- lift the clouds off of... - virtual weather, only on kpix and pix+. pete b welcome back to "face the nation." we return now to our conversation with texas republican tony gonzales. good to have you here in person. you know, uvalde, texas, that is your district. 19 kids and 2 adults killed at robb elementary two years ago in

that horrible anniversary was this past week. how is your community doing now? >> it's still healing. it's still very raw two years later. in many cases we're constantly revictimized over and over again. the other part of it, too, a lot has changed, a lot hasn't changed. everyone talks about robb, what happened at robb, everyone talks about the new elementary school, uvalde elementary school, but there's nine other schools in uvalde in many cases are still in the same situation. yeah, they put some fencing up, but how do we protect our kids long term? and one of the things that i did -- i'm in the middle of a runoff fighting for my life politically on there, i held a bipartisan safety -- bipartisan school safety caucus where we brought all these different parters in together to have discussions on how we fix things. i had the superintendent of uvalde, the new police chief of uvalde. a lot of changes happening in uvalde. one of the things that came out of that was $10 million for school safety, not just for robb

and uvalde elementary school, but all the other elementary schools as well >> so you mentioned that runoff election in this primary challenger you have faced that's the 28th in the initial you received 45% of the primary vote, just short of that 50% threshold. i want to ask, because last march you were censured by the texas republican party and you connected that to the votes that you took to help get the bipartisan safer communities act through the congress. do you feel that some of the challenges you're facing now are because of the work you did after the school kids were killed? >> margaret, you cannot be afraid to do what you think is right. you're never going to get it perfect but you have to fight for the things that are important to us. keeping our kids safe from being burden murderered from crazy people should be important to all of us. it shouldn't be talking points. we shouldn't just blame someone else, we shouldn't just talk about mental health, we should actually do something about it

to keep us safe. the safer community act has prevented over 500 school shootings from happening, but that is only the start. we have to do much, much more. part of that is why isn't there a national standard for school safety? why are all these schools in a silo when it comes to fighting some of these things. we have to give them the resources. we passed this bill but a lot of money has not made it back to the schools. i'm not afraid of that vote, this runoff, i've ran very hard to win this election, and i will keep delivering for my district. >> sounds like you're saying yes, that vote hurt your prospects? your district? >> i am in a runoff for a reason part of it was that vote. i like to call them the devil. when the devil victims you you're going to do this or else and you tell the devil to pack sand you better be ready for a fight. >> who is the devil? >> many faces and many names, and so what ends up happening is, people -- there are no more

debates in washingtn. everybody is defending positions that are already defined for them. we got to get back to having debates, real conversations, that help real people. it can't just be these, you know, the cause play. it has to be real people doing real things. yo started the segment with the four country caucus. a great segment of bipartisanship. >> you're part of it. >> i'm the co-chair. that almost did not happen. and the reason it didn't happen is because everybody is at each other's throats and nobody wants to be seen with one another more or less doing things together it took a member of congress by the name of jim baird, one of the last surviving vietnam veterans serving in congress, i don't like to share private conversations with members, told everybody in the caucus, he goes here's the deal, some day, somebody is going to be there to honor your memorial and i hope you take the time to show up and i tell you what, that hit everyone pretty hard and everyone set aside our differences and put it together. but this is a bigger thing that's happening. you know, the working together

is almost a bad thing in washington. we got to push back against that. let's have debates. let's fix things. let's solve real problems for real people. >> i think a lot of americans would like to see that. we showed video there of jim baird, on your point, though, donald trump is campaigning saying he's going to peel back all of joe biden's restrictions on guns. there weren't a lot of restrictions on guns in this community, safer community act, but you're telling republicans don't repeal this, donald trump don't repeal the work you did. >> i argue there weren't any restrictions on guns in this bill. this was a mental health bill that got spun as a gun control bill for the different, you know, advocacies so they could campaign against it or campaign for it. what it did do is it provided mental health resources, and it gave background collection to minors. i'm okay with background checks. americans should be okay with background checks. we have to do more to keep our kids safe in school. my kids go to school with a bulletproof backpack. you should think about sending

your kids with bulletproof backpacks. it's not fair and the world we grew up in, but something has to change. it can't just be words and pointing blame. we have to solve real problems and debate the issue and solve real problems by bringing money back. one of my community projects i brought $5 million back to the northeast independent school district in san antonio for a quick reaction force essentially a s.w.a.t. team for the local isd. >> a lot to unpack there. but thank you. we'll be right back and thank you for your service. >> thank you, margaret.

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charmin, enjoy the go. a new record number of air travelers are taking to the skies this wkds according to the tsa despite severe weather in parts of the country. and there will be more extreme weather this summer. the 2024 hurricane season is projected to be busy according to both u.s. and world meteorological organization predictions. we spoke with transportation

secretary pete buttigieg on friday and began by asking if federal regulations need to change to deal with increased air turbulence. >> the reality is the effects of climate change are already upon us in terms of our transportation. we've seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn't statistically even be possible, threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the pacific northwest, to hurricane seasons becoming more extreme and indication that turbulence is up by about 15%. that means assessing everything and anything we can do about it. >> here in the u.s.? >> in the atmosphere generally but certainly something that will affect american travelers, whether here or abroad. now there are protocols and patterns for things like how pilots who encounter turbulence can notify those who might be coming in the path but i do think we need to continually reevaluate that. in the face of reality that these things are more frequent and more severe than before.

>> that horrific video that people were terrified by when they saw the singapore airlines encounter severe turbulence that killed someone, that was rare, but you're saying you expect to see more incidents like that here in the u.s.? >> to be clear something that extreme is very rare, but turbulence can happen and sometimes it can happen unexpectedly. our climate is evolving, our policies and our technology and our infrastructure have to evolve accordingly too. this is all about making sure that we stay ahead of the curve, keeping aviation as safe as it is. it's not for nothing that it became the safest form of travel in america. >> boeing released a report that said they saw a 500% increase in the number of employees employee submissions about safety concerns during the first two months of 2024. this is, of course, after all these high-profile incidents that happened with that plane door just flying off. it's good employees are seeing something and saying something,

but a 500% increase, i mean that would suggest that there are actual issues here. >> that's right. there's an encouraging part and a concerning part. the encouraging part is we want boeing and any producer in the aviation space to have a culture of if you see something, say something. we want to make sure those mechanisms for reporting work. we have both whistleblower mechanisms to let us know something at the faa, but in a healthy company that should be happening with the company. >> were they discouraging it earlier? >> if there were evidence of that that would lead to direct action. we want you to err on the side of reporting. that's the encouraging part. the concerning part any of those issues are happening at all, and that's why boeing is under a huge amount of scrutiny right now, including from the faa, the administrator took the step of saying that boeing cannot increase their production until they've demonstrated that they can do it safely. >> that faa decision goes with it that 90-day timeline and

report that boeing has to hand in. >> that ends more or less right at the end of may. we're coming up on the period where boeing will put forward their plan, faa we'll ses it and then begins a process of accountability and making sure they're conforming to that plan and getting the results it should. >> doesn't sound like that moves quickly. the faa administrator was on another network and says boeing has a long road ahead. >> there needs to be some major change and that's not overnight work. to be clear, if there were an immediate safety issue, any time there is, faa acts immediately. it's why it took the extraordinary step of grounding, for example, all of those 737 max 9 aircraft until they could be specifically inspected and returned to service. >> so that hold is not going to be lifted next week when the report is in? >> they have to do more to demonstrate their readiness to safely increase production. the goal is for them to do so, but only on a safe and healthy basis. >> i want to ask you about

something that we hear quite a lot about on the campaign trail and that is electric cars. electric vehicles. donald trump repeatedly talks about president biden's decision to force the industry towards making 56% of car batteries electric by 2032, 13% hybrid. listen to what he said in new jersey recently. >> you notice he's trying to save the electric vehicle but not the gas powered which is the vehicle everybody wants. they're going crazy with the electric car, costing us a fortune. we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car nobody wants and nobody is ever going to buy. >> he's not wrong on the purchasing. >> he's wrong. >> he's not. of the 4 million vehicles purchased, 269,000 electric vehicles were sold in the u.s. market. it's up like 2%. >> every single year more americans buy evs than the year before. this is really important -- >> more quickly -- >> more americans buy evs than the year prior. two things needed for that to

happen more quickly. one is the price. which is why the inflation reduction act acted to cut the price of an electric vehicle. the second is making sure we have the charging network. i want to talk about the bigger point here, and i take this personally because i grew up in the industrial midwest literally in the shadow of broken down factories from car companies that did not survive into the turn of the century because they didn't keep up with the times. >> autoworkers are concerned electric vehicles require fewer humans to manufacture. >> most important thing is that the ev revolution will happen with or without us and we've got to make sure it's american led. focused on. we don't want china -- under the trump administration, they allowed china to build an advantage in the ev industry. but under president biden's leadership, we're making sure that the ev revolution will be a made in america ev revolution. >> because of these tariffs we're talking about that president biden says he's going to roll out? >> making sure we invest in america's capacity.

making sure that we are on shoring or friend sourcing -- friend shoring the materials and processing of what goes into these evs, making sure america masters these processes. look, there's no way that we're going to get to the middle of this century with the technology that we counted on a century ago. now there are, obviously, a lot of voices here in washington who are interested in keeping the status quo. >> he says it's going to be one of the first things he does. >> happy to see americans trapped with dirty and expensive fuels. he's made a lot of promises to the oil and gas ceos about the favors that he believes -- >> it, obviously, is resonating for him because he wouldn't bring it up so frequently if there wasn't some anxiety he's tapping into. let me ask you about a portion of this that i think does fall under your port and that's the charging stations you mentioned. the federal highway administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5

billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021. why isn't that happening more quickly? >> so the president's goal is to have half a million up by the end of this decade. in order to do a charger it's more than plunking a small device into the ground. utility work and this is also really a new category of federal investment. but we've been working with each of the 50 states, every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work. >> seven or eight? >> the first handful. by 2030, 500,000 chargers. the very first handful of chargers are being physically built. that's the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come. the reason that we're investing federal dollars is to fill in some of the gaps in areas where it is not yet profitable for the private sector to do it. again, the majority of charging will happen at home and in some senses an electric vehicle has more in common fueling it has more in common with charging your phone than it does with filling up a gas car. in ways that are both helpful and challenging.

but that is exactly the transition that america is going through right now and the other thing again is the price, right. we have seen the cost of evs fall to now it's within a few percent of an equivalent gas card depending on the model you may come out ahead now. >> secretary buttigieg, thank you for your insights today. >> thank you. >> and we'll be right back.

for an update on efforts secure our elections we're joined by law contributor david becker, founder of the center for election innovation and research and cbs news national security contributor samantha vinograd terrorism officials at the department of homeland security. good to have you both here. i want to start with you, david, we talked last week and we'll continue to talk about election security and integrity and we know that top officials have testified to congress that election infrastructure has never been more secure. but there are a lot of puts in this environment we're going into. one specific example, republican activist in at least three states now where donald trump tried to reverse his defeat in 2020 nearly all of them under

criminal indictment, are now poised to repris a role in the upcoming election as presidential electors, all "washington post" reporting. what does that mean for the integrity of the events they are directly going to be involved with? >> yeah. as you noted, the 2020 election was an incredible success with regard to election security. higher turnout than we've ever seen before, in the middle of a global pandemic, and that work has withstood the highest scrutiny in any election over 3 1/2 years. >> due to court challenge. >> no evidence of any problem. we remember going back to detroit in 2020, attacks on counting centers, there were efforts to organize fake lectors, being litigated and criminal charges have been brought in many states. there were efforts to fail to certify elections to give legal effect to elections in places like arizona and new mexico and just earlier this month in

michigan. and it is likely that we will see efforts like that by -- by supporters of losing candidates in november of 2020 and afterwards. that's troubling. these are legal duties that people have to certify elections particularly when legal challenges have not been successful. but that said, i think election officials all over the country are ready for that in many ways, just like they were in elections since 2020. they're ready for it in arizona when it happened and new mexico when it happened and just earlier this month in michigan. election officials in the state quickly required that county to act and certify the elections. so we will expect that there will be effort ts to dlou slow down and delay the certification process perhaps in the last two months of 2024, but i am cautiously optimistic election officials are ready to keep that moving on track so lectors can be ascertained on december 11th meeshgts on december 17th and counted on january 6th.

>> sam, you were in the administration until recently. spreading lies about candidates is not illegal. it is protected free speech. what david is talking about poses a threat at the state level, leve level and it's states that run these elections. whose job is it to set the record straight? >> margaret, just because speech is protected by the first amendment does not mean it's cost free. we know in today's threat environment disinformation is becoming the norm rather. we know there's been an unprecedented level of physical threats arising out of election related disinformation. january 6th is one example. they have made 17 arrests, 13 convicts in their ongoing investigations and when election relaptsed disinformation spreads, every american needs to understand that does give a benefit to our adversaries,

russia and china, who want to sow discord and undermine our democratic processes. americans should be confident in our election infrastructure security, but our information ecosystem remains incredibly vulnerable and the federal government is not and should not be the omni present fact checker for the american people. the federal government is undergoing rigorous processes to debunk specific inaccurate information about elections as are state and local state board of elections. at the same time social media companies should be thinking about what kinds of elections disinformation violate their terms of service and every american frankly has a patriotic duty to engage in additional security checks when it comes to the information that they are digesting and sharing. americans lock their doors. we wear our seat belts. we take security precautions in other domains and need to apply that same rigor to our information ecosystem for national security and physical security as well.

>> now we put a lot on the electorate to keep themselves informed and certainly here we will try to be fact checking but there is so much disinformation misinformation sometimes but a lot deliberate, i want to ask you, david, speaker johnson told reporters earlier this week he knew intuitively that non-u.s. citizens had been voting in the elections. he said it's not easily proven, but he issued a statement saying russian spies, chinese diplomats and illegal aliens are influencing the election. how does an election official certify that someone is a u.s. citizen when they come to vote? >> there are multiple protections around this. first, it is against the law, there is a federal statute 18 u.s. code section 611 that says it's unlawful up to a year and jail and fines for a noncitizen that votes. in addition, under the help america vote act which has been in place for over two decades

every registered voter needs to provide i.d. before registering and almost always a driver's license number which is checked against the motor vehicles file. when you go to motor vehicles you need to show legal presence. most people show a birth certificate from the united states or passport which shows that they're citizens. that can be checked against that. >> if they don't have that? >> if they don't have that they can provide a social security number which is checked or they have to provide i.d. at the polls before they vote. there is absolute i.d. for voter registration. we know these two protections have been successful because this is knowable despite what the speaker might have said. georgia ran an audit of their entire voter registration system. they found about 1500 people that they couldn't confirm whether they were citizens or not and determined that literally zero of them had voted. same with other states have done similar things. the data is all in the state databases. they can check it. we can be confident that voting by noncitizens is extremely rare. virtually nonexistent.

not zero but close to zero. >> sam, how much planning is the federal government doing going into this election when we know there may be, perhaps, even violent disagreement? >> well, i do want to emphasize it's not just the federal government. federal, state, and local officials are engaged in a range of contingency planning for threats in various areas, deep fake circulating that could impact voter suppression, for example. we saw attempts at that in new hampshire. or whether it's actual physical security incidents coming out of election results. the federal government with its state and local partners, is engaged in contingency planning for physical security threats and other threats that could impact the elections, and its aftermath. >> it is good to have both of you here to fact check and we will stay on it as you indicated, sam, part of our duty as well. we'll be right back. (gasp) you need weathertech. [hot dog splat.] laser measured floorliners front and rear. [drink slurp and splat.]

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that's it for us today. thank you all for watching.

until next week. for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan.

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