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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Two Of 10 New Orleans Escaped Inmates Still At Large; Ex-Police Chief Serving Murder & Rape Sentences Escapes Prison; Second Suspect Surrendered In Crypto Kidnapping Case; Sources: Trump Considers New Sanctions On Russia; Vegas Bitcoin Conference Draws High Profile GOP Guests; Swing District Voters Sound Off On Trump's Second Term; Rare Brain Condition Forces Billy Joel To Cancel Upcoming Tour. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired May 27, 2025 - 17:00   ET

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

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All right. Laura Coates doing an excellent job covering this trial. Thank you so much.

And be sure to watch the special edition of "LAURA COATES LIVE", Diddy on Trial, tonight at 11:00 p.m. Eastern.

And that does it for us.

Jake Tapper is standing by for THE LEAD.

Jake, you're in New York today. Take it away.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right, I am Manu. Thank you so much, sir. We'll look out for "The Arena" tomorrow.

RAJU: Yes, indeed.

[17:00:33]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: At least two convicted killers on the loose in two different manhunts in the United States. The Lead starts right now.

Dramatic new body camera video showing the capture of wanted inmates who escaped that New Orleans jail. But the search is still on for two more from that prison break. And there's a new manhunt added to that search. This one in Arkansas for a former police chief turned felon. How a disguise helped him slip away in broad daylight.

Plus, President Trump escalating his fight with Harvard University, this time ordering all federal agencies to cancel all of their contracts with the university. How far can this go? And what exactly is this fight truly about?

And Trump's new frustration with Vladimir Putin. The president saying Putin's gone absolutely crazy. And today warning the Russian leader is, quote, "playing with fire." What sources say that really means.

Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. We begin with our national lead and the ongoing manhunt in not one but two separate cases of inmates on the run. First, brand new video from police in Huntsville, Texas, showing the capture of two more of those 10 inmates who escaped from that New Orleans jail on May 16. This makes eight of the 10 back behind bars, but two remain on the run, Derrick Groves and Antoine Massey, both considered armed and dangerous.

And as of this morning, authorities have charged 13 people in connection with their escape, including a maintenance worker with an Orleans Parish sheriff's office. Then, of course, there is a brand new manhunt, one that started Sunday in Arkansas.

A former small town police chief escaped prison while serving decades long sentences for murder and rape. We do not know exactly how 56- year-old Grant Hardin orchestrated his breakout, at least not yet. But it appears that he walked out of the prison wearing a disguise.

CNN's Ryan Young has the latest on these ongoing manhunts. Plus a closer look at the dark past of that escaped former police chief.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Newly released body camera footage showing the moments two more escaped inmates from a New Orleans jail were taken back into custody. Their capture in Huntsville, Texas, just north of Houston. The Other inmate caught in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, just an hour from New Orleans. That makes three inmates in the last 24 hours now back behind bars more than a week after their shocking escape. Two of the 10 fugitives are still at large and considered armed and dangerous and street savvy.

Antoine Massey, with a record of breaking out of jail, this one his third escape. And Derrick Groves, who was convicted of killing two people, U.S. Marshals say they probably aren't acting alone.

BRIAN FAIR, DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL: In hiding or somebody's helping them. It's not as easy as just driving around looking for them.

YOUNG (voice-over): Another escaped inmate capturing headlines today, this time in Arkansas, just south of Missouri, authorities say Grant Hardin, a former small town police chief turned convicted killer and rapist managed to get out of an Arkansas prison in broad daylight Sunday.

NATHAN SMITH, FORMER BENTON COUNTY PROSECUTING ATTORNEY: He's extremely dangerous. He's already proven that he has no moral core.

YOUNG (voice-over): The 56-year-old has been serving a 30 year sentence for first degree murder and two 25 year sentences for two counts of rape, according to prison and court documents. Officials say Hardin walked out of a controlled and secure entry point of the prison, disguising, quote, "Makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement."

SMITH: He's a sociopath. Prison's not full of people who are all bad. It's full of a lot of people just do bad things. Grant's different.

YOUNG (voice-over): Hardin was profiled in two T.V. docuseries that aired on Investigation Discovery, owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, CNN's parent company. In 2019, the docu series shattered features Hardin's wife believing police had the wrong man.

LINDA HARDIN, GRANT HARDIN'S WIFE: Please, somebody believe me.

YOUNG (voice-over): Then in 2023, the true crime documentary "Devil and the Ozarks" profiled both of Hardin's violent crime cases. This is the story of one of the most evil and dangerous criminals I have ever prosecuted because the person does not at first appear to be that way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was right there and nobody knew.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG (on camera): Ongoing investigation. Look, I just got off the phone with a couple sources. They say the tips for Crime Stoppers have been coming in, especially in that New Orleans case. They are getting better information. They feel like they're closer to trying to find the two men who are still out there. But look, there's an ongoing investigation and what happened into that jail.

[17:05:03]

And of course now when you add Arkansas into it, there's a lot of questions that have yet to be answered. We have to figure all this out. Too many folks getting out of jail, especially when it's not scheduled. The manhunt active and ongoing. Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Ryan Young, thanks so much.

Joining us now, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams.

Mr. Williams, you've caught eight of the 10 that escaped. Do you have any leads on where those remaining two escaped inmates might be?

JASON WILLIAMS, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, ORLEANS PARISH: We've got a lot of leads. The Crime Stopper tips are coming in my office. My digital forensics team has been scouring through hours and hours of jail calls, using some AI software to figure out who they were in contact with the night before, hours before to figure out where they may have been heading. Their circle is tightened as people who are assisting are being arrested. That circle is tightening around these last two.

TAPPER: So you personally prosecuted one of the two inmates still on the loose, Derrick Groves. He was convicted of two charges of second degree murder, two charges of attempted second degree murder. When we spoke last week, you said you were personally afraid and feared for the safety of your staff as well as witnesses. Do you feel that adequate protective steps have been taken?

WILLIAMS: Everything that we can do has been done. I do believe that it's necessary for the city of New Orleans to step up talking about municipal government and add or augment security around the courthouse for jurors for potential witnesses in other cases. This is going to absolutely have a ripple effect on other witnesses, other jurors, and we want to make sure they realize that there's adequate protection at a courthouse when they come to testify and do their service.

TAPPER: So you recently said that the New Orleans sheriff, Susan Hudson, waited nearly a week to have the scene of the jailbreak processed for evidence by crime lab technicians. And you said that she only did so at the request of the district attorney. What impact did that processing delay have? And why do you think it was never officially requested?

WILLIAMS: You know, it boggles the mind that it would not have been done in the moments or within an hour of this escape. The chief of police quickly got the head of the crime lab over. But every single moment that goes by when a scene is not processed, you're diminishing the value and reliability and the chances of actually being able to recover good evidence. And that's a very serious problem.

It's vitally important that we catch these fugitives, whether it's Arkansas, whether it's Louisiana, whether it's. But it's also critically important that we know how they got out and who helped them get out. And we can't --

TAPPER: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- wait until they're in custody to do that.

TAPPER: So Sheriff Hutson called the jailbreak a failure, which is obvious and true, and she suspended her reelection campaign. What are your thoughts on her performance? Do you think she should step down before the end of her term?

WILLIAMS: Look, I mean, that's a job and a decision for other folks to make. My job right now is collecting every piece of evidence that's still available, working with my team to go through these jail calls to see if we can figure out where these last two are. The politics of how this unfolds will be determined by the people of New Orleans (inaudible) I've ever seen in terms of care, custody, and control, which is -- the only job of a jailer in any municipality.

TAPPER: So as of this morning, authorities have charged 13 people in connection to the escape, including a maintenance worker with the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Department. How deep do you think this goes? Was there a conspiracy that was long planned?

WILLIAMS: There certainly was a plan. How long that plan was, we don't know. We sent a preservation letter out requiring her to preserve all lawns, records, videos so we can figure out who was, where and when to see how deep this goes so that we can answer that question you just asked with real specificity and prove it to a jury in a court of law.

TAPPER: Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams, thanks so much for coming back. We appreciate you coming and answering our questions.

Let's bring in CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller, who joins me now here in studio. So three escapes, escapees rather remain on the run. Two from the New Orleans prison break, one from Arkansas. How serious is the danger to the public, do you think? JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, it's always serious because there's two things that play against each other, no matter which end of this tube you're squeezing. First, you target their friends and associates, anything that could be a support network to cut them off.

Then you start to squeeze the friends and associates. That's why there's, you know, a dozen arrests for aiding and abetting there. But at the same time you do that, then you increase the potential motivation for I've got to get a weapon, I've got a carjack, somebody, I've got to get a car, I've got to put distance there.

[17:10:08]

So they're very dangerous.

TAPPER: How common are prison breaks? I mean, when you see that image of the former Arkansas sheriff appearing to be wearing a disguise, we can bring that up, does it make you suspect he had inside help or outside help?

MILLER: He is perhaps the most interesting of all of these. I mean, if you look at the bar graphs of prison breaks, they go up and down depending on conditions, usually about when staffing is very low and budgets are being cut. But 91 percent of escaped prisoners get captured in a relatively short time.

But here's something about Grant Hardin. He was the chief of police in Gateway, Arkansas. He was on the police department in Huntsville and Fayetteville, in Eureka Springs. But at the time, he allegedly committed, well, not allegedly, he's pled guilty.

TAPPER: He's convicted. Yes.

MILLER: The 1997 murder where he shot a man point blank, stopped on the side of the road, motive still unknown, he was working for the Arkansas Department of Corrections. So he has not only the talents and training and instincts of a lawman who's been a criminal most of his career, but he also has an insider's knowledge of, as a corrections officer, of how everything works there.

And whether you're talking about the career criminals in New Orleans or this police chief who escaped in Arkansas, every minute of every day, if you're doing a life sentence, somewhere in the back of your mind or in the front, you're thinking of, how do I escape? You're watching for every opportunity. He clearly put that knowledge to work.

TAPPER: So you said 91 percent of people who escaped from jail or prison are caught. So that means 9 percent get away forever?

MILLER: Well, not forever, 91 percent are caught within a relative short of time.

TAPPER: Caught within relative short amount of time. OK.

MILLER: You know, there are those who figure out how to disappear, which is increasingly harder with things like not just fingerprints, but now DNA. The fact that we have this digital dust trail that we all leave behind us, but some people manage to disappear.

TAPPER: I have to ask you as long as I have you hear about this other fascinating story. There's a second suspect who surrendered to police in the case of cryptocurrency trader who was allegedly kidnapped, tortured and held hostage in an apartment here in Manhattan in New York. He was there for weeks. What do we know about the second suspect and what exactly was going on here?

MILLER: Well, this was an individual that, you know, he was talking to when the victim was in Italy and they were -- he was just coming here to have meetings about doing a joint venture in crypto when the first suspect, who was arrested on Friday when the victim escaped, and the second suspect literally allegedly spent days torturing him to get the passwords to unlock his crypto fortune. And apparently they intended just to steal it. There wasn't any real deal that they were going to negotiate. The real question here is, and then what?

TAPPER: Right.

MILLER: Were they going to just steal it? And as the victim told police on Friday, this was the day that they said they were going to kill me. Were they going to take the money and kill him? What was the end game?

TAPPER: Well, I don't think that they deserve the benefit of the doubt. I mean, if the victim says he was going to be killed, I mean, it seems --

MILLER: But there's so many people involved in this, Jake.

TAPPER: Yes.

MILLER: You've got the servants who are at the house. So you've got a -- you've got like a maid and a butler who were kind of on the periphery of this while it was going on. Not alleged participants, but, I mean, it's the kind of thing you notice.

TAPPER: Yes, one would think.

MILLER: And then you had other visitors, including allegedly prostitutes who took part in and seeing some of this. So this story --

TAPPER: Yes.

MILLER: -- is only at its weird beginning.

TAPPER: Man, this crypto -- this crypto thing is the gift that keeps on giving. John Miller, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up, the crypto conference going down now in Vegas. The special speaking invites to Trump administration officials that make you wonder how much money folks are really making off of this rather novice financial market.

[17:14:10]

But first, Trump's new plan to cut Harvard University off from all federal funding. Here's the $100 million question, why?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our politics lead, the Trump administration is going for round two in its fight with Harvard University. Today, the U.S. General Services Administration, or GSA, said that it intends to cancel all remaining federal contracts with Harvard University, alleging that the school, quote, "continues to engage in race discrimination," unquote. This after Trump tried to stop international students from studying at the elite university but was blocked by a federal judge. CNN's Kaitlin Collins is with us.

Kaitlin, CNN has learned that the U.S. State Department is going to take the vetting of international students a step further. Tell us more about that.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake, a question still of what that looks like, but we do know that changes to that process are coming. And that's according to a cable that was sent out to all embassies and consulate across the globe. It was viewed by my colleague Jenny Hansler over at the State Department.

It was signed personally by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio himself. And it essentially tells them to stop and to pause all new student visa appointments that they may be as they are seeking to change and expand their vetting and social media measures.

Now, looking at what this means and how they actually wrote this out, Jake, I'll quote from the cable where in part it says they're conducting a review of how they do things now, the existing operations. And they say based on that review, they plan to issue new guidance on expanded social media vetting for all such applicants.

Now, it's a question of what that vetting looks like now, Jake, and whether or not it could slow down this process, if it's quite extensive, if that could potentially create a backlog. But it really is just the latest move we've seen when it comes to the intense scrutiny on these international students that we're seeing from the Trump administration, in part because one, we already know a lot of student visas were revoked by the State Department. And then also there was a move that they took last week in particular against Harvard, trying to prevent the school from enrolling any new international students.

[17:20:17]

Now, obviously that's been tied up in the courts. We'll see what that looks like. But it does raise real questions here, Jake, about what this process is going to look like going forward and what it means for students and whether or not it does make some international students hesitate from applying to United States schools or trying to go there, given it's not totally clear what this new vetting process is going to look like or what it will entail. But it's not surprising when they want to look at social media, Jake, given the protest we've seen against the war in Gaza that has played out on so many campuses here in the United States. That isn't part of the process that we've seen here. We'll see how much further it goes now as a result of this review.

TAPPER: Yes, but with more than a million students, I mean, that's a lot of social media profiles to be --

COLLINS: Yes.

TAPPER: -- to be looking at.

Kaitlin, this just in, President Trump just pardoned a reality T.V. show couple that had been convicted of fraud.

COLLINS: Yes, Jake. I had been hearing about this about a month ago because Savannah Chrisley was in town around the Correspondents Dinner weekend. She's someone who's a familiar face to people on the Trump campaign trail. She actually spoke at the Republican National Convention last summer. The president has just pardoned her parents, Julie and Todd Chrisley from the reality star -- the reality show "Chrisley Knows Best."

They had both been serving sentences since the summer of 2022. They were convicted of attempting to a conspiracy to defraud banks, other tax crimes as well. They had maintained their innocence and they had been fighting this out in the appeals courts. But they have been serving out those sentences respectively, Jake. And one of the president's top aides who sits outside the Oval Office just posted a video of him calling Savannah Chrisley to inform her that he would be pardoning her parents, something that I was told by sources had been under consideration for several weeks now.

And now he has actually pardoned them.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Kaitlan's going to be back with new reporting on her show "The Source with Kaitlan Collins." That's tonight and every weeknight at 9:00 Eastern only here on CNN.

In our world lead once again this week, President Trump is showing his unabashed frustration with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Today President Trump posted, quote, "What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean really bad." That's in all caps. "He's playing with fire."

That fire might come in the form of new sanctions, according to sources talking to CNN. Joining us now, CNN Political and National Security Analyst David Sanger of the "New York Times." He also wrote the book "New Cold Wars, China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West."

David, thanks for joining us. What bad things is President Trump talking about that would have happened to Russia had it not been for him?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: You know, it's really hard to know. I mean, maybe he is thinking that the United States would continue to support Ukraine and send more arms and ammunition, air defenses, although I think Congress probably had pretty much had its fill of that, Jake.

Certainly there would have been more sanctions and perhaps the $300 billion that the Russ inexplicably left in European banks would now be in the hands of Ukraine. But the fact of the matter is, Jake, he keeps saying we're going to be sanctions, this and that, but he hasn't really done anything that would hurt Vladimir Putin in the slightest. In fact, he all but exempted him from the -- from the tariffs.

TAPPER: Liberation Day, tariffs. Do you think that there is any amount of sanctions that would prompt Putin to stop the war?

SANGER: It's pretty hard to imagine that. First of all, this is, in Putin's mind, pretty existential. He's lost, you know, a huge number of people, up to a million by some estimates, maybe a bit fewer, who are both wounded or dead. It's a point right now where there aren't that many more sanctions the west can put on Russia. I mean, even in the best of days, there wasn't much we bought from Russia.

The only thing that could really hurt them is if the U.S. and the Europeans were able to cut off the purchases of Russian oil and gas that China and India are making. And I'm not sure that President Trump's willing to go do that.

TAPPER: You wrote an analysis about Trump's exasperated message on Sunday when Trump said that Putin has, quote, "gone absolutely crazy." Trump has historically shown great deference to Putin. You say, quote, "Missing from Mr. Trump's zigzags is an explanation of why he has been unable to use his relationship with Mr. Putin to persuade him to halt the violence, even for a 30-day cease fire," unquote why do you think, David, why do you think Trump has not been able to leverage his relationship with Putin?

[17:25:10]

SANGER: Well, you may remember, Jake, that back during the campaign and even during the Obama administration, in the run up to President Trump's first campaign, he said Vladimir Putin doesn't respect Obama or Biden and he respected Mr. Trump and therefore that's this could get solved in 24 hours.

He's discovered that he had a two hour conversation with Vladimir Putin last Monday and the result this weekend was the biggest air attack on Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine that we've seen during three years of war, mostly aimed at civilians. So clearly he has overestimated what his influence on Vladimir Putin is. And you're seeing that in the kind of frustrated tweets he's sending out and in his comments to reporters.

TAPPER: Yes.

SANGER: But the question is, what's he willing to back that up with?

TAPPER: Yes, totally. On this crazy charge, when Trump said that Putin's gone absolutely crazy, let's dive into that for one second because Putin has long wanted Russia to flex its muscles. He's long thought the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster in the history of the 20th century. He said that. But there is this craziness question.

In 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, I spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron about why -- about Putin and why he started this war. Macron talked about those two other elements that I just mentioned. But he also talked about, and he also talked about the lack of respect that he thinks Russia gets from the world. But he also talked about this other thing about his psyche. Think a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON, FRANCE: I would say this is a post COVID-19 consequence isolation, post-isolation.

TAPPER: Because he's been so isolated?

MACRON: I think so. I think so. Post COVID-19, there was a totally new situation. So he had a window of opportunity and he decided to completely break the linearity of this situation and go to the war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: It sounds good when he says it with his French accent, but he's basically saying that --

SANGER: Yes.

TAPPER: -- Putin went a little nuts during isolation and COVID. And I've heard that from a number of world leaders. What about you?

SANGER: Yes, I've heard the same thing and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. But there's also nothing in Vladimir Putin's recent behavior accelerating the war while talking about how he'd be willing to do a ceasefire under the following nine conditions. That's inconsistent with things that he has done, you know, at least since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, which also seemed crazy to us. Right?

So you know, the president being surprised that Vladimir Putin is acting as a brutish authoritarian who's invading a nearby country or a bordering country, I mean, there's not a whole lot new there. We are horrified by seeing what Russia is doing. But were you really surprised?

TAPPER: Yes, exactly. It's not like the second Chechen War was any saner.

David Sanger, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Coming up next, the MURPHY --

SANGER: Yes.

TAPPER: -- crypto money market and the Trump family all in on it. Even featured in a bitcoin conference going on right now in where else? Vegas. How new investments are raising new questions about conflicts of interest among good government groups. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our Tech Lead, the guest list at this year's Bitcoin conference is stacked with more than just crypto VIPs, Republican lawmakers, White House officials, and Vice President J.D. Vance are all set to take the stage in Vegas. The President-elect or President's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is going to speak in just a few hours. He's been a key player in the family's growing crypto empire. And tomorrow, his brother Eric will join the conference. Eric co-founded a crypto mining firm called American Bitcoin.

The week-long Vegas event is giving the industry a chance to hear directly from the administration that has vowed to turn the U.S. into the world's crypto capital. Vicky Ge Huang is -- Huang, sorry, Vicky Ge Huang is joining me now from that conference. She covers cryptocurrency for the Wall Street Journal. Vicky, what's been the focus of the first day so far?

VICKY GE HUANG, REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Thank you for having me, Jake. The first day so far is really sort of focused on the industry. There's a lot of talk about the strategic Bitcoin reserve that President Trump unveiled a couple months earlier.

And then there's just a lot of vendors, Bitcoin miners, Bitcoin companies, kind of trying to network with each other and trying to sort of cut business deals. And then you also have this Bitcoin bazaar on site at the conference where there's a lot of sort of small businesses selling Bitcoin-themed clothes, gadgets, and other stuff. So it -- it seems like the first day so far is very much focused on the industry and the cryptocurrencies themselves.

But I think tomorrow we'll really see things pick up where, as you mentioned, Vice President J.D. Vance is going to speak at 9:00 a.m. and people are expected to line up for his speech as early as 5:00 a.m.

[17:35:03]

TAPPER: There are a number of ethicists in good government groups who are very concerned about corruption when it comes to the links between the Trump administration, the Trump family, the crypto industry. What are you hearing?

HUANG: Interestingly, today is also the day that the start of the Bitcoin conference also coincided with President Trump's media, social media company, the Trump Media and Technology Company's announcement that they're going to invest as much as $2.5 billion in Bitcoin. And so that kind of sort of regenerates this debate that has been going on for a while in the crypto space that President Trump's family has sort of gone into all corners of the crypto business. For example, setting up his so-called decentralized finance company called World Liberty Financial. And then he saw Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are part of this Bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin. A lot of government watchdog groups have come out to say that this is sort of unprecedented blurring of the lines between business and government office.

So those conversations are continuing. At the Bitcoin conference, there's a general sense of euphoria. A lot of the Bitcoin proponents see President Trump's family crypto ventures as sort of a validation in how far this industry has come from being the rebels and outsiders to right now sort of converging with mainstream finance, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Washington. So that's kind of the focus here as well.

TAPPER: All right, Vicky Ge Huang, thank you so much. Enjoy the conference.

Gains today for the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ on the heels of Trump hitting pause again on a massive 50 percent tariff on the European Union. Good news for investors. But how do voters feel about all the tariffs and the uncertainty? Well, CNN went back to Battleground Pennsylvania to a battleground district to ask.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:41:34]

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, we love these installments of John King's all over the map series. Four months into Donald Trump's second turn -- term, John went back to the swingiest swing district in Pennsylvania, right around the Allentown area, where voters say they are still waiting for things to get better.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Prodart is a small family business. Todd Harder, the boss. His parents among the workers trying to keep things going.

TODD HARDER, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: So we're kind of slow right now. The money's tight. People are complaining that the rent's really high in a lot of places. Just the cash flow isn't there.

KING (voice-over): Just a handful of employees now. Fourteen when business was better. Harder voted for Donald Trump. Here's him promise tariffs will bring a new manufacturing boom but sees the opposite so far.

HARDER: It's going to hurt us.

KING (voice-over): But in the future, for the next generation, it might possibly help them out.

This is Pennsylvania's seventh congressional district. Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton. more rural as you head north and west. Trump won it narrowly last year. And voters like Harder also helped flip the House seat from blue to red.

But Harder isn't sure he will vote for the new Republican congressman again. Not sure he will vote at all. He is 55, but had never voted until this past November.

HARDER: You have man-on-man kissing and everything else and all the transgenders. You didn't have that before. You know, there is a God. I'm Catholic. I was just so disgusted just how everything is in this world. You know, it's going to crap.

KING: You going to stay?

HARDER: Am I going to stay in America?

KING: Yes. You going to stay -- stay as a voter?

HARDER: If I feel that things are running properly, yes.

KING (voice-over): Michelle Rios is on the other side of the MAGA culture wars. She helps run a DEI program at a local college. Helps students with questions, ranging from financial aid and tutoring to rumors about immigration crackdowns.

MICHELLE RIOS, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: Coming from an immigrant household, I know that my purpose is to serve, and so it really is a struggle when there are things preventing that.

KING (voice-over): Rios worries about funding cuts for DEI programs and also to non-profits she works with in the bustling Latino community here, like this food bank.

RIOS: And it just instills fear, and I think that's essentially what the last few months have done to people.

KING: If you had one minute with President Trump, what would you say?

RIOS: I don't think I would want a minute. And that's just being honest. There's a lot of things that come to mind, but I just don't think I would know where to start.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: And Jake, you know this area quite well. You grew up not that far away. What jumped out at me, most striking, Todd Harder, other Trump voters we talked to up there, they still support him, they still like him, but they have lived in the Lehigh Valley their entire lives. They've watched their dads. They've watched their grandparents even go through the cycles in manufacturing. So when he says tariffs are going to fix things like this, they say, sorry, Mr. President, it doesn't work that way.

TAPPER: Yes, there's even a song about it, Allentown. This district also offers something of a textbook, like a laboratory for presidential campaign strategy, right?

KING: And midterm campaign strategy. This district has everything. It's one of the five or six most evenly divided congressional districts in the country. And so you have voters like Todd Harder, had never voted before. He's been eligible since 1988. The MAGA culture wars brought him in. Does he stay? He voted for Trump. Does he vote again in a midterm election for Republican congressman? That's one test. Think about these blue-collar voters. Can Democrats get them back?

[17:45:19]

When I started doing this, if you were a union autoworker at Mack Trucks, you were likely a Democrat. Now a lot of those guys vote for Trump. And that one district, Jake, has 21, 22 percent of the population is Latino. Donald Trump jumped his support in Pennsylvania among Latinos from 27 percent in 2020 to 41 percent last year.

If Democrats are going to come back next year, they've got to get blue-collar voters back. They've got to get Latinos back. Pennsylvania 7 is a great laboratory and a test for that.

TAPPER: Indeed. John King, thanks so much. A big announcement from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The HHS Health and Human Services Department is no longer recommending COVID vaccines for pregnant women or for healthy children. We're asking CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta about this change next.

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[17:50:26]

TAPPER: Paging Dr. Gupta. Paging Dr. Sanjay Gupta. We're paging Dr. Gupta in today's Health Lead. Entertainment -- entertainer and songwriter, Billy Joel, the piano man, recently canceled an upcoming tour and revealed, tragically, that he's coping with an alarming brain condition that, frankly, most of us in the public have never heard of. Sanjay, you're a neurosurgeon. What is this?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, this is something known as normal pressure hydrocephalus. People may have heard of hydrocephalus before water on the brain. Typically, you think of that in babies, but it can happen in adults as well. It's a neurological condition. Let me show you what -- what it looks like. Picture's worth a thousand words, maybe -- maybe. On the left side is what the brain should look like. That's an image of the brain.

Those black areas in the middle of the brain, that's normal fluid. That should be there. Those are called ventricles. On the right, I think it's pretty clearly different. Those black spaces are much larger. That is fluid that has grown in size, and that is what normal pressure hydrocephalus is.

That is the condition Billy Joel has. That's what's causing some of these symptoms that he's been describing and led to him canceling or at least postponing his tour.

TAPPER: And how common is this, and -- and is there -- is there a treatment? GUPTA: Yes. So, you know, it's interesting because it's not that common, but in the world of neurosurgery and neurology, it's something we think about a lot because normal pressure hydrocephalus can cause symptoms such as difficulty with walking, difficulty with cognition, difficulty with bladder control.

That can sort of overlap with lots of other conditions, Alzheimer's disease, for example, Parkinson's disease. So when someone comes in with those sorts of symptoms, they will often get a brain scan and the chance that maybe this isn't Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, that in fact it is normal pressure hydrocephalus, which is very treatable. So not common, it is rare, but it's something that we certainly think about all the time.

TAPPER: Sanjay, while we have you, I also want to get a reaction. HHS Secretary RFK Jr. announced today that they're no longer government, is no longer going to recommend the COVID vaccine for healthy children and for healthy pregnant women. He said it's common sense, good science. What does the science say about the vaccines?

GUPTA: You know, I think -- I think there's a couple of things. First of all, you know, I think it's fair to say that for a lot of kids, if they got COVID, it wasn't -- it didn't amount to a lot other than a bad cold for them, and also that there is a lot of immunity now in the community, either through vaccination or because of natural infection as well.

The concern is this, Jake, the virus changes. Unlike measles, when you get an inoculation, a vaccination should last you for life, if not a very long time. With flu, with COVID, we know the virus can change, and I think that's part of what's driving the thinking on getting more regular sort of shots. When it comes to kids, again, they are less likely than adults to get sick.

But let me share some context with you. If you look over a few-year period, how many kids do you think were hospitalized with COVID? Close to a quarter million between the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2024, quarter million. And around half of those kids, Jake, were considered healthy kids. They did not have preexisting conditions. So that's -- that's the challenge, you know.

There could be kids who seem perfectly healthy. They get COVID. They develop long COVID, so persistent symptoms, or they get really sick and require hospitalizations at much, much lower rates than adults, certainly older adults, but it still happens quite a bit.

I found puzzling in particular, though, the second part of the thing, which was around pregnant women. Pregnant women, according to a study that was actually published by the FDA commissioner, a paper that was published by the FDA commissioner, pregnancy was considered a condition that put you at higher risk of getting seriously ill, pregnancy. Why?

Because when a woman is pregnant, their immune system is naturally suppressed to some extent. That allows them to carry a pregnancy, but also puts them at a higher rate of infection. So the fact that it's no longer recommended for pregnant women is really puzzling. It's important for pregnant women, important for the unborn baby as well because they get some of the protection of a pregnant mom getting the -- the vaccine.

So it doesn't make complete sense. It doesn't follow the science. More importantly, it doesn't even follow their science because they just wrote about pregnant women just a few days earlier, and now they're saying no longer recommend it.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much. Let's put up the QR code for viewers so you can scan it and ask your own questions about normal pressure hydrocephalus, which Billy Joel has. You can submit a question about that. Sanjay will be back tomorrow on The Lead to answer some of your questions.

[17:55:06]

The power of a presidential pardon is next. Trump extended one to a former Virginia sheriff who was supposed to report to prison today, long record of alleged corruption, convicted corruption. So how'd this guy make the pardon list? Well, we'll tell you coming up.

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[17:59:52]

TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. In this hour, President Trump is taking new steps today that could affect colleges and universities across the United States. The White House stopping all new appointments for international students who want to come to the United States to study as it moves to increase the vetting of applicants. How will this work?