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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Trump Signs Order Aimed At Dismantling Education Department; Voters Express Rage, Frustration At Fiery Town Halls; Hamas Fires Rockets At Israel As Death Toll Mounts In Gaza; Judge Rules Georgetown Researcher Cannot Be Deported; Investigative Journalist Stumbles Onto Series Of Cold Cases. Aired 5-6p ET
Aired March 20, 2025 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Could be Trump third term real or trolling? Because this was after Steve Bannon was asked about it on News Nation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FMR. WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST TRUMP ADMIN: I'm a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028.
CHRIS COUMO, "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, we'll hand it over to you with that.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Thanks, Kasie. We'll see you back in "The Arena" tomorrow.
HUNT: Thank you.
[17:00:43]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: The White House says the president is saving America's children by killing the Department of Education. The Lead starts right now.
President Trump signing an executive order just moments ago taking a controversial step towards dismantling the Department of Education. What this order aims to change and not change about education in America. The president does not have the standing to destroy the department, so how is he attempting to dismantle it? Plus, a Georgetown University researcher with a valid U.S. visa, one of the latest detained by immigration authorities. So why did he pop up on the administration's radar? And journalist Ronan Farrow with an unbelievable find in his new podcast. How his investigation into a former beauty queen uncovered a series of unsolved crimes, cold cases, including attempted murder.
Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.
President Donald Trump today fulfilling a major campaign promise, officially signing an order to begin the process of dismantling the federal Department of Education.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 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.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: While completely shuttering the department would require an act of Congress, the president is going to direct Education secretary, Linda McMahon, a former executive with World Wrestling Entertainment, to smack down the entire department. It has been conservative dogma for years, we should note, that the department gives the federal government too much control over what should be left to localities and the states. But let's take a closer look at the Department of Education. It's been around since 1979. Let's explain to you what it does.
Even before the department cut about half of its 4,200 person workforce this month, the department was already the one that had the fewest employees of any cabinet level agency. The DOE makes regulations and conducts oversight, including investigating alleged crib discrimination complaints at colleges and in K12 schools. For K12 schools, the department only provides about 14 percent of total funding. The rest comes from states and localities.
The department handles $1.6 trillion in federal student loans. In 2024, grant spending from the Department of Education totaled $150 billion. That includes Pell Grants for Special Ed and programs for schools with large numbers of students who are poor and or neglected. Now, earlier today, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said some key programs will stay under the Education Department's umbrella.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: So when it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education, but we don't need to be spending more than $3 trillion over the course of a few decades on a department that's clearly failing in its initial intention to educate our students.
(END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: Let's go to CNN Anchor and Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins.
Kaitlan, you were inside the event. It looks like you're standing where it just took place.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Still here.
TAPPER: What-- what did we learn about the plans for dismantling the Department of Education? He can't just sign something and get rid of it. That would take an act of Congress, I think.
COLLINS: Yes, Congress created it so Congress would have to eliminate it. And so far we have not seen the votes on Congress to do -- on Capitol Hill to do so, Jake. There's was actually a proposal last year, got a lot of Republican votes, but not enough to pass. Though I will note, Senator Bill Cassidy just said he is going to introduce legislation to that effect. So we'll see where that goes.
Obviously, they need Democrats to come along with that, and that seems unlikely over in the Senate, but we'll see. But as for what happened here, Jake, I'm standing inside the East Room and behind me there are rows of desks that you can see besides the signing desk that President Trump just used to sign that executive order. It doesn't eliminate the Department of Education or fully shut it down, but it does begin to dismantle it. And he did it all with education secretary Linda McMahon seated in the front row as he was saying that he hopes she is the last education secretary.
And Jake, there is real questions, of course, of the impacts of this and what it looks like, because you're right when you pointed out that this is something conservatives have wanted to do for decades. Dating back to President Reagan, he mentioned it in one of his congressional addresses that he wanted to get rid of it. But no one has succeeded or at least not come as close as President Trump did today with his executive order that he signed.
[17:05:05]
And as far as the impacts, the real questions are what it does do for those programs that still exist there within the Department of Education. Schools get about 90 percent of their funding from state and local governments. They don't get a curriculum from the Department of Education. But conservatives believe that this is going to help schools and local states. Local governments and states have more authority over what that looks like when it comes to the federal funding.
But the questions, Jake, that remain are what happened for students with disabilities, low income students, and also, of course, federal student loans and those programs. Karoline Leavitt did tell reporters earlier that the critical functions of this agency won't be touched. But obviously with the agency being so reduced, with its workforce, with its funding, that's the question of how those continue to operate and what they look like. I just spoke with Governor Greg Abbott of Texas on that matter. And Trump himself has said that he wants another agency to take over that huge student loan portfolio.
So far, we don't have any reporting that anyone has signed on to do that yet, just given what a gargantuan task that would be. But that's a big question that students have going forward of what that's going to look like here, Jake. But for now, the executive order was signed here. And these governors, several Republicans, including Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was here and got a shout out from the president praising this move today.
TAPPER: Shout out is better than saying he wants to squash him like a bug, which is a quote from Alex Eisenstein's book. Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Kaitlin is going to have much more on her show, "The Source" tonight at 9:00 Eastern here on CNN.
Let's bring in CNN Sunlen Serfaty.
Sunlen, I have to ask, how exactly will the Trump administration ensure that there will not be a shortfall in the funding for Pell Grants and student loans, et cetera, while also winding down the department?
SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a great question, Jake. We still do not know exactly how this would work. And the administration has not yet given the exact details about how the agency's core function, doling out federal money to school districts, how that would change, how would it work in this new order. Now, it does sound like potentially some oversight could eventually be shifted to other agencies. A really small but important point of what President Trump said today when he was signing that executive order.
He indicated that some programs will be fully preserved. He said things like Pell Grants, things like Title 1 funding, providing low and -- low income and rural students' money and access to education. He said that those would be fully preserve. But he also added that they would be redistributed to other agencies and departments that will take care of them.
Now, we do not have the details of that yet, but that indicates something that has long been talked about between experts and those at the agency. Also notably something that was spelled out in Project 2025, calling for a shift in essentially breaking up pieces of the Department of Education, sending them to other agencies, Title 1 funding potentially to HHS that have been proposed, Treasury handling student loans, the Office of Civil Rights potentially going over to the Department of Justice.
Again, we have not confirmed those details and we have asked those questions and are waiting to hear exactly what this calls for. But certainly major changes coming ahead for the department.
TAPPER: All right, Sunlen Serfaty, thanks so much.
Let's bring in Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien, along with Democratic strategist Karen Finney. Thanks both of you.
This your first time at The Lead. Welcome to The Lead. BILL STEPIEN, 2020 TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: It is.
TAPPER: Good to have you. Good to have you here.
Karen --
KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.
TAPPER: I'm going to skip over you for one second because Karen actually worked for New York City in the Department of Education. So I do want to start with you. Conservatives have long wanted to get rid of the Department of Education, as you heard from Sunlen. That doesn't mean that they want to get rid of some of the important things in terms of student loans or civil rights protections. But they think that the agency just exerts too much control over what should be a local matter.
What do you, what do you say to that argument?
FINNEY: Well, a couple of things. Number one, states actually set the parameters on education and adopt the curriculum and set the standards for the state, right? It's a very small percentage. What federal -- the federal government does is control. Here's how you can spend our dollars.
But more importantly, at a time having worked in New York City public schools, looking at the NAEP scores, which is our national assessments, math and reading, our kids --
TAPPER: Which are awful, by the way.
FINNEY: Which are -- that's the point I'm going to make. They were bad before COVID. Guess what? Our kids have not made up the gains that they lost. So for a lot of people hearing that we're going to cut the Department of Education, what they're hearing is, well, wait a second, our kids are still trying to make up those gains.
What does that mean for my child and our schools? Will they have the resources that they need to help our kids make up those gains? And to the point that Sunlen was making, schools are making decisions right now. How many special education teachers am I going to need? How many reading specialists am I going to need?
How many after school programs are we going to be able to run? So these finance questions are very important. And that anxiety is being passed on just parents who are saying, what's going to happen to my kid? And so the school districts are trying -- don't have answers to those questions, neither does the federal government.
[17:10:08]
TAPPER: So, Bill, the messaging component of what Karen just said is interesting because obviously conservatives are like, woo, we've wanted this since 1979. But there are conservative, liberal, progressive, agnostic, whatever parents out there who are like, holy crap, what does this mean? Especially if they have like a special ed kid or especially if they have a kid with special needs who are poor or whatever. What do you think of that argument? I'm not saying that they're going to be left by the wayside because of this, but do you think that President Trump needs to talk more about that maybe?
STEPIEN: Perhaps. I mean, this is day one --
TAPPER: Right.
STEPIEN: -- of this, right? So let's give this some time to marinate. You've worked for a city, I've worked for a governor. Every state has a department of education. They have three, four or five of them.
So don't worry, bureaucracy is not going away. It's alive and well. As a governor, governors are cheering this, right? Less mandates from Washington, less direction from Washington. Let governors do their jobs, bring education decisions back to the states, back to the class.
TAPPER: What decisions do they -- are being mandated right now? The -- you work for which governor?
STEPIEN: Christie. Governor Christie.
TAPPER: So you work for Governor Christie. What governors were told you can't do what you want to do.
STEPIEN: Look at the Democrat, governor of Hawaii, right?
TAPPER: OK.
STEPIEN: Who actually has the courage to speak up and say this.
TAPPER: Governor Green, yes.
STEPIEN: Yes. Unfunded mandates coming from Washington, you have to do this. They handcuff states. Mandates --
FINNEY: Well, but some of those mandates are you've got to get your reading scores up. Some of those mandates are you've got to make sure your fourth graders and your eighth graders, your scores have been -- you've been failing for decades or years. And whatever it is you've been doing isn't working for the Title 1 money we're going to give you. You've got to make sure that your poor kids, that you're spending the resources adequately to make sure your poor children are reading on grade level. So it's not -- when you talk about these mandates, I think, you know, conservatives have reduced this to trans, you know, bathrooms.
Who gets to go to what bathroom and who gets to play what sports when, again, we are in a national crisis, our children cannot read. They are behind in math and we're talking about jobs and careers --
TAPPER: Yes.
FINNEY: -- of the future and they're behind.
TAPPER: So, Bill, you and I are old enough to remember. Karen, maybe you are. You don't look like you are, but chronologically, perhaps you are to remember when George W. Bush was on the exact opposite side of this issue. He wanted more federal control, no Child Left Behind, he and Ted Kennedy teamed up to put more standards in, et cetera. Now, obviously that law is not the law anymore, but what of that?
What -- has there been a complete change in conservative thinking and Republican thinking on this? Or was Bush just kind of anomaly?
STEPIEN: I think the latter. I mean, literally, since 1980, this was in the Republican Party platform. Ronald Reagan ran on this and defeated, by the way, Jimmy Carter, who instituted this program. This has been --
TAPPER: But Reagan didn't get rid of the Department of Education.
STEPIEN: He tried.
TAPPER: Yes.
STEPIEN: He tried. He couldn't get Congress to go along with it.
FINNEY: It's very hard politically that we're going to see the rubber hit the road in Congress because the constituents are going to be the ones who are going to have the loudest voices about how they feel on this.
TAPPER: How will this help governors and local school superintendents get scores up?
STEPIEN: Look, these are 4,000 people in Washington, D.C. This is literally the smallest executive agency in Washington.
TAPPER: Not even anymore. It's like 2,000 since Trump took over.
STEPIEN: Yes, tight. So let's not overstate the importance of what goes on there, right? This is -- there's not innovation, cutting edge innovation coming out of those hallways. This is a funding mechanism. OK?
The real innovation and direction comes from the states, closer to the action, closer to the classrooms.
TAPPER: All right, Bill Stepien and Karen Finney, thanks to both of you.
Coming up, some of the incredible anger we're seeing at town halls held by members of Congress, Democrats, Republicans. The response from one lawmaker on camera. Is it what Democrats are saying about the party's leadership behind the scenes?
And just in, a response today from the Justice Department that a judge calls woefully insufficient. The judge's new demand of the Trump administration, that's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:17:53]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. HARRIET HAGEMAN (R-WY): I get it that there are people here who dislike me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
HAGEMAN: Here's the only thing that DOGE has done, which is it's so (inaudible) me --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Can you hold the sign?
HAGEMAN -- how obsessed you are with federal government. But here's the thing --
MULTIPLE SPEAKERS: Boo.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: It's so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with federal government, says the congresswoman. Interesting. That's Republican Congressman Harriet Hageman. You might remember she beat Liz Cheney in the primary in Wyoming. She faced a hostile crowd at a PAC town hall last night in Wyoming.
The congresswoman did get some cheers, we should note. But overwhelmingly, we have to acknowledge it was jeers, boos, even some profanity as she expressed her support for President Trump and DOGE and Trump's policies.
Tempers are not only flaring at Republican events, we should make clear. Democrats also feeling the heat. A pro-Palestinian protester confronted Democratic Congressman Sean Casten in Illinois last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. SEAN CASTEN (D-IL): Just because you don't always get your way does not mean we are not in a representative democracy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what, you are the most soulless piece of crap I've ever seen.
CASTEN: That's your opinion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Soulless. Soulless.
CASTEN: Sir, get off --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are soulless.
CASTEN: Sir, sir, get off --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are soulless. CASTEN: Get off the stage right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Honestly, sir, if you think that he's the most soulless piece of crap you've ever seen, you really need to get out of Illinois. Spent some time in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill.
After that incident, police shut down Casten's town hall. Most of the anger hurled the Democrats is not for the pro-Palestinian side. It's for not fighting back against Republicans as Republicans help enact President Trump's agenda.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm pissed. I am angry. They can go F themselves is how I feel about it. So what are we doing? We need to fight back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are not interested in hearing that you are in the minority. We know that. We want you to show some of the backbone and strategic brilliance that Mitch McConnell would have in the minority.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: I do long for civics classes in America. After voting last week to pass a Republican funding bill, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faces growing pressure to give up his leadership position. Here's what one constituent asked a Democratic senator in Colorado, Michael Bennet, at a town hall in Colorado last night.
[17:20:06]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When will you be calling for him to be replaced as minority leader?
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): It's always better to, you know, examine whether folks are in the right place. And we're certainly going to have that conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Not exactly. That's never going to happen. And with me now, Chuck Todd, host of "The Chuck Toddcast" and former "Meet the Press" moderator and CNN political commentator Jonah Goldberg.
So, I want you guys to listen. Here's Casten again from Illinois. His town hall was shut down by local police after the pro-Palestinian protesters. Here's what he had to say to CNN earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CASTEN: We're going to have to be much more deferential to what the local police feel is a safe way to do the town hall. But I think it's important for us to continue to make sure that we have these avenues for civil discourse and disagreement.
You know, many of my colleagues who are either not inviting anybody who disagrees with them into the room, which as you can tell is not something that we do, who are choosing not to have them at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So first of all, we're going to have to be much more deferential what local police feel. Good thing they didn't defund them. But that's a separate issue, I suppose.
What's going on here? This is not obviously just activists. It's obviously -- not obviously just liberal big money funders doing this.
CHUCK TODD, HOST, "THE CHUCK TODDCAST": No, this is -- look, this is real. I think you have -- I mean, we've seen this growing and you know, first we saw it on the right, you know, and then you've seen it play itself out. Now you're seeing it on the left where I do think that the establishment wing of the party's got to worry about a liberal Tea Party that's coming. There seems to be this anger of do something. And like I said, it was a similar thing that ended up fueling Trump and Trumpism over a 10-year period. So, you know, one of the warnings --
TAPPER: The do something.
TODD: Right. Whatever the do something is, even if it means banging your head against a wall, which a lot of times it's so funny that you heard that one guy say Mitch McConnell was so effective at doing all these things.
TAPPER: Yes.
TODD: He didn't stop Obamacare. He didn't stop -- you know, there wasn't -- there wasn't many things he could -- he could really do when he didn't have the votes.
TAPPER: Yes.
TODD: So, and this is a case where Democrats don't have the votes. I will say this, you know, social media is pretty coarse and our entire way that we communicate now --
TAPPER: Oh, boy, you're going to get help for -- on Twitter for that.
TODD: Oh, my God, for saying that social media is coarse. And the only thing I would say is it does -- you know, for a lot of times, we used to say, oh, all the anger is only on social media.
TAPPER: No (inaudible).
TODD: We're actually now. Now we're seeing it. TAPPER: Yes.
TODD: And you wonder, is this a 20-year -- you know, as we have sort of erased decorum online, we now have completely erased decorum in person as well. It's possible.
TAPPER: Jonah, when you heard that angry, presumably Democrat constituents say, like, I want you to do something, there very seldom seems to be an actual prescription. It's not, you know, enact the filibuster or whatever. It's just do something. What should, could, would Democrats do?
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I mean, first of all, I'm a little more skeptic of this is the new progressive Tea Party thing, which a lot of people are talking about these days, simply because I think structurally, the reasons why you got the Tea Party thing had a lot more to do with the broader economy right now. A lot of these things are about people who are very politically engaged, and when you're very politically engaged, they're going to these things. But I've yet to see whether it's -- it doesn't -- it doesn't seem like we're in a Tea Party moment yet in the polls. I'm waiting for it to be a little more organic.
In terms of what you can do, I mean, I agree with Chuck entirely. One of the things I think is kind of funny is because you hear this all the time, both sides of the culture war think their side always loses and the other side always wins --
TODD: Yes.
GOLDBERG: -- which is evidence that somebody is wrong. And maybe everybody is wrong. Like, so to Chuck's point, Mitch McConnell, things have not gone swingingly for him in the last 10 years, despite his strategic brilliance. But one thing you could do, which Mitch McConnell would not have done, is not do it -- I should put it this way, Chuck Schumer should have done what Mitch McConnell would have done. Pick a strategy --
TODD: Right.
GOLDBERG: -- and stick to it.
TAPPER: Right. He changed. He kind of flipped.
GOLDBERG: He -- he -- he was like, he pulled the stool out from the entire House caucus and said, we're all in for this strategy. Got them all to vote on it, got them all to message on it, and then at psych, actually, we're going to vote for this thing. Made everybody really frustrated, made everybody who believed the messaging really pissed off, and everybody who said, OK, I'm going to do it as a team player really pissed off because they got overextended.
TODD: This is what --
TAPPER: Yes.
TODD: -- feels primary challenges, right, which is when you over promise --
GOLDBERG: Yes.
TODD: -- something (ph) to deliver, right?
TAPPER: What -- yes.
TODD: This is what happened to the right all the time. We're going to stop Obamacare we're going to do this or we're going to -- and they couldn't do it and then that person would get primaried and replaced by somebody like I am willing to shut the government down over.
TAPPER: What -- what do you make of the -- the -- do you think Chuck Schumer is going to last?
TODD: I'm surprised he's there in the first place.
TAPPER: Really?
TODD: I thought after the debacle of 24 for the leadership of the Democratic party that it was a house cleaning moment. Now I know the Senate is not a place that is overly -- that's the -- you know, it's when everybody else is making change then the Senate will finally --
TAPPER: It's a retirement home.
TODD: Correct. I totally accept that premise that the Senate is always slow on the uptake. But you know, when you look at this gene (ph) -- so Biden was leaving the stage, even Pelosi has left the stage the only octogenarian still on stage is Chuck Schumer.
[17:25:12]
TAPPER: I don't think quite.
GOLDBERG: But septuagenarian.
TAPPER: Yes.
TODD: He's close. He's --
TAPPER: Closer than us is.
TODD: He is -- he is -- it is.
GOLDBERG: He presents octogenarians.
TODD: Very late 70s. And so I'm just surprised he wanted to do the job.
TAPPER: Yes.
TODD: You know, once you -- like, it's time to pass it on. It's not a lot of fun to be sending --
GOLDBERG: He's like Richard Gere in "An Officer and a Gentleman." TODD: Yes.
GOLDBERG: He's got no place else to go.
TODD: Correct. He doesn't know what else to do.
TAPPER: Nice.
TODD: But I -- look they should have a generational change and I don't know why they haven't.
TAPPER: Thanks to both of you.
Coming up next, Hamas firing back after Israel launch its attacks on Gaza following Hamas refusing to turn over the hostages. How far might this phase of the conflict now escalate?
And just in, a judge is ruling on the Georgetown University researcher detained by immigration officials. Why was he detained? We'll have that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:30:18]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: In our World Lead, Israel, the government of Israel says for the first time since the ceasefire ended, Hamas launched rockets at Tel Aviv and released this video. The group that the U.S. considers a terrorist organization claims that it, quote, bombed the city. But Israel says it was only three rockets that hit in the Gaza territory, resulting in zero casualties. But the death toll is climbing in Gaza over the past few days because the government of Israel has continued punishing airstrikes, launching multiple new ground operations against Hamas.
CNN's Jeremy Diamond is in Tel Aviv. And Jeremy, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, is facing a lot of heat for this renewed offensive, including from the families of as yet unrecovered, unreleased hostages.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jake. Not only the families of the hostages, but also former hostages released during this two-month ceasefire who have expressed serious concerns about what this renewed offensive means for the hostages who are still alive in Gaza.
We understand, of course, that from those hostages, they recalled some of the moments when the bombings restarted after the last ceasefire collapsed, for example, and talked about their extreme fear, including Keith Siegel, who talked about that just this week, that American- Israeli hostage who was released during the ceasefire. But that hasn't stopped the Israeli prime minister from doing exactly what he said he would, which is ramping up Israeli attacks in Gaza.
Today alone, 85 people were killed, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, bringing the death toll in Gaza well past 500, 200 of whom are children, according to that same Palestinian Ministry of Health. And the Israeli military is also ramping up its operations on the ground, carrying out ground operations not only in northern Gaza, but also new today, now also moving into Rafah in southern Gaza as well. Jake?
TAPPER: President Trump has been quite supportive of the Israeli military's actions of the last few days. His national security spokesman told CNN today that Hamas chose war. Are the chances of ceasefire talks resuming anytime soon remote, non-existent?
DIAMOND: Well, as we understand it, Jake, the mediators have already been furiously working to try and revive this ceasefire. But so far, there's no indication that these talks are gaining any traction whatsoever. The Israeli military is continuing to ramp up these attacks. And it's also important to note, as some of the opponents of the Israeli prime minister here in Israel have pointed out, there is a budget vote, a critical budget vote at the end of this month.
The Israeli prime minister needs his right-wing governing coalition for that, that same right-wing governing coalition that has been pushing him to restart this war. Some thinking that there may be political considerations involved in Netanyahu's national security decision-making as well. Jake?
TAPPER: All right, Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv, Israel, for us. Thank you so much.
Back in the United States, breaking news. Just moments ago, a district court judge said that a Georgetown University researcher who had been detained by U.S. immigration officials on Monday cannot be deported, at least as of now.
The Trump administration accuses Dr. Khan Suri, who is an Indian national on a visa, of, quote, spreading Hamas propaganda. The Trump administration alleges that Suri has a close connection to a senior advisor with Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group. CNN's Tom Foreman investigates this latest arrest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A flurry of men in black masks, brandishing weapons, grabbing a Georgetown University fellow as he returned home at night. That is how a lawyer describes the arrest of Dr. Badar Khan Suri by ICE agents. Never mind that a letter from a school official says, we are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity.
The Trump administration insists Suri, now being held more than 1,000 miles away in Louisiana, was actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism with close connections to a known or suspected terrorist. It fits neatly into claims by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that academics legally in the country can be legally booted out.
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: This is not about free speech. This is about people that don't have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card, by the way.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Those comments came amid questions about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, Palestinian rights activist and permanent U.S. resident. Khalil says immigration agents locked him up for exercising free speech in protest about the Israel-Hamas war. CNN has now obtained images of the flyers that a White House official says is the Hamas propaganda distributed by the group organized by Khalil, a claim Khalil's lawyer denies.
[17:35:03]
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We have a zero- tolerance policy for siding with terrorists, period.
FOREMAN (voice-over): And there is the case at Brown University of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, deported to her native Lebanon after the White House learned she attended the funeral of a slain leader of another U.S.- declared terrorist group, Hezbollah.
KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We're going to keep this press conference on topic.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Administration officials are answering few questions about this case or the others, no matter how hard reporters press. But online, the White House mocked the doctor from Brown in keeping with the stance the President long had during his campaign.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and anti-Semitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home. They go back home. Enjoy your life.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: The White House and its team likes to invoke the word terrorism a great deal and suggest all these grand, terrible crimes here. But they aren't offering a lot of proof for that. And in fact, Jake, what they're charging these people with largely, what they're pushing is the idea that somehow they're just undermining foreign policy for the U.S.
TAPPER: Right. That's -- that's a legal justification.
FOREMAN: Yes, they say that's against the law enough and reason enough to push them out. But the courts are having a say now, and they're saying maybe not.
TAPPER: Interesting. Tom Foreman, thank you so much.
Coming up next, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, Ronan Farrow, the unsolved crimes he uncovered while just checking out the backstory of a former beauty queen who was trying to become a source. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:40:59]
TAPPER: Welcome back. In our Law and Justice Lead, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow set out to talk to a woman who said she was going to provide a potential lead on a political story. But as Farrow tried to assess her credibility as a source, he realized that her entire life in and of itself was a story worth telling. It turns out this woman lives in one of the country's wealthiest gated communities and was involved in a series of cold cases, including accusations that she tried to kill one of her former husbands. In fact, her current husband as well. It's all explored in Farrow's new podcast called "Not A Very Good Murderer" out today on Audible.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RONAN FARROW, HOST, "NOT A VERY GOOD MURDERER" PODCAST: Why do you think there have been these sort of multiple allegations around you?
CECE DOANE: What multiple allegations around me?
FARROW: Well, Regina's claim that you tried to kill Jim, Chuck's claim that you tried to kill him.
C. DOANE: They're all alive.
FARROW: I only ask because, you know, most people don't field multiple attempted murder accusations.
C. DOANE: Is Chuck still alive?
FARROW: Chuck is still alive.
C. DOANE: Is Jim still alive?
FARROW: Jim is still alive.
C. DOANE: Apparently --
JIM DOANE: I guess she didn't do a very good job.
C. DOANE: I didn't do a very good job.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: And Ronan Farrow joins us now. Ronan, what a wild story. So in that clip that we just played, we heard Cece's current husband defending her, even though Cece is accused of trying to kill him via the classic murder weapon Viagra. No one was ever killed. Cece was never convicted of attempted murder against Jim or against her previous husband. Tell us how you decided to do a podcast about her.
FARROW: Well, on a very basic level, the details that you mentioned and other kind of Russian nesting dolls of mysteries, one within another that I uncovered as I was vetting this source, were just so arresting to everyone that heard of this, that it became clear that it was a true crime podcast. Then also the relationship I had with this source, Jake, as I was trying to fact check, as I was trying to vet her, became so volatile. And there was a sort of obsessive component of the relationship with the way she was calling me constantly and personalizing things. And, you know, at one point, the relationship actually gets sort of violently confrontational.
That -- that the arc of this, and it's -- it's four years of interviews, so you really get to see a lot of growth and change in that relationship, in the vetting process, and in what's happening in the country, felt arresting and also more than that, a microcosm, I think, for the lack of trust in journalists, the current disinformation age we're living in, because this is someone who, as I uncovered in investigating these various cold cases, was in profound denial about events in her own life, and also steeped in a disinformation culture politically.
And -- and I hope also illuminating about how journalists are struggling to confront that with careful fact checking.
TAPPER: So as --
FARROW: So I wanted to put it out there. It felt like this was a -- a story that was worth telling as we confront these challenges in our profession.
TAPPER: Yes, no, absolutely. And -- and on top of all that, it's just a great yarn. As explosive as the attempted murder allegations are, as you note, it doesn't really even begin to cover all the wild subplot she's accused of arson and abuse. She claims to be the victim of abuse, claims to be the victim of armed robbery.
You -- you spent so much time with her. Why do you think she's at the center of so much drama?
FARROW: Well, you know, there's a psychological answer to that. There are people that a lot of us encounter in our lives, who, I think, command attention interpersonally by sowing discord and turmoil. And we really go deep into profiling how that kind of mental health situation echoes through families. You know, her estranged daughters are major characters in this, the way in which she's fractured her family with this chaos, and this alleged criminal activity is a big part of the plot.
[17:45:13]
TAPPER: What do you hope that viewers, listeners, I'm sorry, what do you hope that listeners walk away from when they're done with this -- this compelling podcast?
FARROW: Well, I -- I hope people have an appetite for a sense of what it's like to be a victim of a sensitive, complicated portrait of a character who has, you know, charming, really compelling traits in her. I mean, part of what makes this series so compelling is that she is a compelling person.
TAPPER: Yes.
FARROW: But then who also has apparently done all of these objectionable things. So I hope there is an embrace of this kind of rounded, nuanced portraiture. The world is not manichean, people are not black and white. And she represents that it is an exploration of all the complications. I also hope people walk away with an appreciation for what investigative journalists still do.
Because this is a situation where I go in exploring a pretty explosive political lead. And then I have to face in real time as a white hot political news cycle is playing out high stakes decisions about what do I have enough to run. And the exploration of these true crime mysteries is in service of a more significant goal of, OK, does it clear a really high threshold of being bulletproof?
TAPPER: The journalist is Ronan Farrow. The podcast, which is on Audible, is "Not A Very Good Murderer." Thanks so much for joining.
FARROW: Thanks, Jake.
TAPPER: After weeks of turbulence in Washington, D.C., Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are on the road and they're trying to channel some of the voters' anger. Take a listen. Coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:51:32]
TAPPER: In our Health Lead today, the discourse wages on over the best way to prepare your food. When should you use seed oils? What's the healthiest method? Should you switch over to beef tallow? CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is here to answer all your burning questions on this topic.
So, Sanjay, Will from Passaic, New Jersey asks, which cooking oil contributes to increasing one's cholesterol levels? Which cooking oil helps lowering your bad cholesterol? Good questions.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: This, yes, this is the -- the most salient question, I think, in the whole thing. Because a lot of people who are worried about heart disease, they think about this a lot. I -- I'm a guy in my mid-50s. I think about this. Let me show you this -- this graph really quick. We put this together for you, Jake. I don't know how well you can see that. But basically, there are different types of oils.
And some of them are very high in saturated fats. And some are lower in saturated fats. At the top of the list, coconut oil, palm oil. But then butter and beef tallow. Those are the ones that are incredibly high in saturated fats. As a general rule of thumb, if your oil is solid at room temperature, it's going to be really high in saturated fats.
So, you know, look, if you're worried about cholesterol, if you're worried about heart disease, you want to avoid saturated fats. We've known this since the middle of the last century. I will say, overall, the second part of the question, lowering your -- your bad cholesterol, things like olive oil and avocado oil do a pretty good job of that. Avoid saturated fats. Consider oils like this instead.
TAPPER: Sandra from Wisconsin asks, what kind of oil should you use when cooking at high temperatures? We have a foodie here who knows what she's talking about.
GUPTA: Well, you know, a lot of people think about this because, I mean, one of the concerns is you've got the oil in the pan. It's starting to degrade and decompose at high temperatures. That can be problematic. So you want to find oils that have a high burn point, a high cooking point, for example. So we found those. The most stable oils based on temperature when heated, extra virgin olive oil, top of the list. And then a virgin olive oil after that, coconut oil, peanut oil, avocado oil.
You know, for -- for a while it was believed, Jake, that -- that olive oil would actually decompose at high temperatures. And just over the last couple of years, there's been these studies looking at that and finding that olive oil stays actually pretty stable. So again, it's lower in saturated fat, stays pretty stable. Sometimes kind of expensive, but a pretty good option for Sandra.
TAPPER: You just mentioned coconut oil is stable. Dorothy wants to know if coconut oil is bad to use for cooking.
GUPTA: So it's got a lot of calories and it's got a lot of saturated fat. I mean, we use coconut oil in our house sometimes, use it sparingly. But, you know, keep those things in mind. You're going to get a lot of calories there and a lot of saturated fat.
It's gotten a little bit more attention recently because of its presence of what are called MCTs, medium chain triglycerides. That's those are abundant in coconut oil. And that can sometimes be beneficial for different, you know, processes in the body, including your brain. So it can be good, but you know, you've got to obviously keep and take into account that you're going to get a lot of that saturated fat and calories.
TAPPER: So Curtis from Canada has the question that I wonder ever since RFK Jr. did his steak and shake photo op. Is beef tallow better than seed oils?
GUPTA: Yes, that -- that is the -- the question, right? And I guess it sort of depends on your perspective here.
I think for -- for most people who are worried about saturated fat, heart disease is the biggest killer in the United States of men and women alike. You're going to get a lot of saturated fat with beef tallow. That -- that's the concern.
[17:55:04]
Seed oils came about as a result of the concerns about those saturated fats. So, you know, the saying goes everything in moderation except moderation. But I think with -- with beef tallow in particular and butter, you know, we know that there's a strong correlation with heart disease.
So if you're choosing oils and you want to find something that has good burn point and low saturated fat, those plant-based oils, specifically olive and avocado oil are probably going to be a better bet.
TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Olive and avocado. Hear him? Olive and avocado, that's the answer to your questions, everybody. Thanks so much, Sanjay.
GUPTA: You got it. Thanks.
TAPPER: Coming up, that response from the Justice Department today that led a judge to label it woefully insufficient. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:00:06]
TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. This hour, the voters on --
