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In the Easter story, the word "cross" appears 11 times. "Crucify" appears 23 times. Yet one word appears even more: "love." This Easter season, let's remember the love that Jesus Christ showed us when He suffered, died, and was resurrected. To get inspiration about how you can feel His greater love this Easter, visit easter.churchofjesuschrist.org.
Good morning, it's Tuesday, April 15th, and here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning. This is literally political ransom. The White House standoff with America's wealthiest university, Harvard, says it's not budging even with billions of dollars on the line. Plus, no can do. The White House says it does not have the power to bring back a man deported by accident. So what happens now?
Plus tax day in America. Could your sensitive tax information soon be in the hands of Doge? And also this. I'm looking at something to help some of the car companies. Will the auto industry be thrown a lifeline? The changes that could help some companies when it comes to tariffs.
It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. Here is a live look at Boston this morning, a showdown in nearby Cambridge as the Trump administration pushes for big changes at Harvard University. Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for waking up with me. Now, since retaking the Oval Office, Donald Trump has been successful at bending U.S. institutions to his will.
Whether that's government agencies, tech companies, law firms, one way or another they've been forced to decide whether or not they want to comply with the president's demands. Now the Trump administration is taking the fight to America's oldest university. When ICE agents show up at our doors, Harvard should have our backs. Standing up for our values comes at a cost for our future.
But I didn't travel 5,000 miles all the way from Pakistan just to be afraid of walking five feet out of my dorm. It's a transparent effort to change what is taught, what we say in our classrooms, what we teach our students, to make sure that the only things that are actually said on university campuses are things that the Trump administration wants to hear and wants to be said.
On Monday, the Trump administration froze more than $2 billion of Harvard's federal funding. That decision made after the university rejected a list of demands that the White House sent it last week. Among those demands, an end to so-called DEI practices. They also want an external audit looking for, quote, viewpoint diversity in everywhere from coursework to the student body itself.
And new discipline policies, including retroactive punishments, including for protests that happened two years ago. And a comprehensive mask ban. The Trump administration even specified that people who wear masks should be punished with no less than suspension.
So in a statement, Harvard's president described Trump's desired changes as a violation of the university's constitutional rights. But for the White House, they represented yet another chance to make good on something they've been talking about for years.
Schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowments taxed, but through budget reconciliation I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment. I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.
Joining the group chat today, Phil Mattingly, CNN anchor and chief domestic correspondent. Gabby Bierenbaum, Washington correspondent for the Nevada Independent. And Kevin Fry, Washington correspondent for Spectrum News, New York One. Everybody, I want to just start with what the president is trying to do. Because in that old clip we played, he talked about taxing endowments.
which is not what he's doing, right? He's specifically saying, here's a list of demands, comply, or I'm going after your federal funding. So sort of who in the administration is pushing this? What can you tell us about the thinking? Yeah, I mean, why slog through a legislative process that you don't know how it's going to end when you can just do it yourself? And I think this is so, people cannot view what's happening here in isolation, right? We've been talking about this for the last several months where the
The agility and kind of relentless nature with which the Trump administration and top senior advisors who have been planning for this for several years have really, to your point initially, institutions that never saw this coming, even though Trump talked about it on the campaign trail, to their will has been something that people are just starting to kind of get their head around. And Harvard being the first school to say no is crazy.
A fascinating moment to see whether this is the start of a tipping point. And if there's any school that can do it, it's Harvard. It has a massive endowment. But meanwhile, Columbia faces similar predicament, quickly caved. Kevin, talk about the dynamics there that are different. Right. I mean, look, they have obviously they were the center point of the anti-Semitism accusations early on. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and other top.
Lawmakers in Washington have been very loudly condemning what happened there because they really became the face of the protest movement. And that made them vulnerable to public backlash and vulnerable to political backlash. Correct. And you also saw those dramatic images that played out when you saw the police go onto campus and they took over the building. And I mean, this kind of built and built and built. And so they were already under the microscope in that respect. And then they come in and they basically comply with a lot of what the
The administration is looking for, including sort of this mask ban and other sort of curriculum oversight, including on their Middle East studies program. And then on top of that, there's now conversations about whether or not there should be some sort of judicial oversight of whether or not they are in compliance.
Right. I don't want to just skip by some of the things you said. Oversight into actual curriculum. So we want to tell you or at least be able to look at what you're teaching, which is ironic since they're kind of dismantling the Ed Department. But they want to do this in higher ed. Democrats and their allies coming to universities defense. Here's a sense of what they've been saying.
He is putting pressure on universities as well. Good news is Harvard University today said go to hell. That may break the fever. I really hope it does. I do know this. If Harvard had capitulated, I really fear for what next year would be. There are things that matter more than simply the size of one's endowment.
We need the presidents to be banding together and standing up for free expression. Gabby, I probably could have stopped with Clyburn because he really lays out the stakes. But what are you hearing in congressional delegations? What are you hearing in your reporting about people seeing this as like a pivotal moment? I think Democrats in general have been waiting for somebody, some institution, some group to stand up.
and say, you know, we won't, we're not gonna abide by this. And I think Harvard, right, the big dog of academia doing it, I think we'll see, but I would imagine gives permission for some smaller universities, those with endowments that aren't as large, that don't have that, you know, hundred year, multiple hundreds of years history to say, we can outlast any one political moment or administration to sort of band with them. And I think we'll see some former Biden legal officials have talked about law firms need to do the same, that if they stand together, it'll be easier to stand against some of this rhetoric.
and action coming from the Trump administration. And so I'll see what moves forward. - We're gonna talk about this more today, but Phil, you were very good at big picture things and it feels like this is a moment where people are deciding like,
If you give an inch, they'll take a mile. So if the concern is anti-Semitism, but you let that go into, also you need to wear a mask, also we want to go into curriculum, also the list just gets longer. And so do you think that that is the kind of thing that the public responds to, that they start to see as an overreach? Or is it still like a Harvard problem?
I don't-- No, no, no. I know what you're saying. Being from Boston, you're just like, OK, how about them apples? You don't move forward with it thinking it's a problem. It's not a good hunting reference. No. So I think anybody who can predict how anything's going to go at this point in time is probably pursuing a fool's errand. The one thing I would say is they have gone so long-- now three plus months-- with little to no obstacles or tangible opponent in their favor.
whether it's law firms, whether it's Congress, whether, you name it, across the board, that at some point that was going to change. And I think the question becomes, how does the Trump administration react to this? Do they keep trying to just roll over people and steamroll everybody? Or do they start to calibrate as well? Terrorists was really kind of the first time they've lost their footing a little bit.
does this start to kind of carry over? The thing I would just emphasize here is this wasn't an ad hoc thing that they just decided to launch. Stephen Miller, who has a lot of stuff on his plate as a deputy chief of staff for policy, Russ Vogt is controlling the budget operation. These guys have been working in groups under the same umbrella over the course of several years, planning all of this out and recognizing that it turns out because of government funding, because of government authority, that the president and the administration, the executive branch, can do an
awful lot and an awful lot of spaces if they just are willing to do it. Right. And they are. Create a lot of choke points. We're going to talk about this more today. Coming up on CNN this morning, the suspect accused of setting the Pennsylvania governor's house on fire has been arrested. What he told police he would have done if he saw the governor that night. Plus, the benefits of tech, what it could mean for your risk of dementia.
And one month, that's how long a Maryland father has been in prison in El Salvador, why both President Trump and El Salvador's president say they can't get him out. I don't have the power to return him to the United States. Yes, you do. You're a dictator. All you have to do is dictate that he gets out of prison, then go on orbits and get him a one-way ticket to Maryland. And his torture will be over as long as you don't fly him on Spirit Airlines. Yes!
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In the Easter story, the word cross appears 11 times, crucify appears 23 times, yet one word appears even more, love. This Easter season, let's remember the love that Jesus Christ showed us when He suffered, died, and was resurrected. To get inspiration about how you can feel His greater love this Easter, visit easter.churchofjesuschrist.org.
If you're getting ready, it's 15 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to know to get your day going. Investigators in Pennsylvania are trying to determine whether the suspect who allegedly set fire to Governor Josh Shapiro's residence was motivated by anti-Semitism. The governor and his family were there at the time, asleep inside.
We're looking at the possibility that it was geared towards the governor's, well, his religion and his views on Israel. And according to court records, the suspect claimed that he would have attacked the governor with a hammer if he had seen him. Cody Bommer faces several charges, including attempted homicide, aggravated arson and terrorism.
And in Hungary, the parliament there passed an amendment that gives the government permission to ban public LGBTQ+ events before the vote. Opposing politicians and protesters attempted to block the entrance to the parliament's garage. Police removed them. Critics say this is another step towards authoritarianism by the government there.
And there is a new study showing how using technology may be linked to a lower risk for dementia. Researchers were looking at the theory that if we rely too much on technology, then it could hurt our cognitive abilities as we age. But they claim based on their research of previous studies, that might not be true.
And a 5.2 magnitude earthquake rattled Southern California to start the week. You can see the moment that it hit on this video when a mother quickly picks up her baby and runs out of the house. So some 25 million people felt the shaking from LA to San Diego. Since I've been here since 2001, I've never felt one like this because it was only three miles away. And scientists are now on alert for the potential risk of aftershocks.
And I want you to see this as the ground began to shake in San Diego, elephants at the zoo there went into survival mode, springing into action to protect their young, just like that mom did. The herd quickly scrambled to huddle up and shield the two seven-year-old younger elephants, giving us a glimpse of how animals handle things in the wild.
Still coming up on CNN this morning, President Trump's tariffs are leaving many industries in limbo, but at least one group is hopeful they'll get a reprieve. Plus, your taxes are due today and we're looking at the Trump administration's reported plans for the IRS. And I want to say good morning to St. Louis. That's where we're monitoring a fire at a commercial building. You can see some of the smoke and flames there, actually just under the arch.
So the highest court in the land says the Trump administration needs to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the word facilitate means to make something easier, but making his return easier appears to conflict with the White House's plans.
How can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States. That's up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That's not up to us. If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.
So I want to bring in Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, because we've been talking the last couple days about this Maryland father who had been deported due to, quote unquote, an administrative error. Attorney Ginsberg, we have heard a lot about the reasons for why this happened. We've also heard different reasons for why they can't bring him back.
First, can you just talk about the Trump administration's interpretation of what the Supreme Court said when it said facilitate this return? - The Trump administration's interpretation of this is I think certainly different from the way the trial judge in Maryland
interpreted the word and probably the way the U.S. Supreme Court did as well. In other words, this was an individual who did not have any due process rights, who was wrongly deported by the government's own admission. And so to facilitate that return would imply in common usage that the person should be brought home. So you got a very different message
yesterday in the Oval Office? - Yeah, the reason why I've been asking is because, I mean, we heard even Stephen Colbert on late night saying what people hear is the common sense interpretation to bring him back. And you have two people, two world leaders who have basically made themselves, they're recognized for their attempts to have power, right? And you have El Salvador's president calling himself the coolest dictator.
So what does it mean when they say, well, I can't do it, and well, I can't do it, and then no one does it? Well, these are two very powerful people who you intuitively know could make it happen if they wanted to. So the answer is they don't. And from the Trump administration perspective, this appears to be one of several instances where they are trying out the powers of the executive branch.
In other words, here you've got their theory of a very strong presidency, the unitary presidency executive, where they don't have to listen to any other branch of government.
And their opponent in this case is not only the courts, but the due process rights of an individual. And so this is the case that is going to tee up very much just how much power the president, the executive branch really can exert in the face of pushback by a co-equal branch of government.
I want to underscore something you just said about due process there, because the Trump administration claims that Garcia is a terrorist. That it's probably in part because the gang they claim he's a part of, they've also described as a terrorist organization. Here's what Homeland Security official said yesterday. The media would love for you to believe that this is a media darling, that he's just some Maryland father. Well, Osama bin Laden was also a father, and yet he wasn't a good guy, and they actually are both terrorists.
Help me understand this analogy. I mean, yeah, I just need help. Well, this was someone who was in the United States married to a U.S. citizen, which generally confers citizenship rights.
And the larger point is that he was in the U.S. There was an order in 2019 from a court saying he shouldn't be deported. Now he was deported. Normally, under our system of government, under the rule of law, that means there has to be due process. In other words, a trial here in 2025 before he can be taken away from the country and put in prison.
In this case, the administration has acted as judge and jury on his status. And so in the normal course of things, there is an immigration judge who should hear and determine whether he is a member of the gang and whether he does deserve to stay in the country or not.
ben ginsberg i've talked to you in the past because as a republican you have in the past represented administrations and republicans in campaign issues right in an election law when you see something like this as you said the administration acting as judge and jury in one context immigration which i think is some ways understandable legally what implication does it have for
other areas of the law. What are you looking for in the coming days and weeks? Well, as I said, this is really setting up how much power the administration and the president can exert without involving the two other branches of government. Right. So there are other examples of this. The whole tariff policy is part of it.
not spending money that Congress has appropriated, going after universities, going after the news media. It is really, are there checks and balances on the executive branch today? And so that's really a matter of the rule of law and the fundamentals of the constitution that you have to look at to see, can the administration
basically ignore orders from courts is, I think, where this issue will be focused the most. Although certainly the role of Congress in appropriating money and setting up programs and whether the administration can just unilaterally end them or not will be other flashpoints. Okay. Ben Ginsberg, thank you for your insights. Appreciate you for being here on CNN this morning. Thank you.
Still to come, the case that helped set off the MeToo movement is back in court. Harvey Weinstein on trial again. Plus what President Trump said about so-called homegrown criminals and where he's willing to send them.
Well, aren't you a big, brave girl? Hacks is back for season four, and so is the official Hacks podcast. I'm Bobby Finger. And I'm Lindsay Weber. We're your hosts this season, and each week on the podcast, we'll break down the latest episode and all the drama behind Debra's new late-night show. Along the way, we'll also be joined by very special guests from the cast and crew. Hacks season four is back Thursday, April 10th on Max. Listen directly on Max or wherever you get your podcasts. Blackmail on day one? Not good!
They're things that matter more than simply the size of one's endowment. Harvard is refusing to bend to the government's demands, rejecting its request for policy changes on campus. Good morning, everybody. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN this morning. It's half past the hour here on the East Coast, and here's what's happening right now. No surrender.
Harvard University's president says the school won't comply with Trump administration demands to change school policies. The president wants to cut Harvard off from more than $2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts over student activism and DEI policies.
Harvard's president says it won't quote, "surrender its independence or its constitutional rights." And Harvey Weinstein's retrial begins today with jury selection in New York. An appeals court threw out his previous conviction and 23-year prison sentence. The case today includes an allegation from an accuser who wasn't part of his first trial.
And a hearing this afternoon could help determine the next steps in the case of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. He's the man the Trump administration admits they mistakenly deported to El Salvador. The Supreme Court ordered them to facilitate his return, but both the U.S. Attorney General and the President of El Salvador say he's not going anywhere. And so for now, he remains in El Salvador's notorious mega-prison. So who could be next on the deportation list? Maybe U.S. citizens.
We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking. That are absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country.
Group chat is back. I want to start with you, Phil, because I know you've done some investigating into this kind of policy. What's the thinking here? Yeah, about a month ago, myself, my colleague Priscilla Alvarez, did a deep dive story into how President Bukele first brought this idea to Marco Rubio. So he brought it to the Secretary of State. Yes, when Rubio visited El Salvador on his first foreign trip
swing through Central America and who brought it to Nayib Ikeli but Eric Prince, the former head of Blackwater, who is in contact with him and has a good relationship with him. And that matters a lot here because that was the genesis of the U.S. sending undocumented immigrants down to El Salvador, as we've seen, and as obviously there's a current major political issue that the administration is dealing with here. But it's also the genesis of the idea of sending American criminals down to El Salvador, which when it was offered to Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State,
State Department didn't really say a whole lot. I think they understood the legal. It was rather rather tenuous situation or like what's the offer? This is why you should pay attention to what's being said right now. And actually, there are a couple of comments that Trump made related to this yesterday that hinted at some things that are going on behind the scenes. And what they are trying to figure out right now with private contractors and Prince and his operation have a proposal that's in play as well is criminal.
Basically giving the U.S. some type of military base slash diplomatic operation that would be U.S. territory within El Salvador. In exchange, the U.S. would help finance multiple prisons like the Sikop prison that is where kind of the infamous one that everybody talks about. And that would be a plausible way to make this happen.
Why? Don't have a great answer for you on that. But to your point, this hot mic moment between the president, President Trump and the president of El Salvador gives us a sense of just how into it this idea he is. I said homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places.
Okay, I want to process what we're hearing here because Phil has given us a lot of information. You got to build about five more places. We're gearing up for something, right? This is not just a winding down of a smaller story about one deportee. What are you guys hearing in your reporting or where you're from?
I think this is why, you know, if you're a U.S. citizen, it's so important to pay attention to what's happening to visa holders, to TPS recipients, you know, people who don't, permanent residents, whatever. If they can, you know, sort of disappear, someone under that legal framework, and we're seeing right now with the Supreme Court, as we talked about, whether that can occur.
Obviously the idea that he could deport US citizens is pretty legally implausible, like Phil said, but it's all about sort of making strides here, right? If they can do it to one population, they can sort of escalate that and escalate that. And so I think, can he do it, right, was sort of the thesis of Trump 1.0. I think Trump 2.0 is less, can he do it? It's, he's gonna try to do things. Are the courts and are these co-equal branches of government powerful enough to stand in his way?
You know, and it's not clear exactly. I mean, we're reaching one of those moments right now is kind of we're butting right up against the courts to see exactly what they will do. You have Democrats basically saying the courts need to hold the line, potentially hold the Trump administration in contempt, and we'll see exactly where that lands. The other thing I find kind of interesting
interesting about all of this is we've now seen the precedent from the Oval Office meeting just yesterday that we're kind of setting up the space where if they go through with this sort of plan you can have well it's not my jurisdiction well it's not my jurisdiction and then you're left in this black site space essentially what's the definition of facilitate I definitely want to know the definition of homegrown like I don't want that to be a broad definition correct and so when you have this kind of you're setting up the scenario where
maybe to run the hypothetical a little too far, but you kind of have to, where you have a US citizen sent to some foreign prison and there's no real ramifications for how to get them back, should the legal process play out, or what the legal process even looks like. - Phil, I wanna come to you before we move on, because I feel like this is one of those moments where in the media we'll be accused of like spinning this up or over-hyping or raising alarms, but I mean,
what you're telling me out of your reporting is that we're on a path to someplace and we're not there yet. Yeah, so figuring out one, the build process, the actual getting U.S. territory and what it would actually look like process. But you've laid out some of it. Military contractors.
A foreign country that's willing. There's a draft proposal that the administration has their hands on. There are other contractors that are also trying to get into the space. They believe that this is a viable option right now. They believe this is something clearly El Salvador's president put it on the table initially. And clearly the Trump administration, despite some initial reticence, is now, look, this is one of the situations where if people accuse you of getting spun up or making too big of a deal about something, you point them back to what the president was saying.
The president was talking about this explicitly in the Oval Office with President Bukele. This was not something that they were hiding the ball on. It is very clear that this is something that they're talking about. How they do it, the timeline for what that would be, and also the process that they would actually pursue
Nobody really knows right now. But the only thing that I think everybody needs to keep in mind-- and we've talked about this before-- failure of imagination is not something that people, I think, should be able to claim at this point in time. And it is clear when you watch in the Oval Office that this is something that kind of animates them and that they think is a plausible idea.
And based on everything we've seen over the last three months, why wouldn't they? Yeah. All right. Stay with us. We've got a lot more to discuss here because as we close out tax season today, I want to talk about the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE and its reported plans for the IRS. Joining me now to discuss her latest reporting on this, senior politics reporter at Wired, Makina Kelly. Good morning, Makina. Welcome to the show.
Right now the IRS runs dozens of different systems housed in on-site data centers in the cloud. You gotta have special permissions. Workers have like need to know access. So what's this hackathon trying to do? How is it trying to change things?
Yeah, sure. So last week, what happened is that the IRS brought in a group of dozens of career IRS engineers, along with two Doge representatives, Sam Korkos and Gavin Klieger, and a handful of Palantir engineers for a three-day summit hackathon at the IRS building in D.C., where they all sat together and planned out this giant project to connect all systems and all data
within the IRS into one centralized area where someone or a variety of people with special permissions would be able to basically get access to whatever IRS data they sought with this new system. And these discussions are still ongoing this week as well.
You know, you mentioned Palantir. I think I just heard that NATO is finalizing a deal with them for AI-fueled information sharing between nations, right? So that's the use in a military context. Can you talk about what it means for these outside engineers to be able to create the systems that talk to each other that house our data in the IRS?
Sure. I mean, this is something that folks in the government have been wanting to do for a very long time. Earlier last month, I reported that DOJA's talking about something similar at the Social Security Administration and wanting to rewrite the Social Security Administration's code base. And these projects, you know, these are commonly called modernization projects.
And typically they take anywhere from like five to ten years to accomplish. And so even if you come at this IRS project with the perspective that it is something good, wanting to get it done in the 30-day timeframe that DOJ is wanting to finish it in, a lot of people sent a lot of red flags.
Talk about those red flags. As you mentioned, I think in the Wired reporting, the Trump administration actually canceled a lot of those modernization projects that were actually in place to do all this in order to do it this 30-day way. So what are the red flags in this 30 days?
Sure. For 30 days, there's a lot of things that can go wrong. Maybe you forget some system to hook up or even you don't have enough time to test all possible edge cases to prove that your system is set up properly and that it's not going to miss anyone, that it's not going to miss anybody's specific tax return,
or miss anybody's data and get it wrong, mismatch social security numbers, mismatch names or addresses and things like that.
Right, so we know that essentially the IRS has our work histories, right? It has our social security number, it has all of this information. Is there a threat of someone creating a backdoor? Is there a threat of someone having access to this information that could use it in a private industry context without our permission? Are those concerns overblown from civil liberties folks?
Yeah, so I mean what happens here is when you have it in an easy, you know, to glean at place, it becomes a lot easier to see everything at once. Right now the IRS and the SSA and other agencies, a lot of this data is inherently
So it's more difficult for people to access it. You have to be like a certain type of worker to access certain types of data. All the conversations that I've had with IRS workers over the last week have basically said, when you leave your day-long training of your first day at the IRS, the first thing, if you did not learn anything, what I'm told, you're told you learn that you're not supposed to access people's taxpayer information.
If you just like decided to look up someone who maybe, you know, is somebody who you might be dating or something like that, that is like an immediate, you're no longer working in government ever again type thing. And so this kind of system that is being made would possibly make those kinds of searches easier. McKenna Kelly, thank you so much.
Still ahead on CNN this morning, the Trump administration now thinking about another carve-out on tariffs. It's time for cars. We'll talk about that and more with Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, who will join us live. Plus, fumble how the White House visit for college football's national champs didn't go exactly as planned. We're from the group chat after this. That $86,000 car becomes a $103,000 car overnight. But I'm telling you right now,
The impacts of these tariffs are going to make Americans lose jobs. Okay, so that's one car dealership owner describing how those new 25% tariffs on all car imports are affecting prices for his vehicles. But now in the middle of all these tariff changes and chaos, President Trump is considering yet another exemption, this time for car companies.
I'm looking at something to help some of the car companies where they're switching to parts that were made in Canada, Mexico and other places. And they need a little bit of time because they're going to make them here. But they need a little bit of time. So I'm talking about things like that. Stock prices for car makers like Ford, General Motors, Stellantis all went up three to four percent after those comments. So joining me now to talk about this is Democratic Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia. Congressman, thanks for being here.
Thank you, Ani. Thanks for the invitation. So you're not just any congressman in this conversation. We're talking to you because you at one point sold cars and then you actually have gone back to school to do machine learning and AI. So you are uniquely positioned to talk about two things here. One, the effect that these tariffs are having now on this industry and two, the hopes for the future, right? In some scenario where manufacturing is brought back to the U.S.
So first, just reacting to the now, what does it mean when the president can just say, oh, there's an exemption? Does that kind of undercut the argument for the tariffs? Does that does that help the industries that start complaining? Not not in the middle run or the long run. It may help today. I talked to a number of car dealer friends and I sold out five years ago. So I have no interest in it now.
but still a great emotional interest in it. And what everyone's telling me is that they have no idea what's coming next. There's an enormous amount of uncertainty. I asked a dear friend yesterday who has lots of dealerships, can I count on him to hire some of our unemployed federal workers? He said, no, because he doesn't know what's coming. In the short run, the fear of tariffs is making the dealerships very busy places, but they're selling out of everything that's hot.
And they're very concerned that the next round is going to be $10,000, $15,000, $25,000 more expensive. I love that you were talking about displaced workers because we were hearing from the head of the United Auto Workers Union in recent days. Here's what he had to say. The Trump administration is the first administration in my lifetime that's been willing to do something about this broken free trade system. Tariffs are the first step.
But we need to put out our vision for an auto industry that doesn't leave behind working class people. Trade policy has been a fault line running through the Democratic Party, and it breaks apart in these moments. So what do you say to those voters who agree with Sean Fain? That tariffs have never been good for our country. The last time we had tariffs like this was Smoot-Hawley in early 1930s, June 1930, and that gave us the Great Depression.
Tariffs make us poorer. They are a tax on the American consumer. They lead to retaliation. We've seen the retaliation the EU was willing to do last week. China's hitting us with 124% tariffs. Our expenses are all going to go up, and it's not going to bring back those kinds of jobs that went overseas for comparative advantage. American workers don't want to be, as Letnick said, screwing tiny little screws into tiny little iPhones.
We want the service jobs and the much more technical manufacturing jobs that exist right now. And that's why I'm coming back, and we don't really want them back. We want to employ American workers with the skills and the education that we have.
The backdrop to all of this are these rapid advances in artificial intelligence, because they have a direct implication to what we mean when we talk about the future of manufacturing. On my podcast I was talking to Microsoft's CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleiman, and he actually says that, we were talking about regulation, and I was asking him sort of what more could be done, does there need to be more regulation?
And so I think that in most of these situations we have to wait and see, monitor closely, be prepared to react really fast, be proactive and transparent, hold ourselves accountable in the best possible way, invite everybody in to kind of debate and discuss what they're seeing and just keep a very open mind. But so far I don't see any evidence that it's time for some unprecedented regulatory action.
Congressman, you're on the Congressional AI Task Force. The president has rolled back many of the AI protections that the Biden administration had put in place via executive order. But I know you're studying these things. So what is your response to what you just heard? It reminds me of St. Augustine who said, dear Lord, make me a better person, but not yet.
And that's what I'm hearing from the Eric Spitz and the Sam Waldman and Mustafa is that, yes, there's room for regulation, but not yet. And I think that that's we want to light touch regulation. Certainly, we want to keep the world open for innovation. But it's time to look at things like transparency and safety.
One of the things that Trump's AI executive order did was it undid the safety institute at the National Institute for Standards and Technology that Biden had created. And I think that's a mistake. We need to be leaning on it, not suppressing innovation, but making sure that our models are tested, that they're safe, and that they're transparent.
Congressman Beyer, I have one more question, which is that essentially you have a lot of Democrats praising Harvard for how it's sort of standing up to the Trump administration. You, among others, have been critical of the Democrats not having a unified voice, a unified message when it comes to standing up to the Trump administration. What would you like to see? Does this feel like a turning point?
Yeah, I was very encouraged by it, very discouraged by the Paul Lyses and the Skadden Arps that caved. I think we've learned, going back to the Old Testament times, that when confronted with a bully, the best thing to do is to stand up to that bully rather than just surrender. And those folks who surrendered so far, history's not going to treat them well. Harvard is strong enough to last one Donald Trump presidency.
Congressman Don Beyer, thank you for your time. Thank you for being here on CNN this morning. It's now 56 minutes past the hour. I want to give the rest of you the roundup, some of the stories you need to know to get your day going. At this moment, fire crews are battling a large fire burning at a pallet company in East St. Louis. These are live images of those flames. CNN affiliate KMOV reports an explosion from a truck near the building actually started this fire and it's being fueled by the wood that's used to make those pallets.
Also, former President Joe Biden set to give his first public speech since he left office. This evening, he's giving a keynote address at a conference in Chicago. Plus, Vice President J.D. Vance had a bit of a fumble with the Ohio State University football team. The national champs brought their trophy to the White House, but as he picked it up, it broke into two pieces. The former Ohio senator joked that he did it on purpose to prevent anyone else from winning it.
Phil, you're the only person I want to hear from on this. Yeah, shout out to Trayvon Henderson for having his back right there. No fumbles in his career. Look, he's a Buckeye alum, JD Vance, but he also went to Yale. We don't expect the Ivy League kids really to perform. That's why those of us not Ivies, stop sending me the clip. Everyone in America has sent me the clip. I've seen it. I get it. You were like, I go to Ohio. I care about football. And so now you get the clip. Yeah, it was awesome.
No, the event. Oh, the event. But you should know the gold part detaches. Everybody who watches football knows that, so I'm a little skeptical. Wait, for real? Yeah, it's not supposed to. You pick up the gold part, not the base. Are you not starting a conspiracy theory, are you? No, I just watched football.
- My team won, I watched them pick it up repeatedly. - Let me just get back to the news, okay, in this side of the group chat. There's always one part of the group chat that you have to be like, "Mute." Anyway, we're gonna talk about what we're keeping an eye on today. We're gonna start with Kevin.
So AOC and Bernie have been hitting the trail out west. They did this last month. They're doing it again now. We're talking massive rallies. You're like hitting the trail. This is thousands of people. Tens of thousands of people at these various events. Not all of them in very blue areas. And so they've wrapped up Idaho and Salt Lake City over the last two days.
suppose good montana tomorrow they're wrapping up some california once today so just keeping an eye on that and what it says about that the democratic angst and desire for some sort of message in this market gapi beer bomb out and you know nevada but what's your look ahead so i'm looking at i think having you are to uh... in nevada new york and some other states there these republicans whose district of
Districts have reaped massive benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate law that Democrats passed in 2022. This is a key area that Republicans are looking to cut spending. They're looking to revoke some of these tax credits towards companies in the renewable energy space. And it puts a lot of Republicans in an awkward position. - Right, because there were Republicans who really
move forward in the renewable energy space. - Yeah, and you don't have to be super into climate change to feel that there's a business case to be made, that this is jobs, this is energy savings, what have you. And so they're sort of working behind the scenes and we're gonna see if they're able to influence the bill. - Last seconds to Phil. - Trump administration officials have been very dismissive about China's ability to fight a trade war publicly.
Something changed yesterday. Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, said the rare earth export controls were very concerning that had been put on. China basically controls the entire market, absolutely integral. They're concerned, and that's interesting to me. All right. Thanks for our group chat. Thank you for waking up with us. I'm Bonnie Cornish, CNN News, the real news. CNN News Central starts right now. This is why you can't be on...
In the Easter story, the word "cross" appears 11 times. "Crucify" appears 23 times. Yet one word appears even more: "love." This Easter season, let's remember the love that Jesus Christ showed us when He suffered, died, and was resurrected. To get inspiration about how you can feel His greater love this Easter, visit easter.churchofjesuschrist.org.
This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Kornish. People often say these models suffer hallucinations. They make stuff up. Well, actually, they're designed to make things up, right? We want them to tell us something that we don't know. The CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleiman, on the next era of the tech industry and about what it means to hold on to your values when the industry is moving faster than the rules meant to govern it.
Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app.