Storming the Court?
49:18 Share

There's a reason the Sleep Number smart bed is the number one best bed for couples. It's because you can each choose what's right for you whenever you like. Firmer or softer on either side, Sleep Number does that. One side cooler and the other side warmer, Sleep Number does that too. You have to feel it to believe it. Sleep better together. And now save 50% on the new Sleep Number limited edition smart bed. Limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you.

See store or sleepnumber.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your selling wherever you sell. With Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps, and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash tech, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash tech.

This is a February 11th right now on CNN this morning. I wish the courts would allow the executive and the legislative branches to work. The centerpiece of our democracy is that we observe court rulings. It's in the Constitution. Court stormed the president's blitz to overhaul the federal government, roadblocked by federal judges, as Trump's top allies are now suggesting he could defy the courts. Plus. They're all going to leave. It's a hellhole right now.

Turning up the pressure, President Trump says he may cut aid to U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt if they refuse his plans to, in effect, expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza. And a bidding war. Elon Musk leads a nearly $100 billion charge to acquire control of OpenAI, while his competitor is saying, "No thanks." Then,

The indictment's very old. It goes back a long time. Well, I had the same thing. So I wish him well. Case dismissed. The President's Justice Department calls for corruption charges against New York City's Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped. 6:00 a.m. here on the East Coast. That's a live look at the Washington Monument. Good morning, everyone. I'm Jim Sciutto, in for Casey Hunt this week. Great to have you with us. The Trump administration finds itself

On a growing collision course with the judicial branch as federal judges continue to step in and pause some of President Trump's many executive orders issued in the opening days of his second term. Federal judges have now issued orders blocking Trump administration actions on things such as firing most employees at USAID, firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel, cutting funding for public health research, offering a buyout program for federal employees, etc.

and has now been told twice to unfreeze certain federal funding. During hearing Monday, Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island says the attempted freeze is, quote, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. The president, however, seems unmoved by federal judges calling some of his orders unconstitutional.

You get some very bad rulings, and it's a shame to see it, frankly. They want to sort of tell everybody how to run the country. They don't talk about what you're looking at. All they say is, oh, it's unconstitutional. Judges should be ruling. They shouldn't be dictating what you're supposed to be doing.

Well, they are ruling. The president's advisors are stepping up attacks on judges critical of their work, such as his vice president, J.D. Vance, who writes, "Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." Elon Musk writing overnight saying, quote, "Democracy in America is being destroyed by a judicial coup.

end quote we are witnessing an attempted coup of american democracy by radical left activists posing as judges we should note that there's a trump appointed judge who also issued one of these orders listen to what jd vance had to say back in 2021 about what donald trump should do in january of 2025 years before he was even considered to become his next vice president i think that what trump should do like if i was giving him one piece of advice

Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts, because you will get taken to court, and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.

Because this is, I think, a constitutional level crisis. If we continue to let bureaucrats control the entire country, even when Republicans win elections, then we've lost. We've just permanently lost. We've permanently given up. And so that's sort of how I think about this.

All right. Joining me now to talk about this, what this means, Alex Thompson, CNN political analyst, national political reporter at Axios, Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor, Kendra Barkoff, former press secretary to Joe Biden, and Brad Todd, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist. Elliot, can you just explain the law and the Constitution here? I mean, in effect, actually, what...

Trump and his advisors are doing. They're not just standing up to the judiciary branch, but the congressional branch, because this is funding that was appropriated by Congress acting on its constitutional power to do so. I think most of us at this table are children of the 1970s and might remember Schoolhouse Rock.

three-ring government. There's three branches. The legislative branch writes the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. That's how it's worked for 249 years, and that's really how it ought to work. Now, when...

either a president or Congress has a problem with how some other branch is going, you sue in the courts and you have a right to enforce your rights. The president, if he doesn't like something that Congress has done, or if he thinks that he needs more power, can certainly go to the courts to, you know, to vindicate that right. And maybe you disagree with the court opinion, maybe you don't. But this whole notion of

saying that when we don't like what the courts have done, the courts themselves are illegitimate, really strikes the heart of who we ought to be as Americans. And we should note that Trump and other Republicans certainly cheered court rulings that go their way and did not question the court's power in those circumstances. Alex Thompson, it strikes me that this is such a consistent message from Trump, from Vance, from Elon Musk, who has become, in effect, the information arm of this administration, that they are

not just teasing this, but laying the groundwork to say, "No, we're not gonna listen to federal court rulings." - Yeah, and they want a showdown at the Supreme Court. Now, Donald Trump was one of the most, you know, litigious people in America well before he was the American president, but he is now surrounded by people that believe that essentially Trump can do all these things. And they believe that basically the president can do whatever he wants

to people that are in the executive branch. He can fire whoever he wants, he can cut off funding. He is surrounded by people that want this showdown in order to greatly expand executive power, not just for General Trump, but for presidents in the future. - Brad, are you comfortable with this new reality that the president and his advisors are creating here?

the way you want government to be working? It's not a new reality. Let's rewind the tape. A couple of years ago, Joe Biden lost his plan for student loan forgiveness, if you will, at the Supreme Court. His quote was, I will stop at nothing to do this. And he then proceeded to give up $48 billion of student loan debt in defiance of the Supreme Court.

We've seen the same things with Democrats. He didn't defy the court ruling. He found another path to attempt to get that funding through. The court was different. Donald Trump has not yet defied any court ruling. They've abided by every lower court ruling. That's a fact that we didn't have. But they're making quite a public case here to say, we don't have to listen. That's not a minor point, though, Jim. That's the major point. Is he abiding by the court rulings or is he not? He is. He is. They will be appealed. They're following just the way the court chain of command is supposed to go. They'll appeal to the Supreme Court.

Kendra, did you hear them abiding by just the way the courts-- It doesn't seem like that they're trying to abide by the courts. It seems what they're trying to do is obviously defy what the courts are telling them to do. But I think this is going to play out in the real world. And what's going to happen is,

Grandma's going to stop getting some of her checks. You saw it with the OMB freeze. They got so much backlash from the Republican Party themselves. They were calling the White House. They were saying to the White House, this is not working for me. You saw it yesterday with Katie Britt, who's already saying some of the spending, the NIH things down in Alabama. We need to really look at these things. And so I think it's going to play out on two prongs. One is in the court system. And the second is some point there's going to be some backlash here and things are going to have to change.

Do you think that's a sufficient strategy for Democrats? Because that seems to be a fairly consistent message I hear from Democrats, is just wait for the American people to feel the pain from this, and they'll do something about it. That's not exactly an active defense. No, it's not, and they...

We need to be out there doing more, talking about it. But there are real-life implications of how these cuts and these spending freezes and these jobs will actually affect people in their day-to-day lives. Yeah, the Katie Britton example is good because here's Alabama, and you have the University of Alabama saying, actually, we need that federal money. That's going to impact...

Things like cancer research. A lot of these places are in these red states where there are big institutions, where there are big research institutions that need these fundings. Elliot Williams, can I ask you to respond to Brad's argument, which has become a talking point now that Biden did the same thing. Is that true? I think there's a big difference. And you were getting at this with your question with finding another way to carry out a plan and quoting Andrew Jackson in Learfield.

literally one of the darkest moments in the relationship between in American history and the relationship between the executive and the courts. Certainly, I will give the president this. He has every right to challenge orders, has every right to say the courts are wrong, has every right to vindicate his rights. But when

Both he and JD Vance are making the argument that there will come a day when we simply will not adhere to court orders. That, to me, is the big problem. Wait a minute, though. Let's go back. Joe Biden appointed a commission to look at packing and expanding the court, an explicit threat to the non-people who actually sit on the court right now. That's something we hadn't seen in 80 years. Okay. Counterpoint. What I would say in response is that

There is nothing wrong constitutionally with expanding the size of the Supreme Court, right? It's an explicit threat to the nine people who are sitting there about the cases they have in front of them right now. Although to your early point, didn't happen. There was a commission. But Democrats have spent the last eight years trashing the Supreme Court. They've attacked Sam Alito. They've attacked Clarence Thomas.

they've undermined the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and they're going to continue to do it after these cases get there. Sure, and I think you had me until you went with the court size argument simply because in American history, the Supreme Court's never been set by law at nine. Quite frankly, when a Supreme Court justice dies or resigns, the court has eight. It can have any number of people. And so this idea, it's sort of a little bit of a red herring to say that, well, Democrats looked at expanding or shrinking the size of the Supreme Court. I think-

I think your better argument is that Joe Biden- In modern life, we've only considered expanding the Supreme Court twice, when Franklin Roosevelt didn't get what he wanted out of the court, when Joe Biden didn't get what he wanted out of the court. That is undermining the integrity of the court. But here's the thing. This is a common response. When Trump proposes something that the facts show is new, it would be new to openly defy court rulings.

The response I often hear from the right is, well, Democrats have done quite similar in the past. And I'm not sure the facts support that. I mean, Alex. I mean, even if the facts did support it, it doesn't justify what, if Trump were to do it now. What aboutism tends to be the weakest argument on a number of fronts. Yeah, I mean, Biden did X is not a defense of what Trump is doing now. He doesn't defy the courts. What?

- I'm not saying, I'm just saying-- - One of the judges I believe said that they did defy the ruling based on federal discursions. - Yes, the plain text, and that was last night. But my point is not saying that just pointing at Biden is not necessarily a defense of Trump. The fact is that Trump is doing something new. And they're doing it very intentionally.

They are putting these executive orders to try to push the limits of executive order. Like Barack Obama did with the waters of the United States and the Clean Power Plan, and Joe Biden did with the Student Loan Act. Presidents advancing executive policy to get to the Supreme Court and test the limits is as old as the presidency. 100% agree. This is not extraordinary. Well, the question, of course, is do they test it in the courts and obey the court rulings, or...

are they laying the groundwork here to disobey if they don't like the outcome? And the quite public argument is that that might well be the case. When Joe Biden said, I will stop at nothing when he lost the student loan case, we didn't get on television and CNN didn't say, I wonder if he's laying the groundwork to defy the court. We treat Republican presidents different than we treat Democrat presidents in this conversation. Kendra, do you agree? I

I mean, I think that there is a very big difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in just the way that they approach things. Joe Biden is a very methodical thinker. He thinks about things. He talks about things. He doesn't move. He doesn't say random things. And then everybody sort of expects, OK, we're going to go this way and then we're going to go that way. I think that these men are fundamentally different people.

So I just think it's a very different comparison. I'm not sure Joe Biden's capable of coherent thought now at this point, but let's open questions. Well, we can have a different conversation. There's a legal response and then there's that response. But anyway, we will see. The test will be, do they obey the decisions of the courts? My panel will be back. Coming up on CNN this morning, Donald Trump weighs in on his second in command, why he is saying it is too early.

to claim that J.D. Vance, his vice president, is his successor in 2028. Plus, New York City Mayor Eric Adams could soon be clear of federal corruption charges as the president grants a full pardon for a former governor who was sent to prison on similar charges. And straw wars: Donald Trump's executive order backing plastic over paper. Has anybody ever tried, seriously, the news source made out of paper, right?

It disintegrates as you drink it. If you have a nice tie like this tie, this would have no chance. This podcast is supported by Sleep Number.

There's a reason the Sleep Number smart bed is the number one bed for couples. It's because you can each choose what's right for you whenever you like. Firmer or softer on either side, Sleep Number does that. One side cooler and the other side warmer, Sleep Number does that too. You have to feel it to believe it. Only Sleep Number smart beds let you choose your ideal comfort and support, your Sleep Number setting. Sleep Number smart beds learn how you sleep and provide personalized insights to help you sleep better.

The new Sleep Number Climate Cool smart bed lets you adjust up to 15 degrees cooler on either side. It's perfect for couples who struggle with sleeping too hot. Sleep better together. And now save 50% on the new Sleep Number Limited Edition smart bed. Limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.

I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger. So I can get in more squats anywhere I can. One, two, three. Will that be cash or credit? Credit. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do you. Get yours at Samsung.com. Compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.

Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact. That was President Trump not shying away there during the campaign from giving his honest opinion about vice presidents. President Trump on the campaign trail, but just two weeks ago after naming J.D. Vance at the time as his running mate, even though he's now in office, some things never change. Trump sitting down with Fox News, sharing this opinion about Vance's future in politics.

Do you view Vice President J.D. Vance as your successor, the Republican nominee in 2028? No, but he's very capable. I mean, I don't think that it, you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job. It's too early. We're just starting. All right, let's go back to our panel here. Brad,

Does he not want J.D. Vance to be his successor? No, sure he does. I think J.D. Vance actually was picked because he might be the future of Donald Trump's movement. I feel like Doug Burgum or Marco Rubio would have been picked if he was worried more about the short term. I think he picked J.D. Vance for the long term. So why say no so emphatically there when he was asked? Because Donald Trump wants to remain at the center of the ring. He doesn't want the torch to pass now. It's the sixth week, fourth week of his presidency. I don't think that's that unusual.

And then if he endorsed him now, then J.D. no longer needs him, right? Because then he has the most valuable thing in the 2028 primary. There's already the parlor game going on among...

going on among Republicans right now about whether or not J.D. would even get a challenger in 2028 because of Brad's point, which is that Trump's own aides have called J.D. Vance a legacy pick because in that they want the Trump movement, MAG movement, whatever you want to call it, to extend beyond this four-year period. So let me ask you a question, Kendra, because Trump more than once has

not shut down the idea of going for a third term, regardless of what amendments to the Constitution say. And again, this is a frequent phenomenon where statements like that are dismissed as bluster until they become the truth. You look at that as him signaling that, hey, if I can, if the courts will back me on this, on reinterpreting the language, maybe I will try again. Well, I think Trump likes to talk about Trump. And the second somebody moves on to anybody else but Donald Trump,

He doesn't like that. Now, I will say you did see a House Republican introduce a bill into the House

to allow for Trump to run for a third term. It was a very narrowly defined piece of legislation that it said basically that, you know, you have to, it can't be two consecutive runs in a row, therefore Barack Obama couldn't run. But you have seen some Republicans who are pushing for this, but I think this ultimately comes back to Donald Trump wants to be the center of attention. You know, right?

look, I think a lot of members of the house put a lot of crazy bills on the floor that really aren't going to go anywhere. And this is sort of one of those Donald Trump, what did Donald Trump say today? Parlor games. I don't think there's any serious question about it. He also says, if you'd just left me alone, I'd be finishing my second term, uh, last November. Right. So like he's the, the,

This is Donald Trump entertaining the crowd so that people in shows like this will get screwed into the scene. That explanation has been said about so many things that turned out. I mean, the Gaza thing was just a random idea thrown out there until Trump has said it about 27 times now and is...

apparently preparing to pressure the Jordanian king by saying, I'm going to remove aid unless you let me take over Gaza. I'm just saying that statement that is just bluster has turned out to be wrong. No, he says, I'm going to take away aid unless you help me solve the problem of what to do with the Gaza- His actual words are, they're leaving Gaza and the U.S. is taking ownership. Those are his actual words. He's pressuring the nations in the Middle East to do things differently than they've been doing them.

Alex, is that what the president really intends with Gaza?

To be honest, I don't think anyone at this table knows what he intends to do with Gaza. You know, this is, every single thing he does is actually just, honestly, a lot of it's negotiating gambits. He'll throw it out there to see what people are going to do, what people are going to say. The Middle East came back, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt have all come back and said, no way. True, but listen, on Greenland, the Danish officials are taking the Greenland threat seriously.

Justin Trudeau is taking this 51st state gambit seriously. They're not treating his buster. There's a reason for that. What all these things have. From their perspective. You should take Donald Trump seriously. But I've said this, started this. You should not always take him literally. But you should take him seriously. And I think what this all has in common with the J.D. Vance thing we started talking about at the beginning of the segment was that it's all the reality show presidency. You tease something, you throw it out there and say, after the break...

We'll find out more. And I think this is all teeing up a commercial break and seeing what's going to do. But to your point, it could end up becoming very, very serious. He could try to displace two million people in Gaza. I'm just saying that. Saying that out loud. Yeah, exactly. But I'm just saying, you know, sometimes he throws these things out there to see how people will react. And then sometimes if they react in a certain way, then he actually tries to do it. I will tell you, I know the Panamanians are taking the threat to retake the Panama Canal quite seriously. So, yeah.

Dismiss it at your own risk. Panel, do stick around. I got more questions for you. Still ahead on CNN this morning, quote, all hell will break out. President Trump weighing in on the fate of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and is now pushing a new demand. Plus, the world's richest man puts in a bid to buy one of the world's most advanced AI companies.

Elon Musk is now leading a group of investors in a bid to buy OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Their offer? $97.4 billion. If he succeeds, Musk could control one of his AI company's biggest competitors.

But he faces opposition from the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, who he has very publicly feuded with. President Donald Trump has emphasized that U.S. AI investment in his second term should be a priority, especially after the release of a Chinese competitor of ChatGPT called DeepSeek that operates pretty well and at a fraction of the cost.

The release of deep-seek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win because we have the greatest scientists in the world.

Tech executives and world leaders, including Vice President J.D. Vance, are meeting now in Paris. They've gathered to discuss their hopes for AI, as well as to grapple with its potential for economic and social disruption. Seen as Melissa Bell is in Paris, joins us now. I wonder how those conversations are going. I'm sure there's been a lot of disruption from DeepSeek's advances.

There has been a lot of attention on that big Chinese disruption to the market, but also a lot of talk about what the future is and whether the European way, which has been one of a greater push for regulation so far, is the right one. We heard even from Emmanuel Macron last night of the need for Brussels to lift some of its red tape to encourage that European innovation. But we've just been hearing, Jim, from Vice President J.D. Vance. He was at the Elysee Palace last night

for dinner with world leaders and Emmanuel Macron. It's his first foreign trip, of course, so all eyes were very much on the tone that he would strike here at the summit. And he did take on head-on European regulation, going further even than the EU Digital Act and speaking to GDPR, the privacy rules that he says were so problematic for some American companies that they were simply blocking European consumers to begin with. Was that, he asked, the kind of world towards which we wanted to go?

He also then took on the problem of what he sees as wokeism in AI, speaking to a controversy for which Google had apologized in which their AI generating image service had redrawn historical figures in the name of diversity. Here's what the vice president had to say. - Now over the last few years,

We've watched as governments, businesses and nonprofit organizations have advanced unpopular and I believe downright ahistorical social agendas through AI. In the US, we had AI image generators trying to tell us that George Washington was black or that America's doughboys in World War I were in fact women. Now we laugh at this now and of course it was ridiculous, but we have to remember

the lessons from that ridiculous moment. And what we take from it is that the Trump administration will ensure that AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias and never restrict our citizens' right to free speech.

the American vice president bringing to Europe that messaging that we've been hearing from Washington so clearly of anti-wokeism, but also speaking to the need to continue to lift regulations. In fact, what we've seen so far is the Trump administration, of course, Jim, rolling back what timid

regulation had been introduced on AI by President Biden. That messaging very much brought to Europe. The vice president will be having lunch with Emmanuel Macron on the table there. Less AI and much more about Ukraine. The American vice president vowing to get European leaders, both here in Paris and when he goes on to the Munich Security Council, to look much more clearly and urgently in how to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

They were taking their family photo there just now. They love the family photos at these events. Melissa, I'm curious, given DeepSeek's advances here, is there concern in the room as you've been there that the U.S., that the West is losing ground in the AI competition, the battle with China?

I think one of the lessons of what we've seen from DeepSeek is that American dominance is challenged and that's something Europeans are hoping to see go further as well. We've been speaking to the CEO of Mieschal, the European startup that is hoping to challenge the Chinese and American giants at a time when people said it simply couldn't be done. But that has been one of the key lessons, of course, is that AI can be done cheaper and faster elsewhere than it has been so far. And that's at once a disruptor, but of course,

also reason for investors and American entrepreneurs to continue focusing on what could be done next, very much at the heart of what J.D. Vance had to say here today. Essentially, the American tech has been protected so far and will continue to be protected in the rest of the world. Better follow suit, Jim.

And it raises questions about export controls as a means to restrict China's advances as well, because even without the chips or the ability to get the most advanced ships, they made this enormous step. Melissa Bell in Paris, thanks so much. Still coming up after the break, an unusual heist to say the least, thieves caught on camera stealing hundreds of eggs from a restaurant. This as egg prices are soaring amid a nationwide shortage. Plus...

President Donald Trump's ultimatum to Hamas. - Saturday at 12 o'clock, and after that, I would say all hell is gonna break out. - Really, Donald Trump, all hell is gonna break loose? Have you seen pictures of Gaza recently?

You know what's smart? Enjoying a fresh gourmet meal at home that you didn't have to cook. Meet Factor, your loophole in the laws of mealtime. Chef-crafted meals delivered with a tap, ready in just two minutes. You know what's even smarter? Treating yourself without cheating your goals. Factor is dietician-approved, chef-prepared, and you-plated. Pretty smart, huh? Refresh your routine and eat smart with Factor. Learn more at factormeals.com.

This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE, have rattled the federal civil service to its core. So now that the richest man in the world has been put in charge of remaking the U.S. government, the questions are, how is he doing it? Who's helping him to do it? And what does it mean for the government services you might just be taking for granted?

Listen to The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app. With the fate of Gaza and two million Palestinians who live there hanging in the balance, President Trump is hosting Jordan's King Abdullah at the White House this morning. The president is threatening now to withhold funding from U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt if they do not agree to take in Palestinian refugees forced from Gaza. Both countries have already quite publicly rejected that idea.

Would you withhold aid to these countries if they don't agree to take in the Palestinians? Yeah, maybe. Sure. Why not? You mean if they don't agree? If they don't agree, I would conceivably withhold aid, yeah. Trump has made it clear he does not believe the Palestinian people should return to Gaza during the current ceasefire and claims, and this is crucial, that they do not have a right to ever come back to their homeland.

Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. Would the Palestinians have the right to return? No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing, much better. In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it'll be years before you could ever. It's not habitable.

I want to speak now to Yara Hawari. She is the co-director of Al-Shabaka, an independent transnational Palestinian policy think tank. Yara, thanks so much for joining this morning. Thank you for having me. I want you, if you can, to describe reaction in the region to sitting U.S. president saying not only will the U.S. take ownership of Gaza, but that the Palestinian people have no right to return, to ever return, to the land that is their home.

Well, I think most people think the comments are absurd. It's yet again another call for ethnic cleansing. But what seems to be quite confusing is his claims to take over Gaza and actually for personal ownership of Gaza. There's no legal basis for this. There's no sane basis for this.

Gaza is Palestinian land and it always has been. So the only way that he can actually take over Gaza is by force. And so that begs the question, will this require American troops on the ground? And some of his officials have already refuted that. And considering his campaign promises of

of less US interventionism. It's hard to see how that's going to happen. And I think his reasons for these comments is because, you know, he said that Gaza has been destroyed, that it's been uninhabitable. And so that's why he's sort of proposing this ethnic cleansing. But he never talks about why this is the case. This wasn't a natural disaster. This was a manmade disaster.

Israel carpet bombed Gaza, this tiny piece of land that is about a third of the size of Los Angeles for 15 months straight with U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons, might I add.

So this is a destruction that is as direct result of US foreign policy. So I think people in the region and Palestinians find his comments quite absurd and quite detached from reality. - You have the Jordanian king meeting with the president in the White House today, and the president publicly applying pressure to Jordan and Egypt to accept a forced migration in effect

They're going to have to choose between U.S. aid and possibly stability at home, because the Egyptian and Jordanian populations would not look kindly on the forced movement of the Palestinian people. And you already, when you look at Jordan, it has more than 2 million Palestinian refugees already. It becomes a stability question just for, can it absorb them? How do Jordanian and Egyptian leaders make that choice? Do they defy pressure from the U.S. president?

Well, firstly, I think it's really important that we get our language right. You know, this isn't a forced movement. This is ethnic cleansing. It's quite a simple concept. It's the forced removal of an entire ethnic group from the lands in which they live. King Abdullah has been quite clear up until now that any kind of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, whether it's from Gaza or the West Bank, is a red line that he won't accept. And actually,

the Jordanian parliament passed a bill last week that rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians and said that Palestine is for Palestinians. And I think it's really crucial to understand regional factors here. As you already mentioned, Jordan is considered the stable country and very much a US ally. And it's already home to millions of Palestinian refugees that have been previously forcibly displaced by Israel.

And so for the Jordanian regime, taking in more Palestinians could result in some kind of destabilization. And I think that the same goes for the Egyptian regime. So it's actually in US foreign policy interests to not disrupt the status quo. But I think also a crucial factor here

is the Arab people, both in Jordan and in Egypt, who are overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinian people, of the Palestinian struggle, despite the policies of their governments. And I think they'll outright reject their own government's capitulation on this matter. And that's certainly sensitivity from the leaders there to that feeling. Before we go,

You will often hear about this issue and others that this is just bluster, this is just President Trump talking, but he's repeated this threat in terms of taking aid away from Jordan and Egypt, but also that he wants the U.S. to take over Gaza. From your point of view and the people you speak to there, is that a serious proposition by Trump regarding Gaza?

Well, I think we have to take whatever Trump says very seriously. And you're right, this wasn't just an off-the-cuff remark. He has repeated it many times since he first mentioned it. But I think in all of this, no one has discussed Palestinian agency, you know, as if Palestinians are just these passive, you know, pieces on a chessboard.

but they're not. They've survived genocide, 15 months of relentless bombardments and forced starvation, and they are determined to stay on their land. And I think people, including Donald Trump, underestimate that determination. They have agency. Yara Hawari, thanks so much for joining us this morning. Thank you.

Coming up on CNN this morning, it's the final straw. President Trump signing an executive order ending the paper versus plastic straw debate. Plus, why President Trump chose to issue a controversial pardon to former Governor Rod Blagojevich. I have great respect for you. I have great respect for your tenacity, for the fact that you just don't give up. But Rod, you're fired.

The Trump administration is moving to dismiss the federal corruption trial against New York Mayor Eric Adams. A new Justice Department memo sent by the acting Attorney General instructs the Southern District of New York to dismiss the charges as soon as practicable. The memo adds, quote, "The Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based."

The indictment accused the mayor of receiving kickbacks from foreign nationals in exchange for political favors. President Trump has long believed the case was due to Mayor Adams' criticism of the Biden administration. Mayor Adams, good luck with everything. They went after you. They went after you, Mayor. I just want to be nice because I know what it's like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders.

We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted and so are you, Eric. We should know prosecutors have noted the investigation began long before that public criticism. Mayor Adams is not the only Democratic official getting a legal olive branch from the Trump administration. It's my honor to do it. I've watched him. He was set up by a lot of bad people, some of the same people that I had to deal with. I think he's just a very fine person.

And this shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't have happened to him. And let him have a normal life and let him go out and do what he has to do. So I'm signing this as a full pardon. Rod Blagojevic.

Former Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, now getting a full pardon on his federal corruption charges, convicted in connection to a scheme to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama's presidential election. Evidence at the trial included FBI wiretaps such as this one. I've got this thing and it's f***ing golden. And I'm just not giving it up for f***ing nothing.

Blagojevich, we should note, served eight years of a 14-year prison sentence before receiving a commutation from President Trump during his first term. The former governor spoke to the media last night after he was granted the pardon. It's over. How interesting it is that when someone goes through something like we went through, and he's gone through what he's gone through, it creates a certain understanding between people who sort of understand that something isn't right and something is wrong.

My panel is back now. Elliot, you've argued a lot of cases before. When you look at the evidence and the law as relates to Blagojevich and Adams, obviously Blagojevich was convicted. Adams was just at an investigation stage.

Was it questionable evidence? Well, there's weak. I think we ought to treat them very differently. I think the Blagojevich one blame Alexander Hamilton for giving president for writing and arguing forcefully. The presidents ought to have the right to pardon anyone whenever they want. It's a perfectly plausible exercise of presidential power, even though, look, it's kind of gross. It's kind of icky.

The Eric Adams one is a different case. And there's a few really big problems here. Number one, in my six years at the Justice Department, I never once saw headquarters write a memo to a local prosecutor's office telling them to drop a case. It doesn't happen. I haven't seen Republicans do it. I haven't seen Democrats do it. And the other bigger thing is that

I think in the last couple weeks, that office filed something with the court saying that they'd found additional evidence against Eric Adams. So this was a strong case that these local prosecutors, federal prosecutors, career prosecutors in New York had brought that the White House just sort of, or headquarters at the Justice Department, just superseded. It does not smell right. It doesn't look good. And this is even more than some of the other cases we've seen just...

a use of power from Washington when it comes to local prosecutions that just shouldn't happen. - Brad, are you comfortable? Are you comfortable with these parties? - No, no. In the last two months, we've seen Joe Biden pardon a couple thousand people, including everybody in his family. We've seen Donald Trump pardon a couple thousand people. I think the pardon power is a bit out of control right now.

Is there a corruption message coming from this, on these cases like this, but also when you look at suspending enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is, you know, a law passed by Congress to prevent bribery of foreign government officials? Is that...

Is that a message you want? - There is. I think it goes all the way to the Democrats in the Senate who let Bob Menendez sit in their chamber and vote when it was 50-50 Senate, knowing he was guilty of corruption. I think we have a problem. - He was prosecuted, Menendez, though, under the previous president. - Yes, and his colleagues did not ask him to leave because they had to have his 50-50 vote. - And it's why people across America

are losing faith in institutions. Pew Research Center has done a ton of research on this point and released a lot of data on this point that people just don't like Congress or the courts or anything else. And a lot of it is these turning a blind eye to corruption issues. Now this is playing out on a big scale when it comes to the president wagging a finger, or again, the Justice Department, not just the president, wagging a finger at local prosecutors

but it's all part of a slurry of people not trusting government and it doesn't look good. - Ken, sorry. - I was gonna say, it's also notable that both these men both sat down with Tucker Carlson the last few months. They have been trying to appeal to Donald Trump through his allies. And that's also why Eric Adams has been cooperating with the borders are and the immigration stuff. And it's gonna be interesting to see what Eric Adams, 'cause he faces a primary this in just a few months and all of his opponents

piling on. It's a question of whether or not this will hurt or help him in that election. Well, and I was going to say, this is all about Trump's ego at the end of the day. This is, if you appeal to my ego, you get what you want. If you come down, if you kiss the ring, if you go to Mar-a-Lago and you say the right things and you appeal to my ego, then you're going to get what you want. And I think, to Elliot's point, this is why Americans are not happy, generally speaking, with the way that government is running. Yeah, not the way the legal system is supposed to work, at least in theory. It is definitely not.

um thanks so much uh to all of you for for spending so much time with me this morning i'll buy you uh i'll buy you coffee uh we are just uh a few minutes before the top of the hour here's your morning roundup the senate voted 52-46 breaking a filibuster on tulsi gabbard's nomination to be the director of national intelligence a final vote on her nominate nomination is expected just after midnight tonight if not sooner they can work it out in the senate

The Gulf of America has now arrived on Google Maps. Users in the U.S. will see the new name instead of what it was, the Gulf of Mexico, when they hover over that area of the map. Users in Mexico, however, will see the same name as usual. Everyone else in the world, they'll see both. The change follows an executive order by President Trump renaming the Gulf last month.

A Seattle restaurant falling victim to an unusual heist. There they go. Thieves stealing more than 500 eggs from the restaurant. This as egg prices hit a near record high amid shortages. Some grocery stores, including Trader Joe's and Costco, are even putting a limit on the number of eggs that customers can buy.

And now this: President Donald Trump has taken aim at a number of policy issues during his first few weeks in office, from dismantling government agencies to massive immigration crackdowns and deportations. His latest target is much smaller in size. He's now going after paper straws. We're going back to plastic straws. These things don't work. I've had them many times, and on occasion they break, they explode.

If something's hot, they don't last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It's ridiculous situations. And I don't think that plastic's going to affect a shark very much as they're eating, as they're munching their way through the ocean. This isn't the first time he has railed against those pesky paper utensils. I want to ban straws. Has anybody ever tried those paper straws? They're not working too good.

Right? So they want to ban straws. They said, oh, really? What about the carton? What about the plate? What about the knives and the spoons that are plastic? Oh, they're okay. But the straws we got to ban. Has anybody ever tried? Seriously, the new straw is made out of paper, right? It disintegrates as you drink it. By the time you get finished, the straw is totally disintegrated. Does anybody walk around with a plastic straw? Because it's not bad. You know, you whip it out, boom, boom. You never had to do that.

My panel is back now. I don't think you're going to find a constituency for the paper straw out there because it doesn't really work that well. I was going to say, I think that these words I never thought would come out of my mouth, but I actually agree with Donald Trump. Oh, my God. I know, I know, I know, I know. The paper straws, I agree with that, you know, although we were talking about avocado seeds straws, those should be the way of the future. You can recycle the pits.

It's all about recycling still. We can still keep it in the green message. Is that a thing, avocado straws? It is a thing, and they last for a long time. They do not disintegrate. I highly recommend. They have the consistency of plastic straws. And when avocados are $15 a pound because of tariffs, you can start a straw black market. How are sharks going to react to avocado seed straws? Are they going to make it through? I think the sharks and turtles are okay with the straws. It would be like a toothpick for a shark. I think they're okay with the avocado.

cut-of-seed straws. Kendra's not alone among Democrats, though. In 2019, Kamala Harris was for banning plastic straws, but by last summer, she was on Donald Trump's team. Who knew milkshakes could bring us together? I was struck by the president's statement that the straws explode. Like, he had me at the disintegrate thing, but I've never seen an exploding straw. I don't know. I mean, the thing is, it is part of a broader...

going after any sort of environmental regulation, plastics, et cetera. I mean, from EVs to plastic straws, right? I mean, this is a central feature of the second Trump term. If I could take another tack on it, it also is sort of an appeal to common sense. We have got a lot of government regulations that just violate common sense. This is one of them. The nanny state wagging its finger and telling you what you can and can't do. But is there really a regulation on this, though? I mean, I think, I don't actually know if there is a national... Some states. Some states.

The point was to reduce plastic waste, right? And the president is right. You know, they ban plastic straws, not plastic bottles, of which there are very many and produce a lot more plastic. But I can't imagine there's going to be much progress on that in this term. Thanks so much to all of you. We discussed everything from Gaza to plastic straws. Thanks so much to you as well for joining us. I'm Jim Sciutto. CNN News Central starts right now.

There's a reason the Sleep Number smart bed is the number one best bed for couples. It's because you can each choose what's right for you whenever you like. Firmer or softer on either side, Sleep Number does that. One side cooler and the other side warmer, Sleep Number does that too. You have to feel it to believe it. Sleep better together. And now save 50% on the new Sleep Number limited edition smart bed. Limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you.

See store or sleepnumber.com for details.