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D.C., Maryland A.G.s Sue Trump; Awaiting White House Press Briefing with Sean Spicer; Ninth Circuit Shoots Down Trump's Revised Travel Ban; Labor Secretary Talks Apprenticeships, Jobs During White House Daily Briefing. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 12, 2017 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00] BRIAN FROSH, MARYLAND ATTORNEY GENERAL: And that's what we're fighting to stop.

The sad fact is that President Trump is profiteering from the office of the president. He doubled the fees at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida, from $100,000 to $200,000 after he was elected president. After he was elected president, he raised the prices of the rooms at the Trump Hotel in D.C. These acts are clear violations of the Emolument's Clause when they are applied to foreign governments. It's shameful that he's doing it and receiving payments from private citizens because he's president, but it's flat-out illegal and unconstitutional when he's getting it from foreign governments.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Brian Frosh is the attorney general of the state of Maryland, Karl Racine is the attorney general of the District of Columbia, to both of you, thanks very much. I know this subject is going to come up in the White House press briefing any moment now. Appreciate your joining us.

We're only minutes away from the start of the White House briefing. The Press Secretary Sean Spicer is going to be taking lots of questions from reporters on a whole slew -- on a whole bunch of very sensitive issues. Our live coverage will come up on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:35:00] BLITZER: Press Secretary Sean Spicer expected momentarily to walk in to the White House briefing room and start with certainly some announcements or statements. We'll see if he has a guest that will lead off this briefing or if he's going to just start himself. Then he'll answer lots of reporters' questions. And there are many important questions on the agenda right now, including the attorney general of the United States Jeff Sessions. He's now scheduled to testify in public tomorrow afternoon as part of the Russia investigation. He'll be testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Let's get some perspective as we await Sean Spicer from our panel. We have CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor, Laura Coates, with us; CNN politics reporter, Tal Kopan; and our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger.

Gloria, this could be significant. We're about to hear from Sean Spicer on Sessions, on a whole bunch of other issues.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: This is the first time we'll hear from Sean since the Comey testimony. I think the news that Sessions wants to testify publicly is a smart thing for Sessions to do. We don't know if he'll claim any kind of executive privilege about his conversations with the president. We'll have to wait and see. Obviously, as the president famously said to Jim Comey, there's a cloud about this, and now Sessions has been drawn into this. And I think he wants to probably take an opportunity to clarify that his meetings were and when, and his involvement or lack of involvement in the Comey firing.

BLITZER: I'm wondering will Sean Spicer, Tal, finally say, yes, the president has confidence in his attorney general?

TAL KOPAN, CNN POLITICS REPROTER: That's certainly the big question. We have asked this, we the press, have asked this, numerous times. They have dodged in several ways. The most recent being that he has confidence in his entire cabinet. So we still have not heard those magic words "confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions," which they have to know allows this conversation to feed that cloud and feed those questions. They clearly don't want to put this to bed.

BLITZER: We'll see if he says the president has confidence in his entire cabinet or if he's ready to finally say that would include the attorney general.

The breaking news this hour, Laura, as we've been reporting, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has now joined the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in saying that travel ban, the revised version, 2.0, is not going to be implemented. Some vetting procedures can go forward. But it's now up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That's right. Nothing breeds a lack of confidence in your A.G. than saying, I told you so, I told you how they were going to rule, which is why I didn't want you to water it down --

BLITZER: That's what the president did.

COATES: The president -- in the first place. So this is squarely in the lap of the Supreme Court. Remember, Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice did not wait to find out this ruling, which I think was inevitable to everyone looking at this court and how it has ruled in the past on this ban. The inevitability combined with -- they have now a complete nine-justice panel. They now want this to be in the lap of the Supreme Court, and it is. They are going to have a balancing test they've always had, which is the prerogative of the president and his right to balance national security interests against that good old-fashioned Establishment Clause. And when the president's own words on the campaign trail and his words as an incumbent and his Twitter rants as of last week, those are going to combine to weigh that actually against the president's benign and otherwise racially neutral second travel ban. And you're seeing that today with the Ninth Circuit. You'll see more of it later on. BLITZER: This is another, Gloria, legal setback for the president of the United States. He doesn't like to lose, and he's lost with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Now he's losing with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

BORGER: Which he's criticized the Ninth Circuit.

BLITZER: Right. He's not happy about this, I'm sure.

BORGER: No, he's not happy about it. And obviously, he wants to continue the vetting. He's not happy with his attorney general. Not only because of the so-called watered-down travel ban, but also because he believes that because Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation that they may have led to the --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: All right, here's Sean Spicer. Let's listen in.

(LAUGHTER)

SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Whoever did that is getting a raise.

(LAUGHTER)

Good afternoon. As you've all by now probably heard, the president is placing a big emphasis on workforce development. Secretary of Labor Acosta and Secretary of Education DeVos, along with the president's daughter, Ivanka, and the Office of American Innovation have been involved in this effort. And Secretary Acosta had the opportunity to address this issue just a few moments ago at the president's first meeting with this fully confirmed cabinet.

So I'd like to kick it off by having Secretary Acosta come up, talk to you a little about this initiative and take a few questions.

With that, Secretary Acosta?

[13:39:54] ALEX ACOSTA, LABOR SECRETARY: Thank you and good afternoon.

I especially want to thank the work that's been done by Ivanka Trump and the Office of American Innovation to develop the proposals that we'll be talking about this week. I'll be traveling with her tomorrow to Wisconsin where we'll be looking at some excellent programs. Her leadership on this issue has been invaluable.

As you know by now, the president will be making important announcement regarding apprenticeships this week. He'll be visiting the Department of Labor on Wednesday.

There are currently six million job openings on the United States, vacant jobs that can be filled. This is the highest number of job vacancies ever. A Business Roundtable survey just last week found that 95 percent of executives reported problems finding qualified workers. Americans want to work. American companies want to hire. The issue is a mismatch between available jobs and prospective employees' job skills. This skills gap is a particular challenge in some of the fastest growing sector of the economy, health care and information technology. And it also persists in some of the more traditional sectors of the economy. There are currently 360,000 job vacancies in manufacturing. There are 200,000 job vacancies in construction. And with the upcoming plans for infrastructure, those job vacancies in construction are only going to increase.

Apprenticeships teach skills needed to bridge this skills gap. An apprenticeship combines a paid work component with an educational component. Apprentices earn while they learn. In the process, they largely avoid the substantial student debt that you see with higher education today.

The most obvious benefit of apprenticeships is a good job. Individuals who complete apprenticeship programs have an average starting salary of about $60,000 a year. Nine out of 10 are employed upon completion of the programs. Both the starting salary and the employment rate are higher than that of traditional college graduates.

Apprenticeships are also going to increase labor productivity. Apprentices hit the ground running. When they start a job, they're more able, more productive, and tend to be more loyal to the employer. Despite these benefits, apprenticeships make up only about 3 percent of the American workforce.

This administration will expand apprentices across most if not all industries. Higher education, too, should assume responsibility for promoting apprenticeships. Community colleges and four-year colleges have an obligation to work with students to educate them in skills they need to succeed.

Demand-driven, experience-based is not new. It's used, to some extent, in the health care sector. Demand-driven, experience-based education can be improved and can be used in a wide variety of sectors to further expand the workforce. Incorporating apprenticeships in two and four-year degree programs would offer students both traditional learning and skills-based learning. And this is particularly important for those students who learn better by doing.

President Trump has seen firsthand the success of apprenticeship programs in the building trades where he's very familiar. The building trades invest nearly $1 billion a year of private money into the apprenticeship program.

President Trump has made clear his commitment to expand job opportunities here in America. Apprenticeships is one important way that President Trump will fulfill that promise.

And, again, I'm very excited to work with Ivanka Trump and the Office of American Innovation as this program goes forward.

Questions?

Yes? UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) --

ACOSTA: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So how exactly do you plan to expand these apprenticeships? What is the government going to do? I guess it's our understanding that it's not necessarily you're not going to put more money towards these programs, so how are these going to expand?

ACOSTA: If you look in the building trades, there's almost $1 billion that's spent every year. That's all private-sector money. The building trades have put together labor management organizations that jointly invest in these apprenticeship programs because they know both on the labor side and the management side that a skilled workforce is critical to the building trades. And that's how it's worked for a number of years. I've talked to several CEOs. Ivanka Trump has spoken to several CEOs. There's excitement in the business sector. The private/private partnership where businesses come together with educational institutions to actually focus on demand-driven education, to focus education on the skills that businesses demand has worked in other sectors and can work throughout the economy.

Yes?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: My question is where exactly do you see these apprenticeships? Because most of the complaints against it is it's for low-paying jobs and not the higher-education jobs that you need and it amounts to nothing more than indentured servitude.

[13:45:08] ACOSTA: That's wrong. If you look at the Department of Labor data, the average starting salary for an apprentice is $60,000 a year. That's higher than a college graduate.

I was in Michigan at the Ford facility. I met with some apprentices at the Ford facility. They love it. They love it.

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: They love it. Let me finish. They love it. They are excited about it. And they are being paid a very good wage.

I should add, though, that you see apprenticeships in white-collar positions as well. There are a number of firms that we're talking to that are looking at it for areas like bookkeeping, accounting. If you look at law schools, for example, there's been conversations, even in law schools, about the need for more experience-based education. The Carnegie Commission came out with a report a number of years ago about the importance of experience-based education in law. So the point I'm making is we need to stop thinking that this is limited to a certain kind of the job sector. Experience-based education works throughout all sectors of the economy.

(CROSSTALK)

Yeah, in the middle.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Follow-up, if I may, just a follow-up.

ACOSTA: One follow-up.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But is your program geared towards the white- collar jobs or to mostly --

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: Our program is geared toward -- will be geared to all industries and all jobs. The point here is to foster private/private partnerships between industry and educational institutions so that when students go to a community college or when students are looking at apprenticeship programs in the building trades or in four-year institutions, when they leave, they have at skills necessary to enter the workforce.

In the middle, yes?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you. In the president's budget, it talks about work requirements. Also, Congress is talking about some new welfare reform for able-bodied people. Could this sort of integrate into that at all?

ACOSTA: Well, certainly, the -- one of the important aspects of this is the portability of credentials. When someone earns a skill, when someone learns a skill, it's important to signal to other employers that this person knows a certain set of skills. And so the -- I should say the emphasis is on high-quality apprenticeships. It's important to not water things down. It's important to have skills that are portable and that are indicative of quality.

Yes, ma'am?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The Office on Workforce Development, the president's budget contains about a 40 percent cut in all workforce skills programs from the last budget. If work development is a priority, why is the president calling for that? And, secondly, I understand it's has about $90 billion for apprenticeship programs, which is also what President Obama requested. How is this expanding what the last administration wants to do?

ACOSTA: Let me circle back to the point I made about private/private partnerships and what the building trades do. The building trades invest a billion dollars a year of private money to develop a skilled workforce. So I want to challenge the assumption that the only way to move policy is to increase government spending. What we're trying to measure here is outcomes. And so private-to-private partnerships, if industry is -- in the building trades' willing to work with labor to foster these programs, that's exactly, isn't that exactly what we want to see? So we should measure success based on outcomes and not based simply on spending.

Yes, ma'am?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I'm sorry --

(CROSSTAKL)

ACOSTA: I was calling right in front of you and then I'll follow-up with you. How is that?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: How do you foster these private/private relationships? Is there some executive action that will be taken? Is there a tax policy proposal? How exactly are you proposing that this would happen?

ACOSTA: So --

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I guess organically happens beyond. Sorry.

ACOSTA: I will answer in to parts. Frist, you've already seen that to a large extent as we've had round tables with business leaders, as Ivanka Trump has conducted several meetings with CEOs around the country here at the White House. And the second part to your answer is stay tuned and listen to the Wednesday announcement.

Yes, ma'am?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Is there a certain region or group of people you're trying to focus in on with these apprenticeships, especially since, even as the president is saying that the unemployment rate is doing well under his administration, there's still groups of people, be it region or it by race, or be it by gender, that still have issues when it comes to employment. Is there a focus on certain groups, certain regions or genders?

[13:50:08] ACOSTA: So, ma'am, you are correct. So the unemployment rate, I believe, is 4.3 percent. The broader unemployment rate that is the U6 rate I believe is at 8.4 percent. And as we have had discussions with CEOs that are looking at these apprenticeship programs, one of the items of discussion is a way to work with communities that you typically don't see going to the STEM fields ask other fields. And part of that discussion has been, how do you target those groups? How do you reach out? And it's interesting because apprenticeships help here because apprenticeships bring students together in a cohort model with individuals who are currently working in their field. So it allows the possibility of role modelling. An apprentice can have a role model that can provide support and can introduce them to the field. And so I actually think this is going to be a great thing to -- for expanding opportunities, for example, to women in STEM.

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So with that, you're saying women in STEM, there are still women, going down to race, the African-American and Hispanic unemployment numbers, particularly in STEM, is this administration looking to push also apprenticeships for those communities for the private/private partnership?

ACOSTA: Again, we're looking to push apprenticeships across the board, all people, all industries. This is an opportunity for everyone.

Yes, sir?

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: Sir, sir, red tie.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you, sir. You mentioned that you're targeting this towards all sorts of professions, not just blue-collar professions. How do you get around, in many states, there are laws that would prevent this sort of thing, such as the legal profession, where most states don't allow people to things like read for the bar anymore, so how do you get around regulations and state laws?

ACOSTA: Let me circle back and clarify. The question was, is this just targeted only to blue collar, and I said no. In fact, it's across the board. I gave an example where experience-based education has been advocated. I want to be clear. The vast majority of apprenticeships are not for law. OK? Let's start there. So the question about state barriers, I really think is a nonissue, because the vast majority of apprenticeships are going to be in the types of professions where students are starting out, entry professions, professions you typically see coming out of community college, professions that you typically see at most large state four-year institutions, and for those professions, you don't have those types of barriers.

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: Right behind you, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Given the advantages of apprentice programs, what are the CEOs telling you about why they aren't used much more often?

ACOSTA: I don't want to speak for the CEOs because they haven't told me why they aren't used more often. What I can tell you is that every CEO I have spoken with has made a personal commitment to pursuing these. The CEOs are excited. I attended a business roundtable event around this, and to a person, the CEOs are looking forward to it because the CEOs need a skilled workforce. And they recognize Americans want to work. We just need to marry up the desire to work with the workforce skills.

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: In the back, yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You're one of the newcomers of the administration. This is the first time we have heard from you on camera. I was wondering if you could give a broad reading of how you see the labor market currently. I'm wondering if you could give us your read on what some of the bright spots are with the job market and what some of the challenges are.

ACOSTA: The bright spots are obvious. We've had almost 600,000 new jobs so far this calendar year. The 4.3 percent unemployment rate is the lowest it's been in 16 years, since 2001. The number of job vacancies, in a sense, points to the skills gap, but it's really a phenomenal number that's quite positive. Six million job vacancies means that if we can fix the skills gap, there are six million jobs that we can fill right now. You compare that to 6.9 million individuals that are unemployed, and wow. I think one of the -- to fully answer your question, one of the challenges we need to look at is the labor force participation. There are a number of Americans that are forgotten that have been ignored and have dropped out of the workforce. Labor force participation is lower than it should be. And our hope, and Ivanka Trump's hope, and this administration's hope, and certainly -- President Trump, just this morning, referenced these individuals who are forgotten because they are the ones that elected him. Through this apprenticeship program, we're hoping to bring them back into the labor force because to have growth, we need the labor force growth.

[13:55:33] UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) -- is just a small part of bringing the labor force participation rate up. What else do you think needs to happen? Is it tax reform? Is it -- what else needs to happen?

ACOSTA: All of the above. This is a small, but very, very significant part. Because if you start providing -- if you start changing the system to demands-driven education, where educational institutions, whether they be two or four-year colleges or experience- base education institutions, are providing workforce skills, with each passing year for every hundreds of thousands of folks that go through this, those are all new jobs. But certainly, all the policies we see this administration administering, whether it be tax reform or others, is part of bringing individuals back into the workforce.

Ma'am?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: When would we see results? When would the skills gap close? And what types of jobs are we talking about versus professions?

ACOSTA: When, I think, is a very speculative question. I can't provide you an exact date.

And the second question was, I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What type of jobs.

ACOSTA: Again, what types of jobs, I think we're looking to apply this broadly across all industries. It's interesting because, as some of you know, I was at a university. And I know a student that really wanted to be a police officer. So that student majored in criminal justice. And then he graduated, he had student debt, but he didn't have a job because criminal justice does not prepare you to be a police officer. So what would things be like if actually a criminal justice degree allowed students that wanted to, to have the option of also attend a police academy. And I want to give that as a specific example of what these possibilities would be. What would a legal studies degree be like if you could actually also get paralegal or legal assistant training? There are possibilities all across that we can look at.

Ma'am?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Two things. There is an idea out there from these cities to require students graduating high school to have either, whether they say they're go to a college, the military or, indeed, a trade school, which would lead to these kinds of jobs. I'm wondering what you think of that.

And my second part of that is to really help us understand what the White House is doing with these meetings with the CEOs. Is anything being reduced to a memo of understanding or a letter, so we actually get the pledge, because I want to have more of a sense of what is out there. Nice meetings are nice. But what is the promise that you can say that people are telling you and how are you codifying it so you have it written down so you can go back to the CEO and say, you said you're going to do it, and you did it. So explain how that works.

ACOSTA: Happy, happy to answer both. First, what do we think about requirements that every student have a letter saying what they are going to do. I'll speak just for myself on this one. I worry about a requirement that requires students to do A, B or C. I think our nation is about choosing. I think you need to respect individuals' choices. And you can certainly encourage, you can say, what are you going to do with yourself? What do you want to do? But I always worry when I hear the word requirement, because I think we're about choice.

Going to your second point, I'll say, in part, stay tuned for the Wednesday announcement as to what specifically we're going to be doing. And after that Wednesday announcement, you can certainly expect quick and vigorous follow-up with the various CEOs and industry associations with which the administration has been speaking, because at least for myself, the expectation would be, OK, you said you're very interested in this. Let's sit down and let's pen something out and let's see how we can go forward.

One last -- one last question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can we get you to clarify your answer to Julie's question about the budget because there's so much confusion about this. When you're saying the president is interested in outcomes, and you come from an academic environment, is the president saying that the Labor Department has evaluated all the existing programs and you're recommending cutting grants --