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It is Monday, March 24th. Here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning. We're going to continue to arrest public safety threats and national security threats. The Trump administration may have a new tool to help mass deportations, the IRS, but are undocumented immigrants who pay taxes, national security threats. Plus this. I take him at his word in this sense.
U.S. negotiators believe President Putin does not want to take all of Europe, but is he just playing the White House? Then later. The American people are fed up with the old guard. There needs to be a renewal. Kamala Harris wanted an opportunity economy, but some Democrats say a better word is abundance, what's behind the latest movement in the party. And later, wildfires burning out of control, thousands forced to evacuate. When will conditions improve?
It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. Here is a live look at New Orleans. Good morning to the Big Easy, where today's Louisiana governor is heading. He's going to be coming to D.C. to meet with President Trump at the White House.
Good morning to everyone. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me. And I want to start with the IRS because the agency could soon help President Trump try to fulfill his promise of mass deportations. So CNN has learned that the IRS is nearing an unprecedented agreement with immigration officials. The deal would allow ICE to use tax data to locate people it suspects of living in the country illegally.
Immigrants rights groups have sued, arguing that the deal violates disclosure laws. So this means yet another Trump immigration policy is going to wind up before a federal judge and eventually maybe the Supreme Court. And with three justices handpicked by President Trump, that pretty much seems to be the plan.
The Supreme Court will get involved. This is an out of control judge, a federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy and he cannot do it.
Joining me now to talk about all this, Stephen Collinson, CNN politics senior reporter, Jonah Goldberg, CNN political commentator and co-founder of The Dispatch, and Ashley Allison, CNN political commentator and former senior policy advisor in the Obama White House. All right. I want to actually start with Trump's border czar, Tom Homan. And here's what he said this week. What do you mean when you say I don't care what judges think?
I don't care what that judges think as far as this case, we're going to continue to arrest public safety threats and national security threats. We're going to continue to deport them from the United States. I understand this case is in litigation through the Alien Enemies Act and we'll abide by the court order as litigated. But my quote was, despite what he thinks, we're going to keep targeting the worst of the worst of the worst.
OK, Joan, I want to talk about that last part, the worst of the worst. Usually, people don't realize this, but undocumented immigrants even pay taxes in order to show they're not the worst of the worst. So help me understand this policy. JOAN LEVY: Yeah, so it's funny. Remember the whole brouhaha about Elon Musk discovering all these people who were like 250 years old? That was in part because a lot of undocumented immigrants use these--
use social security numbers from deceased people as a way to sort of get through the paperwork. And the irony is that they're paying in money that they'll never be able to collect. Look, the broader thing is I think-- I think Homan is not the most sophisticated spokesman on that kind of stuff. But he's actually pretty effective, I think, in the big picture of things. The problem is they're running into is that with this IRS thing is-- and the way they're rescinding a lot of asylum status
is they're going after more of the legible undocumented immigrants, the ones the government can see because there's paperwork on them. And by definition, if you're sending money into the IRS, if you're paying your taxes, if you're showing up for immigration appointments, as these Cuban immigrants did in Florida this week, and they got detained while showing up to appointments, you're not getting...
drug gangs. You're not getting criminals and rapists. You're getting people who are trying to play by the rules as best they can and make a living. And I think there's a lot, that's a lot more politically fraught than they appreciate. Stephen? Yeah, I think what's going to end up happening potentially is that, uh,
undocumented migrants that largely obey the law are going to stop filing tax returns and that's going to cause not just chaos and the government won't know where everybody is, it's going to cost billions of dollars in revenue and there seems to be some inconsistency between the
the presence arguments that we're going after murderers and rapists and people who have been taken out of jails in Central America. - And we're gonna talk about that later this hour. There's this kind of push into everyone who has a legal status, legal status. Ashley, I wanna talk to you because Senator Bernie Sanders has been holding massive rallies focused on fighting oligarchy. But he was also asked around some of these immigration ideas. Here's what he told ABC this weekend.
Is there anything that you think Trump has done right? Yeah, I mean, I think cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger. Look, nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate. And I happen to think we need comprehensive immigration reform. But I don't think that it's appropriate for people to be coming across the border illegally. So we've got to work now on comprehensive immigration reform.
Obviously, the Obama White House did a lot of deportation. So help me help translate for me what we're seeing from this wing of the party. Well, I think you are going to see this across the entire Democratic Party. Democrats want comprehensive immigration reform. The challenge is, is that Congress is
incapable of getting it done for many, many reasons, but particularly because of politics. Whether you think the timing of the killed bill before the election was whatever your take on it, it could have gotten done. It didn't get done. It was politics. But I think
What the Trump administration and what Bernie Sanders was trying to get to is that immigrants do have a place in this country. But the approach the Trump administration is taking and that I've said before is that they said they want to go after criminals and the worst of the worst because nobody wants bad people out doing bad things to anybody, particularly Americans. But that's not what they're doing. They don't. This is an anti-immigrant movement.
And so when you go after people who pay your taxes, when you go after people who go to their court cases, that's not trying to force to the worst. That is a very clear policy determinant directive to folks is that we don't want immigrants living in this country and we'll do it by any means necessary. And we will challenge the court and make it fair.
a conversation piece to see how far we can actually go. - Yeah, okay, I want you guys to stick with us. We're actually gonna talk about this more this hour, but coming up on CNN this morning, is there actually a path to peace in Ukraine? Negotiations continue between the US and Russia. Plus the road to perfection at a dead end, the game that ended it all for your office pool. And the Easter egg roll will roll on for a fee, and it's not just 'cause the price of eggs.
So this was them in the wild rumpus. I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, you need this to keep your baby safe, to feed them the right way. I'm going to talk to reporter and writer Sophie Brickman. She wrote a book that takes a deep dive into baby tech and what parents really need.
It was overwhelming, but I kept asking, do we need it? And at what cost? What data, what privacy do we have to share to get that information? Follow CNN's Terms of Service wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, as you're getting ready this morning, it is 12 minutes past the hour. I want to give you your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to get your day going. A wildfire raging in New Jersey is forcing people to evacuate a state park. Firefighters helped get this 80% contained so far. And in North Carolina, areas still recovering from Hurricane Helene are facing evacuation orders because of wildfires. There is some rain in the forecast this morning. They're hoping that could help.
This week, Second Lady Usha Vance and National Security Advisor Mike Walz both set to visit Greenland as President Trump repeatedly talks about taking control of the island. Greenland's prime minister calls the visit highly aggressive and suggests the Trump administration wants to, quote, demonstrate power over us.
23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After struggling for years to turn a profit, the genetic testing firm says it plans to sell. And if you're wondering about your data, so is California's Attorney General. He's warning customers to go to 23andMe's website and delete their genetic data immediately. And you gotta see this. Floats it. Oh! Marilyn on the right side of a buzzer beater!
This is a freshman for Maryland sinking that game winning buzzer beater against Colorado State. Basically the coach asked in the huddle right before who thinks they can take the shot and Derrick Queen stepped up. After this weekend there are no perfect brackets left. The last one was taken down by Kentucky's victory over Illinois.
Straight ahead on CNN This Morning, why have the controversial Tate brothers returned to Romania just weeks after that spectacle of coming to Florida? Plus, why a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin is drawing national attention and possibly $100 million in donation. Good morning, Virginia Beach. It's going to get up to the mid-70s today.
A hundred million dollars. That's how much money could be spent on a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, and that would make it the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history. On the ballot is a Trump-endorsed judge, and he's facing a judge whose campaign is actually backed by billionaire George Soros. And there's a lot at stake here because the outcome will actually determine the ideological control of the Wisconsin High Court.
So we're bringing in Daniel Beiss. He's a columnist with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And Daniel, first just start out with the two candidates. Who are they?
Thanks for inviting me to be here. On the one hand, you have Brad Schimel. He's a conservative and a former Republican attorney general, and he has the support of the president and Elon Musk. Elon Musk is here in a big way supporting him. And then you have Susan Crawford, and she's supported by, you said, George Soros, a number of other, J.V. Pritzker, Reid Hoffman, a number of wealthy Democrats around the country are helping her campaign.
And right now, you said 100 million. Right now, it's about 76 million that's been spent on the race. And we have another week to go before people go to the ballot box.
Now, you'll understand why we jumped the gun to $100 million at the rate the money is pouring in. One example, Elon Musk's, yeah, you're going to hit it. I want to mention this, Elon Musk's political action committee offering any Wisconsin voter $100 if they sign a petition, just expressing their opposition to activist judges, one way to capture their addresses. But can you talk about the other ways that money is showing up in this race? What does it look like for voters?
- Well, Elon Musk has two different groups here. He has America PAC, which as you might remember, played a big role in organizing voters around the country and in Wisconsin. And they came in around February 20th and started organizing people. They had digital ads, they had all sorts of things. And they got off to an inauspicious start. They had a digital ad with the wrong picture of Susan Crawford. They were in a picture of a professor at Harvard and not the person running for office.
But then there are TV ads and you know a lot of people felt like the election was over in November, but it's not here. It's hard to get away from the TV ads.
I think there's been a little over 56 million spent on TV ads here. And so both sides are spending a lot of money. One, on the Republican side, it's a lot of outside groups from around the country. On the Democratic side, it's the Crawford campaign herself. There's a rule here that allows
political parties to receive as much money as they can and to transfer as much money as they can. And Crawford is going to report this morning that she's raised $24 million in the race so far. Can you talk about what's at stake? I understand it's the ideological balance, but you've also said something interesting here, which is that the election never ended in Wisconsin. So is this money pouring in because of 2026, 2028? Like kind of what is the impetus here?
It is 2028, but what you have to remember is 2020. And Trump lost here by about 20,000 votes. And he had a number of grievances and concerns that he had at that time. And he took four petitions to the state Supreme Court to try to overturn the election. And in each of those cases, the petitions were rejected by a 4-3 vote. Very, very close. And if he could get one more vote
He feels like he could get a 4-3 majority for conservatives. So that's really big heading into both the midterm elections and into the next election, the next general election. Any sense on polling? Are voters actually that interested in this or are they being drawn into the race just by the sheer amount of marketing and money being spent?
It's not going to be like the general election, but there will probably be about a 40 percent turnout, which is two million people. But as I said, one hundred million dollars for two million people is just incredible. But in terms of there have been a couple of polls recently that have shown that Crawford is ahead by four or five points. And here these off year elections tend to favor Democrats. But with all of the money being spent on the Republican side, it's hard to tell who's going to be ahead at the end.
Before I let you go, do you think other states will start to see this kind of spending? I mean, I know the era of sort of all politics is locals, like kind of over, but what's your warning for everyone else?
- I think it's primarily because we're a swing state. That's an important thing. And then, you know, Elon Musk is trying to turn this into a referendum on Trump. And then the Crawford campaign is trying to turn this into a referendum on Musk. I think we're just catching a situation where Musk is at a particular point where the one side can turn him into being the focus of the election. - That's Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Thank you for your time.
I want to also turn to some sad news this morning because the former Utah Congresswoman and CNN contributor Mia Love has passed away. This following her battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer. She was the first black woman to be elected to Congress as a Republican. She was just 49 years old.
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. We want to make sure that those students do have those special services and those needs which they have, which is really monitored and taken care of at the state level.
That was the Education Secretary's response when asked whether she could guarantee that the kids with special needs would keep getting that support if the federal department is dismantled. Good morning everybody, I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me. Here's what's going on on CNN This Morning.
Workers at the Department of Education will have 30 minutes to start today, pack up their cubicles and get out. That's per the Trump administration instructions. And that's for every day this week. Only an act of Congress can shut down the department, but the president signed an executive order last week to kickstart the process.
And the Tate brothers are back in Romania. They'd been in Florida until state authorities there launched a fresh criminal investigation into allegations of sexual exploitation of women and girls. The pair still face human trafficking charges in Romania, and they claim they returned there to clear their names.
Right now, the U.S. and Russia are in talks in Saudi Arabia over Russia's war on Ukraine. Yesterday, the U.S. team met separately with Ukrainian officials. Ukraine's defense minister called those talks productive and focused. Until a ceasefire deal is reached, Russia doesn't seem to be letting up. Ukraine says Russia launched drone attacks over the weekend, killing at least six people, including a five-year-old.
the elephant in the room is there are constitutional issues within ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory the russians are de facto in control of these territories the question is will they be uh will the world acknowledge that those are russian territories cnn's claire sebastian joins us live from london can you talk about what we know about today's talks
Yeah, Audie, I think big picture, it's worth stepping back. We are really at this point working backwards from where we were less than two weeks ago when Ukraine signed on to a U.S. proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire. Last week, we saw that call between Presidents Trump and Putin where Putin basically rejected the idea of a full ceasefire but did promise
to stop attacks on energy infrastructure. It doesn't seem that that has been kept up in force, despite the Kremlin's claim that it has. So today what we're looking at following on from those U.S.-Ukraine talks on Sunday are looking at technical issues around a partial ceasefire. They are, as the main topic, the Kremlin says today, looking at the black
Sea reviving the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative that lasted for a year, but Russia allowed to lapse in the summer of 2023, which allowed for safe maritime corridors so Ukraine could continue to export its critical grain supplies to global markets. Russia pulled out, saying that it still had obstacles
in the way of its own food exports. So they're looking at this again today. And while we see some optimism coming from the Trump team, Steve Whitcough over the weekend saying that they're looking at real progress this week, the Kremlin is very much playing down expectations. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, again this morning saying there is still a lot of work to be done on technical issues, making it clear that we're still at the early part of this. They may also again look at energy infrastructure. There was some confusion last week
over what was agreed in that call between Trump and Putin. But I think overall, this is very technical this week, but still for Ukraine, a very concerning moment when you hear rhetoric like that coming from Steve Witkoff. The concern with this bilateral track between the U.S. and Russia is that Russia will continue efforts to persuade the U.S. that it is Ukraine standing in the way of peace, even as we see these attacks continue.
that's cnn's claire sebastian reporting from london now i want to follow up on something claire was talking about because if a lasting peace can be achieved between russia and ukraine what exactly would that look like and we're going to bring in samir puri he's the director of the center for global governance and security at chatham house he was also a ceasefire monitor in east ukraine in 2014 and 2015. um first i want to start with the fact that you have had a first-hand view uh
of kind of what it can look like to police these borders. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience? - Yeah, well, great to be with you. Now, of course, that was a decade ago. The first Russian invasion of East Ukraine, much more limited, very different kind of conflict, extremely difficult because the ceasefire line then, as it would also be now, runs sort of in a jagged way, sometimes between settlements, sometimes separating communities,
It's very hard to monitor this. And of course, the ceasefire that I was involved in monitoring didn't last. It broke down. That was the Minsk Accords, everybody understands. This time around, the task is going to be so much harder because the war has been so much more devastating.
It's also a war where we've seen Ukraine using government intelligence, etc., to hold off Russia using technology, just drones. How is that critical and how does that play into monitoring any kind of ceasefire this time around?
Right, so the mission I was part of, we had four very underpowered drones. Technology in drones has of course moved on leaps and bounds in a decade. I think without question drone monitoring, satellite monitoring and other verification techniques were really crucial in giving Ukraine some confidence that whatever they sign up to, whenever this process actually gathers some momentum, more momentum than it already has,
that there will be some sort of monitoring. And then, of course, the other side to that is, is there any accountability mechanism if Russia breaches whatever ceasefire agreement comes to? That will also be a huge part of Ukraine's lack of confidence in the process at this early stage.
You've also said that if major powers are retreating to their bolt holes and failing to talk about questions around global governance, that that can be damaging to future security. Can you talk about what that meant, especially in light of what we just heard earlier, where you have a U.S. official saying, look, the world needs to recognize that Russia's already taken X amount of land and it's sort of de facto theirs. What are some of the things that you're concerned about?
So one of the things I'm concerned about is of all the regions of the world that are adjusting to Trump's change of tone, total change of tone in U.S. foreign policy, it's the Europeans that are feeling that change of tone the hardest. The Ukrainians, like you say, they've been relying on the U.S. for military support, intelligence support.
But the Europeans, the British, the French and the others have kind of made this bet that the U.S. would always be sort of on their side and having their backs. So when I was sort of talking about major powers retreating into their bolt holes, it's the U.S. being seen as a disruptor in a way that –
China is seen a disruptor by some countries. It is extremely hard to plan anything for the future. And it's also extremely hard to work out just how committed the American government will be, this American government, to holding Russia to account, to maintaining whatever it signs up to in whichever ceasefire arrangement comes out of this process. But I do think there will be something that comes out of this process. And I do think we're at the beginning of what will be a very long, meandering negotiation involving the Russians, the U.S. and Ukraine. Great.
I want to follow up on one thing because a lot of Russia watchers have not just seen this as long and meandering, but stalling. And at best, if something comes out of it, it will be just Russia biding its time until after the Trump administration. Here you are again, right, talking about this after so many years of having been a monitor at the last ceasefire. What are your thoughts on this?
It's a really important point. The Russians are extremely skilled at using negotiation processes as a smokescreen for carrying on with their military ambitions. And I've directly experienced this in February 2015. I was stationed in Kramatorsk in the Donbas. At the same time, the Russians were mounting an offensive through their separatists to take a particular town.
They were negotiating in Belarus the Minsk-2 deal. So they fight and they talk at the same time. And that's the trap Zelensky is very, very keen to avoid being pushed into a corner by the Russians doing this fight, talk, fight, talk. And we're seeing that because of Russian airstrikes, as your previous reporting has mentioned, have not let up.
in terms of that military pressure on Ukraine. And of course, Russia still wants to take more of the Donbas, so it captures those four regions that Steve Witkoff failed to mention by name, I think, in his previous interview last week. But we must all remember Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk. Putin's forces don't yet control all four of those regions, and they want to before the fighting stops. Sam Puri, Director of the Center for Global Governance and Security at Chatham House. Thank you. Thank you.
All right, I want to turn to domestic politics because here Democrats are still struggling to find a new strategy. There's a new book people are talking about called Abundance that argues that Democrats need to focus less on red tape, more on results. And I want to bring it to the group chat because it has been all over the time. Look at your face, the resignation about abundance discourse. Who can explain abundance? Ashley, can you? Oh, why me?
Oh, not you? OK. Who can actually explain Abundance 101? It seems to be what it is all about is this idea that Democrats have created so many regulations, they're stifling growth. Your environmental reviews, your worker protections, your DEI. Zonal stuff for building new homes, etc. They're making it more difficult for people to afford homes.
And this seems to be some attempt... And there's some other attempts too to shift the party a little bit towards the centre, a bit like the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Council in the early 1990s. The question I have is, you know, this is an intellectual exercise
the Democrats really looking for an intellectual exercise? Everything we're seeing is emotional. - Please cut to Ashley's face. - The response is emotional, not intellectual. - I know, and that's a good point because when I think of who has the crowds right now, it's Bernie Sanders, AOC actually drawing physical people, actual people, not sub-stack readers. But that doesn't mean this movement can't catch in some way, Ashley.
Well, I mean, do people feel like they're living in abundance right now? So I think words actually matter too. The door might close before you even see them. But that's their argument. Their argument is the Trump world is all about saying what you can have, what you can't do, and we want to show people. But is that what people want? I think you have to meet people. I think this is what happened this last election, is that we talked about, I have a friend who always says, like, Democrats, Republicans,
make a documentary and Republicans make a blockbuster movie. And people more often than not want to go see a blockbuster movie and not a doc. So I think what Democrats need to do is acknowledge the pain. And I'm not saying that some didn't and that the vice president didn't, but it's acknowledge where people really are. Do you think that this abundance thing doesn't really do that? Acknowledge? Look,
I talk about abundance in my life in a different way, but not through politics. I'll just say that I think that the thing that Donald Trump is so good at is telling people there is only a certain amount of abundance. That's why you have to deport all these immigrants. It's a zero-sum game. Right. So I just...
I'm going to take a different take on this. Yoni Applebaum of the Atlantic has a fantastic book called Stuck, which gets at a lot of this. Mark Dunkelman, professor at Brown, has a book called Why Nothing Works, which also gets at this. I think those are better books and better arguments than the abundance argument. Which is from Ezra Klein and Eric Thompson. Which I'm not trying to denigrate too much the Klein book, but my point is that the abundance argument is very utopian and it's very much aimed at
at really hardcore ideological progressives and say, "Hey, there's a better way." That's a useful argument to have. The Dunkelman and Applebaum books are much more aimed at the simple fact that starting at the local level, but also at the national level,
The progressives have screwed things up by gunking up the works with all sorts of red tape that makes it impossible to get things done. It keeps people, you know, only one in 13 people change addresses every year now. It used to be like two and five.
And that lack of mobility makes people feel locked in, makes people feel like even if they wanted to improve their lives, they can't. There's a variety of reasons for that. There's a bunch of reasons for it. But the point I'm trying to get at is that the reason why Trump, part of what is appealing to Trump is that claim of common sense. Sort of like what was appealing about Biden was that claim of normalcy.
The better argument for Democrats isn't some utopian notion of abundance, if we could just give state planners all the power in the world to do exactly what they want. It's just to say,
Let's just do common sense stuff. Yeah, but it's sort of a baffling mix of people giving advice to Democrats. Stephen, can you weigh in? I don't really think that a lot of these reviews and examinations after elections end up really contributing an awful lot. There was the Republican review after 2012. That's still in a drawer somewhere. The party went the opposite way. The autopsy and Trump won. And I think parties go where they're
supporters want to go and what you most often see is parties change direction when you have a personality that leads the party in a certain direction, which is what happened with Trump. But that's why we can't have nice things. Or it captures attention. Like I just want to play one clip because at town halls, this is where we see Democratic voters really voicing their frustration in very specific ways.
We're not okay. I'm going to just cut the s***. We're not okay. None of them are going to save us. I am so sorry. I've been waiting every day, but they can't right now.
So we're hearing that Nancy Pelosi is saying that Hakeem Jeffries, use your power. But I love hearing from a voter because when I think about that Tea Party movement for Republicans, even though it's not what it was then, it changed the trajectory of things. Yeah, I think Democrats need to be listening. If you I'm not going to say that if you go to a town hall, you're already in it.
overly engaged person, but you probably do go to the PTA. You probably show up a lot, including on election day. There are segments of the Democratic Coalition that they need to be listening to. The folks coming who are saying they are not okay. Just don't hear I'm not okay, but ask why are you not okay? What makes you feel like that? What could I do? Tell me one thing I could do to make you feel like we are a step better for you feeling like you are okay. Then
there are people who will never go to a town hall who never show up sometimes but not often at the polls you need to go talk to them too and say why did you sit out this election yeah it's a fact-finding not a report out you have to listen to people and and not just take advice from the towers of DC the towers of DC okay well we're gonna hear more about this in the coming days trust me people are talking about it still head on CNN this morning the White House Easter egg roll
a time-honored tradition. Now companies can join in, of course, for a price. Plus, why the losers of this year's Super Bowl are also getting a White House invitation. And we're going to have more from the group chat after this. We have a runaway judiciary. We have these district courts who are trying to step in and make laws to impact then effectively or make precedent that would impact the entire country.
That's Donald Trump's senior advisor, Jason Miller, once again attacking judges who have ruled against the president. One of those cases centers around a Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil. He's the Columbia grad student in federal custody. He's currently fighting deportation. The Justice Department now argues that he committed immigration fraud. They say he failed to disclose some details about his background when he applied for a green card.
Joining me now to talk about this, Shan Wu, defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. Shan, thanks so much for being here with us this morning. First, I want to set the table because we have a bunch of different examples here. Are you effectively seeing ways that the Trump administration is looking at people who have legal status and finding ways that they're vulnerable to deportation?
Generally, yes. I think the way that it's affecting all people in this situation, whether they're citizens, have legal status, non-legal status, is the Trump administration's approach is simply to not follow any of the normal processes. And we can certainly refer to that as violating due process, but in plain English what that means is there's no process at all. They're just rounding up people,
The reasons for targeting those people or talking to them, very unclear, as we saw in these sort of mass deportation efforts they made. And it's not even correct to call them deportations because deportation is a legal term in the legal process. You know, the rounding up, putting them on planes, not even clear who they've rounded up. And there's no transparency there. So that's really the way that it's really broadly affecting all citizens is this lack of any discernible process.
So, for example, when we talk about Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, they said that on his application he left out that he was a member of a UN Palestinian relief agency. Is that the kind of thing that in the past would have been enough to get these proceedings going?
Sure. They could get the proceedings going with all sorts of issues, including if there's something fraudulent or incorrect about the original application, not having any inside information or comment on his case particularly. Again, they can offer these justifications or reasons, but they need to have it determined through a process, bring it before an immigration judge to figure out what's going on here, and that's what's missing at the moment.
One of the big fights we hear a lot about are these, the D.C. Court of Appeals looking at the deportation flights to El Salvador where Venezuelan migrants are being sent. The National Security Advisor was asked about this this weekend.
Venezuela is directing these gangs? We are saying that TDA is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime. This is how the Alien and Sedition Act applies. And we cannot have district judges interfering with the commander in chief's actions to take care of, in the way he deems necessary, a terrorist organization. The administration fighting very hard to try and make this connection. Can you talk about why?
The why is they want to really rely upon the original presidential immunity decision, this idea that at its core, something that you can't touch at all is the president's executive power to be a commander in chief, to make military decisions, including about national security. That's what they want to lean into.
While that may be true, this is not a situation of immunity. He's not being charged with anything. And again, it goes back to the same problem the allies do here, is there's no process. That's a fine argument to make. It may fly with a judge, may not fly with a judge. It may ultimately fly with the Supreme Court, may not.
But they need to go through the process and simply blustering about it in the media, saying no judge can review this. That's obviously wrong. Obviously, a judge can review it. And that's the issue. They have to allow the courts to review it. They're going to have to answer Judge Boasberg, for example, questions as to what are the details? When did you fly? Who did you fly? That's former federal prosecutor and defense attorney Shan Wu. Thank you for joining me this morning. Good to see you.
Okay, it's 52 minutes past the hour. I want to give you your morning roundup. A few more stories you need to know to get your day going. A murder suspect in Georgia under arrest and according to immigration officials, he was in the country illegally. The man is from Honduras. He's accused of killing a 53-year-old mother of five in an Atlanta suburb earlier this month. The 21-year-old suspect reportedly crossed the border four years ago.
And the losers of this year's Super Bowl getting a special invitation, typically only given to the winners. The Kansas City Chiefs have been invited to the White House. So why? Well, the president says it's because they missed their visit in 2020 due to the pandemic. Don't worry, Eagles fans. Philly also got an invite. They will visit in late April.
And Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney calling for an election on April 28 saying he needs a strong mandate because President Trump wants to break Canada so the US can own it. Carney got comedian Mike Myers, of course, famous Canadian, to do a campaign ad with him. What are the two seasons in Toronto? Winter and construction. Wow.
We really are Canadian. Yeah. But let me ask you, Mr. Prime Minister, will there always be a Canada? There will always be a Canada. All right. Elbows up. Elbows up. Carney's conservative rival also campaigning on standing up to the U.S. So it's a tradition that dates back to the 1800s. The South Lawn of the White House turns into a springtime celebration as children and adults alike gather for the annual Easter egg roll. The first Easter.
The official White House egg roll occurred here in 1878 when President Rutherford Hayes was living in the White House. Now a lot of things have changed since then. Today what you need to know is that for the very first time, hundreds of thousands of young people will be experiencing the White House egg roll through the internet.
The internet, a series of pipes and tubes. But this year, as one planner notes, it's not your grandmother's Easter.
Easter egg roll. President Trump, the businessman looking to add his own flair with corporate sponsorships ranging from $73,000 to $200,000. The group chat is back for a segment that in my notes is titled Egg Roll Ethics. So Stephen, I want to start with you because this shouldn't be a shock given Tesla's on the White House lawn and the gold card, green card situation of paying in order to get into the States. But how do you see it? Right.
The concept of White House ethics seems to have been completely swept away by this administration. I guess the problem here is that companies are paying for access to a White House event and even to officials and potentially the First Lady, according to our reporting.
that seems to be a pathway to corruption. But all kinds of things are sponsored these days. So is it just perception? Is it that Trump's past indicates that this actually will curry favor for those companies? Like, what is it that makes it nerve-wracking? Yeah, I mean, I think it's of a piece with his trade policy and all those things. He likes systems where...
your business deals are improved if you get a seat next to him at a dinner, that kind of thing. I think, I was trying to wonder, I was wondering where that Clinton clip was going. I think what we need to do is take the era of online sports gambling and Easter egg rolls and combine them. We can do that.
You want to actually bet on the children. I want to bet on the children. Feats of strength, races. I knew that was where this was going. The Easter egg roll on the day is the best thing ever. The weeks leading up to it, there are like crazy parents trying to get tickets. And so I actually wonder. And now corporations. And I do wonder what impact, you know, sponsoring this event. But I'm.
I'm not going to take the bait on this one. I just want the kids to have fun. You're calling my egg roll ethics bait. You are correct. On the scheme of things, I just can't. It's always been ancillary fun event. I mean, I think historically, even during segregation, black families were not even allowed at the White House egg roll. And so if you are in the D.C. area, you know, you go to the zoo on that.
because that is where there was like actual events. - The problem is that it seems now becoming about administrations competing with each other to have the most spectacular egg roll. It seems to have gone a long way from its origins. - Instead of lowering egg prices. - That's the point, yeah.
I let you say it, but I was wondering. We're talking about eggs in a different type of way. It's all about the eggs, right? I know, between the getting artificial food dyes that RFK wants that's being reported in the Wall Street Journal and the price of eggs, it feels like the egg roll is not long for this world. The Secretary of Agriculture recently said that we're going to start importing eggs to lower egg prices. The sad thing is, apparently...
Increasing trade only works to lower prices for eggs, for no other product, right? For everything else, we've got to have higher taxes on it. But for eggs, the administration understands that if you lower tariffs and import more, the price will lower. Oh, that's a specific economic theory. Is that from the Chicago school? It's an egg-centric theory, but it's... I don't know what you did this morning. Okay, last minute, we're going to talk about what we're keeping an eye on today, this week.
Stephen. These talks in Riyadh about Ukraine, I think there's a lot of reason to be skeptical about the administration's approach. Yeah, we heard some. Not least because Steve Wyckoff seems to have adopted a lot of Putin's positions since he met the Russian president. But at least Ukrainians and Russians and the U.S. are in the same place. Perhaps something's going to happen. Yeah, that is remarkable. Thank you for talking about it. So I'm looking forward to Usha Vance, the second lady's trip to Greenland.
JD Vance over the weekend was talking about how Denmark's a bad ally and that's one of the reasons why we need Greenland. We should be clear because Denmark has control of Greenland. Denmark has quasi-sovereignty over Greenland. And I suspect the plan is they're hoping that Greenland has some protests, some ugliness, that they can then turn up the gain on this whole nonsense about taking Greenland. Oh, you think that's what the administration wants? I think it is a... The best case scenario for them is that there is some ugly...
The Greenlanders are very mad about this visit. Yes, they just had an election. So, okay. And Ashley. Well, we were talking about what's the Democratic message. We are seeing a lot of Democrats, governors, and mostly members of Congress and senators go all around the country. I want to see who else is going to start doing these tours around the country outside of their district to see, one, if they have political ambitions, but two, if they can actually...
curate a narrative that is resonant with the broader American people. Usually for political reporters, we wait until they go to Iowa and then we start saying he's running or she's running. It's looking different. But now they start podcasts. Okay. Right, right. Oh, is that all it takes? I'll be announcing my run shortly. I want to thank you all for waking up with us. Thank you for a bright and cheerful panel. I'm Adi Cornish. CNN News Central starts with your headlines right now.
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