Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Chaos and Confusion over Musk Email; Shan Wu is Interviewed about Musk Email; GOP Hardliners Threaten to Block Budget Plan; William Attig is Interviewed about DOGE Cuts. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired February 25, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This chaos and confusion just part of everyday life for federal workers right now.

All right, pushback from hardliners in his own party as he tried to pass a budget plan (INAUDIBLE) vote happen today and as officials scramble to make the base ready for the hundreds of migrants the Trump administration wants to detain there.

I'm Sara Sidner, with John Berman. Kate Bolduan's out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking this morning, new Republican pushback on Elon Musk and his confusing orders to millions of federal workers. Pushback from Congress just moments ago. Also pushback from within the administration itself.

Overnight, Musk said that federal workers now have another chance to justify their jobs or they will get fired. The president said they could get semi fired if they don't follow those orders. But officials with the administration itself, they pushed back and let it be known the response is voluntary. You won't get fired if you don't respond. Sound confusing? Well, just moments ago, right here (INAUDIBLE) said that all this is sending the wrong message in the wrong way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): I think some of this is happening too fast and furiously. There are rash decisions being made. And it needs to kind of slow down a little bit and involve the people who are actually appointed to head these agencies to incorporate efficiencies and changes.

BERMAN: Sounds like you think Musk went too far in this one case.

MALLIOTAKIS: Well, yes, I do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, CNN's Katelyn Polantz is with us. Alayna Treene is at the White House.

First to the White House and Alayna Treene. Any effort to sort of clear up this confusion, Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: There's just been more of it, honestly, John. But look, I actually do want to just address what the congresswoman said. Obviously, as you mentioned, she is a Republican, which is notable. But it's also very emblematic what she said, of what I've been hearing from people within the Trump administration itself, which is, you know, they support this idea of wanting to (INAUDIBLE) in government, trying to see if there is waste, fraud and abuse, and acknowledging that cuts should be made. But they are questioning and raising concerns about the way in which it is happening. That chainsaw approach, rather than the scalpel being, you know, far more swift and quick with these cuts and other moves that Musk and DOGE are making, rather than having a more thorough review process. So, I found that notable.

But just to get back into some of what, you know, the latest on this is. There's been so much confusion and questions of who to listen to. I mean we've had federal employees tell CNN that they do not know which, you know, email to respond to. You have Musk saying if you do not respond initially by that deadline last night, you would be forced to resign. You hear the president saying, yes, you could be semi- fired. But then you have different agency heads, who are these peoples, you know, direct bosses saying, do not respond to this email. That includes places like the Department of Justice, the FBI, secretary of state, et cetera. All people who are handpicked and hand- selected by Donald Trump.

And to add to more confusion of all of this, you know, even employees who were at the agency that sent this email at the office of personnel - Office of Personnel Management, they didn't have guidance until last night around 6:00 p.m., telling them that actually this email would be voluntary despite being strongly encouraged.

And then we heard Musk weigh in once again, saying, that "subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance." He's referring to these employees. He said, "failure to respond to a second time will result in termination."

So, look, I think a lot of this as well is kind of symbolic of what we've seen DOGE and Musk do so far. There have been a lot of confusion around a lot of what DOGE has been doing and a lot of questions about, one, not just Musk's authority. I'd note, of course, he is a special government employee. He was not an elected representative. He was not Senate confirmed. But also, you know, we've seen this happen with some of the other initiatives and rollout they have. I'd remind you of the fork in the road initiative, the one about the deferred resignation or so-called buyout. There was a lot of confusion about that. There was also confusion about that move to pause federal grants and loans that was ultimately reversed by the White House. So, this is a common theme now that we've seen with some of the other things that DOGE has tried to do.

But importantly here, John, of course, is where is the president on all of this? He, of course, is the one who is going to be calling the shots on the administration. And he is standing by Musk. Over the weekend, he said he actually wants musk to be more aggressive. And then this is what he told reporters in the Oval Office yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you don't answer like you're sort of semi fired or you're fired.

I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, John, and also, just, of course, to put a bigger point on all of this and to bring this back to the real-world consequences of some of these things, there are real people who, you know, these jobs are their livelihoods and they are really trying to figure out what they should be doing.

[09:05:05]

They're afraid of getting laid off. They're afraid of being forced to resign. They want to make the right move.

And we've heard a lot of concern and fear from employees themselves who are saying, you know, we don't know how to move forward. So, hopefully, we can get some more clarity on this today.

BERMAN: Well, there is no clarity. I mean you have Elon Musk saying you'll get fired and the president saying semi-fired and the administration itself saying voluntary, don't worry about it in any way. So many questions.

Alayna Treene, stand by, because there are also legal questions and judges not getting answers.

Let's get to Katelyn Polantz on this.

What are the questions and what aren't the answers?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, there aren't a lot of answers right now, but the question is, what is DOGE and what is Elon Musk in the federal government? There have been, by my count, almost two dozen lawsuits challenging Musk and DOGE in different ways. Two really big cases where people are saying Musk just shouldn't have any authority to do what he's doing, and then a dozen more cases or so over privacy concerns of DOGE accessing data that may be sensitive in various agencies. And in order for the courts to respond to those lawsuits in an emergency way, like right now, to stop things that Musk or DOGE may be doing, they have to know what it is.

And so yesterday was the first hearing where a judge really dug in with about 30 minutes of very pointed questions to lawyers from the Justice Department representing the Trump administration, asking, what exactly is this guy doing? And who are the people working for if they are affiliated with DOGE and they're going into agencies like the Treasury Department, getting access to sensitive payment data.

The questions came from Judge Kollar-Kotelly in the D.C. district court. Here's just a sampling of what she had to say. "Where is Mr. Musk in all of this?" "Is there an administrator of USDS" - that's the U.S. Digital Service, DOGE, "at the present time?" An administrator is important because it's specified in the executive order from Trump setting up DOGE. She also asked rhetorically, "who's involved? Who's in charge? Who's giving them direction?" I would hope by now we would know the structure of DOGE. And the Justice Department lawyers in that room, they sighed more, very audibly, than they gave any answers because they just don't have them. That's what we heard over and over again.

The only thing they could say about Musk, he's an advisor to the president. But the judge did come back to them and say, you know, this is actually pretty important, guys, because if you can't articulate the power that Musk has and where people are getting direction from, I can't tell - the judge can't tell in the federal court if they're getting direction through the proper chain of command in the federal government, somebody that would be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, which Musk doesn't appear to be. To that the Justice Department lawyer said, well, there is a secretary at the top of the Treasury Department who has been confirmed by the Senate, and yet there still has not been clarity on exactly how the people working, at least in the Treasury Department, are doing what they're doing with data on behalf of DOGE.

And the judge also, John, I should point out, had a lot of social media posts from - from Elon Musk to read out loud, and that did not help things either.

BERMAN: Yes. Audible sigh always makes for an interesting legal argument.

Katelyn Polantz, thank you for that explanation. Our thanks to Alayna Treene as well at the White House. Appreciate both your reporting on this.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, let us discuss this and more with defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Shan Wu.

OK, Shan, got a lot of questions here. A federal judge grilling the Trump Justice Department, as you just heard reported there by our Katelyn Polantz, and they simply cannot come up with an answer as to exactly what DOGE is. If they cannot answer that question to a judge, then how will any of these cases go forward?

SHAN WU, DEFENSE ATTORNEY AND FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: The answer is, in my opinion, in almost all of these cases, they should be frozen. I mean they can proceed as a matter of a lawsuit. But at the first step, as we saw in one of the cases with the federal teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers, there's a TRO imposed just to freeze this. And a big part of why those TROs are being granted, and why I think they should be granted across the board, is because these answers aren't very clear.

I mean the main themes in these lawsuits are, of course, violation of privacy laws and violations of the APA, Administrative Procedures Act, because there is no procedures going on whatsoever.

But if the government can't answer that, really it's got to be frozen right now because it's a per se violation. There's no authority to do anything right now because they haven't articulated who they are.

SIDNER: I wanted to ask you that. What is Musk and DOJ's authority? The president couldn't seem to answer exactly what he is legally.

[09:10:02]

He called him a patriot, which is not a legal term.

WU: Right.

SIDNER: What is the authority that they are basing this on? They have not been confirmed.

Musk, nor the group of - of his DOGE guys have been confirmed by Congress. So, can you give us some sense of what their authority is to do these firings?

WU: From a legal sense right now, forget about the burden of proof, we just don't have any information to understand what category to put them in. We're speculating kind of like making their arguments for them.

If they were regular government employees, if the head of the agency has engaged in some sort of normal administrative procedure act process, some of these things maybe could pass traditional scrutiny as not requiring a statute passed by Congress. But in this situation, we're just extrapolating from these things. Even Musk's role. You know, first he was not a government employee. Now he's a special government employee. Let's not even touch upon the problems for his lack of disclosures, potential conflicts of interest and who looks at that besides Trump saying, oh, no conflicts there.

So, the answer is - is really unknown. And if you have a legal posture where the government is unable to articulate who they are, what safeguards are in place, what is their authority, then everything should stop right now. It's hard for the judges, obviously. I mean, there's so much confusion. I mean one analogy I'd make is if you had a surveillance camera during a bank robbery, but the camera is actually a microscope. You're not going to get a great view of the robbery that's going on. And that's one of the problems with legal focus is, it's got to be very small and minute in a lot of ways, and it's hard from a single perspective like that, such a microscopic perspective, to take into account these gigantic problems that are happening.

SIDNER: Yes, ultimately, you think that Congress would also have to step in here. So far they've been mum when it comes to the power of DOGE and Elon Musk.

I do want to ask you a question, and I don't love snark, but I just had to ask, what is the definition of semi fired? Is there a legal definition for that or -

WU: No, there's not. So, not to be a snarky, but it's just not a legal definition at all.

SIDNER: This is part of the confusion, is it not?

WU: It's like - is Musk a government employee? Kind of.

SIDNER: Right.

WU: Right.

SIDNER: Shan Wu, I made you laugh, and that was my whole, whole thing today, can I make Shan Wu laugh? You are usually a very serious person. It's nice to see you smiling. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

WU: All right, good to see you.

SIDNER: All right, ahead, GOP hardliners are still on the fence about Speaker Mike Johnson's budget strategy, casting doubt on his ability to advance Trump's agenda. So, will Johnson have the votes to go forward?

All right, also, the air traffic controller's union is firing back at Elon Musk's email, calling the demand to justify their jobs actually dangerous. We'll explain why they say that.

Plus, an early legal blow to the "Associated Press" fight to get back into White House events. What a federal judge is saying about the AP's battle with President Trump over the use of the Gulf of America versus the Gulf of Mexico.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:48]

BERMAN: All right, developing this morning, does Speaker Mike Johnson have the votes? Unclear. And it's over a big issue. Basically the starting point for the entire Republican agenda. Johnson can only afford to lose one Republican vote on the floor. But so far, more than one says they might be leaning against all this.

Let's get right to CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill kind of for the latest count this morning in the hallways.

Lauren, what are you hearing?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm standing right outside the Republican conference meeting where the Republicans are going to gather this morning and get some more guidance from their leadership about whether or not they're going to go forward with this vote later this evening to take the first step to trying to advance the president's agenda. As you noted, the margins are really tight. And one of the challenges for Mike Johnson right now is that he has members on the conservative side who believe that the spending cuts are not severe enough. Then he has people who are running for re- election in swing districts, who have deep concerns about how deep some of the spending cuts that are outlined in this budget proposal are, and what impact it could have on programs like Medicaid specifically. So, that is the really difficult position that Johnson finds himself in because, as you noted, he can only afford right now to lose one vote.

Now we'll see if Democrats have full attendance. If they don't, perhaps that that margin for error grows a little bit for Speaker Mike Johnson.

But we heard earlier this morning from Steve Scalise, the majority leader, just before he went into this meeting, saying that he does believe that they could vote today.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): We're going to be moving the House budget on the floor later today. So, you know, probably around 6:00. We've got to do some of the procedural motions earlier, around 1:30, debate the bill. It will be a robust debate on that bill, as there should be. You know, and we want to get our country back on track, deliver on the promises and the mandate that President Trump was given. And the budget does all of those things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And now this is just the very first step, John, we should point this out. This is really just a blueprint. It gives the House committees directions for how to proceed to the next part of this negotiation, which is really writing legislation for Trump's agenda.

[09:20:02]

Now, House Republicans have a very different vision for what they want to do. They want to include a debt ceiling hike. They want to include more money for the border, more money for defense. They also want to package into this their tax plan that would essentially renew those 2017 tax cuts, although it would not make those programs permanent. So, that is much, much more expansive than what the Senate passed last week. There's still this big divide between the House and Senate Republicans right now over that one bill or two bills strategy.

John.

BERMAN: Yes, and, look, you make a great point, this is just the first step. It may not even be the hardest step. So, if they're having so much trouble getting over this first point here, what does it mean going forward?

FOX: Yes, I mean, because this is really just giving those instructions to the committees. In fact, I just talked to Marjorie Taylor Greene right before she went into this meeting and I said, are you supporting this budget? She said, absolutely, because this is not the fight we should be having. I'm much more concerned about what is in the tax and spending bill that comes forward in the next couple of weeks if we can pass this budget. And I think that that is really what's so interesting about this moment for Speaker Mike Johnson. He is battling this out on what is really just the very first easy blueprint step of this process. This is before you get into whether or not your specific tax provision is included in legislation in a couple of weeks. This is before you get into specific Medicaid cuts that could be outlined in that package. So, this is really bare bones at this moment, which is why it speaks volumes for the challenges ahead for Mike Johnson.

John.

BERMAN: All right, great to have you there. Let us know what happens in this meeting that begins shortly.

Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill.

All right, new video this morning of a building explosion on a quiet street. New details on what caused the blast.

And this is one expensive hairdo. A man busted with $10,000 worth of cocaine in his wig.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:32]

BERMAN: This morning, the union that represents more than 10,000 federal air traffic controllers is calling Elon Musk's report a resign email a major safety concern. CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean is with us now.

What's your reporting here, Pete.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, air traffic controllers tell me they're pretty pissed because they're already stretched so thin. Remember that workforce chronically understaffed, John. Many controllers working mandatory overtime. Six-day weeks of ten hour shifts.

The Department of Transportation, one of the few agencies that ordered its workers to respond to Musk's what did you do last week memo, meaning that each of the more than 10,000 air traffic controllers who work for the federal government had to reply justifying their work. Their union now insists that takes controllers away from their main role and makes flying less safe.

Here is the new statement from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "This request," they say, "has created a distraction that affects our members' ability to focus on their primary mission, safely directing aircraft carrying passengers and essential cargo throughout the national airspace system." That is especially poignant when you consider the string of high-profile crashes involving planes this year. Last month's mid-air collision over the Potomac River in D.C. killed 67 people. And we reported at the time of that crash that one air traffic controller in the tower at Reagan National Airport was responsible for two positions at the same time. Now, union NATCA says they have issued guidance to controllers on how

to respond to that message. But also of note here, other aviation workers got that message, which includes investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board. They're leading at least three major investigations into crashes involving commercial flights this year alone. A small agency that's fighting to keep investigators on the job right now. Right now it's not really clear whether each of those 435 workers at the NTSB will have to justify their jobs to Elon Musk.

John.

BERMAN: Yes, just a small sample of the dissatisfaction within the federal ranks right now.

Pete Muntean, thanks so much for that report.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, Elon Musk and President Trump's mass layoffs of federal workers has hurt families who rely on their paycheck, like most Americans do. But this includes veterans who are part of the federal workforce.

Joining me now is William Attig. He is the Executive Director at the Union Veterans Council, a labor group that represents many military veterans.

You were also deployed in Iraq from 2003 to 2009. Alright, I do want to ask you this just sort of generally. Donald Trump, as almost every single person that you hear from in Congress says, they support veterans. Is he supporting veterans?

WILLIAM ATTIG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNION VETERANS COUNCIL, AFL-CIO: Not right now. Sara, thank you so much for having me on here. For the last 40 years, and especially following the 2008 recession, we've realized the importance -- the veterans' community and lawmakers, the importance of good staple employment for our veterans. And that's why we've seen massive work to create programs to ensure veterans have a priority and have great pathways to achieve the American dream through federal employment. That's why we see a disproportional amount of veterans in the workforce right now.

So when we see attacks on the federal workforce, especially blanket attacks both on the VA, but every agency, just like the FAA we were just talking about, which is packed full of military veterans. We see a direct attack on our community and not only on the workers and the employment, over a million veterans between contractors and federal workers work in the federal workforce. We know that there's going to be a degradation of the basic needs that our veterans' community needs and -- when these agencies are attacked.

[09:30:06]

SIDNER: How are these cuts?