be volatile on Monday when Israel launched a fresh round of missiles towards Tehran. A thick plume of smoke was seen emanating from a busy neighbourhood after Israel launched major strikes on security institutions, including facilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and police intelligence units, in Tehran. An Israeli military spokesman said they were targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard command centres, Al Jazeera reported.
