Sec. Kristi Noem, Gov. JB Pritzker, WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain 

0:00I'm Ed O 'Keefe in Washington and this week on Face the Nation, with President Trump looking to expand immigration and crime crackdowns in more U.S. cities, we'll hear exclusively with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Boosted by a drop in crime in the nation's capital following the deployment of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to clean up D.C., the president sets his sights on another potential target, Chicago. ago. We visited the Windy City and toured a neighborhood where the crime rate has dropped with the governor of Illinois, Democrat J.B. Pritzker. J.B. What they're saying they're trying to do is fight crime, but actually they're just trying to scare people.

0:40MILES O' Pritzker tells us Trump and Secretary Noem's mission is un-American. J.B. It's clear that in secret they're planning this, well, it's an invasion with U.S. troops. MILES O' Plus, the shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control after the firing of the newly confirmed director, a group of top experts quit in protest. CBS medical contributor Dr. Celine Gounder will tell us why this matters to public health. Then, World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain joins us following a trip to Gaza, where her organization's working to feed hundreds of thousands threatened by famine. Finally, we'll reflect on the passing of a Washington institution, legendary CBS News radio reporter Mark Nolan.

1:23It's all just ahead on Face the Nation.

1:41Good morning and welcome to Face the Nation. Margaret is off on this Labor Day weekend. I'm Ed O 'Keefe. We begin today with Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Noem, who's joining us from Florida. Madam Secretary, thanks for being with us. Absolutely, Ed. Thank you for inviting me. Yes, well, we have a lot to discuss, so we want to start with this, because we've learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning on expanding operations in the coming days to Chicago. When are those operations expected to start? And you said in recent days that you're using the recent deployments in Los Angeles as a model.

2:12What does that mean? Well, we've already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago and throughout Illinois and other states, making sure that we're upholding our laws. But we do intend to add more resources to those operations. I won't disclose the details because they are law enforcement and investigative folks that are on the ground there. And I want to make sure we keep their security our number one priority. But we will continue to go after the worst of the worst across the country like President Trump has told us to do. Focusing on those that are perpetuating murder and rape and trafficking of drugs and humans across our country, knowing that every single citizen deserves to be safe.

2:49Part of what distinguished the Los Angeles operations, however, is that National Guard troops were there, in essence, protecting or backing up those federal agents as they conducted operations. Is that what we should expect to see in Chicago? You know, that always is a prerogative of President Trump and his decision. I won't speak to the specifics of the operations that are planned in other cities, but I do know that L.A. wouldn't be standing today if President Trump hadn't taken action. then that city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state. And so the citizens who live there, the small business owners in downtown L.A., they're thankful that President Trump came in with federal law enforcement officers and helped support keeping those streets open, keep their homes and businesses from burning down, and made sure the law and order was restored.

3:36I just want to clarify one thing you said there. You said L.A. wouldn't be standing if not for these federal deployments? So many of those homes and businesses that were in downtown L.A. and in those areas were dealing with riots and violence. And coming in and bringing those federal law enforcement officers in was incredibly important to keeping peace. And so we are grateful that President Trump was willing to send resources and people in in order to enforce the law. And, Ed, since then, we have arrested 5 ,000 dangerous illegal criminals out of L.A. and removed them from our country and had them face justice for their crimes.

4:11So, as you know, we spoke with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker about all this, and I asked him what he'd say to you about these forthcoming plans. Let's play that and let you respond after. If she were to call you, what would you say? What's your message to her? Well, I tell her that what she's doing is inflaming passions and causing disruption that doesn't need to be caused. We have people that have lived, yes, in the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago for decades, working here, paying taxes. They're law-abiding members of our communities, friends, neighbors. And why are we arresting them?

4:52Why are we making them disappear? here. Indeed, they're even disrupting the lives of people who are attempting to go through a legal process to stay in this country, who've been invited to a hearing. And then they're arresting them in the hallways on their way to that hearing. So this is dangerous. They shouldn't be doing it. It's anti-American. It's un-American. And I would tell her to maybe check herself for what does she really believe. She's also critical of the fact that Chicago is one of those cities that doesn't cooperate with federal immigration operations. And she was quoted as saying that Illinois, quote, refuses to have our back.

5:33Well, that's not true. In fact, there were police officers who made sure that there was nobody interfering or attacking or causing problems for the ICE officials that were here, people have a right to express themselves. People have a right to their First Amendment, you know, freedom to express. And we protect that too in the city of Chicago. So it's not true that nobody has their backs. What we won't do, however, is engage in what is a federal effort. That is to say, they have their job, immigration. We have our job, which is to fight violent crime on the streets of our city. And by the way, we're succeeding at that job.

6:21But when they bring people in and don't coordinate with us, they're going to cause enormous problems. Madam Secretary, your response? Well, for 13 consecutive years, Chicago had more murders than any other American city. In fact, just last year in 2024, they had three times the amount of murders that L.A. did, five times more than New York City. So he can talk about what a great job he's doing as governor, but he's failing those families who will no longer have their child with them, their mother or their father or their cousin, aunt and uncle that are gone forever because of the violence that's happening in Chicago.

6:57So I was a governor for many years. So I recognize the responsibilities that you have on your shoulder when you're a governor. And I'll tell you, as a governor, when I had to make tough decisions and when I had disagreements with the Biden administration or challenges my people were facing, I called up the Biden administration. I went and talked to them. I asked for meetings. I fought for my people. This seems like it's more about Governor Pritzker's ego now rather than actually protecting his people. If he has one murder in the city of Chicago, he should be calling President Trump and saying, what's your ideas?

7:28What can we do? They don't even honor our detainers in Chicago. They don't go out there and work with us to make sure we're bringing people to justice. And instead, he goes on TV and he attacks me when we're doing exactly what those people need, is they need someone to help them get the dangerous criminals off their streets. And if he has one, two, five, or ten, those victims and their families deserve to walk in freedom on those streets and not have to worry about what's going to happen to them on their way to their jobs. Are you planning beyond Chicago to expand these kinds of operations to other cities?

7:59There have been reports, for example, that Boston may very well soon be next. I think there's a lot of cities that are dealing with crime and violence right now, and so we haven't taken anything off the table. We've been making sure that we have the resources and the equipment to go in. We've been working to partner with every single agency that we can. We have hundreds and hundreds of agreements with local law enforcement, sheriffs, city administrators, and mayors across the country that want to solve problems. I'd encourage every single big city, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, whatever they are, if they want to help make their city safer, more prosperous, allow people the opportunity to walk in freedom like the people of Washington, D.C.

8:41are now, and enjoying going out to eat at night and not having to worry if they're going to be a victim of a carjacking or a robbery, they should call us. You mentioned there are a bunch of cities in Democratic-controlled states with Democratic mayors, and there have been a lot of questions asked about that focus. There are Republican cities with major crime issues as well. And we haven't heard about plans to deploy, say, to Dallas or to Oklahoma City or to cities in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi that have considerable crime rates. In some cases, higher percentage wise than those other cities you mentioned.

9:12Are there plans to go to red states and Republican controlled cities in this kind of way? Absolutely. Every single city is evaluated for what we need to do there to make it safer. So we've got operations that, again, I won't talk about details on, but we absolutely are not looking through the viewpoint at anything we're doing with a political lens. One of the most high-profile examples of someone who's been rounded up by ICE in recent months is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the fate of his situation is still up in the air. He's awaiting trial on human smuggling charges set for January in Tennessee, but your department's also working to get him deported to Uganda.

9:52If he broke the law in this country, as the administration alleges, shouldn't he be held here and face charges here instead of being deported? Well, prosecution decisions are always made by the Department of Justice and Pam Fondy's department. So we will let them do that, although this individual does have criminal charges pending. He has charges pending against him civilly as well. and the one thing that we will continue to do is to make sure that he doesn't walk free in the United States of America. But I heard you say that we're going to let the Justice Department do that. Does that mean the push to deport him to Uganda is off?

10:30Oh, we will still continue to pursue all options. We will make sure that he's not released into this country. So regardless of that, yes, absolutely. He's not an American citizen and he shouldn't be here and especially because of his dangerous criminal activities, we should ensure that we leave every avenue on the table. Got it. So among other things, you oversee FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as we hit the peak of hurricane season, and we're marking the 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina this weekend 20 years ago. Is the federal government prepared to respond to a major disaster at this moment?

11:04We are absolutely more prepared than the last administration and doing a much better job responding to the disasters we've already experienced since President Trump has been in the White House. We've had over a dozen, close to 20 different disasters throughout the country just since President Trump has been the President of the United States. And we have deployed resources twice as fast as FEMA ever has in the past, gotten people on the ground over 100 % quicker than any other administration has. In fact, with the disasters that we saw that were so horrific and devastating in Texas and New Mexico, North Carolina, we've had people on the ground within hours responding to those families that were in crisis.

11:45I bring this up because part of what you're suggesting there is in dispute from a handful of current and former FEMA employees who wrote to Congress this past week raising concerns about the agency's ability to respond to forthcoming natural disasters. One of the specific concerns they have is this decision that now has you reviewing any cost of $100 ,000 or more that FEMA plans to make. Can you give me an example of a charge of$100 ,000 or more that you've rejected? Yeah, absolutely. We paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars to a one-woman firm to deliver to us 30 million meals, and she delivered only 50 ,000 to us.

12:26And it was a one person that the federal government had contracted with in order to deliver 30 million, and I don't know how they ever expected one person to do that. We had a person that was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to book meetings of less than 10 to 15 people. And with no meetings that we saw that were productive or couldn't be done by sending an email, over and over again we're looking at these contracts and looking at the fact that are they duplicative? Are they just supporting woke ideologies, DEI? Or are they actually delivering disaster response? Which is what FEMA's job is, is to put in place operations to support states and local governments to take care of people.

13:05And so that evaluation has saved us hundreds of millions of dollars within FEMA, within the Department of Homeland Security. It has saved us$13 billion already. And we're going to continue to make sure that we're accountable to taxpayers. At least 20 of the people who signed this letter were current FEMA employees and they've been placed on administrative leave. And I'd heard you in previous interviews suggest that those that are making accusations against the agency should put their names on the criticisms or the allegations. So now they have, and they've been placed on administrative leave. And I'm curious if it's now the policy of DHS that any time an employee puts their name on something, publicly criticizes you or the president's leadership, that they should anticipate being put on leave or fired.

13:50This letter was signed by many people anonymously. There was some who had their names on there, and those who had their names on there were temporary contract employees who had worked for the Department of Homeland Security for less than a year. Individuals who are not long-term FEMA employees who grab a hold of the mission to be there to go and serve individuals and are deployed across the country and have for years to make sure they're responsive to families and their time of need. So absolutely, every employee will be evaluated as to if they're doing their job and if they're doing it appropriately.

14:24All right. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joining us this Sunday from Florida. Thank you so much. Lots to discuss. We appreciate it. Thank you, Ed. Appreciate it. Face the Nations back in one minute. Stay with us. On Friday, we traveled to Chicago and sat down with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. He invited us there in advance of the expanded federal presence. Secretary Noem was just talking about. Here's what he told us. We hope that they don't send any troops along with ICE. And if they do, they'll be in court pretty quickly because that is illegal. Posse comitatus does not allow U.S.

15:03troops into U.S. cities to do, you know, to fight crime, to be involved in law enforcement. That's not their job. If they're doing federal immigration work, a judge might say, if they're protecting those federal agents, that's okay. I mean, you'll just fight that in court as long as you can? Well, National Guard troops, any kind of troops on the streets of an American city, don't belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not. Have you been briefed by anyone in the administration about these plans? No one in the administration, the president or anybody under him.

15:40has called anyone in my administration and me, have not called the city of Chicago or anyone else. So it's clear that in secret they're planning this, well, it's an invasion with U.S. troops if they in fact do that. The other thing is, you know, they ought to be coordinating with local law enforcement. They ought to let us know when they're coming, where they're coming, if it's ICE or if it's ATF or whoever it is. But they don't want to do that either. And I must say it's disruptive. It's dangerous. It tends to inflame passions on the ground when they don't let us know what their plans are and when we can't coordinate with them.

16:21The president has had some things to say about the Windy City several times in recent days. Next should be Chicago, because as you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now. Everybody knows Chicago is a hellhole right now. Everybody knows it. You know, he wakes up in the morning and whatever whim strikes him is what he apparently says. And recently, I guess I've been living rent free in his head. Chicago apparently is living rent free in his head, even though on other days he'll talk about Baltimore. He'll talk about New York. Notice he never talks about where the most violent crime is occurring, which is in red states.

16:58Illinois is not even in the bottom half of states in terms of violent crime. But do you hear him talking about Florida, where he is now from? No, you don't hear him talking about that. Or Texas. Their violent crime rates are much worse in other places. And we're very proud of the work that we've done. And we want more help. You know what kind of help we want? Civilian law enforcement help. We would like ATF agents to help us take more guns off the streets. We would like FBI, again, to coordinate with our local law enforcement to help catch perpetrators of crimes. If they would do that, we would welcome that.

17:33But that's not what they're planning to do. So bottom line, would more federal agents in Chicago assisting local law enforcement help deter crime right now? Of course. You want to help us catch bad guys? Bring the FBI. Bring the ATF. We already coordinate with them, by the way. We do a lot of work with them. And we do drug interdiction, we do fighting gangs, and we do interdiction of guns at the borders. Part of the reason I ask about the potential for federal deployments to help right now is that according to a CBS News data analysis of what's gone on in Washington just in the last few weeks, well, crime there as well was down, and in most cases, down double digits.

18:18It's down nearly 50 percent in the three weeks since the National Guard moved in. assaults down 41%, homicides down 69%, robbery down 63%, and the mayor concedes carjacking, which would become a bigger problem, down 83 % since the federal agents showed up. So this kind of deployment he's set up in Washington that he says he wants to do in other cities, at least in Washington, is showing potential success. And what I hear you saying is, well, sure, if they show up, it might help us too. I'm saying we don't want troops on the streets of American cities. That's un-American. And frankly, the president of the United States ought to know better.

18:53This one doesn't seem to. He hasn't read any books. He doesn't seem to understand the Constitution or the laws. But he just sends the FBI, the ATF, the EA. Yeah, they're here already. And sends more of them. We have some working with us now. Would love more help. You know what else he's doing? He's cutting funds that help us to fight violent crime from the federal government. And give me an example of how those cuts have affected the ability to fight crime in Chicago. So let me just tell you what happened in Illinois when we had a Republican governor and he cut funding for programs that help prevent crime.

19:28What happened was we saw a significant increase in crime. Donald Trump is now doing the same thing. He's taking away federal funding for those programs, which are so important to us. We've increased funding at the state level, but we need that federal funding. It's on top of that. One more thing. The business community in the city of Chicago got together and put$100 million forward to help us back in 2022 to help us to fight crime through these prevention programs. It's working. Crime is down. I mean, murders are down 50 percent in the city of Chicago. And you can go through every statistic. Almost everything is much better as a result of that work.

20:06Donald Trump is trying to take that money away. And he isn't listening to the business community here. He isn't listening to the clergy here. He isn't listening to people on the ground. Republicans here who understand that putting troops on the city of Chicago's streets is going to cause more problems than he understands. What do you think it's going to do to the country if that happens? Deploying in Washington where he has federal control is one thing. But if he sends military forces into a major American city in a state that didn't ask for it, beyond Los Angeles, what do Americans make of that?

20:40Well, they should understand that he has other aims other than fighting crime. That's the first thing they should understand. The second is it's an attack on the American people by the president of the United States. Now, he may disagree with a state that didn't vote for him, but should he be sending troops in? No. You said he has other aims. What are the other aims? The other aims are that he'd like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections. He'll just claim that there's some problem with an election and then he's got troops on the ground that can take control If in fact he's allowed to do this.

21:16You're talking about invasion. I hear you tell him about You're talking about him suspending elections. Is it your belief? He's an authoritarian Look I can tell you this I built a Holocaust Museum. I Know what the history was of a constitutional Republic being overturned after an election in 53 days. And I'm very, very concerned. We could talk about lots of authoritarian regimes in the world, but that just happens to be the one that I know. And I can tell you that the playbook is the same. It's thwart the media. It's create mayhem that requires military interdiction. These are things that happen throughout history and Donald Trump is just following that playbook.

22:09Is there any chance Illinois redraws its congressional lines before next year's midterm elections? That's not something that I want to do. It's not something that any of us want to do. But I have to say if Donald Trump is going to force his will on the American people by going to his MAGA allies in various states and having them redraw in the middle of a decade when you're supposed to be doing it right after a census with a year ending in one, not a year ending in five. If he's going to do that all over the country, I think all of us have to think about what it is that we can do to counter that.

22:46What much more could you do, though, as an Illinois Democrat? I mean, your map already gets an F from most good government groups for being gerrymandered. Would you wipe out all the Republican districts? Yeah, it is possible to have more Democratic districts in the state of Illinois, and we could do it. Like I said, it's not something that I want to do. We'll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.

23:15We're joined now by Dr. Celine Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and the editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. Doctor, so great to see you. Thanks for coming to Washington for this important conversation because it's been a pretty chaotic week at the CDC, to say the least. We've seen the ouster of the head of the agency who'd only been confirmed by the Senate this summer. She's now mounting a legal challenge to that. Other top officials also departed. They're still reeling from a shooting at the headquarters in Atlanta a few weeks ago. Why are these departures so important to take note of?

23:46And how do they affect you, me, and everybody else in terms of health and medicine? I think it's really important to understand that this is not just palace intrigue. This really does affect all of us. So not just the director, but the people in charge of respiratory infections, vaccine safety. The chief medical officer, the person who was in charge of public health data also resigned earlier this week. So these are really key positions, not to mention that a lot of the directors of the different centers, because it's centers plural, have also been forced out over the last several months. So you're really dealing with a leadership vacuum at the CDC.

24:22So this is not business as usual. And so specifically, how does this affect you and me, folks watching at home? So first of all, vaccine policy. Vaccine policy is now being made by political fiat and communicated through social media rather than a transparent, open scientific review process. And so we're seeing the reversal of previous recommendations, which will also confuse whether insurance will cover certain vaccines for certain people. And it's already sowing tremendous confusion at pharmacies as well as doctor's offices. So there is a series of meetings coming up regarding the future of vaccines and how they're going to be available, who gets them.