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It is Thursday, March 20th. Here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning. It only hurts the most vulnerable, our children. The beginning of the end for the U.S. Department of Education. President Trump pulls the trigger today. What does that mean for kids, parents and teachers? Plus this. The question is, should you call those blocks? RFK Jr.'s risky idea to fight bird flu on farms, let it spread. Can that actually work? And more.
It is heartbreak for the family of a missing college student. They now want her to be officially declared dead. Why that might be difficult to do. And later, March Madness Mayhem actually means big money and college athletes are finally getting a cut. But who's really winning?
6:00 AM here on the East Coast. Here is a live look at Nashville where I used to live. Hello all my friends in Nashville. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you all for waking up with me. We're going to start today with the latest presidential executive order. President Trump is set to sign an order that would start the dismantling of the Department of Education. CNN has learned he will direct Secretary Linda McMahon to take steps to quote, facilitate the closure of the department.
I told Linda, "Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job." I want her to put herself out of a job. I want the states to run schools, and I want Linda to put herself out of a job.
To be clear, eliminating the department requires an act of Congress, but massive cuts, that is something the president can do on his own. Earlier this month, the agency said it was getting rid of about half of its workforce. Teachers and unions say this is going to affect the most vulnerable students.
When they are attacking the Department of Education, they are attacking our students and we are not going to stand for that. Educational opportunity is not government waste. It's something that is very central to what makes America great. I think that these kids deserve the moon and if there's any cuts that can be made to make government more efficient, it shouldn't be on the backs of special education students.
Joining me now to discuss Stephen Collinson, CNN Politics senior reporter, Carrie Champion, CNN contributor and host of Naked Sports with Carrie Champion, and Sabrina Rodriguez, national political reporter for The Washington Post. So, Sabrina, we actually heard from a union leader there. Are you starting to see any movement or conversation among parents' groups, students' groups, like the people who will be affected by COVID?
the laws that the US Department of Education kind of enforces. Absolutely. I think right now there's a lot of anxiety around what exactly is going to happen here. You know, this is a long awaited executive order from the president. We've been talking about what the fallout of this could look like for weeks.
it is starting to register with folks that this is gonna happen. But again, that impact of what exactly is coming is something that we're gonna be talking about for the weeks and months ahead. - But there was a massive constituency for this one. I think coming out of the pandemic, all of these parents who certainly ended up in Moms for Liberty, for example, and there are gonna be governors reportedly at this signing. So Steven, can you talk about that part of it? Like they are answering a call.
True. The president is doing something that Republican presidents have said ever since Ronald Reagan that they want to do. Yes, I've been hearing this forever. You know, every time you go to a conservative political meeting, this is one of the big applause lines. The difference is that most Republican presidents thought
They had to do it through Congress because that's the law, as you pointed out. I think the big question here is what happens to programs for low-income kids, the disabled kids, the present? It's not being quite truthful. - Special education, bilingual education, although now that English is officially the language, maybe that doesn't matter. - The states already look after schools. It's all these extra programs. And then there's a question of student loans. They say they're gonna put it into the Commerce Department,
if that happens and we get to the summer when all the new students are applying for their loans, there could be complete chaos. - Yeah, so to underscore what you just said, they're thinking of moving student loan administration, which was under the US Education Department, under Commerce, so that will still get done. Carrie, you were nodding. - I was curious because, and this was my question for you,
I think about when I was in college and Pell Grants, all of those things really-- Yes, I did work study. I did work study. All of those things really mattered. OK, good. So we're all on the same page. So where does that leave so many students who, in my case, really, truly needed it? Right. They have to make sure that they get people who know what they're doing. If it's going to the Commerce Department, are the people that administer these loads going as well? Because if it's not done properly,
A lot at stake. You know, as we mentioned, it takes an act of Congress to do something like this. But obviously, when you look at where Republicans are in the party, they're not going to be pushing anything too hard. Here's Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, what she talked about this week when she was talking about working with Donald Trump and Elon Musk in this Doge effort, even when they make cuts that she disagrees with. It may be that Elon Musk
has decided he's going to take the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowski. And you know what? That may happen. That's why you've got everybody just like zip-lip, not saying a word, because they're afraid they're going to be taken down, they're going to be primaried.
Carrie Champion, zip lip. Well, I do feel that way. I feel like we are, and I know you've heard this before, but in a real-life episode of Handmaid's Tale, everyone is just watching it and we're all asleep and no one is saying anything and doing anything. I'm just really so concerned about all the issues that are happening. There is, when you repeat this out loud,
to other people who maybe say live in other places in another country they don't understand what's happening in either do I. We're in the midst of so many things that are confusing and I wonder why there's so much silence. I asked a congressman that the other day. - Well, I mean she's saying that it's basically fear. Sabrina, you've probably reported this at the Post. There are lawmakers who have said that they get all kinds of threats. But it was interesting to me because Lisa Murkowski survived primaries before.
to the point where she felt-- it seemed like she was kind of untouchable out of Alaska. So what do you make of someone like her saying this, that the world's richest man now
I mean I think she has the the weight that she can throw around in Congress on this and and be honest because she has had that position as a more centrist Republican she has had that position as being someone who speaks out more I mean we're talking about crucial votes in the Senate she is one of the only handful of people that people love you by the Tea Party revolution right she survived those were in a different place today because we're talking about the world's richest man involved in US politics and he has no problem going on X
throughout the day and launching attacks at lawmakers that he disagrees with and has openly talked about how he will primary anyone that disagrees with what Donald Trump wants to do so we're at a different point right now because again it's the information war it's him on X talking about all these things and it's the fact that he has all the money to
actually do it. Yeah, Stephen, do you see this as haunting, this whole conversation? I think intimidation works. The new Republican, well, the old Republican Party was people like Lisa Murkowski. The new Republican Party is Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And that's
just the way it's going to be. Yeah, all right. Sabrina, can I say something about what she said? Yeah, yeah, sure. When we do the information war, what I find interesting about how they've orchestrated it, so if Elon Musk puts it on X, it goes from X to being retweeted by however many other people. Yeah, to ending up on podcasts, too. Joe Rogan to Theo Vaughn, and the list goes on and on and all the different people who are listening. And so the message is already clear who, quote-unquote, the problem is.
and it doesn't always turn out to be him because no one's saying anything. It's the person he's going up against. - Okay, group chat, stay with me, 'cause we are gonna talk about a ton of things this morning. Coming up on CNN, the college student who vanished in the Dominican Republic, her parents had made an agonizing decision. We're gonna have the latest on that story. Plus, paving paradise to put up a parking lot. President Trump takes a cue from Joni Mitchell. And Democratic voters speaking out, demanding answers from the leaders that they elected.
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Available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax not included. Prices may vary. Not valid with any other offer, discount, or combo. It's 13 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Some of the stories you need to know to get your day going. The parents of the University of Pittsburgh student missing in the Dominican Republic. Well, they now have a very emotional plea. They want an official declaration that their daughter is dead.
We are coming to terms with the fact that our daughter has drowned. This is incredibly difficult for us to process.
Meantime, the man who is last known to have seen her alive has actually left the country after being detained for two weeks and busted. Federal prosecutors say the leader of the Crips in L.A., they're accusing him of stealing money from an anti-gang charity that he actually founded basically to fund his alleged criminal operation. That's what they say. He goes by the name Big You. Investigators say he ran a mafia like crime empire. Other charges include murder and human trafficking.
President Trump previews plans to pave over the grass in the Rose Garden at the White House. The grass just, it doesn't work and we have a gorgeous zone and everything else. I think it's going to be beautiful. I think it's going to be more beautiful. The president says since they have news conferences and other functions out there, the grass can be a problem when it's wet. The plan is to turn it into a patio-style seating area like they have at Mar-a-Lago.
And you gotta see this, a buzzer beater, Cade Cunningham nails a three-pointer with just .6 seconds left. His Detroit Pistons beat the Miami Heat. And for the Lakers, Luka Doncic, he doesn't even have to be on the court to sink a basket. He showed off this trick shot in the warm-up. Then he went on to score 31 points against the Denver Nuggets.
Still coming up after the break, college athletes cashing in on their brands. Does this level the playing field or just create a new generation of power players? Plus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s bold idea to fight bird flu on farms doesn't fight it at all. So what's the science of that? Also, good morning, Baltimore. Today, the NTSB is expected to release new information in that key bridge collapse investigation. We'll be watching for that. Stay with us.
Okay, March Madness is here. With that comes brackets, bragging rights, and the billion dollar business of college sports. And that business looks a lot different than it did just a few years ago. Thanks to NIL, student athletes can finally cash in on their own name, image, and likeness. But the system has few guardrails. So who really benefits?
Well, this week I went on assignment and spoke with a former NCAA gymnast, Savannah Shanehair, to break it all down, how the system works, who's winning, what it says about the future of amateur athletics. So how did you decide to enter the market, so to speak? I vividly remember July 1st, 2021. I made a little graphic on Canva and I was like, hey, my name is Savannah. I'm a gymnast at University of Florida and I am open for anything.
Like business. I don't know. Something along those lines. Like something super cheesy. But I posted it on my Instagram just in hopes that brands would be like, okay, so she definitely wants to jump headfirst into this NIL thing. It's interesting because for your generation in particular, not just of athletes but across the board, being a brand ambassador, right, trying to get marketing opportunities, I feel like that's your native tongue. Yeah.
Definitely. Yeah, I really leaned into the sports space. And so I was reaching out to protein brands, supplement brands, protein bars, athletic clothing that I could wear outside of the gym, you know, just things that I felt really aligned with my brand. So that was really cool for me. Were you seeing other students too?
get even more? You know, I was realistic. I was realistic. I was like, okay, the quarterbacks are getting cars. I'm personally not going to get a car. I'm good with a can of protein if that's what I get right now.
Carrie Champion is back with me. I mean, keep it realistic, right? Yeah, exactly. If you can't have protein, you get a car. It all makes sense. Here's the thing. So what's happened with NIL is there has been the development of these things called collectives, right? Which are-- it's a system where schools can use this entity to raise money, and then that entity can deal with the students. That entity can give money to the students because schools are still banned from doing it.
How has this changed the economics of the sport, the vibe even? You know, I think, and I'll go back to when I was in college, I always referenced stories just about the athletes that were around me. Ed O'Bannon, probably the originator of wanting to get paid for his name, image, and likeness, a basketball player at UCLA. I always thought to myself, it's unfair that they don't get any sort of compensation. Yes, because we should say NCAA, March Madness, I think it's...
- It's 1.3 billion dollars or something annually for them. - And they were trying to operate as a non-profit. They were making money off these kids' name, image, and likeness, while some kids would say stories, you'd hear these crazy stories about how they couldn't even eat lunch 'cause they had no money. So I like that the children are getting paid. I love that the babies-- - He want that for the kids. - I want that for the kids.
But the problem is the question of are we now watching amateur athletics? Are we now watching mini pros? Do they still care about the sport? And this has, and it's the Wild Wild West apropos. This has changed the game. And I think, you know, if we had to look maybe five years from now, we're not going to see the type of basketball or
in her case being a gymnast, we won't see that same love of the sport for those who really, really, truly are the big names because they're looking about how much money they can get paid. Very rarely do they leave the NCAA and go on to the pros and do really well. - But like in Savannah's case, she was saying gymnasts, you know, you really only have till your mid-20s.
before you're kinda out of the sport why shouldn't she have the ability to make that money and treat it like the job it is she should she should in the time that she has you know what she should always I like the idea of her saying when she started in 2021 she didn't know anything about it when I knew everyone had been watching it but she deserves some sort of compensation I think everyone does but you have to give the money to the sports that matter so and when I say that matter the sports that
keep all the other programs going football and basketball keep all the other athletics programs goings now girls women's basketball keeping all the other programs going making more money so I see why someone like her would get a can of protein versus a car that's just how it is but now these students are soon to be I would say in many cases employees at the University they have the right to make so much money now there
There's one student right now, and I know you're not talking football, but he's making $7 million a year. Can you imagine a name, image, and likeness? $7 million a year. Who knows if he'll ever go pro? Who knows as a football player if he'll ever go pro? If he even needs to. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Before I let you go, I feel like I have to ask an obligatory brackets question. Obligatory brackets.
Feels like it's somewhere in the law of news. Have you filled one out yet? Yeah, let me check that off. Okay, your final four for women. Okay, so I'll just make it quick. I think that UCLA, the women's basketball team, which is their number one seed, overall number one seed, will win it all. On the men's side, this is really radical on my part. Okay. Not really, but...
I'm going with Michigan State. I feel like Tom Izzo has another run in him. And something about it tells me he might just make this, and he can make it at least to Elite Eight, but I feel like he might go all the way home here with this one. So I'm excited. - Okay, this is advanced brackets with Carrie Champion.
but be sure to check out new episodes of the assignment they drop every thursday you can hear more of our conversation with savannah today coming up on cnn this morning why ukraine's president thinks peace with russia is possible this year after his phone call with president trump is that the case plus a massive purge of pentagon websites we're going to talk about why content about war heroes and suicide prevention is being scrubbed
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The chainsaw and the wrecking ball is coming after the 50 million students that go to our public schools. 90% of America's children go to public schools and nine abilities go to public schools. President Trump expected to start dismantling the Department of Education today. Good morning everybody, I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with us here on CNN this morning. Here's what's happening right now.
Today, the president plans to sign an executive order that will begin the process of shutting down the education department. It will direct the secretary to take the necessary steps to make that happen. To be clear, an act of Congress will also be needed to completely close it down. And the Justice Department has until today at noon Eastern to give a judge more information about the deportations
that the Trump administration carried out last weekend. They can also decide to invoke the state secret privilege to avoid turning over that information. And there's no shortage of anger and frustration as lawmakers go home to face voters, and that continues today. - I'm a veteran and you don't give a about me. - We want you to show fight. - I'm not gonna get my way when my people are being slaughtered.
Democratic Congressman Sean Kasten of Illinois faced pro-Palestinian demonstrators during his town hall last night. Eventually, police sent everybody home after multiple people were escorted out. Also, Ukraine's President Zelensky says he believes a lasting peace with Russia can be achieved after what he calls a positive phone call with President Trump.
I believe it was substantive. Over the recent period, this is probably the most substantive conversation. The mood was right, sufficiently detailed. We discussed our next steps, the demands for a partial ceasefire.
both zelinski and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to stop striking energy targets but the details of that agreement aren't quite clear President Trump also floated the idea of the U.S taking control of Ukraine's power plants okay group chat is back I'm going to lean on Stephen Collinson who's been writing about this a lot because you're describing it at this point as a spinning a fiction what the White House is doing
Right. There are times in a peace negotiation where you have to create the illusion of progress just to keep people at the table, to try and get things moving. It's not clear that there is any progress at all here. And it seems that what's happening is the White House is saying everything's going great because the president came in and said, I'm going to fix this in 24 hours, and it's proving a lot more difficult. What we saw in the call between President Trump and President Putin is,
the Russian president hasn't changed any of his goals that he had at the start of the invasion. And also why should he, right? If the president turned to Zelensky in the Oval Office and said, you don't hold the cards and you're the other person who comes to the table, what reason do you have to make concessions? But the question is, if there's going to be a peace at some point, the president of the United States is going to have to lean on the president of Russia because it's pretty clear that right now Putin doesn't want peace. He wants to keep on fighting because
he's trying to get rid of the Ukrainian forces in Kursk a part of Russia which is one of the few bargaining chips that Ukraine has in these talks. And he wants us to end with him having more land, Ukraine having no military and NATO out of the way.
Right, so the question is, can there be a peace? What's interesting in the last few weeks is that after that disastrous meltdown in the Oval Office, Zelensky has worked out a little bit how to deal with the Trump administration. He's showing more gratitude. He is... Playing nice. He's pretty much agreeing to whatever the president wants at this point because he knows he has to do that to try and keep Ukraine in the game. But the fault line here is that
The president seems to be aligning himself with Russia's positions and not the positions of the country that was invaded in the first...
First point. Okay, I'm going to keep the group chat here. There's a lot more to talk about, but we're going to bring in a few more people to add to the conversation. So one question that I've been hearing about in domestic politics, should Democrats play dead or should they fight back? The party's really divided when it comes to challenging President Trump and his agenda. And now we're seeing these town halls across the country, voters saying what they want them to do. Do the Democrats have a game plan? Can they get together the...
the House and the Senate and do something. I hear Democrats talk about strategies for taking back Congress in the midterms. Will we even have a midterm? Will we even have future elections? So what is the plan to stop this?
Okay, so our next guest is somebody who thinks she has some answers to those questions. The founder and president of Run for Something, Amanda Littman. She's also the author of When We're in Charge, which comes out in May. Amanda, welcome to CNN this morning. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
You've called for every Democrat over the age of 70 to make this their last term so that we can break the cycle of, quote, bad boomer leadership. How do you propose that should happen? And I ask because there are calls right now against Senator Chuck Schumer to at least step down from his position as minority leader.
You know, I am looking at the generation of leaders on the Democratic side who got us to this point. People like Senator Schumer, people like Nancy Pelosi, who have done incredible work through their leadership over the last 10, 20, 30 years. But that's part of the problem. They have been in charge for decades in some cases, and they have neither the skills nor the stomach
to meet the moment that we're in. And it seems like Senator Schumer doesn't even realize the crisis of this moment. There is this incredible bench of talent. Run for Something has helped elect more than 1,500 millennials and Gen Z to local office in nearly every state. They are ready to rise up and to run, but we got to make space for them at the top.
Can we talk about that recruitment? It's very clear from the last election that this generation is not default leaning Democrat, right? There is a mix on the political spectrum. The other thing I see at the town halls is people sound helpless. It sounds like they're saying to the lawmakers, why aren't you doing something? Because it sounds like they're afraid to do something. Am I misreading this? Tell me I'm wrong.
I think you are sort of right. You know, we have seen Run for Something recruits young people to run for local office. We have seen just since the election, more than 32,000 people raise their hands and say they want to run. That's more than we had sign up with us in the entire first two years of Trump's first administration. The day that Schumer announced he was going to vote for the continuing resolution was one of our biggest days of candidate recruitment yet.
So I think in particular, young people across the country who do share our values and a majority of them do, even if they weren't for us in the last election for reasons through Trump and media and Biden and all of that, they do generally share our values. They're saying, if you're not going to fight for me, I'm going to fight for me. And I find that at least a little bit hopeful. That's Amanda Lipman, founder of Run for Something. Thank you so much for being with us. Anytime.
Also, her book, When We're in Charge, is out in May. Now I want to talk about something that impacts your health and your wallet, bird flu. There's no sign that this outbreak is slowing down. Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. recently posed an idea on how to curb the spread. It has some public health experts raising alarms. They should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify
the birds and preserve the birds that are immune to it. Joining me now, public health veterinarian Dr. Gail Hansen. Okay, right now the way we deal with this is to cull, kill the birds that are sick. What is the science behind what he's saying, which is let it run free and the ones that live are immune and like we've solved the problem? There's not a lot of science behind that and that's the reason why we kill or cull those birds is that those
the avian flu, the bird flu, kills those birds, but it doesn't kill them quickly necessarily and that's a nasty death. So it's not humane to do that. It also doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of
the virus mutating, so the virus can then potentially get into people, puts people much more at risk, and it puts the farmers at a large economic risk as well. - Right, 'cause the farmers are able to look abroad and say, look, we've culled the birds that are sick, you can still buy from us, and under this system, Europe or whoever can look and be like, what? You're just letting it run wild, we don't need to buy from you.
Right, and you have then the birds that are sick that are potentially getting the virus then into the food that we're eating. That obviously we don't want to have. We want to make sure that the birds are as healthy as they can be. If they're going to get the disease, once it gets into a flock, almost all the birds are going to die anyway. So to cull them means that you depopulate them. You kill them fairly quickly and much more humanely than having them die from the disease, which they're going to do anyway.
You said something fascinating to me, which is that genetically at this point, so many birds on American farms are kind of the same. Like the idea that there's some super bird that's immune, that you let that one live. It sounds science fiction-y, but you tell me. How does this work or doesn't work the way he's thinking?
Well, most of the birds that either are laying eggs or that we have as chickens that we eat chicken are pretty much from the same kind of stock. So they're the same breed. They're the same type of bird. They're not quite clones, but they're pretty close. So if you've got disease that's going to kill them, which it does, it's going to kill all of them. You're not going to have that one. And even if you have one in a million,
you've got the rest of them that are going to die a horrible death. What should we do instead? People talk about what's happening in Europe, that there's some vaccination system. Help me understand what's an alternative to killing or letting it run free. Well, I think that's where people get a little confused because it isn't just a one or other vaccine.
It really needs to be, and USDA has talked about having a five-pronged approach, but I think a multi-pronged approach certainly makes sense. So culling the birds when you have it in the flock, you have to do that for humane reasons. You can't let those birds suffer. You also don't want to make, you want to make sure that the farmers and the farm workers aren't exposed to the
Right, so even just hygiene, keeping things sterilized, etc. Right, right. What they do in a lot of Europe and what they do in Canada is the flocks are a little bit smaller, so they're a little less dense, so the birds aren't quite connected so closely together, so you have a little less chance for them to get the disease. So doing that, vaccination, which is we have a vaccine that's available, it's being used in some parts of the world.
Just looking for other ways we can do, they call it biosecurity, so making sure that the disease has less of a chance of getting into the flock. - Yeah, yeah. So right now, are health experts, veterinarians like yourselves, is it just an eyebrow raise to what he's saying, or is there genuinely worry?
There's a lot of worry that that might come to fruition that nobody really wants that to happen. To have the birds just get sick and have all of them die, and die, like I said, a terrible death. So we're not just saying, maybe we should think about this. No, this is not something we want to think about doing. Okay, Dr. Gail Hansen, thank you so much for coming on set. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.
All right, still ahead on CNN this morning, the Trump administration versus the courts. Why mounting losses in lower courts could actually be setting up a long-term strategy. Plus, why a selfie taken a few hours after the stabbing deaths of four Idaho college students has become a key piece of evidence. We're going to bring back our group after this.
We have judges who are acting as partisan activists from the bench. They are trying to dictate policy from the President of the United States. They are trying to clearly slow walk this administration's agenda, and it's unacceptable.
Today, the Trump administration is facing a federal judge's deadline. He's demanding more information about those deportation flights to El Salvador. The Justice Department claims they didn't ignore his written orders to turn the planes around, and now they're questioning whether the judge even has jurisdiction.
We will answer appropriately, but what I will tell you is this judge has no right to ask those questions. You have one unelected federal judge trying to control foreign policies. He came in on an emergency basis on a Saturday with very, very short notice, if any, to our attorney to run in the courtroom. This judge had no right to do that.
Joining me now to discuss, Eli Honig, CNN senior legal analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. So Eli, we've seen this deadline push back a couple times now. What is it that he's looking for? He wants all the details on those flights. And the thing that's remarkable to me,
is the judge has now given DOJ three chances. He said, here's a list that I want from you. When did those flights take off? When did they leave US airspace? When did they land? Who was on them? And all three times, the response has been essentially what we just saw from the attorney general. You're not entitled to this, judge. We'll tell you a little bit, but not everything. Today he said, I want everything or I want your specific
excuse for why you don't think you have to give me everything. I want to talk about this more, but I think one thing I've noticed as I've been looking at these court transcripts is that the Trump administration attorneys are often saying, I don't have that information. Or they're saying, we are complying, even though it hasn't happened yet. Or they are saying, well, I'm
not sure. Let me like, are there other tactics here other than the public bullying that you're seeing in court? No comment. And I don't know are not acceptable answers. If you are the United States Justice Department in front of a court, occasionally you do get asked a question that you don't know, but you say, Your Honor, I don't know, but I will get that to you immediately. And we just heard Pam Bondi say he, the judge, he has no right to ask for that. Yeah, he does. He's the judge. That's his job. That's what they do. And the tactic
that DOJ has taken of, "How dare you ask us that and we shall not answer you?" That is new. Okay. So to that point, I want to play this moment from Trump's speech at the Justice Department. He actually was referencing the Indiana basketball coach, Bobby Knight, as one is wont to do in front of your federal prosecutors. And he accuses others of working the refs. Here's that moment.
He would play the ref and he would scream at him. He knew exactly what he was doing. They're doing the same thing. He said, no, he's not going to change now, but he's going to change for the next one. That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to scare the hell. They wanted to scare the hell out of the judges and they do it. Can you talk about this characterization? Yeah, first of all, I'm not sure who the they is. I mean, this is something Donald Trump certainly does all the time. Judges are not refs. They don't wear striped shirts. They wear black robes. Yeah. But
- It will never work to your advantage in my experience to try to browbeat a judge or guilt a judge into giving you the next call the way, I don't know, maybe it does work in basketball. - Yeah, but it doesn't work in court, but in the court of public opinion, which we talk about a lot, when you refer to them as refs, activists, radicals, lunatics, over time you're trying to change the public sense
of who they are and what they do. - You're right, there is an interesting messaging effort underway here. And by the way, how many times have you heard Caroline Leavitt or Stephen Miller or any other Trump administration spokesperson, Tom Holman, say a single unelected district court judge cannot overrule the will of the president? That has become a very effective
theme. And I will say... Yeah, because people talk about unelected judges in the past. Exactly. Elon Musk is unelected as well. Right, right. But this issue of can one district court judge issue a ruling that impacts the entire country, this goes back to really it started under Barack Obama. Now, Trump has had way more of those rulings, but it's a common complaint. But the Trump administration, certainly more so than prior administrations, has really, I think, done an effective job, for better or worse, of messaging that.
Which may be why you finally had the Chief Justice speaking out this week. So we'll see if there's more of that. He chooses his words three times in 20 years he's said something. He does. Ellie Honig, CNN Senior Legal Analyst. Thank you for joining us this morning.
Now it is 51 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Some of the stories you need to know to get going. Overnight, people at Tel Aviv's airport heard sirens as the Israeli military intercepted a missile targeting that airport. Yemen's Houthi rebels say that they launched it in support of Palestinians after the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire.
And prosecutors say the man accused of killing four Idaho college students bought a knife, sheath and a knife sharpener in the months before the crime. Detectives say they found that sheath next to one of the victims. And other newly released court documents include a selfie that investigators say Brian Koberger allegedly took on the morning of the killings, making a thumbs up gesture.
A jury is ordering the environmental group Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a pipeline company over protests from nearly 10 years ago. The company had sued accusing Greenpeace of defamation and trespassing. Greenpeace says the case threatens free speech and the organization's very future.
Now we want to talk about the massive purge of Pentagon websites because CNN has obtained a database that reveals more than 24,000 articles have been or could be scrubbed
all of them in the name of the new anti-DEI era at the Defense Department. Of course, a closer examination shows that some of them have little connection to diversity, equity, or inclusion. For example, an online feature about Jackie Robinson's military service pulled down, restored, of course, after a lot of backlash.
What does DEI have to do with Jackie Robinson and Medgar Evers? This is the establishment of Jim Crow 2.0. I said that before we ever had the election and it's coming true. And so I would hope that we would stop running around chasing these shiny objects and begin to focus American people on exactly what this administration is doing.
Group chat is back. I want to start with you, Sabrina, because the other articles scrubbed about the Holocaust, about 9-11, cancer awareness, sexual assault, suicide prevention. What's going on here? What's the sense of how it got to this point?
I mean, this is something that Donald Trump talked a lot about on the campaign trail. I think now we're seeing it sort of put into effect. But so much is getting caught up in it. I mean, part of it they've said is, oh, there's filters. Oh, things have gotten caught up in the filters. But the umbrella of woke has gotten wide, like way bigger. Exactly.
But the filter, you have to set a filter for something to get caught up in it. And I think there's a question right now of everything, you know, we're hearing from the Pentagon spokespeople saying, well, diversity is not our strength, it's unity.
Diversity is just a reality in the United States. And I think there's a question right now of, okay, why is this such a toxic word? Why is it that this scrubbing is happening? Also, it's a key part of the history of the Defense Department, the integration of forces, which also contributed to the integration of the country more widely. Carrie, I was thinking about how if there's one person you shouldn't scrub, it's Jackie Robinson. Well, she just said the filter where you're saying that. And I'm like, the filter, I understand. How wide is this filter? Is it just...
black people, white women. What is this situation where you say they start really wide and then they go back and correct the mistakes? And to me that was, I mean, extremely disgusting. What's the goal of this, Steven? - I think you have to ask the question,
after all of these incidences, do they actually want a diverse military? Because these stories keep coming up and I think there's certainly an attempt to
impose conservative thought and values on what many conservatives see as a very liberal government. I mean, what I hear from Republican lawmakers is, look, the woke thing went too far. Military leadership was too focused on things that were not about battle readiness because they were busy trying to protect all of these groups within. So is it...
As the historians look around and say you're scrubbing history, but is there a nugget of truth there? And can this be, I guess, message massaged in a different way? Often the backlash to the backlash is bigger than the backlash to start with. The argument that a lot of people in the Pentagon were putting about the political people was this hurts recruitment, the overly woke sense in the Pentagon.
But what happens to the recruitment of more diverse future members of the military? I think we have to look at that now and see whether this is a disincentive to people to enlist. It's interesting. We also heard from a NASA watcher, an astrophysicist, who was telling us that on their websites they saw images of black and brown astronauts being removed. Who is it?
It feels like a reimagining of the project of telling America's story. Diversity, equity, and inclusion. When you say it out loud, who's not in on that? Who's not in on it? Well, lots of people. Yeah, but listen to- The governor of Florida. I'm just like, why though? Listen to what they're saying. In any space, it makes people better and different. And so I'm always just so, I don't know why this word woke has become so poisonous and toxic and used to describe
other people, black and brown people, are people who are not aligned. You almost feel like, how did we get here? I keep asking that question, and I'm looking at you for the answer. And this is a good example, though, of just the slippery slope. I think one thing is, you know, we saw when the defense secretary went in, one of the first actions in the Pentagon was to say, okay, well, people aren't going to use time that they're on work to do, you know, cultural month celebrations. Okay, that, you know, moves from the mission. That's one thing.
and another thing is to scrub websites of just historic events in U.S. history. Yeah, and so much of our content online is our history right now. I want to talk about what you guys are keeping an eye on in the next day or two. What are you watching, Stephen, that you think other people should pay attention to?
I'm looking out for the first big story that captures the public imagination that's not about Donald Trump. He's... That's all for Stephen Rollinson. He's inflicted or imposed himself on the nation's psyche. He's in the middle of every single issue, popular culture, politics, international stories. That's not going to last forever.
perhaps it's going to be part of these demonstrations that we're seeing. And we know people get tired, right? That's what happened in 2020. Well, let's hope. I don't know. Good luck with that. I'm keeping an eye on my bracket.
If in fact, if in fact I win, it'll be the first time ever in the history of college basketball, at least in my reporting. But I don't think that's gonna happen because the chances are one and nine point what two quintillion or some number like something outrageous in which I know that's not gonna happen. - Kyron, your brackets don't matter. Sabrina Rodriguez, last word to you. - Okay, on a light note,
I've filled out my first bracket, so I'm excited. It's my first time. Welcome to the chat. On a serious note, I mean, in politics, the thing that I'm paying attention to right now is we've talked so much about the fallout from this case, specifically over the weekend of Trump sending over all these mostly Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. I think one of the open questions is what happened?
to these migrants? They're in a notorious mega prison. Are we gonna see legal challenges? Are they just stuck in El Salvador? And I think there's just a lot of questions of what happens to these people while, yes, we debate the constitutional piece of this. - Yes, yes, right now it's like we've sort of lost them in the shuffle of this conversation, but one of the things I'm compelled by is it's easy to have a conversation about people you see as gang members, right? That's easy, it's gonna get harder when this starts to move to other communities of people.
I want to thank you guys for joining me this morning. It was a lot of fun. I want to thank all of you for waking up with us. I'm Adi Cornish. Stick with us for the headlines. CNN News Central starts right now.
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