Trump Stands By Intelligence Team
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I always say you have to learn from every experience. He used to say, "You're fired." This time he's standing by his cabinet members. But will there be any consequences after a reporter ended up in a highly sensitive group chat? Plus this. We're working on, of course, to end illegal immigration, counter transnational organized crime. The Secretary of State heading to the Caribbean today with immigration top of mind. Do U.S. interests align with priorities there? And this.

People say they're very unhappy about the state of the economy. They say they feel pessimistic. Consumer confidence plunges. Are buyers turned off by President Trump's trade war roller coaster and government cutbacks? And an Amtrak passenger diagnosed with the measles, were other riders along the East Coast exposed to the virus?

It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. Good morning, New York, New York. And good morning to you. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you all for waking up with me. Here's what we're going to start our conversation with. The blame game over how sensitive military plans reportedly ended up on a group chat with a journalist. The White House now going on the offensive.

Let's start with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. He says he takes responsibility for creating the group chat centered around an attack on targets in Yemen. He is also starting up his own theories about what might have happened.

Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else's number there? Oh, I never make those mistakes. Right? You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So, of course, I didn't see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out.

Meanwhile, some reported members of that chat are trying to distance themselves from it. One of them, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, wouldn't say whether she was actually on it, yet she seemed to know a lot about what was on it. There was no classified material that was shared in that. So if there was no classified material, share it with the committee. You can't have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security.

So the journalist at the center of this argues that even if the material isn't classified, it is highly sensitive. Jeffrey Goldberg says the text even included the identity of an active CIA officer. Goldberg says he intentionally withheld that detail and says he wants to be careful as he weighs further releases. Just because they're irresponsible with material doesn't mean that I'm going to be irresponsible with this material.

Joining me now to talk about what comes next with this story, Kevin Fry, Washington correspondent for Spectrum News New York One, Margaret Tulliv, senior contributor at Axios, and Mossimo Calabresi, Washington bureau chief for Time. Welcome to the group chat, now officially the most loaded term in Washington.

But I want to start about how they are talking about this, how they are defending this, because there was this group threats hearing yesterday where basically half the people in the chat happened to be at Congress to talk about it. I don't know who wants to start here, but when I think back to how most of the folks here were approved in their cabinet hearings, people raised questions about

their abilities, about whether it was amateur or hour. Like, this is such an unusual situation. Massimo?

So I have a slightly contrary take to a lot of the coverage, which is I don't think this was a huge breach in itself. Like the intelligence that was apparently discussed, even if it got out, is nothing like past breaches. 10 years ago, the Chinese hacked 4 million personnel records from the government. Julian Assange let out. What this is indicative of is a

pattern of loose handling of classified information. President Trump was, of course, investigated criminally for his handling of classified documents. He's shown satellite, highly sensitive satellite photographs. So I think the larger story here is, as you say, there's a whole bunch of people here charged with handling the nation's secrets who don't seem to care very much about protecting them. Margaret?

I think there's two things going on. And one is that the administration is, including the president, circling the wagons, trying to diminish the controversy over this and saying, we're going to move on. I'm standing by these people. They're going to show they can. But secondarily, there is a real dichotomy between the way this administration is treating the idea of leaks to journalists or how journalists publish information with

information that, while not leaked, was a breach anyway. Yeah, because it puts the reporter in the position, and bear with me because who cares about reporters, but you've either got to release information that could be classified and get in trouble for that or not release information and be called a liar.

Yeah, I mean, there's like, there's, you can't, it's a no-win situation. And either way, the public doesn't get an answer. Correct. And look, I mean, this oscillating by this administration has been really fascinating over the past 24 hours to go from suggesting that there is no classified information to there is classified information to Jeffrey Goldberg, I accidentally added him, this is my fault, to he nefariously got on to this chat. Which if reported

- The voters were good at hacking. We live in a very different world. - Yes, exactly. - There is this playbook of blame the journalists or try to diminish them or accuse them of having done something wrong here. But I think, you know, there's also the political component to this, which is how much do most Americans care? And I just like happened to be listening to a voter focus group last night that wasn't about this.

voters are thinking about the economy, voters are thinking about their jobs. I don't think at this moment that most American voters are like,

what's going on on signal chains. And so what you're gonna have and the challenge for not just Democrats, but the challenge for people who are concerned about the national security apparatus, people who are inside intelligence agencies and are still in the government, people who wanna protect the government from other countries or potential adversaries seeing stuff. The challenge is going to be, how do you apply pressure on this administration to change if the

public barometer yes is what is going to decide how they i want you guys to stay with us because we are actually going to be talking with someone from the house armed services committee we are going to have a lot of chat today about what does it mean to hold anyone accountable in this current environment under this administration all right so coming up on cnn this morning congressman

Dave Min is going to be here. House Democrats demand answers about how this all went down. And a doctor under arrest accused of trying to kill his wife while on a hike. White police say it all started over a photo. And what was billed as a cultural visit, now adding another notable name, Vice President Vance, joins the trip to Greenland.

- In light of this embarrassing group chat scandal, I have decided to go thousands of miles away from here too. If you need me, do not text me on signal.

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I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. People know a lot about the puberty they went through, but it is not the same now. That's Dr. Cara Natterson. She's an expert on puberty. Why are kids going through puberty earlier? And is that early puberty really the new norm? What do parents need to know about how to help their children navigate? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

If you're heading out the door, it's about 12 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to get your date going. Vice President J.D. Vance is going to be joining his wife Friday on her trip to Greenland. Vance says he wants to check out what's going on with security there. Greenland's prime minister calls the visit, quote, highly aggressive since President Trump has expressed a desire to annex the territory.

Police arrested a doctor in Miami who's accused of trying to kill his wife on a popular hiking trail. Police say he tried to push her off that trail. She hit her head or hit her head with a rock. According to Hawaii News Now, there was a six-hour manhunt to find him. It also reports that he is accused of attacking his wife after she refused to take a picture with him.

and wildfires are scorching parts of North Carolina that are still trying to recover from Hurricane Helene. And in South Carolina, two fires are burning in the mountains. Forecasters are warning of an elevated fire risk along parts of the East Coast today.

And welcome to New York, Russell Wilson. He's officially signed a one-year deal worth up to $21 million with the Giants. The Super Bowl-winning quarterback had been in discussions with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns before going with the Giants. And you gotta see this.

A possum rescue. A cat pulled from danger by a good Samaritan in Peru. It was stuck on a rock surrounded by rushing water from flooding. The man heard the cat meowing somehow, so he tied a rope around his waist. Oh, there it is. And trudged into the water to save it.

Still coming up on CNN this morning, as Haiti's capital faces dire threats from armed gangs, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio heads to the region. So what are the big issues he's going to be tackling on this trip? Plus, what year is it? We'll tell you how much somebody paid to buy Napster. I founded an internet company that let folks download and share music for free. Kind of like Napster? Exactly like Napster. What do you mean? I founded Napster.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio heads to the Caribbean today, and a big focus of his trip will be Haiti. The UN says more than 60,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince in just the last month as gangs take greater control of the capital. Joining me now to discuss foreign policy and national security expert Rebecca Bill Chavez. Now, you were recently writing an op-ed in the Miami Herald about this. We know that the issue of Haitian immigrants is kind of

a live conversation for the Trump administration as they basically crack down on asylum seekers and refugees. So what do you think this trip is about? Well, I think the trip is about, well, first of all, what I would say is that I'm so glad that we're paying attention to the Caribbean. It's so often overlooked. I think you've got people call it the third border. The third border, exactly. And I think this is an opportunity to create a positive agenda, an affirmative agenda with the Caribbean.

in recognition of how important the Caribbean is to U.S. national interests. You mentioned Haiti, we've got the transnational organized crime organizations, we have energy security is tied very deeply to two countries like Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and we also have sort of the environmental concerns in the Caribbean.

Can you talk to us about the Homeland Security Secretary? He basically announced that they were going to be ending legal status for, I think, for more than half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, which we've been talking about. And the idea originally was to have a way for people to come to this country legally. Now they could face deportations. I want to play to you some reaction from some Haitian refugees.

I prefer to die than go back to Haiti because I will definitely be killed if I go back. Gang members threaten my son with guns. Returning is not an option. I leave it in God's hands.

This instability in the region is quite serious. It brought a lot of people here. It even came up during the election, right, when J.D. Vance made up stories about refugees in Ohio. Can you talk about what this asylum policy can do?

for people there? - So the asylum policy was actually to provide a legal pathway for individuals from those four countries that you mentioned to come to the United States for two years that could be extended. And as you mentioned, and as we just heard, the situation in Haiti is Haiti is a failed state.

basically. - Yeah, I mean, so it's not in a position to take people back, so to speak. - No, it's absolutely not in a position to-- - But are other nations in a position to help them, right? So if Rubio's going to the region or talking to the head of state of Jamaica, is he saying, "Hey, you should be doing more here."

So what I would say to that is we tend to look at the migration crisis in the United States as about our southern border. It's really a hemisphere-wide migration crisis. And the countries of the region are already accepting

much larger numbers of migrants than the United States is. And Venezuela, for example, is one of the countries that is going to be affected by this. Colombia has taken in over two million Venezuelans. So these countries, and in the Caribbean, for example, Trinidad and Tobago, and I know Marco Rubio is going to be meeting with the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. They have taken in so many Venezuelans. So I think

pushing this issue on the countries of the Caribbean is not a fair request. Can you talk about the relationship overall? These are countries that live in the shadow of the U.S. They consider themselves allies, but at an era when even Greenland feels that the tone of the U.S. is highly aggressive,

What does it mean for these countries here? Well, that's a great question. And I hope that this, so I think Secretary Rubio's trip to the region is an opportunity

to actually create a positive agenda with the countries of the Caribbean. The countries of the Caribbean, we've just seen their unity when the CARICOM, the Nations of the Caribbean Community, banded together to elect the new Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Albert Ramding. It's the first time we have a representative of the Caribbean as Secretary General of the OAS.

So we see that there's a lot of unity in the Caribbean. And this is something that the US should actually be encouraging. Regional integration is a good thing. So my hope is that when Marco Rubio is in, he's going to be visiting Jamaica, he's going to be visiting Suriname, and he's going to be visiting Guyana. And he'll have the opportunity, especially in Jamaica, to meet with other heads of states

that he can highlight that the U.S. is here to be a partner. Rather than China, which is their other option. Yes, and this is over the past two decades across the Western Hemisphere, across Latin America and the Caribbean, China has gained influence. And we see this in the Caribbean where the Belt and Road Initiative has led to major developments

infrastructure projects, telecommunications. And so the historical US approach has been, say, choose. You have to choose between the United States and China without offering an alternative.

So what I hope and what I think is necessary for U.S. interests is to, when Rubio meets with these Caribbean leaders, is to say, hey, we are an alternative. We're going to provide development financing, infrastructure. We are a reliable partner. We are an alternative to China. Yeah.

We'll see if it's carrot or stick in that offer today. Rebecca Bill Chavez, president and CEO for Inter-American Dialogue. Now, still ahead on CNN this morning, Congress weighs in on the group chat heard around the world. How did a reporter end up in a text thread with top U.S. officials? We're going to have Congressman Dave Min here to talk about that and a lot more.

Plus, consumers' confidence is not so great right now. Could that perception become reality for your wallet? And good morning, Miami. It's in the mid-60s right now. The new season of United States of Scandal has bribery, fraud, undercover agents, and politicians suffering from a moral virus. You know, the usual. United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper, Sunday at 9 on CNN.

The kind of money that's being wasted and it's a very biased view, you know that better than anybody. And I'd be honored to see it end. I don't even know what Dozier's recommendation is. I assume their recommendation is to close him up. President Trump backs the push to take away funding from NPR and PBS. Good morning, everyone. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me here on CNN this morning. Here's what's happening right now.

The CEOs of PBS and NPR will appear today before Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's new Doge subcommittee. She titled the hearing in part, "Anti-American Airwaves," in a letter she accused NPR of being blatantly partisan.

And today marks the one year anniversary of the devastating bridge collapse in Baltimore. It killed six people when a cargo ship hit that bridge. Since then, an NTSB investigation revealed that 68 bridges in the U.S. need to be checked to see if they're at risk for being in a similar situation.

And rebels in Yemen are claiming the U.S. has now carried out 17 additional airstrikes that happened overnight. The U.S. has not confirmed this. The U.S. military has shared video of previous attacks launched from aircraft carriers. Those attacks on the Houthi rebels are also, of course, at the center of this national security firestorm in Washington after they were mistakenly leaked to a reporter before they were carried out.

The Trump administration vows to investigate how a journalist was invited to a group chat involving some of the highest ranking national security officials. But will Congress conduct its own review? Some lawmakers want more answers on what happened.

It's not okay, and any member of Congress, particularly ones that are on important committees, sensitive committees like armed services or intelligence or foreign relations, knows that it's not okay. They should have been more careful about it. It would be funny if it weren't so damn serious. There's a lot more things we should know. Bottom line is, I think they made an error, and I'm not sure that this episode is over with yet.

Joining me now to discuss, Democratic Congressman Dave Min of California. Congressman, thank you for being here this morning. Thanks so much for having me. One thing I noticed in those clips, mostly senators talking about looking into it. You are in the House on the Oversight Committee. What are you hearing from Republicans about whether they think this actually deems more conversation, more actual investigation? We're hearing nothing on oversight, and this is something I continually point out in our Oversight Committees.

We have focused on lab rats. We focused on sanctuary city policies. You just heard Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to be focusing on NPR. This is not something these are not things that my constituents are talking about. I've had tens of thousands of people reach out to my office. They're deeply concerned about the rule of law. They're deeply concerned about

the this egregious breach up national security that we we are witnessing right now but we're not hearing oversight our oversight republicans actually commit to actually want to do any oversight in the meantime President Trump says that he actually asked wall since the the person I'm who people believe actually admitted the reporter to the group chat to immediately look into what's happened so I don't know what that look into what that means in terms of investigation but here's what waltz told a fox last night

It's embarrassing, yes. We're going to get to the bottom of it. We have, I just talked to Elon on the way here. We've got the best technical minds looking at how this happened.

So we have a best technical mind, possibly on texting. Can you talk about what the White House is saying about this? Because we've also heard even today from other reporters, like this, it's not necessarily the information that was so egregious. It's not so clear how serious this is. And are Democrats going to spend their time saying, look, we really need to talk about an app for the next six months? Look, I use Signal all the time. And I can answer the question here of how Jeffrey Goldberg was included. It's because Hegseth and others act

put him on the chain. There's no breach here. There's no hack. And so I don't want to say anything that's already been said. I know people have talked about the incompetence of this administration across the board, the incompetence of having this person be part of this group. And that's what happens when you hire people based on

a reality show set of criteria. The federal government is not a reality show. But the thing I really want to talk about, I'm a former law professor. I started my career prosecuting corporate fraud at the SEC. And what is egregious to me is the sheer lawlessness of this administration across the board, whether it's shredding documents at USAID, whether it's Elon Musk illegally taking over our ID at Treasury,

and IRS, whether it's this episode, why were they on Signal in the first place? Why were they not on a secure federal channel? And the obvious answer here is that they were trying to avoid scrutiny, trying to avoid transparency, and trying to shirk and avoid federal law, including the Freedom of Information Act.

So you're referring to the fact that of course in these messaging apps a lot of them are timed to disappear at a certain point. And my understanding is it was supposed to be one week disappearing. Why are they on this app which is not secure? Why is one of them in Russia? What information besides this is being shared right now over Signal

on just hearing you're asking a lot of questions that it sounds like will not come up in house oversight committee unfortunately the oversight committees not doing real oversight we mentioned Elon Musk he and members of his to Department of Government efficiency they're actually set to give an interview later today you obviously have a bill already

about doge and accusing it of abuses of power but what do you think he needs to say to the public today more that these members need to say yet so that my bills the bad does jack the bolstering American democracy in demanding oversight government ethics act which would repeal doge but here's the problem does is not actually a government agency so today if he's on

'Cause he's going to be on TV saying, "This is what we're doing. "We're tackling waste, fraud and abuse." And people who complain about that are defending the status quo. - So why are you ending entire departments and agencies? That's not efficient. It's not efficient to fire tons of Social Security personnel and make it more difficult for seniors to get their Social Security benefits.

uh... what we're seeing though the real question i think you on must need to answer is what is his exact role and what are his conflicts of interest again topics that house republicans refused to address uh... he's been described as a special government employee if you look up that definition of what that is it's someone who is supposed to be a temporary consultant or advisor instead elon musk is exerting powers

uh... better greater than the president i states uh... he's frequently breaking the law in the constitution and this is what's being challenged in the court right right i stand in a service and they're losing in the courts and that's why house republicans instead of standing up as a co equal branch of government uh... the congressional republicans are attacking the judiciary trying to impeach judges

We are not supposed to be lapdogs for the president of the United States. I want to ask one more question because Donald Trump actually signed an executive order tasking Doge to now look at state voter rolls. It's obviously looking for foreign nationals. I know that California actually enacted a bill that you authorized that prevents cities from requiring IDs at polling places. Yeah.

it seems like this is going to be on a collision course with federal law. This is happening with sanctuary cities, this is happening with other things. So what is, are you preparing for a fight? Like what's the conversation? So the bill I passed would prevent cities, as you mentioned, from passing their own unique voter ID requirements. The idea being that the state should have its own uniform policies. And I continually asked Huntington Beach, which was the source of this problem, they tried to pass their own voter ID requirements.

based on the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. I said, show me any evidence that there's any voter fraud and I will pay. But are those kinds of laws going to be at crosshairs with the Trump administration and its push to put in place law

voter ID rules that we should say Pew poll found 81% of Americans support requiring an ID to vote. - No, and so what I'm saying is that this needs to be done by the legislature, not by the president, not by cities. It needs to be done by Congress. And if Congress wants to pass a voter ID requirement,

We can talk about the pros and cons of that, but it shouldn't be based on false baseless conspiracies of voter fraud that isn't happening. This is a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist. And that is the problem right now. And Donald Trump cannot pass these types of executive orders. Those powers belong with Congress. And that's the alarm bell that I've been ringing, that every time Donald Trump tries to do an executive order and pass legislation effectively, he is stealing Congress's authority, but Congress refuses

to stand up for our rights. And my kids know this. We're taught in elementary school in California that only Congress has the power to make laws and to appropriate money. And that's really the issue here is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep trying to steal away those powers, and Congress is rolling over and letting them do that. All right, Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

All right, straight ahead on CNN this morning, an inside look at that app everybody's talking about. How easy is it to hack? And who else might have been monitoring that now infamous group chat? And the state of Florida working on a plan to replace deported migrant workers with children. More from the group chat after this. Okay, I want to turn here to the news at home because I know when you go to the grocery store right now, you don't know how much you're going to end up spending.

Are the prices coming down or did I just go to the store on good days? $1.58 for a little pack of tuna, $1.58. Our struggle meals need to have struggle meals at this point. It seems like the egg prices finally went down. You can get milk, but you can't afford the cereal. You want to make spaghetti, but you can only afford the noodles.

Okay, so that kind of uncertainty is leading to sharp drop in consumer confidence this month, and it's hitting the lowest level since January 2021, when the country, frankly, was reeling from the effects of the pandemic. So I want to bring this back to the group chat because, you know, you can get through all kinds of political problems and scandals if the economy is doing good, or at least if people think it is. And what we are seeing there is the reality of kind of how people are thinking about it. Massimo?

This is going to be the ultimate story of the Trump administration. The forces that brought Trump to power are bigger than he can address on his own. These are global economic forces that have been at work for a long time. How the public ends up feeling about the economy is going to be a lot more important. I mean, struggle meals is going to catch on, Margaret. I'm sorry, I'm going to hear that again. Struggle meals are real. Clever for TikTok. But

I do think that some of this is fear about tariffs as well as price on the ground. It's not just anxiety about the moment now, it's anxiety about the moments in the weeks to come because you had many voters who voted for the president

not because they liked his other policies, but because they wanted economic relief and they thought he had a better ability to do it. I think politically there's a different question, which is if you bake in a lot of this anxiety now, does it burn off in time for the midterms or does it get worse? We don't know the answer to that yet. But right now there are, you know, a lot of Americans who are like one of the price is going to come down. And this is the worst since the inflationary process.

Oh, that's a good point. Although I also like that you said bake and burn. So that's also where this could go, Kevin. Exactly. I mean, that's a good point. And that's one of the questions I have, particularly with how Democrats have been messaging this over the past couple months. They have seemingly their main takeaway, Congressman Jeffrey, Senator Schumer, has been that the 2024 election was about the economy. And so we need to message on saying essentially Trump is doing nothing to help the middle class voter.

And so at least in the short term, it seems that bet is paying off, that the consumer sentiment is going down. This plays right into what Democrats want to message on. And want to talk about going into the midterm elections. Exactly. The question is, as Margaret just touched on, is if this all changes on a dime in the next year, that completely undermines their messaging.

heading into the midterms. And one thing I'm thinking about is there is a new caucus announced their presence, the new economic patriots, Democrats in the House, and clearly this conversation about focusing on the economy is only heating up for the party. All right, group chat, I want you to stay with us. We have a few more people we want to talk about. And if you're sick of hearing about the Signal app, I get it. But here's what you need to know about how it works.

We're going to talk about what we don't know this morning. Why the nation's top intelligence officials chose to use the app to discuss a military strike and how journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic somehow got invited to participate.

I don't know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation and he really is the bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone. And we're going to figure out how this happens. To help us out, Graham Cluie, co-host of the Smashing Security podcast, speaking to us from London. He's a cybersecurity expert. So first, the basics. Can you break into somebody else's shack group? Well,

Not really. Not the way that this journalist has been accused of doing it. No, you get invited to a chat group. So someone who's already in it adds you to a chat group. But once that has happened, of course, the messages are being sent to somebody's phone. So if their phones are hacked, then their messages could be read in the future. So

Signal is what we call an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, which means in transit the messages are encrypted. But once they reach the phone, obviously they're decrypted because otherwise you wouldn't be able to read them yourself. So that brings us to the next point. Two of the people in the chat, one was in Russia, one was in Moscow, one was in Asia at the time it was happening. So how likely is it that either of those nations or any other foreign adversary was monitoring this traffic?

We don't know if they would have been. Obviously, if they had the opportunity, they absolutely would have done. But why would you expose yourself to that kind of risk? I mean, there are government-approved secure messaging systems where...

These sort of communications should be happening. You shouldn't be using an off-the-rack messaging service. You shouldn't be using Snapchat. You shouldn't be using WhatsApp. You shouldn't be using Signal if you are communicating at this kind of level about this kind of serious thing.

I'm glad you put this in the context of Snapchat and all the other things that are out there. People perceive Signal to be more secure, and you've described some of the ways it is. But can you talk about what are the ways to use it? How vulnerable is it? I mean, is this something the average person is using or just national security officials?

Oh, absolutely. So, Signal is something which millions and millions of people use around the world. I use it every day myself. It's a great device.

secure messaging app. That doesn't mean you have 100% security. It doesn't mean that anything you write on it will never be seen by the wrong people because of course someone else's device could be stolen, their password could be cracked, your message could be viewed. I certainly would rate it higher than the likes of WhatsApp and Snapchat. It's better than those but it isn't something which government should be using. In fact

under legislation and regulation. Any government employee shouldn't be using an app like that to communicate about government business because it's not being properly logged. It's not being audited. You don't have the transparency there. So I believe the regulations are that if anyone who's using that for government business is supposed to forward any messages to their business account. But I would say, why are you using Signal in the first place? It's great for you or me. If we want to have a chit-chat or...

tell our partner what to go and pick up at the supermarket. It isn't great if you want proper security. There are proper secure systems in place for government officials to use. Graham Cluley, co-host of the Smashing Security podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you.

It's now 50 minutes past the hour. I want to give you your morning roundup. The last of the stories you need to get your day going. Russia is now adding new demands before accepting a U.S.-brokered ceasefire with Ukraine. The White House announced an agreement on Tuesday between the two sides to stop using force in the Black Sea. Now Russia is saying they will only stop when certain sanctions are lifted.

And someone with a confirmed case of the measles traveled to Washington, D.C. on a southbound Amtrak train that typically stops in multiple cities, including Boston, New York and Philadelphia. This was back on March 19th. D.C.'s health department did not specify where this person boarded the train, but they visited several places while in D.C.

And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is supporting a bill that would allow children as young as 14 to work overnight shifts on school days. Right now, they cannot work past 11 p.m. in Florida. This comes as the state cracked down on employers hiring undocumented immigrants for low-wage jobs.

and if you think back to the early 2000s the first harry potter movie came out alicia key's fallen was top in the charts and napster was in its heyday well napster has now been sold for 207 million dollars to a tech startup here are the co-founders discussing their vision when they launched napster all those years ago people will pay to receive music to their cell phones or their portable devices to um

However music is pumped or piped into the home digitally, that will be monetized. Okay, so the plan is to transform Napster today into a platform where artists can connect directly with fans.

President Trump wants Doge to turn its attention to voters. He signed a new order saying Doge will work with Homeland Security to review state voting rules to identify foreign nationals. That list would be turned over to state and local election officials. But Doge's role in the government isn't sitting all that well with some voters. I want to talk about what you do in

We know that he is an unelected, unconfirmed billionaire. Are you willing to use your subpoena power to say Trump, or sorry, Musk, come in here, stand in front of Congress and answer some hard questions? Elon Musk does have a security plan. Okay, critics fear that this new Doge and Homeland Security review could lead to voter roll purges. And is that a legitimate concern?

I want to turn now to our group to talk a little bit more about this. And Kevin, for you, it's interesting that voters are now very explicitly wanting to talk about Elon Musk and wanting to talk about his role. He's supposed to give an interview later today. What's your sense of kind of like where this conversation is going? I mean, it's extraordinary to me how much

uh... musk has really been able to kind of cut through the public site guys and clearly this is connecting i'm sure market can say from some of her focus on the internet twitter house right exactly and on that i have something that is i think tangible for voters that they can sense that oh he's messing around i think the question is and one look this gets to the whole debate of

states versus federal rights and technically the elections are run by the states and republicans traditionally like federalism and don't like to be superimposing their beliefs on the states but on top of this if doge does go messing around in voter rolls

Musk himself has admitted that mistakes will be made. So which mistakes will be made in identifying who is a citizen, who is not, who should be voting, who is not, so on and so forth? I think the waste, fraud, and abuse argument that really resonates with some voters is one thing when you're talking about government operations. It's another thing when you're talking about the potential to disenfranchise voters. I think so much of the argument for so many years on the right has been there is fraud.

on the voter rolls, that there is stuff to be found. And doesn't it then fall under that umbrella? Is it all that shocking, I think, to bring Doge in? Well, that's the argument. But then there's the reality, which is that there's no evidence that this is...

a problem that requires a solution like this. And there is real concern among voting rights advocates that this is actually an effort to make it harder for many people to vote. So you're gonna see litigation. Colorado's already signaled they're gonna litigate. But what the president's talking about here is tying federal funding to states that fight this. So then you're gonna see battles for pressure on states to accept it or be willing to negotiate or something. - It fits into the whole playbook of this administration,

A lot of this may end up being illegal. The EEO may be thrown out in court, but that'll be months from now. They'll be in there purging voter rolls, maybe in a targeted way that has a political dimension. And the impact will be-- especially in states where

election is decided by a few thousand votes could make a huge difference. And in the meantime, I wonder, states can't fight everything. You have these Democratic Party AGs who are launching lawsuits in a variety of directions. And I know earlier in this process, we were talking about an administration that, quote unquote, floods the zone. So is this the kind of story? What happens with voters, our data, the kind of thing that gets lost in the sauce?

- Yeah, I think, well, there's other privacy concerns. That's also a really interesting question, which is, are the parameters of this being set up in a way to protect people's information and privacy and the ability to preserve voters' rights to vote? - But it's like the deluge of news, right? And this becomes just like a blip

the idea of like something that could really reshape federal elections. - But I will say that one of the things that we have seen in a lot of these focus groups is they're really, the way voters feel about these issues does depend on where they get their news. And if you're getting a lot of your news from social media and you feel like,

there must be waste in the system because that must be why your taxes are so high. You are not necessarily going to be alarmed by this because you're going to think, well, there's problems with voting. We should fix it. And we saw that with the Biden administration, the way they talked about protecting democracy. Right. And so...

And Biden received a fair amount of flack during the midterms when he used that as kind of his messaging device. I think one of the things I was told by one historian was when it comes to talking about democracy, that's a great, you know, 30,000 foot concept. But you have to talk about what the tangible impact is on voters. Right. Not as easy to understand as struggle meals. Correct. Exactly. Struggle meals, abortion rights, other things like that that people can connect with. But voters are going to have to be vigilant. Like if voting new is important in these midterms,

and you think you may be targeted by this in some way, you do need to make sure that your voter registration is up to date. Like, people are going to have to do their own work to make sure that they're right to express their opinion, that the polls is protected in the next elections, whatever your partisan affiliation is or whichever candidate you want to vote for. If you want to vote and you think you're registered to vote, you should make sure with enough time to correct any issues that happen. Democracy requires work.

All right. Speaking of which, I want to ask you guys what you're keeping an eye on today or in the days ahead. Things that you think we might miss in the overall news or just things you think you're listening for certain comments. And Massimo, I want to start with you.

So on tariffs and the economy, there's legislation moving to revoke China's most favored nation status. Huge game for the future of international economy. I'm surprised they still had it, honestly, given the environment here. All the signals from both parties, are they going to do away with it?

enormous amount of money at stake in how that washes out on the other side. Both Trump's recommendations when they come out in early April and how Congress incorporates that. So there's a ton of work being done in Washington to gain that. - Margaret, what should we keep an eye on?

I'm watching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and kind of how he navigates. He's in Hawaii, I think, right now. Yeah. Not just watching his itinerary, but watching the Baltics around. I'm just saying the quotes are coming out of Honolulu. Everybody's getting a long way away from Washington. Yeah, exactly, exactly. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has sort of taken the buck stops here mantle on this one. But I think actually...

in Washington, a lot more of the scrutiny and questions is going to be around the defense. Because of the information he actually put into the chat. And because several missteps in the early weeks of his tenure, a lot of concerns about people who are in the military, about whether, you know, how he's going to manage the job. And so I just think,

This is the palace intrigue in Washington, but he's a really important job and a lot of people are watching him. And he's also a cable news personality. People know him. They'll want to hear from him. Kevin, last word to you. Not to repeat the obvious here, but the Signal story, what is the next shoot that's going to fall on this story? And quite frankly, can Democrats try to rally some sort of message around this that cuts through, that they can keep this as a second-day, third-day, fourth-day story?

Well, I know we're going to hear more about it in the headlines ahead. CNN News Central starts right now.

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