China Fights Back
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It's Tuesday, February 4th, right now on CNN This Morning. A lot of people don't like to play the game because they don't have a threshold of pain. A tit-for-tat trade war, new overnight. China fighting back, hitting the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs. Plus... No country's ever made an offer of friendship such as this.

An unprecedented offer: El Salvador willing to house U.S. deportees in its jails, including American citizens. And then: "Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval." The Doge takeover: Elon Musk's blitz to remake Washington at breakneck speed. And later: "I believe she's committed to strengthening our national security."

Critical support, Tulsi Gabbard getting a boost from a key senator ahead of today's committee vote. All right, it is 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Capitol Hill on this Tuesday morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. New overnight, China announces tariffs on American goods just minutes after President Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports went into effect.

China will be speaking to China probably over the next 24 hours. We don't want fentanyl coming into our country. Now we had another big thing, speaking of China, China's involved with the Panama Canal. They won't be for long, but that was just an opening salvo. If we can't make a deal with China, then the tariffs will be very, very substantial.

China's retaliatory tariffs on American coal, natural gas, cars and pickup trucks set to take effect on Monday. As for the tariffs that President Trump threatened to impose on America's neighbors, those are now on hold after deals were struck with the nation's leaders. Mexico sending thousands of troops to its northern border to cut down on the fentanyl trade in exchange for an American effort to combat the flow of weapons into Mexico.

Canada implementing a previously announced border security plan and agreeing to appoint a fentanyl czar. The White House calling those compromises a win. Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt telling CNN on Monday, quote, Canada is bending the knee, just like Mexico. And late last night, the Trump administration claiming victory on another front. The president's push for mass deportations. The president, in an act of extraordinary friendship to our country, knowing the challenges we face in the U.S.,

has agreed to the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing that El Salvador has agreed to accept deportees from America regardless of their nationality. That deal accompanied by an unprecedented offer, El Salvador's president saying that his country is willing to imprison American citizens convicted of crimes in the U.S. in exchange for money.

The president of El Salvador writing on Twitter, quote, we have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. The fee would be relatively low for the U.S., but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable. All right.

All right, our panel is here. Zolan Cano-Young, CNN political analyst, White House correspondent for The New York Times. Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters. Jonathan Cot, former senior advisor to Senators Joe Manchin and Chris Coons. And Brad Todd, Republican strategist and a CNN political commentator. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here. Another hectic day, Jeff, in the life of a White House reporter such as yourself. You've seen a lot. We've all seen quite a bit in the last two weeks.

Can you just kind of take us behind the scenes in terms of how this played out yesterday as the markets? Obviously, there was incredible volatility in the morning. Futures were down through the weekend. We know that's something that President Trump pays close attention to. Ultimately, these two deals are cut. It makes it feel like it is the Trump show, right, as opposed to actual inaction of policy, which is kind of where we've ended up.

And yet, these tariffs are going into effect on China. I mean, what do you know? What can you tell us about how this all plays out and what happens next? Well, I think, number one, you're right to say it's a little bit of a Trump show. And using the markets as a prism is a good way of looking at it because that volatility that you saw yesterday absolutely mirrored what was going on behind the scenes. It started off with a 500 or 600 point drop on the Dow when they were concerned, investors were concerned about

the impact of these tariffs and a trade war and then a lot of those gains came back, or a lot of those losses were brought back at the end of the day after these two deals. I walked into a White House official's office yesterday afternoon who said something along the lines of, "Everyone was so concerned about tariffs, "now look what President Trump has done."

They see it as a sign of success that he used these tariffs as sort of a cudgel to bring people to the table. I think it's important that you mentioned in your intro that some of the things that both Mexico and Canada have agreed to do were things they were already going to do. Right. Is it a success or is it a cave, I guess, right? Exactly. They want to position it one way clearly. But the White House can and is presenting it as a...

bending the knee, as you said. - A win for them, right? A show of strength, an American show of strength. Brad Todd, I wanna play a moment that President Trump had in the Oval Office yesterday along these lines because the Wall Street Journal, traditionally a conservative paper, their editorial board has not been pleased

by the tariffs that have been and the tariff war that Donald Trump has kicked off, especially with our neighbors. Here was what Donald Trump had to say. That was the editorial board headline, the dumbest trade war in history. And then they had another editorial at the top of the editorial page yesterday as well. But Donald Trump was in the Oval Office with Rupert Murdoch, whose company owns the Wall Street Journal. And this is what happened.

from Mr. Murdoch's own newspaper. He called it the dumbest trade war on the editorial page on Saturday. I'm going to have to talk to him. I've been right over The Wall Street Journal many times, I will tell you that. I don't agree with him on some things. The Wall Street Journal is wrong because very simply, every single country that you're writing about right now is dying to make a deal. Brad Todd, how do you look at all of this?

Well, get used to this. Get used to tariffs being a key part of Donald Trump's foreign policy agenda. And the truth is, for most of our history, they've been a key part of our foreign policy agenda. I put all these three tariffs in three very separate buckets. The China tariffs are part of a long-term disentanglement. And you'll remember in his first term, Donald Trump put tariffs on Chinese aluminum and steel. Democrats and many people in the news media freaked out, and then Joe Biden kept those tariffs in place.

This is part of, PNTR was a mistake. We all know it. We all realize it. And it's going to take a long time to undo it. This is just one more step in it. The tariffs on Mexico, I think, are a legitimate negotiating tactic. We cannot secure our border without Mexico's help. We have to get their attention. Tariffs and their economic threats are the best way to do it. It will be a key part of how we bring Mexico into full compliance on immigration. The Canadian tariffs, I think, are a little bit more of a head-scratcher.

I don't think Donald Trump likes Justin Trudeau much. I think there are problems with him. They're putting up a lot of non-tariff trade barriers to our goods that we do need to negotiate away. 25% tariff was probably a little bit of an overpunch the first time for that. But this is how Donald Trump is going to do business with allies and enemies alike. And I think most of the people who elected him want to see an American president who carries a big stick.

The threat of tariffs have been consistent. They were forecasted throughout the campaign. I think you can expect that to continue. But what also is consistent is the ambiguity over the terms of which the president lays out.

You know, he often has this threat of terrorists, but then keeps his actual demands that he wants countries to meet quite vague. And what that allows is him to also declare victory at really any point. So you mentioned this context before. Many of the actions that the White House celebrated yesterday that he got these countries to take,

Not only were they planning on taking them before, but in some cases they were already doing them before. Mexico did agree to ramp up enforcement in the final year of the Biden administration without the threat of tariffs. Actually- And they had sent troops to the border in 2021 when they were asked to. And they had agreed to send troops to the border in 2021, agreed to do it again years later, as well as take other enforcement actions as well, which led to illegal border crossings planned

plummeting as well. Now, you might not hear that in the conversation because it's not like the president was actually outlining, I want crossings to decrease by this much in order to lift tariffs. He kept it vague, kept it broad, and thus he's able to declare victory. He said to the president he's going to be confrontational, and that's what's going on here. And I think most of the people who voted for him like it.

- Jonathan Cott, you worked for Joe Manchin for many years, right? Interesting, you know, cuts his own figure, but also represented a state that really exemplifies the way our politics has changed, right? In the last 30 years where it went from voting consistently for Democrats for years and years, and then ultimately became essentially the Trumpiest state in the union.

What of what Donald Trump has been doing here is kind of resonating, not with MAGA and the far right of the party that's very online and very politically engaged, but with regular people who are unhappy with their economic prospects and their lives? I mean, what's he doing that's good, and what is he doing that is politically risky for him? Awesome.

All of it right now is good because they love action. And Donald Trump is very good at making voters and people believe he's doing something. The executive orders he's signing, 90% of them mean absolutely nothing. They don't do anything. But he's showing them that he's doing something, and that's where Democrats faulted in the last four years. So people in West Virginia see the action, and they love it. I think what's going to happen is when they start realizing their prices aren't

aren't going down, the government programs that a state like West Virginia relies on desperately are going away, you're going to see a turn from him. And they're going to say, wait, you promised us all of these things, and now we're just getting this. And I would point out, not only tariffs were promised as a threat,

Donald Trump told us they would lead us to this new gilded age of an economic boom. If they're so good, why aren't we implementing them? Why are we accepting that these sort of concessions that mean nothing and were already happening are good for the American economy? We were told throughout tariff was the best word in the English language, which is what he told his voters. And a lot of them believed if Donald Trump got in there, he was going to impose tariffs and there was going to be all this money flowing into our bank accounts.

They're gonna wait for that to happen. They'll give him six, eight months, but they'll turn quickly. - The spending freeze, I almost feel like kind of because of the way the news cycles played out, the continued actions, also of course the devastating plane crash last week,

That seemed like something to me that was potentially very bad for Donald Trump's political prospects. Do you agree with that? That seems like the most, if he's done anything to damage himself in these two weeks, that would be at the top of the list. Yes, and you can see how quickly they flipped on it, how quickly they moved to say, no, that's not what they were doing, no, the media lied about it, no, we weren't doing this. No, you shouldn't cancel your WIC appointment. Right, you shouldn't do all these things because...

The states that benefit most from those programs aren't purple states. They're dark red states with two Republican senators and almost an entire Republican delegation. It was going to be hard to go home and explain that. Let me give you the last word. Well, I think that there...

The president has a right to empower his agency heads to try to find efficiencies, save money, and cut waste. It was an attempt to do that. I think it was an attempt to hit the easy button, though. The executive order was too broad, too vague, and a lot of agency heads didn't know what to do with it. But that just tells you the culture of saving money is so foreign to federal bureaucracy that when you tell them to do it, they don't quite know how to do it. Well, it was a rather blunt instrument to, you know, I mean, Head Start programs and, you know, I have no idea.

I don't think you can do it. There are people in Michigan who are like, I don't know if I can send my kid to preschool. The teachers aren't going to get paid. We're not going to cut spending with a three-page memo. And that's essentially what it was. But we also have a culture of bureaucracy that does not look to do that. And so therefore, it's very hard for them to take those cues. Probably going to have to involve the appropriations process. We're also not going to cut spending focused only on poor people.

No, we're not going to cut spending on programs that work. We're going to end up cutting spending on programs that don't work, and there are plenty of them. Voters may not remember who gave you the program. They're sure as hell going to remember who took it away from you. Indeed. All right, coming up here on CNN This Morning, a warning for federal workers why some attorneys general are urging them not to...

to take the offered buyouts. Democratic Congressman John Olszewski joins me live to discuss that and more. Plus, two of President Trump's most controversial cabinet picks facing committee votes today. More on the Republicans we're watching. And Democrats issuing warnings about Elon Musk's apparently unchecked power as Doge turns its attention to the Department of Education.

To give Doge a chokehold on treasury payments is outlandishly dangerous. It's like putting a tiger into a petting zoo and then hoping for the best. I'm Anderson Cooper. Grief isn't talked about much, but that's what my podcast is all about. This is All There Is, Season 3. In the past year, I've listened to about 6,000 voicemail messages you've left for me after Season 2 and most of the ones sent in so far this season.

When I listen to your messages, it makes me feel less different and alone. My grief is deep and real, and it has brought me to my knees. Listen to All There Is with Anderson Cooper wherever you get your podcasts. Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval, and we'll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won't.

President Trump there talking about who else? The head of Doge, Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man, now tasked with making massive cuts to the federal government. His first target has been the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID. Musk yesterday called it a, quote, ball of worms, and his Doge department now is effectively dismantling it, despite questions over whether that is constitutional or legal. And now we know where Musk may be looking next.

The Department of Education, exclusive reporting from the Wall Street Journal, sources telling the journal, the Trump administration officials, quote, have discussed an executive order that would shut down all functions of the agency that aren't written explicitly into statute.

or move certain functions to other departments. According to people familiar with the matter, "The order would call for developing a legislative proposal to abolish the department," the people said. Trump's advisors are debating specifics of the order and the timing, the people said. And some of the president's allies in Congress say they're all in. To my friends who are upset, I would say with respect,

You know, call somebody who cares. They better get used to this. It's USAID today. It's going to be Department of Education tomorrow.

So, Zolan, USAID today, the Education Department tomorrow. Clearly, we have this ball is rolling, right? Elon's activities here. The Department of Education, there is plenty of political opposition. People fight about teachers unions, for example, but they also do critical things like fund impoverished schools.

and administer programs for students with disabilities, which shows up across the board for people no matter your socioeconomic status. Anyone can end up in that kind of a situation. What would it mean to go after this particular piece of education

I mean, it's a cabinet agency. I mean, they're not allowed to do it. Doesn't mean they're not going to try. I go back to a time period in the campaign when we were all focusing on Project 2025, a blueprint developed by conservatives, including former Trump administration officials. And this was one of the sections of that plan at that point to shutter the Department of Education. And yes, you know, this is a cabinet agency.

Well, scholars would say that you need congressional, you actually need Congress in order to completely shut down. But even in Project 2025, what they were saying is you could still almost divest, defund it, shutter different programs in the agency to whittle it down at this point. I do think one, and I might add too, during the campaign campaign,

the president-elect at that point tried to distance himself from that platform. And we're seeing many of those same proposals come to fruition now, all part of an effort to try and remake the federal government in basically Trump's image at this point. I do think that it also has resulted in Democrats finally having sort of a consistent message

against the Trump administration here. Both Elon and Elon bringing some of his engineers and involving himself in government matters, but also this effort to completely upend federal government and really wage an assault on the federal workforce as well when it comes to the memos issued last week as well as this action. - Well, right, and the Washington Post reports that the draft order acknowledges only Congress can shut down the department and instead directs the agency to begin to diminish itself.

Brad Todd. Well, we've only had a Department of Education since 1979 and our schools are worse now than they were in 1979 according to performance data. It's the smallest department in the federal government. We can continue to send the money for Title I reading and funds for disabled students, send that money as a block grant to the states and let the states administer it without having 10,000 bureaucrats here in Washington.

It's totally within the rights of the president to reduce the workforce there. Congress can still make sure he's doing the functions that they want it to do, but we don't have to have 10,000 bureaucrats in Washington in the Department of Education. - Right, I guess we'll see. Ahead here on CNN this morning, an offer of friendship. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praising El Salvador for offering to jail American prisoners for a fee. Plus, President Trump suggesting a new avenue to sell TikTok and put it under US control.

All right, welcome back. California dealing with heavy rainfall as the Midwest prepares for freezing rain. Let's get to our meteorologist, Allison Chinchar, with your forecast this morning. Allison, good morning.

And good morning. Yes, we're going to start to see a shift in all of this rain that's been coming into the West Coast. So far, it's been focused in Northern California, Washington and Oregon. But now we're going to start to see that slide southward into places like Los Angeles and San Diego. But it's still up north for now. San Francisco, Sacramento getting some pretty moderate to even heavy bands of rain right now. High snow or heavy snow in the higher elevations. This is where the concern is for the flooding for today. Yes, it's still in northern and central California, but notice it does

start to slide a little bit farther south. Overall, most of these areas still looking at an additional one to three inches of rain on top of what they've already had. But a couple spots could even pick up a little bit more than that. Snow still coming down in feet in some of these areas could pick up an extra one to three ft. Now we're looking at some more rain as well. But on the eastern half of the country, this starts tomorrow. You can see Wednesday we get this new low that develops that starts to spread some rain across portions of the Ohio Valley and mid Atlantic, but then

overnight Wednesday night into early Thursday. Those colder temperatures start to slide in and now you're looking at the potential for some ice, especially in places like Chicago over towards Indianapolis and Cleveland that spreads over into portions of the northeast as we get into the late thursday. So here's a look at where we're talking about in terms of that ice Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and even spreading into portions of Pennsylvania and upstate New York as we finish out the rest of the week. And I'm seeing Washington under that ice as well, which is

I'm really, really unhappy to see that. All right, Alice Chinchar, thank you. I really appreciate it. All right, coming up here on CNN This Morning, confirmation votes for two of President Trump's more controversial cabinet picks. Can Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. run the table with Republican senators? Plus, tariff wars, China not hesitating to hit back at the U.S. President Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend, quote, Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe and maybe not. Well...

I'm reassured. Are you president or a strip mall dentist?

This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. The truth is that many of us warned about this. Reverend Gabriel Salguero, pastor of The Gathering Place in Orlando, Florida. What are the kinds of messages you have been getting? I got a call from somebody saying that they're not going to go to church because they're afraid. Many pastors are concerned that it will impinge on our religious liberty to serve immigrant communities and mixed status communities. What does it feel like to be on the front lines of the immigration debate?

Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app. Tariffs could raise the price of tequila. Well, now what are Americans supposed to drink if they want to end an evening in jail? And where is the worm going to live? Oh, right. I'm sorry. I forgot. I forgot.

I forgot. Oy, tequila connoisseurs can breathe easy for now. President Donald Trump has delayed his planned tariffs on both Mexico and Canada for 30 days. The two trading partners promising to bulk up security along their borders with the U.S. to curb drug trafficking and illegal immigration. If you're in the market for consumer electronics, toys, footwear, though, expect to see higher prices as Trump's tariffs against China will remain. Beijing also hitting back overnight with its own retaliatory tariff package.

All this showing how Trump seeks to govern in his second term. Here's what the New York Times' Peter Baker writes. Quote, soft power is out, hard power is in. Since returning to the White House, President Trump has demonstrated that he prefers to bludgeon, not bargain. His favorite blunt instrument, not military force, but economic control.

Coercion, like the tariffs he ordered on Saturday. Joining us now is former senior advisor to Mike Pence, Mark Short. He also served as White House legislative affairs director under Trump and now is the board chair at Advancing American Freedom. Mark, good morning. Casey, thanks for having me. Wonderful to see you again. Broadly speaking, what we're seeing here in these two weeks from President Trump this time around, it has been a series of broadsides across government,

beginning with the pardons for everyone who was investigated for January 6th. Is President Trump doing what Americans voted for? I think broadly, yes, Casey. I think for most Americans, they looked at the border situation under the Biden-Harris administration as a total disaster and chaotic. And they see that that's where a lot of Trump's focus has been. I think for a lot of people inside D.C., there's hand-wringing over, you know,

cuts to government spending. But I think that in many cases, that's what Americans wanted. They wanted to shrink the size of the federal government. And while there's a lot of concern here about DEI, I think for a lot of Americans, they were concerned about how woke the Biden-Harris administration had become. So yes, I think that generally so far, he's off to a strong start and Americans support that.

But I do think that there are warning signs out there regarding trade policy and as well today with two of the cabinet picks, I think are two of the most radical unqualified picks to serve in any administration. - Let's talk about those because Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. both set to get committee votes.

today. One of the senators we've been watching on RFK Jr. is Senator Bill Cassidy, who questioned RFK during the hearing. I want to play a little bit of what we saw at that hearing. We'll talk about it. Take a look. Will you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism? Senator, I am not going into the agency with any

That's kind of a yes or no question because the data is there. And that's kind of a yes or no. And I don't mean to cut you off, but that really is a yes or no. If the data is there, I will absolutely do that. So, of course, that's the vaccine skepticism question. And I know that the group that you are with is releasing a new ad today aimed at undercutting RFK Jr.'s chances for confirmation. Let's take a look at the ad. Jr. is a Democrat plant.

A lot of people think that Junior is a conservative. He's not. He's an extreme liberal. He's radical left. So don't think you're gonna vote for him and feel good. He's a radical left Democrat.

So you're saying vote no on RFK Jr. to Republican senators. Is your argument getting traction? Well, I think that right now, I think most Americans understand that he's not qualified to be nominated for Health and Human Services. I think the concern for a lot of Republican senators is worry that Donald Trump will form a primary against them if they vote against him.

But Casey, I mean, here's a guy, you look at Donald Trump's own words just a few months ago. He's a person who is, even when he ran last year, advocated abortion on demand through all nine months of a pregnancy. He's somebody who said, "I'm not going to take sides on 9/11." He's somebody who said the NRA is a terrorist organization. He's somebody who now America and Samoa, parents of 83 children who have died because he advised them not to get vaccinated for measles.

This is not just somebody who would be too left wing for a Democrat administration. He obviously is far more radical than any Republican administration would ever nominate. And yet, I think he is right now on the verge of an incredibly close vote and could get confirmed for the Secretary of Health and Human Services. - It is interesting to think about what would have happened had Democrats, a Democratic president nominated an RFK Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary, what Republicans might have been saying about him. - Yeah, exactly. I think that you'd see pretty much uniform opposition to RFK if that was the case.

- Mark, I do wanna ask you about the latest twist in how this administration, the new Trump administration, is dealing with what happened on January 6th. Because obviously it started out with the pardon, unilateral pardon of people, even those who beat up police officers who were convicted of violence against cops.

Now we've reported here that FBI agents, FBI personnel, have been given a 12-question questionnaire around their involvement in investigating January 6th. Is that appropriate? And does that presage a potential purge of our law enforcement officers who held people accountable for their actions that day?

I think it's incredibly wrong. I think the reality is that no matter how much we try to revise history, January 6th was a terrible day for America. I think there are a lot of noble law enforcement who were trying to protect elected officials that day.

And I think it's a terrible message when Republicans look to undermine law and order and pardon those who assaulted our officers. I think there's something else, though, pernicious that could happen down the road, Casey, and that is the sense that for people who feel if they're taking on violence against an opponent of Donald Trump, they think they'll get pardoned by Donald Trump.

And so I think that this isn't just how bad a situation is of pardoning those who assaulted law enforcement officers. I think it also creates a potential threat down the road too. And so, yeah, I think it's an unforced error and a mistake by the Trump administration.

So the pardon is definitely one question. You're essentially saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that someone might commit violence on behalf of Donald Trump, expect a pardon. Go ahead. Well, sure. I mean, that's basically the precedent you set up, is that under this case it was okay. And so why wouldn't somebody assume that under a future case they too would get pardoned? I mean, there's a couple of those who were convicted of crimes, including by Trump-appointed judges from January 6th, who said, as they're in the courtroom, that it's okay, I'm going to get pardoned.

And do you think that this questionnaire and this sort of chilling of the FBI, is it possible that that might mean that agents inside the FBI would be reluctant to take on a case or to investigate someone who was doing things on behalf of Donald Trump? I think the reality is that the Department of Justice had become politicized. I agree with that.

But I think the concern is that in many cases now you're firing people who are simply following orders. In many cases, these were attorneys who took on prosecutors who took on cases because it was assigned to them. And so I do think that's a dangerous precedent. All right. Mark Short, very grateful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for being here. Come back. We'll do. Straight ahead here on CNN This Morning. With just a few days left to decide, some federal workers being warned against taking buyout offers.

Democratic Congressman Johnny Olszewski here to discuss that. Plus, saving TikTok, President Trump's new plan to try to keep the app around. We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok. All right, welcome back. We're just over two weeks into Trump's second term. Perhaps the most striking development in these days has been his administration's determined effort to reshape the federal government with dramatic executive action.

There's the attempt to freeze all federal spending, that order halted by a federal judge. There was the slashing of DEI programs across government. And of course, the attempted buyout of potentially millions of federal workers, what the Trump administration called a deferred resignation offer.

workers eligible for that program, required to make a decision by Thursday. The email announcing that buyout obviously did not go over well with federal workers. Business Insider reported this, quote, "Federal employees are ping-ponging between outrage, despair, and confusion as Trump's payout offer hits inboxes."

The anger is personal, one career State Department employee telling them, quote, they can F off and we won't be intimidated, end quote. President Trump has been assisted in this effort by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which first targeted USAID, his attempts to dismantle that agency meeting strong opposition from Democrats on Capitol Hill.

I'm sorry that you have to put up with this offensive bulls**t coming out of this White House. This is a constitutional crisis that we are in. That is how dictators are made. We need you, America, to listen and to act because today it's USAID.

Tomorrow, it's our healthcare. It's social security. It's our livelihoods. It's our freedoms. We don't have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk.

The Wall Street Journal reporting this this morning that after dismantling USAID, the Trump administration plans to turn its attention to the Department of Education. Joining us now to discuss all this, Congressman Johnny Olszewski of Maryland. He's a Democrat congressman. Thanks very much for being here. Thanks for having us on. You, of course, represent a significant number of people who work for the federal government. It affects this region very deeply. I want to start with this reporting that they may go after the department's

Department of Education. Is that legal? What would it mean? Yeah, I mean, 150,000 workers in Maryland, over 22,000 just in my congressional district, that's just civilian, not counting military. And so if this is personal, I mean, there's a story behind every family who's impacted. And so this is part of the playbook.

This is about going after, today it's USAID, like I said, now it's the Department of Education. And no, these are not legal actions. I mean, we have the power of the purse in Congress. USAID and other agencies are established by law. And it's clear that the president has to be more thoughtful about how he wants to do it. Look, you have the White House, you have both chambers of Congress. There's a way that if you want to go after

or if you want to change the way our government is structured, you can do that. I welcome that debate. I think members of the Congress welcome that debate, but this is clearly not legal. It is clearly an affront to the hardworking men and women of this country, and it's something that I won't stand for. I know many of my colleagues won't either.

What are you hearing from constituents about their attitude toward continuing to do their jobs? Because it's one of the explicit strategies here and that the Washington Post kind of reports it this way, that the executive order of this draft to shut down education acknowledges only Congress can actually shut it down, but it directs the agency to begin to diminish itself. Are federal workers that you speak to

ready to do things like that? You know, just yesterday at USAID, there were federal workers who were just so scared and upset and frustrated that their mission that really is helping preserve and protect American interests across the world was under attack. That's the same for our workers in the Department of Education. You know, the vast majority of the funding for the Department of Education is actually going directly to our states and local governments. As someone who oversaw a local school system as county executive before coming to Congress,

This support is invaluable. And so I know that employees are ready to stand up. They're ready to fight. I think what you read today speaks to the frustration and the emotions that our employees are going through. But again, these are not legal actions the president's taking. I think employees are not going to take kindly to being told to dismantle their own work. These are people who have given their lives to the American people and to the American government. And it's deeply concerning.

Let me talk to you a little bit about how Democrats are responding to all of this. We got a new chairman at the Democratic National Committee. But the reality is that it can be hard to see how Democrats are standing in the way of what Donald Trump is doing. In many ways, it's a steamroller, him plus Elon Musk. What does your party need to do differently now?

more. We need to have urgency about what we're facing. We need to have an all hands on deck strategy. We need to pull every single lever that's available to us. I was encouraged to see senators saying they're going to use all their tools. They have more than members of us in the minority party. But as I was saying yesterday, this is also incumbent upon the American public

especially those who are represented by Republicans in congressional districts and U.S. Senate districts, to reach out and say, "This affects not just me. This affects a family member. This affects a friend. And I'm concerned about the actions you're taking." Until, you know, ultimately, until we have Republicans joining us in the fight, we're going to have limited levers, but certainly,

things like reconciliation. So the buyouts, you know, the government's not even funded past March. So I don't know how the president can promise to pay folks for not showing up to work. But, you know, I think there will be places where Democrats can have more impact and more leverage in these conversations. We should and will use every tool at our disposal. We're going to support legislative efforts. We're going to support

court and judicial efforts. We're certainly going to be in the court of public opinion, but we need to make sure that both the American public is aware of what's going on because this is just the beginning. USAID, Department of Ed, Social Security, healthcare, your freedoms, your liberties could be next. And I think those are really real threats that are out there that we need to take seriously. - The Elon Musk piece of it,

How do you see a Musk's interaction with President Trump? And I mean, I heard Jamie Raskin there say, we don't have this fourth department of government that is this billionaire. What is the plan from the democratic perspective to try and impact that? Because clearly he is moving so quickly that it seems all but impossible to stop it.

Well, he's moving quickly with the full support of President Trump and to date members of the United States Congress. And so, you know, our moves have to be calling it out for what it is. This is someone who's had no vetting. There's no transparency about the work that he is engaging in or those who are helping him and assisting him. And now they have access to some of the most

classified personal information that Americans can have, our social security numbers, our financial information, our healthcare data. It's deeply concerning. And so we need to not only call for it and push for that transparency, but be at the table. I'll just add, it's interesting that, you know, between the workforce and the tariffs and all this other stuff,

You know, cost of living was always front and center for this president. And it was a key issue in this election. We're now 32 days into Congress. There hasn't been one bill brought to the floor to lower costs for Americans. Instead, we're seeing tariffs that are proposing to drive up costs 25 percent, $1,250 for the average family. And I just think that we're losing sight of what Americans told us they wanted us to go to Washington and work on. All right. Congressman Johnny Olszewski, thanks very much for being here this morning. I appreciate it. Come back soon.

All right, 53 minutes past the hour. Here is your morning roundup. Today, President Trump is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss an extension of Gaza's fragile ceasefire deal. The deal is set to end March 1st if no agreement is reached on phase two of the agreement. Netanyahu says he'll formulate phase two details with President Trump.

You're looking now at live images of crews removing wreckage from the Potomac following last week's deadly mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter. They expect to recover the jet's cockpit today if the winds and the tides will allow it. By tomorrow, snow, sleet and freezing rain are expected to hamper recovery efforts.

California's largest insurance provider asking for an emergency rate increase following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. State Farm says it's already paid out more than a billion dollars to customers and is facing a dire situation. And this. I believe that our diversity efforts have led to making the NFL better.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell making it clear the league intends to keep its diversity initiatives going Goodell emphasizing the NFL's policies are good for business and quote follow the law All right, let's turn out of this story one of the many executive orders signed by President Trump creates the first-ever US sovereign wealth fund a government-owned fund that would generally work to stabilize the economy by investing excess capital Trump hinted on Monday that the funds first purchase could be tick-tock and

as the China-based app faces a deadline to find a new owner in the U.S. by April. We're going to be doing something perhaps with TikTok and perhaps not. We might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make, or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options. But we could put that as an example in the fund. And we have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund.

All right, our panel is back. Jeff Mason, obviously President Trump

took some action on this when he first came in or at least tick tock wanted to give president trump credit for being the one who took this action when he came in to office how real is this particular proposal oh i think it's real and it's interesting to see him follow up on it yesterday i was in the oval office on the night of inauguration and he's talked about tick tock with us that night with reporters in the room and talked about the fact that the us might have a stake in it and we all were kind of wondering all right well how

How would that work? And that is being explained, at least in part, by this sovereign wealth fund. So it would give them a vehicle, because that's what a sovereign wealth fund is, is a vehicle to invest U.S. money into something like that.

There's still questions of how they would actually develop this fund, though. It's usually something that you see in countries that have a budget surplus or in a better fiscal situation as well. So just how he would actually construct this, like many of the White House's proposals, the implementation of it, there's definitely questions there. The political gain is clear, though. You know, he has made clear that he feels that...

This could be a means to pleasing younger voters when it comes to TikTok and any sort of headline around regaining TikTok with a ban on the horizon as well. And he's been clear with regard to TikTok that he sees it as having played a role in helping him win over young voters. So there is a very personal connection politically, political and personal connection between him and that app that he keeps coming back to

despite, shall we say, during Trump 1.0, him almost banning it. - Right, well I was gonna say, Brad Todd, I mean, it was his idea. Mark Warner will go out there and say like, "I didn't think we should necessarily do this, "and then Trump told us we should, "and I actually got on board with that." - Well, it was Josh Hawley's idea to get it off government devices, and then it picked up steam and we got it out. I mean, we got the head cut off the snake, let's keep the head cut off. This is a terrible idea.

The only way to get rid of TikTok, to bring TikTok back is if it is completely disconnected to the Chinese government. It doesn't need to be connected to ours either. I can't think of a worse idea than the sovereign will fund. - Yeah, I think this is another ridiculous idea that Trump's throwing out there that'll never go anywhere unless Jared Kushner is gonna come back and, you know,

talk to the Saudis and run the Solven-Wa fund that he's, you know, sort of become accustomed to doing outside the government. But like, this is an absurd thing that's never going to happen in our government. It's not what we do. It's what countries in the Middle East with enormous oil reserves do. Like, this is just another Trump distraction to make us think we're going to buy TikTok and what, make it a state-run media operation. We already have that with Twitter. So...

Well, a lot of northern European countries have sovereign wealth funds, too. The Scandinavians countries. They have enormous oil supplies. Part of the American premise is the government doesn't pick winners and losers. And a sovereign wealth fund is definitely the government picking a winner. What do we know about the algorithm itself, though? I mean, isn't there still a question about whether TikTok will actually ever give it up?

Yes. Yeah, they're not going to... I don't know the answer to that. They're not going to give it up. That's the most valuable part of it. That's what they use to control what teens are seeing. That's what they use to control how teens are thinking. There's no way the Chinese government... Which is the national security concern. There's no way the Chinese government is giving that up. They can sell every other aspect of it. They're not giving that up. So we can buy a useless social media app that nobody wants. I think there's plenty of them out there. MySpace, Vine...

Also, just remember, like, this is all happening at the same time that both China and the United States are putting tariffs on each other. So a cooperation on TikTok also seems unlikely. Unlikely. Very good point. All right. I will leave you with this. Pull out your flip phones, dust off your Walkman, because Variety is reporting that there's going to be a sequel to the 90s drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It could be coming to Hulu. In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires.

Sources telling Variety that the show will focus on a new generation's Slayer, but we could still see some familiar faces, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Who are you? Let's just say I'm a friend. That's not the only showback throwback show. It could be gracing our screen soon.

The beloved series Little House on the Prairie, of course, based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, is also slated for a Netflix reboot. Okay, this segment is definitely for me, guys. I don't know. I don't know.

So now I'm at a table with all gentlemen here. You did. Yeah. Love it. All right, Solon, you can come back anytime. Guys, thank you. It was great. I'm terrified to see the new woke Hollywood version of Little House on the Prairie. Let's hope they don't screw this franchise up. Oh, my gosh, Brad. Okay. Thank you all, guys, for being here. Thanks to all of you at home for joining us as well. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now. I'm back with a vengeance.

After a decade of history, exes Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa finally face off. The flip-off is a house-flipping competition. There's so much at stake. It's the ultimate design showdown like no other. This is war. Things are definitely going to get heated. If I lose to my ex-wife... Bring it on. I'm back with a vengeance. The Flip-Off, all new Wednesday night at 8 on HGTV. Stream next day on Maxx.