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Measles Outbreak in the United States Rises to 530 Cases; Remote Work Now Permitted for Some Military Spouse Federal Employees; Trump Announces Another Pro Bono Deal with Law Firm; Two Law Firms Sue Trump Over Executive Order. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired March 28, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: All right, welcome back. This just in. The number of cases in the ever-growing U.S. measles outbreak now stands at 530, according to a CNN tally. As of today, Texas has 400 of those cases, followed by New Mexico with 44. Oklahoma has nine.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And making matters worse here is a rise in vitamin A toxicity among some of those patients. You may recall Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had suggested using vitamin A as a possible treatment for measles, that vitamin A deficiency was contributing to some of the serious symptoms.

Well, joining us now, we have CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell. It sounds, Meg, like people took vitamin A thinking that might mitigate some of the worst of measles. Tell us what we're learning from these numbers.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, people are very concerned about these vitamin A statistics because it suggests that there's some misinformation out there. And there's a worry not just that we're hearing about these injuries possibly with too much vitamin A. We did hear from doctors on the ground that in a hospital there, several patients had signs of elevated liver enzymes, which suggests maybe too much vitamin A.

But they may also be foregoing vaccination, thinking that vitamin A is going to protect them.

[15:35:00]

And doctors say that is not accurate and that vaccination is the thing that is going to contain this outbreak. If you look at these numbers in Texas, we saw just an absolutely gigantic jump from Tuesday. Seventy three new cases have been reported just in the last three days in Texas there. You can see how this has grown since it was first reported in late January.

This has now grown at least to four states. We heard from Kansas this week. They have 23 cases of measles. With a link, they think, at least in terms of genetic sequences to the outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.

You're also seeing cases in Oklahoma. We also heard yesterday about a case in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from a person who had traveled to Texas. We don't know if that is absolutely linked to that outbreak, but that's what we're learning.

Twenty states are now reporting measles cases this year. And guys, we heard about a separate outbreak that doesn't appear to be linked to Texas in Ohio. Now they are reporting 10 cases and their health director has been warning that their measles vaccination rates are too low at about 88 percent for kindergartners.

So there's a lot of concern about these low vaccination rates and this misinformation that's potentially causing people to seek out things like vitamin A, which is really not going to stop the spread of measles.

JIMENEZ: Wow. And in those numbers you just showed, the measles numbers in Texas alone look like they almost doubled over the course of March. Meg, thank you for that.

I also want to ask you about fluoride, because we're also getting word that Utah is officially the first state ever to ban fluoride in public drinking water. Can you just get us up to speed on what the controversy is around fluoride?

TIRRELL: Yes, so the governor in Utah signed this bill into law last night. And really, usually fluoride is a very local decision. Municipalities make the decision about whether they want to put fluoride in their drinking water and it's something that's been done in the United States for decades to prevent tooth decay.

The CDC has called this one of the biggest public health achievements of the last century. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, has been opposed to putting fluoride in water. In fact, before the election back in November, he said that if Trump was in the White House on Inauguration Day, they would direct municipalities or states to take fluoride out of the drinking water. We don't know that they did that, but here he points to some of the health issues he sees with fluoride. And we should note that if these are health issues, they are seen at much higher levels of fluoride than we actually have in U.S. drinking water. The level that's recommended by the CDC is 0.7 milligrams per liter of water, which the CDC says is about three drops in a 55-gallon barrel of water.

Across the U.S., 63 percent of the population has fluoridated water. But if you look in Utah, they are ranked number 44 in terms of fluoridating their water. Only about 44 percent of their population on community water systems has fluoridated water. And, guys, their own health department has reported that that has led to higher rates of cavities in kids, they say, in part because of the lack of fluoridation in Utah's water systems -- guys.

KEILAR: Yes, really interesting. Meg Tirrell, thank you so much for that.

After a CNN inquiry, the Trump administration reverses a policy that would have had devastating impacts for some military families. Well, that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL. [15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: On Home Front today, the Trump administration reversing a policy that would have had devastating impacts for some military families and the about face came after a CNN inquiry. This has to do with President Trump's executive order demanding federal workers return to the office. In February, the Trump administration exempted military spouses in the federal workforce who had been hired with remote work agreements.

Remote work, essential for many of them as they support their service member and shoulder much of the responsibility of a household and a family. But last week, after the Office of Personal Management, which is the H.R. Department for the federal government, issued superseding guidance, forcing remote working military spouses to return to work in person if they lived within 50 miles of an agency worksite. These employees started receiving notices that their exemptions had been rescinded. So we pressed OPM and the White House for answers on why this was happening.

And OPM ultimately issued updated guidance exempting all remote working military spouses from the return to work in person requirement.

Maria Donnelly is with us now. She's an active duty military spouse who advocates for military spouses who are in the federal workforce, which she used to be in herself.

Maria, first, thanks for being with us. And just tell us a little bit about how this was affecting these folks when their exemption was resented and what it means for them to now have that exemption back.

MARIA DONNELLY, MILITARY FAMILY ADVOCATE: Hi Brianna, thank you. Well, for military spouses who it was kind of whiplash was going back and forth with the policies. But for a lot of military spouses, not having this exemption would have meant that they had to resign because I mean, 50 miles can be a very different commute in the Washington, D.C. area. Or if you're in Japan, in Tokyo, 50 miles can mean a multi hour commute for a lot of people.

And military families kind of have other constraining factors that maybe other federal employees don't have. So we can't choose where we live. In some cases, you have mandatory on base housing.

And when you take our spouses away for a significant part of the year, it's a lot of times it all falls on the spouse to manage childcare commutes. We were talking to military spouses who, even if they dropped their child off at the on base daycare when it opened, would not be able to make it to work on time. And we're taking leave, annual leave every single day just to get to their office because they didn't have kind of that support from their spouse who was deployed.

[15:45:04]

So for a lot of military families, this is life changing in that they're not losing half their household income.

KEILAR: Yes, then they need the household income. We see the stories about military families on food stamps. I think that strikes many in the country is pretty unacceptable.

We should be clear, there are a number of other issues that are facing this community that has long been recruited to work for the federal government. I've been hearing from military spouses who are moving with their service member to a new duty station again, as you mentioned, not their choice. And they say that their bosses are not willing to request a remote work agreement for them that they think they wouldn't have had a problem getting before. So they are now out of a job. What kind of other problems are you hearing about?

DONNELLY: Well, that's definitely an issue. We were actually really encouraged at first because when OPM issued a categorical exemption, it really read like a categorical exemption from return to office. But we're also seeing a lot of these offices never recoded these positions from being, say, fully telework to remote work. And so some of these spouses who did PCS who now live way outside the 50 miles are also being told to return to office because their command never recoded their position.

And military spouses already have a 21 percent unemployment rate. And when you consider things like underemployment, it's as high as 50 percent of military spouses who are working kind of below their level of education or level of experience. Because a lot of these bases are located in the middle of nowhere where federal employment really is the only game in town or remote employment.

That's actually something that affected me. I used to be a federal employee, but I moved to the private sector so that I could continue to work remotely, because there's not exactly a lot of jobs where we're stationed right now. So we're seeing this just continue to affect military families.

And those -- especially those with the full time telework or telework exemptions are just nothing's changed for them. And they're still being forced in just impossible situations.

KEILAR: Yes, and it's interesting when you've seen presidents, all these administrations who have encouraged agencies to hire military spouses, including in the first term of the Trump administration, he drew a line between retaining service members and, you know, sort of national security priorities to military spouse employment, which I think is something a lot of people don't always see that connection. How does it affect the service member when there's all of this kind of whiplash going on with their spouse's employment or their spouse isn't able to have a job?

DONNELLY: Well, you mentioned it as well. When you're moved and you're moved away from your support system, maybe grandparents who can help take care of your kids, and then everyone needs kind of two incomes to survive right now. So when a military spouse loses their job, it's not just the military spouse expected, it's the entire military family. And so you have service members who are worried about whether or not they're going to make ends meet. I think food insecurity affects as much as 30 percent of the United States Armed Services. And while we had a major pay raise this year for the junior enlisted community, it's still just not enough.

And so we're seeing just families being put into these really difficult situations because they're waiting years for childcare. And when you're only at a duty station for a couple years, there's just really nothing you can do. And then there's no appeal mechanism.

And so we have service members who are concerned that they're not going to make ends meet because their spouse is out of a job. And in a lot of cases, this isn't because they kind of didn't plan, they planned around being able to maintain that remote position, maybe that the house they got had an extra room so that their spouse could work remotely, or they chose to live closer to base and further away from where that spouse's agency work site might be to reduce that commute. And now maybe they have to move or reconsider that situation.

We're also seeing military families have to make really difficult choices about childcare and continuing with childcare, as they have this kind of instability in terms of their incomes. And even while we're seeing kind of some really encouraging policy reversals, like the one you just mentioned, there's other agencies that are still choosing not to implement it and are saying that they're going to go by the old policy, or that they're going to interpret it as kind of carefully as they can, maybe interpreting it as 50 miles as the crow flies, not 50 miles driving to the agency work site.

And then, yes, HHS and the Navy in particular, we're seeing they're still reversing these remote work agreements and forcing spouses to come in. It's just all of this uncertainty.

It can't help but affect the military family, the entire military family. And then that in turn affects the military families savings for retirement that affects the military family in so many other kind of follow on ways.

KEILAR: Yes, and these spouses do not have recourse in so many of these cases. Maria Donnelly, thank you so much. Really appreciate you.

DONNELLY: Thank you, Brianna.

KEILAR: And I'd be remiss if I did not know that Hadas Gold did so much of the reporting on that story. So thank you to her.

Another major law firm has just agreed to provide 10s of millions of dollars in pro bono work to the Trump administration in a deal that critics say amounts to a shakedown.

[15:50:00]

We'll have those details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KEILAR: Another law firm has agreed to provide tens of millions of dollars in pro bono work for the Trump administration.

JIMENEZ: Now, this comes after Trump issued executive orders limiting certain law firms ability to work with the federal government and revoke security clearances for attorneys at those firms for doing work tied to the criminal probes against him.

I want to bring in CNN crime and justice corresponding Katelyn Polantz for the details. So Katelyn, I mean, which firm is this? Why are we seeing these deals?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the latest firm, Skadden -- Skadden, Arps, big New York powerhouse deal making firm. What's happening here is that Trump is restricting. These firms all have significant Washington presences, restricting their ability to do certain types of work with the federal government going into federal buildings, having security clearances.

[15:55:04]

And so there are firms that want to cut deals with Donald Trump and the White House to either hold off something like this, a restrictive policy. That's what Skadden is doing or to rescind one that was already in place. There was another firm that took that choice.

These firms are offering in return pro bono work. So millions of dollars worth of legal services in some sort of fashion that satisfies the White House. Trump is calling the settlements wins.

But this really is a moment that is dividing the legal industry because the legal industry is many people are looking at these executive orders against law firms and saying this is totally not what would be allowed under the Constitution. And so you see other firms having executive orders like this from the White House, and they're going to court and suing.

We actually have two hearings coming on up on that this afternoon from two other law firms. But just to look at that divide of do you sue Donald Trump and go against him in this administration as a law firm? Or do you not? Do you work with him? Skadden said the firm looks forward now to continue our productive relationship with President Trump and his administration.

KEILAR: Really interesting. Katelyn Polantz, we know that you will continue to cover this. Thank you very much.

And we'll be right back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: ET is phoning for a new home. The original body model of the friendly alien character is up for auction. The three foot tall model expected to fetch up to $900,000.

JIMENEZ: Wow! [16:00:00]

Do we need that close up of a shot? It will be sold off as part of Sotheby's collection called, There are Such Things. 20th century horror, science, fiction and fantasy on screen. Now, if you want to bid on it, you have to wait until April 3rd. So mark your calendars.

No word yet on whether the model comes with a Reese's bag or if it can make bicycles fly -- shot on the mouth. What are we doing here?

KEILAR: You know, even he got cataracts, though, I will say over time.

JIMENEZ: I mean, like the shots are. Oh, my gosh. Incredible. Oh, and the blink.

KEILAR: Oh, the blink. Got to love it.

Well, thanks for being with us. Hope you have a great weekend. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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