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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Signs Order Aimed At Dismantling Education Department; Judge Blocks DOGE From Accessing Social Security Sensitive Data; Judge: DOJ's Response On Deportation Flights Is "Woefully Insufficient" And Demands More Answers; Dissatisfied Voters Clash With Lawmakers At Town Halls. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired March 20, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:06]
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: It's important to explain. We're bringing you this story because people have been shell shocked by high egg prices. Would that be a good enough reason, though, to try the most Florida breakfast ever?
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: It's not --
SANCHEZ: Would you try it?
KEILAR: I probably would. Honestly, I'll eat anything. But it's not farm to table. It's like pool to table, right?
SANCHEZ: Pretty much.
KEILAR: Yeah.
SANCHEZ: Yeah. Listen, people sell iguana meat and Facebook marketplace in Florida, so this is not that bad.
THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.
Enjoy your breakfast.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: It's President Trump versus the Education Department. Let's head into THE ARENA.
At any moment, the president expected to formally order the Department of Education to take steps toward its own demise. We will bring you that signing ceremony live.
Plus, voter town halls with members of Congress getting angrier and uglier. Why some big name Democrats are putting themselves out there anyway.
And this just in, a federal judge has blocked Elon Musk and DOGE from accessing Social Security personal information, at least for now.
Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Thursday. We are waiting for a ceremony to start live at the White House, where
we expect President Trump to sign an executive order that will begin dismantling the Department of Education. Now, that is something that he promised over and over again on the campaign trail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states.
We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America's youth. We want federal education dollars to follow the student rather than propping up a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Okay, so he has repeatedly said that he's going to do it. And now as president, he is saying he's going to do it.
You probably have the same question that I do. How is this going to impact me, my kids, my grandkids, my kids, teachers, my community?
Here's the thing. Many, if not most Americans want their states and local communities to have the biggest say over their local schools.
And for the most part, that's how we do it. Those communities do have that control, but there are some critical places where federal money authorized by Congress makes a huge difference to your local public schools. The first is title one. It helps schools with low income students something like 60 percent of public schools are impacted by that.
The other big pillar supports students with disabilities, and the Trump administration has promised up and down that the federal dollars for those programs will keep coming.
Here's what the Education Secretary Linda McMahon, had to say at her confirmation hearing about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINDA MCMAHON, EDUCATION SECRETARY: The Title I programs that you've been discussed will continue to be appropriated through Congress today. They go directly to the state Department of Education and then are distributed to the districts, not looking to defund or reduce any of those amounts. IDEA is the same. But might it be better served in a different agency? I'm not sure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and McMahon, by the way, couldn't say what that stood for when she was recently asked about it in an interview, but I digress.
The IDEA is the law that means that if you have a kid, a child who's born with a disability, or you have a kid who's diagnosed with ADHD, your school has to help you. They have to.
The federal government has made a commitment to help pay for it. And by the way, if you have a kid who doesn't have any of those challenges, the money helps your school get more resources to help the kids who are there, who do, so that your kids can get more of the attention that they need.
And its this federal support that one teacher at a town hall in the deep red state of Wyoming told her congresswoman that she was worried about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a teacher, and I know many other teachers who have no qualms about the federal department of education being cut. We do have concerns about our special needs students and the federal funding for IDEA and special education.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. My panel is here.
Kristen Soltis Anderson, Republican strategist and pollster; Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor; David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama; former House Republican Speaker Patrick McHenry is also here.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
David Axelrod, I actually want to start with you because I think, you know, we've seen obviously, our politics become incredibly polarized.
[16:05:07]
This Education Department situation is part of an overall effort to reshape the government that President Trump has done that obviously has generated a ton of anger at these town halls from constituents.
However, this is something that really potentially touches people, even if they don't necessarily understand how it might. And I'm curious, your perspective on whether you think what they might do here and any unintended consequences that may come of it, especially when it comes to the IDEA, what difference that might make?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I can speak to this personally because I'm the parent of an adult child who has had learning disabilities all her life, severe, and she was the beneficiary of these monies. She got additional help that she needed, for which we were incredibly grateful.
And if you are the parent of such a child, you think about it all the time. If that should go away that will be a huge void in that child's life and in your family's life.
But let's also lets talk about what this isn't. You know, it's not about efficiency. This is the smallest department in the federal government, and it's not exactly clear to me if they're going to continue all these programs, that the most efficient way to do it is to spread them around the government.
It's not a mandate from voters, actually. Kristen -- Kirsten can talk about this more readily, but two thirds of the voters don't want this to happen. It's not about returning power to the states, because, as you point out, state and local districts actually have control over their schools, and 90 percent of the funding comes from state and local sources.
This is about politics. And this is a very popular thing. The speaker can talk about this. This has been going on 150 years. This debate has been going on in some form or fashion with the Republican base.
This is a great applause line. And you heard it. And so this is chum in the water for the base. But as you point out, there may be consequences that are really significant for families across the country.
What do you think?
PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: Well, I'm interested to see if those are significant because the fact is, no, the median salary at the department of education is nearly twice the median salary of a teacher in a classroom in America today. Mentioning that is a popular thing to mention, by the way, and therefore leads to the conclusion, why are we paying people in Washington so much when our classroom teachers don't have the resources they need?
IDEA is long -- has long been underfunded, but yet we've added more people in the last decade to the Department of Education. So I think what parents see in America today and why this is so popular among Republicans is the belief that many of us have that if you emptied out that whole department, you wrote the check to the states, the classroom -- the classrooms would benefit by more money and better educational outcomes.
And if you ask teachers in the classroom, they don't in themselves see the benefit of a U.S. Department of Education to their daily lives in the classroom.
So, I would --
(CROSSTALK)
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, I saw that from a teacher in Wyoming. Yeah.
MCHENRY: This is Republican orthodoxy. Reagan talked about it all the way to today. It is. What is interesting is that this DOGE process has figured out how to change the leverage points out of Capitol Hill and into the executive branch, and we'll see what the long term play is here when Congress has to appropriate.
HUNT: Kristen, what do you -- I mean, answer to David's question. I mean, what do you see in the data? KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah, I think the
question is, is this something that voters voted for Trump because of this or in spite of this?
I mean, Donald Trump was very clear and Republicans have been clear for decades that they wanted to do this. This is not a new Donald Trump idea. Famously, I believe, Governor Perry, when he was running for president, said he wanted to eliminate a variety of departments, including this one.
HUNT: This is one of the ones he could remember.
(CROSSTALK)
ANDERSON: This is -- this is not new. It's something Republicans have wanted to do for a while. And I do think the question is for, whether this will move polls, or not or affect voters is when you shift these functions to other departments, when HHS begins being the one that is handling, are we taking care of kids with disabilities? When treasury begins handling student loans, when DOJ begins handling civil rights issues in the schools, are they being handled better by those departments or not? If they're not, then there's real potential for there being actual blowback.
HUNT: Well, and, Elliot, I would just like to bring kind of an idea into this. I mean, I take David's point that this is something that they've been trying to do for the long run. This is not necessarily a DOGE idea, but it is DOGE who seems to be doing a lot of executing a lot of these things.
Let's just remember what Elon Musk said in the in that cabinet meeting about what they've been doing and not doing and accidentally doing, and just watch it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, TECH BILLIONAIRE: So, and -- and I should say, we also -- we will make mistakes.
[16:10:02]
We won't be perfect. But when we make a mistake -- we'll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola -- Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So he was like a little bit embarrassed about having done that. But, I mean, I think my question with this, with the Department of Education is, okay, fine. If there's political support for it, okay, fine.
The money may be better spent in different places, but if you break it, the unintended consequences are potentially very difficult for a lot of families.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And without question. And look, this has been part of Republican Party orthodoxy since Ronald Reagan. At least Ronald Reagan would have had a plan for what happens the day after the department is either closed or dismantled. And there's just basic questions that Americans don't have about what would come.
I mean, you know, to Kristen's point, what happens when the Justice Department takes over civil rights, which authorities there's -- there's a raft of authorities that the Department of Education has -- some of them are mandated by statute, some are regulations, some of them are memoranda of understanding. Who gets them? Has anybody --
HUNT: Title IX.
WILLIAMS: Title IX, you know, $28 billion of funding. They've sort of waved a magic wand, sprinkled some magic dust and said it'll go to the states.
Well, okay, what states and what formula when, where -- these are questions that have been answered. Same thing with the IDEA's question, and students with learning disabilities or learning differences, how would they be administered tomorrow? And no one -- and even and this is regardless of where anybody is on this question, I don't think any American really knows what happens.
I don't know how much faith folks have in DOGE's ability with their chainsaw to plan for the future.
AXELROD: Yeah, look, I want to tell you, I think it's a mistake to mindlessly defend every bureaucracy and every employee or employee or the approach to every particular problem. I think that we live in a dynamic world. There are ways to do things that weren't available in the past. Some things have worked, some things haven't.
There is a sensible way to reform these processes. I don't think when you have a child with special needs or you're a student who is getting a Pell grant, or any of the people who are impacted by this department, I'm not sure a chainsaw is the image you want.
MCHENRY: But I would say the point of leverage still here is now shifted. Capitol Hill has -- has had this stasis for 20 years, 25 years in fact, George H. -- sure. George W. Bush tried to reform the bureaucracy and trim spending did not succeed.
HUNT: Do you trust these kids, though? Like the DOGE kids and not even Elon Musk? They're like -- a lot of them are like 20 something years old. Like, do you trust them?
MCHENRY: You worked on Capitol Hill. You covered Capitol Hill, right? The legislative branch --
HUNT: But they had less power, okay?
MCHENRY: And you're like -- your key folks were young people that are going to grind, you know, 20 hours a day. HUNT: But they didn't have, like, they could -- they could, you know,
do big things for you, but they weren't doing this.
MCHENRY: So this DOGE group is actually a little more complex than has how it's been -- been betrayed (ph). One example is a payment system with the U.S. Department of Treasury. This is hemming and hawing over the payment system, it's old code, without modern infrastructure. It needs to be reformed. And it's long been desperate for reform.
Now you have people that are high quality individuals in there trying to fix this. They're not all 20-somethings. Some of them are pretty elite folks. Just like Eric Schmidt was brought in, in the Obama administration. They're high level folks like that that are trying to do reform minded things in a methodical way, but not getting --
(CROSSTALK)
HUNT: I'll take the young people to write the code. And I'm sorry, quick, last word. We're going to have to go.
AXELROD: Okay. I want to say, when I came to the White House, you know, from the hinterlands, my first thought was, now these three agencies all do the same thing. Why isn't it one agency? And I saw how powerful the bureaucracy can be in resisting that. And there were several instances of that.
I would say Washington could use an angioplasty. It doesn't need a heart attack.
MCHENRY: All right.
AXELROD: And I fear like we're -- that we're -- we're venturing a little too far. And that's my concern.
HUNT: All right. Well, so speaking of potentially venturing too far, apparently a federal judge has some concerns about that. There is some breaking news coming in here that federal judge now blocking Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, that we've been talking about from accessing sensitive Social Security data.
Our Katelyn Polantz is with us.
Katelyn, what are the concerns and what's the impact?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Kasie --
HUNT: What is the judge decided?
POLANTZ: It's not just concerns. It is alarm. In an opinion more than 100 pages long, a federal judge has walked through why the DOGE team is no longer, according to this judge able to have access to Social Security information. She says that the way DOGE went about so far working at the Social Security Administration getting access to people's personal data, she says it was hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. [16:15:05]
They did it in a way that got 10 people at DOGE access to -- she says unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans.
I want to read a little bit of this opinion because it really is stark. How this judge has outlined exactly what DOGE has done so far, even not giving people the level of training or giving them the way in to understanding how to work with this sort of data when people at DOGE were given access to it.
She writes, the American public may well applaud and support the Trump administrations mission to root out fraud, waste and bloat from federal agencies to the extent it exists, but by what means and methods? The DOGE team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at the Social Security Administration in search of a fraud epidemic based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.
And she is telling Elon Musk, she's telling the administrator of DOGE, she's telling everyone affiliated with it they can no longer access medical records, health records, birth certificates, income information, tax information, everything the Social Security Administration has about Americans, unless its anonymized and protected.
HUNT: All right, Katelyn Polantz.
Of course, I don't have -- my panel. I don't have time to ask you, Mr. Speaker, if you trust the DOGE people with your Social Security information, but maybe we'll come back to it later in the show.
MCHENRY: I may not trust Social Security with my Social Security information.
HUNT: Well, that's a whole another level of alarming.
Much more on the effort to tear apart the Education Department. We're going to talk with a former teacher of the year, current Congresswoman Jahana Hayes of Connecticut.
Plus, a new turn in the conversation over Senate leadership, stunning new comments from one Democratic senator saying its important to know when its time to go. Just who might he be talking about?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:21:22]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back in THE ARENA.
We're looking at live pictures here. We're waiting for the president. He's going to come out and sign an executive order that will gut the Department of Education. There are still massive questions about how this is going to affect the agency, what might fall through the cracks.
Joining us now to discuss, an educator and 2016 National Teacher of the Year, Democratic Congresswoman Jahana Hayes.
Congresswoman Hayes, I'm very grateful to have you here.
What is your reaction to what the president is planning today?
REP. JAHANA HAYES (D-CT): I'm disgusted. I'm disgusted because for as much as everyone is having this conversation, I haven't heard anyone say what will happen next. I haven't heard anyone say how the services will continue to be delivered to the 49 million children who rely on special education, and I know what that looks like on the other side.
I know what it looks like in a Title I district who is relying on those funds, and I haven't heard anyone say, you know, everyone keeps saying, all of my Republican colleagues keep saying it'll be returned to the states. I haven't heard Linda McMahon, Donald Trump, Elon Musk or anyone say a check will be written to the states to make up for the funding that they will no longer receive from the federal government.
HUNT: So you're saying and we obviously are having a conversation here on the panel before we came to you. And I do want to apologize if I have to interrupt you, because we have to go to the president.
But what part of the conversation was about teachers, the impact that they see from the federal Department of Education in the classroom? Can you -- I understand what you're saying, that the money is there, but can you elaborate on that a little more?
HAYES: Well, that's just it. Teachers don't have to worry about what the Department of Education does because they protect the civil rights of students. They make sure that we have funding and resources for IDEA or special education, so that special education students can be educated alongside their non-disabled years, so teachers don't have to get in the weeds on that, because the department of education handles it.
HUNT: All right. So I unfortunately, I think were going to have to cut our conversation short and listen here to the president. Congresswoman, I do appreciate your time.
Let's listen in.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you very much, everybody.
And I'd like to start by saying that our country is doing very well. Things are, as you can see, doing quite well. Please sit down.
Before we begin, I just want to announce that I signed a proclamation a few moments ago honoring the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry's famous speech to the Second Virginia Convention, in which he declared very well-known, very famous words, give me liberty or give me death. Has anyone heard the phrase I think most of you have. And moments ago, I also signed an executive order to dramatically
increase production of critical minerals and rare earths. It's a big thing in this country. And as you know, we're also signing agreements in various locations to unlock rare earths and minerals and lots of other things all over the world, but in particular Ukraine. We're doing very well with regard to Ukraine and Russia. And one of the things we are doing is signing a deal very shortly with respect to rare earths with Ukraine, which they have tremendous value in rare earths.
[16:25:01]
And we appreciate that. And we spoke yesterday with, as you know, President Putin and President Zelenskyy, and we would love to see that come to an end. And I think were doing pretty well in that regard.
So hopefully we can save thousands of people a week from dying. That's what it's all about. They're dying so unnecessarily. And I believe we'll get it done. We\ll see what happens. But I believe well get it done.
Today, we take a very historic action. That was 45 years in the making. In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And it sounds strange, doesn't it? Department of Education, we're going to eliminate it in everybody knows it's right and the Democrats know it's right. And I hope they're going to be voting for it, because ultimately it may come before them.
But everybody knows its right. And we have to get our children educated. We're -- we're not doing well with the -- with the world of education in this country. And we haven't for a long time.
And we're pleased to be joined today by the woman who I chose because she's an extraordinary person. And hopefully she will be our last secretary of education, Linda McMahon.
Linda?
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much.
That's another interesting statement. This is a very -- it's an interesting opening, right? But it's true. And we people -- you know, it's been amazing how popular this has been. I tell people that this is what I'm doing today. And they say, oh, that's -- it's about time. Everybody says Republicans and Democrats have said it. They're all saying it.
Also with us are some terrific people. Governor Greg Abbott.
Greg, thank you very much. (APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Governor Ron DeSantis, thank you very much, Ron.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Mike Braun, congratulations on your victory, Mike. That was a big one.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Mike DeWine, thank you very much, Mike.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Jeff Landry, Jeff, thank you very much, Jeff.
Bill Lee, tank you. Governors, all governors.
Brad Little -- Brad, thank you very much. Where are you, Brad? Hi, Brad.
Jim Pillen, thank you very much, Jim.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And Kim Reynolds, these are all people very interested in education.
And, I even see Dan Patrick over there. My friend Dan Patrick.
We're joined also by Representatives Tim Walberg. And Virginia Foxx, Rick Allen, Mike Rowley and again, Dan Patrick, thank you very much. Dan, you've been a great friend of ours.
And state attorneys general. Ken Paxton -- Ken, I see you there.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Andrew. Bailey. Andrew, what a job you've done, Andrew. What? You have some good cases going. You've done a great job. Thank you very much.
And co-founder of Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice. She's been a hard worker. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tiffany.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: When President Carter created the federal Education Department in 1979, it was opposed by members of his own cabinet as well as the American Federation of Teachers. "The New York Times" editorial board, and the famed Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
History has proven them right, absolutely right. After 45 years, the United States spends more money on education by far than any other country, and spends likewise by far more money per pupil than any country. And it's not even close. But yet we rank near the bottom of the list in terms of success.
It's an amazing stat. That's -- those are two stats you don't want, the most money spent per pupil, and you're at the bottom of the list. And that's where we are, like it or not. And we've been there for a long time.
Seventy percent of eighth graders are not proficient in either reading or in math, 70 percent. Forty percent of fourth graders lack even basic reading skills, can't read.
Students in our public elementary and middle schools score worse in reading today than when the department opened by a lot.
In Baltimore, 40 percent of the high schools have zero students who can do basic mathematics. Not even the very simplest of mathematics.
[16:30:01]
I said, give me your definition of basic. And they're talking about like adding a few numbers together.
Despite these breathtaking failures, the department's discretionary budget has exploded by 600 percent in a very short period of time, and it employs bureaucrats and buildings all over Washington, D.C., and as a former real estate person, I will tell you, I ride through the streets of Washington and it says Department of Education, Department of Education. I said, how do you fill those buildings? Its crazy what's happened over the years.
I'm pleased to report that after offering these federal employees two generous buyout options, and they were very generous, and they're good people, but they were very generous -- my administration has initiated a reduction in force, and we're already cutting numbers that were really surprising to a lot that we were able to do it so successfully. And we've cut the number of bureaucrats in half, 50 percent have taken office, which is great.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Thank you.
Under the action I am taking today, a small handful of Democrats and others that we have employed for a long time, and there are some Republicans, but not too many. I have to be honest with you, but the department's useful functions and such as they're in charge of them, Pell grants, Title I funding, resources for children with disabilities and special needs will be preserved, fully preserved. They're all going to be.
So if you look at the Pell grants, supposed to be a very good program, Title I funding and resources for children with special disabilities and special needs. They're going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them.
And it's very important to Linda. I know, and it's very important to all of us. But beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It's doing us no good.
We want to return our students to the states, where just some of the governors here are so happy about this. They want education to come back to them, to come back to the states, and they're going to do a phenomenal job.
You know, if you look, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, I have to tell you, I give them a lot of credit. China is a top ten. And so we can't now say that bigness is making it impossible to educate because China is very big.
But you have countries that do a very good job in education. And I really believe like some of the governors here today from states that run very, very well, including a big state like Texas, but states that run very well are going to have education that will be as good as Norway, Denmark, Sweden and those top Finland, those top countries that do so well with education, I think they'll have -- they'll do every bit as well.
And what do you think about that, Governor? Do you agree? I think so. Ron, do you agree? I think so.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Florida. Iowa. That's right. I really believe that they'll be as good as any of them.
And then you'll have some laggards and well work with them. And we can all tell you who the laggards will be right now, probably. But let's not get into that.
But we'll work with them and were going to make them. They'll do a job. I think they'll do a job and they'll go to sections of the state.
For instance, New York, you'll have a Manhattan and you'll have a Suffolk County, and you'll have Nassau County, and you'll have Westchester County. You'll do four or 5 or 6 of them. You have upstate New York.
And those counties, I think are going to do very well. And I think ultimately Manhattan should do very well. But we'll break it down into sections, and I think it will be really, really good. And they're going to be probably the tougher ones. But I think they have a chance to do really well.
But we're going to be returning education very simply back to the states where it belongs. And this is a very popular thing to do. But much more importantly, it's a common sense thing to do, and it's going to work. Absolutely, it's going to work.
And I can tell you from dealing with the governors and others in the state, they want it so badly. They want to take their children back and really teach their children individually. Probably the cost will be half and the education will be maybe many, many times better.
So we look forward to this. I want to just make one little personal statement. Teachers to me, are among the most important people in this country, and we're going to take care of our teachers. And I don't care if they're in the union or not in the union. That doesn't matter.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: But we're going to take care of our teachers. And I believe, I believe the states will take actually better care of them than there -- than they are taken care of right now.
[16:35:05]
They'll work all sorts of systems and even merit systems. Those great teachers are going to be maybe a little bit better rewarded, and maybe that's the way it should be. But the states are going to make that decision.
But we're going to love and cherish our teachers along with our children, and they're going to work with the parents, and they're going to work with everybody else. And it's going to be an amazing thing to watch, and it's really going to be something special.
And, Linda, you're presiding over something that's so important and you're going to do a fantastic job, just like you have your whole life. I know your whole life I've been watching you. I've been watching you for a long time. She's had nothing but success.
So it's tremendous to have you. And hopefully you won't be there too long. But we're going to find something else for you, Linda. Okay?
So this will conclude what we are talking about with respect to our most cherished group of people. And that's our children. We want to have our children well-educated. We want them to love going to school. We have examples of it.
Look at those beautiful bright-eyed faces. Those -- they are so smart. They are so smart.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And with that, I'm going to come down and we're going to sign a very important document and we're going to be on our way. People have wanted to do this for many, many years, for many, many decades.
And I don't know, no president ever got around to doing it, but I'm getting around to doing it. So thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Good looking people here. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
HUNT: All right. We have been listening to President Trump talk about cuts to the Department of Education.
Worth noting at the top, he also seemed to say that a rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine will be close at hand. We should note he has been talking about that for some time, but will at least mark it as we continue to watch and report that story out.
But my panel is back here and I -- Kristen, I want to let some of our viewers into the conversation we were having here off camera in terms of how voters think about what we just saw and the differences, especially between Republican base voters and any risk President Trump may or may not be taking with those kinds of voters, versus how swing voters that decide elections may react to something like this.
ANDERSON: So something like this is going to be enormously popular with Donald Trump's base and with Republican voters, not just because its something they've been wanting to do for a while, but because for them, its a whole bunch of different issues it's government spending, it's control of the state. It now branches into things like antisemitism, and what's been going on, on college campuses. I mean. This touches a number of different important buttons. For swing voters, that's maybe of less interest.
But what President Trump said in the middle of his statement, where he was talking about we spend more per student than any other country, and we get terrible results for it. That is something that I found in a lot of data voters agree with. Now, what do you do to fix that is to start eliminating the Department of Education, the solution to that problem.
They may have some questions about that, but at least in terms of diagnosing that there's a problem that public education in this country is not doing what it needs to for the amount of money we spend on it, that is a belief that is pretty widely held.
AXELROD: Yeah, that is a huge issue, and we should be concerned about that. Our friend Rahm Emanuel keeps talking about the fact that were talking about, you know, bathrooms and locker rooms and schools, but were not talking about the fact that kids can't learn, aren't learning how to read in the classrooms. I think that's where the emphasis should be.
But the truth is, the fact is that the states and local school districts largely control their own schools. So is eliminating the federal Department of Education going to boost performance in those schools?
The Department of Education actually keeps statistics about performance, so we can follow exactly what's going on. And then, you know, he talked about Norway and Denmark, both of those federal governments are much more deeply involved in the education of their children. And he extolled the fact that they cut half the employees of the department in very short order.
And it reminds me of that old joke about the guy who jumps off the roof of a building, and he passes the 22nd floor, and a guy looks out the window and says, how's it going? And he says, so far, so good. We don't know what's going to happen when the whole department is
eliminated.
HUNT: And that -- one second, I want to bring in Jeff Zeleny, who is standing by for us at the White House about what we just heard.
Jeff, one of the things President Trump said there is that he wants to take he was very emphatic about preserving Title I and funding for special needs. So that's low income students, special needs students. He did seem to say that the money would go elsewhere.
That's explicitly not how congressional appropriations work. Congress appropriated the money for these programs for the Department of Education. He also seemed to acknowledge that Congress was going to have to do something about this.
[16:40:00]
So where do you think we stand in terms of what of this is going to actually result in real changes and what is just a show?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kasie, the easy part clearly has been done with the president's pen there, and that is no small thing. I mean, Republican presidents and presidential candidates have been talking about doing this for a long time. This is something that this president has actually done.
However, it was created by Congress in 1976, this department, and it must be dismantled entirely by congress. And the odd thing is, Congress has just appropriated funding for this department and others for most of the rest of this year.
So going forward, where these exact agencies and funding programs reside is going to be an open question, it's not a throwaway question. I mean, the federal government is under deep examination now and turmoil right now. So the fact that about half of the department staff has been laid off and more to come, it does raise questions of where -- who's going to administer these very basic but important programs for low income people, for handicapped students, and also student loans, Pell grants.
So the hard part comes now in terms of governing. And there's not a great track record here. But I will say this is one of the more orderly proceedings we've seen here. The president clearly this was a designed to be a bit of a moment, a showpiece to have students sitting behind the president there rather than simply signing an executive order in the Oval Office, which was initially the plan a couple of weeks ago. But then the White House put the brakes on that and decided to have a more --
HUNT: Fly all the governors in from across the country.
ZELENY: -- more orderly -- a privacy. Yeah, exactly.
But also, I think going forward is, you know, what is the next step here in terms of the funding for kids. And this does not guarantee that students will read better or learn more. It certainly you know, perhaps offers that opportunity, but we shall see.
But he may be long gone before any of those test scores become his problem.
HUNT: All right. Jeff Zeleny for us at the White House -- Jeff, thank you.
ZELENY: Sure.
HUNT: Elliot, you were going to jump in to our conversation.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, sure. Something else we were talking about during off camera was this line from the president. Well, Democrats, this message, Democrats in Congress might have to vote for this. It might have to make a decision on it, where he acknowledged, as Jeff talked about, in order to really get rid of the Department of Education, there has to be an act of Congress.
I will say that right now, we have the worst possible outcome, which is a gutted agency that still exists. It would almost be better to completely do away with it. Right now, you have half of the staff there, less than half of the staff there still trying to perform these functions with not much clear guidance as to the kinds of things Jeff was talking about, where the funding goes, how it's administered and so on.
So -- so the half loaf is far worse than the full.
ANDERSON: The zombie agency?
WILLIAMS: The zombie agency.
MCHENRY: So let's step back here. This is about political leverage. That is exactly what it is.
Heretofore, Republicans have had no political leverage over the administration of the state. And that means the appropriations process, the appropriations process to get a bill through the House and the Senate. The House is a majority vote. Senate is 60 votes. So in Republican led operations, Republican House, Senate and White House, the Democratic party has the leverage in the Senate, which means President Trump actually presided over a spending increase in his first term because Democrats held that leverage over him.
Now they've flipped the script. They've used every administrative opportunity they've had to reduce the federal workforce, federal employees, who are disproportionately Democratic voters. And part of what Republicans view as the Democratic base, also siloed in the DMV. D.C., where many of us call home, right?
And -- and that means the political power is not across the country as a result of -- so the leverage point that the president has found is to take action. And then in October, find if that is enough leverage to reduce the actual spending long term of the federal government.
AXELROD: Well -- MCHENRY: That's --
AXELROD: -- I would go back -- I would go back to a point I made before, which is if you're a parent of a child who is getting help, the whole discussion about leverage is not all that interesting. The question is, am I going to get the services that I've been getting? And the thing we didn't hear and the thing we don't know is, is that the case? And --
HUNT: Somebody's still going to be sending those checks from the Department of Education.
AXELROD: Exactly.
MCHENRY: How many people do we need to send the checks is the question then.
HUNT: We just know there are kids --
AXELROD: What is the answer, Congressman? I don't know.
HUNT: All right. We will actually go across the country next because there have been testy town halls for both Republicans and Democrats. We'll show you some of that.
Plus, breaking news coming. In the other case, the Trump administration is fighting in court with a judge again today saying the information they provided isn't enough.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:49:22]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
The federal judge at the center of the court battle over deportation flights is again blasting the Trump Justice Department, saying the information that the administration handed over today is, quote, woefully insufficient, end quote.
CNN's Evan Perez has been following these developments.
Evan, what have we learned?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judge Boasberg is chastising the Justice Department, Kasie, because he says that the what the justice department provided to him today, which came after the deadline he had imposed, he had given him a noon deadline to provide information, some more information about these flights from over the weekend that carried these -- these immigrants to the prison in El Salvador.
[16:50:01]
He had asked him to provide that information by noon. He said they missed it. They missed the deadline. They -- they actually provided information afterwards.
But it was not what he had requested. He had wanted more detail, more -- more information about exactly who were on those flights, including a third flight that took off after the judge had issued an order saying, turn those flights around, do not deport anybody else until we have some more information. And what he says he got was a -- was a written declaration from a lower level person at the -- at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it is not answering the questions that he was asking.
And so what now we have is, it appears, a bit of a standoff between the Justice Department and this judge, Judge James Boasberg.
He is the chief judge here at the federal court in Washington. And he says he means what he says. He wants them to provide more information.
And he can -- also giving them an off-ramp. He's saying you can declare that this is a state secret and I will go away, essentially.
HUNT: Remarkable.
Thanks, Evan, very much for the update on that ongoing standoff. As you note, between the Justice Department and that Judge.
All right. Up next, hear more from inside those town halls were seeing across the country.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:55:39]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would say this -- this is a big country, kids. Democracy is in fact messy, right?
CROWD: You're making it messy!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going to give you 30 second to just scream it out of your system. Come on. Go ahead, do it. What? You don't -- you don't want to scream now?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, please leave. Ma'am, I am not taking orders from you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are the most soulless piece of crap I've ever seen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's your opinion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Woof! Those last two interactions prompted police to end Democrat Sean Casten's town hall.
Across the country, Democratic and Republican lawmakers coming under fire as town halls become explosive forums for constituents, Democrats, Republicans and everything in between to voice their concern about DOGE or the Democrats' lack of fight.
Right now, AOC, Bernie Sanders are holding a fighting oligarchy event in Las Vegas. They are trying to. What they say is to provide space for those frustrated by the current space of politics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): We are not powerless in this moment. People are starting to put the pieces together. And ironically, the most divisive forces in our country are actually starting to bring more of us together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Our panel is back.
Congressman, these town halls have gotten extraordinarily, as you could see there, fraught from either side. I know that some Republicans have said, and I -- as someone who's covered a lot of campaign events, I totally get some of these people are activists. I am curious if you think that there is something very real going on underneath it all.
And, Kristen, maybe that's a follow up question.
AXELROD: We should note that he has the glow of a former mayor.
MCHENRY: Yes. Yes, I can happily say --
AXELROD: That glow.
MCHENRY: Right?
You know, last week you showed a town hall from a part of my old district.
HUNT: Yes, we did, right.
MCHENRY: Now, you show a friend of mine, Mike Flood, who represents very polite Nebraska.
So what I would tell my colleagues is this. Yes, there are political activists. Absolutely. There always are.
Wherever you show up, yes, there's politics and politics. Come on. Right?
But underlying this smoke, there is fire. And you need to be warned of this. I experienced 2006 where Republicans had it coming to us. I experienced 2010 when Democrats had it coming to them.
This stuff moves up and down. But if you're not awake to it, if you're not messaging well, if you're not explaining what you're doing well and justifying what you're doing well, now, you will feel the wrath, in November, a year and a half.
ANDERSON: And what I what I also think is notable about this is in all of these -- this pushback that you hear, well, this is just Astroturf, right? The term that gets thrown around to say, this is not grassroots, it's just fake, plastic activism.
You would hear that a lot during the kind of Obama post-Affordable Care Act moment where there was dismissal. This isn't real anger. This is Koch brothers funded.
AXELROD: I may have -- I may have uttered a few words.
ANDERSON: Like that now -- and now it's sort of the -- its the mirror image, right? Oh, this is all Soros funded Astroturf.
But to your point, there sure -- I'm sure there are people there who this is professionally, what they do, but there is still a lot of voter frustration out there. And I think its notable that it is even hitting, in fact, mostly maybe hitting Democrats in their town hall. I think we very well could be seeing Democrats facing their own tea party kind of moment.
WILLIAMS: I am just thrilled that I did not get rid of my skinny jeans, because it is 2009 again. No, this populist sort of uprising of sorts in America that we saw all through 2009 and 2010, it all has echoes, and we've seen it before. And I think politicians disregard it or dismiss it at their peril.
AXELROD: Yeah, I agree. Congratulations, by the way, and still fitting into your skinny jeans.
WILLIAMS: It's not pretty.
AXELROD: That that is an achievement. That is an achievement. But I do look -- this fits into the previous discussion we had. Everybody in America is against waste, fraud and abuse. Everybody in America wants more efficiency in government.
But when you get down to the grass level, the street level as to what it means, it gets a lot more difficult. And I think that's what some of these members are experiencing.
MCHENRY: Yes.
HUNT: All right. It's going to be an ongoing conversation.
Thanks to all of you for joining us today.
Earlier, I did ask my sources and friends this question. We didn't get a chance to put it up earlier. Is talk of a Trump third term real or trolling? Because this was after Steve Bannon was asked about it on NewsNation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, PODCAST HOST: I'm a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028.
CHRIS CUOMO, NEWSNATION HOST: You know he's term limited. How do you think he gets another term?
BANNON: We're working on it. I think we'll have -- I think we'll have a couple of alternatives. Let's say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So here's what my sources had to say about this. A Democratic member of Congress simply wrote in and responded, truth. Former Trump campaign aide wrote in that Bannon is just kissing Trump's A-S-S because he wants to be brought back into the White House, eventually.
Jake Tapper, will hand it over to you with that.
