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Trump Prepares to Dismantle Education Department; Republicans Meet with Musk; Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) is Interviewed about Job Cuts and the Education Department; Zelenskyy and EU Leaders Meet in Brussels; Terrance Floyd is Interviewed about a Pardon for Chauvin. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 06, 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]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: On patrol in the area arrived and sprung into action.

(VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Oh, my God. That officer you see reaching into the burning car, pulling the unconscious driver out and to safety. The man was taken to the hospital, amazingly with non-life threatening injuries.

And it was a wild ride in the skies over Texas. Strong winds knocked loose a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol blimp that was tethered over South Padre Island on the southern coast of Texas. This is how it ended up. Authorities lost contact with the blimp, later finding it had traveled nearly 600 miles off course. It finally came crashing down on a power pole in a small town outside of Dallas. No injuries reported. These blimps are used to - by border officials to track suspicious air traffic. It then became its own suspicious air traffic.

There is a new contender for the - just follow me on this one, OK. There's a new contender for the world's most expensive crunchy snack. A Pokemon-shaped Flamin' Hot Cheeto, nicknamed Cheetozard, just sold for nearly $90,000.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Stop it.

BOLDUAN: Yes, we - I should leave now. Three inches long, because that man - Cheeto is shaped like the Pokemon character Charizard. The auction house behind the sale said on social media that it would - did I say it right? OK. That it went to an unnamed buyer. Let's just sit on it. Just sitting on it.

SIDNER: Hey, get out now!

BOLDUAN: I - I got to go.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL: starts now.

I can't. SIDNER: All right, breaking this morning, Americans has just experienced the largest number of job losses of any February since 2009. The huge number of job cuts is something that generally does not happen unless the country is in a recession.

Also, dismantling the Department of Education. CNN has learned President Trump could keep his promise and sign an order in hours to end the Department of Ed. There's just one thing standing in Trump's way. Senate Democrats.

And growing calls among MAGA pundits to pardon the officer who murdered George Floyd. A call now being amplified by Elon Musk to his 319 million followers on X. What does the Floyd family think of all this? We have one of his brothers here live.

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

BOLDUAN: So many new and impactful headlines this morning, including CNN is learning that President Trump, as soon as today, could take executive action to eliminate the Department of Education. This is something that the president has threatened and promised that he would do. Republicans have applauded this effort. Democrats have vowed to block it. Here is one House Democrat that I spoke with just last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): Will he do it? Sure, he'll do it. Will it stick? No. He's so erratic. He's so unreliable. This is an incompetent administration that is making life very difficult for my constituents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Just how far the new education department head, Linda McMahon, will be able to go with this - what will be a mandate, that's a question this morning. According to a draft of the order, Donald Trump will direct Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department.

Let's get right over to Kevin Liptak. He's at the White House for us.

Kevin, what are you learning about this, this hour?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, this is a step that Trump has signaled for a long time, that he was planning to take. But now the order is drafted. He could put his signature on it as soon as today.

What it would do is tell Linda McMahon, who was just confirmed on Monday to be the secretary of education, to start these steps to begin the closure of the department, to the extent that it is permitted by law, which I think is the White House's acknowledgment that to fully get rid of any federal agency, they will need Congress to act. In this case, they will need 60 votes to break a filibuster, which they just don't have right now. There are only 53 Republicans in the Senate. Instead, what the plan seems to be is to dismantle the Department of

Education essentially piece by piece, to move some of its essential functions to other parts of the federal government.

The Department of Education has a pretty broad purview. They, you know, enforce civil rights laws to prevent discrimination in schools.

[09:05:01]

They oversee billions of dollars in grants for schools in high poverty areas. They oversee $1.6 trillion in federal student loan programs, including Pell Grants, the FAFSA form that students fill out to apply for federal aid. And that could all be up in the air as they move to dismantle this department.

But Linda McMahon is fully on board. She wrote a letter to agency staffers earlier this week saying that this is a momentous final mission for the Education Department. She says it's an opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students.

I think it's clear that Trump is working very quickly, not only to dismantle the Department of Education, but to work across the government, to truly reshape the federal bureaucracy to his own liking.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

Kevin, thank you. Great to see you. Thank you for the reporting, as always.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking this morning, U.S. employers have cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009. That's according to new data. And it says moves by the Trump administration, coupled with economic uncertainty, have fueled a, quote, "recession level spike in jobs cuts." In total, U.S. based employers slashed more than 172,000 jobs last month.

We are keeping a close eye on futures to see how the markets react. Not well right now, down almost 100 percent in all the major indices.

As for Congress, we're getting reports overnight that some Republicans, Republicans, think that the sweeping cuts by Elon Musk have gone too far, or at least the way he has been doing it.

Let's get right to CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill for the latest on that.

Good morning, Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Republicans, yesterday, met in two separate meetings with Elon Musk. First, the United States Senate met with him. Then you had a group of House Republicans meet with him later in the evening. And a key takeaway from that earlier meeting in the Senate was that lawmakers are trying to reassert their power of the purse, suggesting to Elon Musk in this meeting that as part of his strategy to make these across the board cuts, he should send that up to Capitol Hill in the form of a kind of package where lawmakers could vote by a simple majority to repeal some of the spending that Congress had already authorized in past spending bills.

And I think that this is really a sign of some of that tension that you are seeing behind the scenes, where Republicans really do want to have more control over what is happening.

Here's what a couple of Republicans said following that lunch.

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SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): There was some talk in the meeting about using rescission, which takes 51 votes in the Senate rather than 60. Using rescission to implement some of the waste and fraud cuts. So, I think that that's, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's decision today.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If the White House put together a rescission package encapsulating the really egregious stuff DOGE has found and brought it to the floor of the Senate, I think it would pass. And that would make it law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Now, the challenge for Republicans is that they then have to decide whether they are going to vote to cut certain programs. And just to flash back to 2018, this was part of a $15 billion package that was sent up to The Hill by the Trump administration to make some cuts. That's obviously much smaller than the kind of discussion that they are having now when it comes to DOGE cuts. It couldn't pass, John, because there were not enough Republicans who were willing to support it. It's one thing to say that you support cutting waste, fraud and abuse on paper. It's another thing when you see what those line items are and you have to make decisions about whether or not it affects people back in your state.

John.

BERMAN: No, very true. But the law is the law. And when people like Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul, no fan of spending, says, you know what, if you want these to stick, we have to vote on it, you get - you get where the members of Congress are coming from.

Lauren Fox, on Capitol Hill, thank you very much.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, joining me now is Democratic congressman from Virginia, Gerry Connolly. He is a ranking member on the House Oversight Committee and sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. All right, I want to start with this because this just happened,

breaking news last month, job losses were the worst we've seen in almost two decades. Typically, economists say that we don't see these kinds of bad numbers unless we're in a recession. It was the tech sector responsible for a lot of these cuts. How do you explain this to the American people?

REP. GERRY CONNOLLY (D-VA): Well, I think we put it right at the doorstep of Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk. They've created so much uncertainty about an economy that was strong when he was inaugurated, right? He inherited a very strong economy from Joe Biden. Biden doesn't get the credit, but he deserves it. And in the last six weeks, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have gone through the federal government, you know, with a chainsaw, reckless and irresponsible, and Donald Trump, on top of that, has jeopardized long-standing relationships.

[09:10:05]

SIDNER: I'm not sure we can hear you. I don't know if we can hear you. You can hear me. I am not hearing your audio. I'm hoping that our - that our audience is.

Congressman, go ahead. I think - I think we can now hear your background. Go ahead with your thought.

CONNOLLY: Sure. I was just saying that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have created an environment of economic uncertainty. And I think the markets are responding to that. You're not going to expand. You're not going to make that investment. You're not going to have new hires if you're facing 25 percent tariff impositions in Canada and Mexico and another 10 percent in China. These are our biggest trading partners. So, it's not a surprise that the economy is reacting, and negatively.

SIDNER: Certainly Wall Street is reacting very negatively as well.

Donald Trump says he's going to close the Department of Education. He cannot do that unilaterally, but he can crush it by defunding it. What are Democrats going to do about this?

CONNOLLY: Well, from my point of view, if you want to create or de- create a federal agency, it requires an act of Congress. So, he's going to try to get around that, as you say, by crushing elements in the Department of Education. But at the end of the day, he still needs congressional approbation.

I think it's a terrible decision. It's going to hurt K through college education throughout America. It's going to hurt local school districts. It's not going to make our kids smarter or more competitive in the 21st century.

SIDNER: Look, American children have been struggling compared to the rest of the world when it comes to education. What - why do you think, though, that Donald Trump wants to get rid of the Department of Education?

CONNOLLY: I think it became a slogan in the right wing. It was another government agency they don't need or want. Education is a highly professional career path that many have - many of whose members, of course, are unionized. They don't like the fact that it is a government run public service, public education. It's kind of a cornerstone of what made America great, gave us our greatness, public education. And they don't like it. They prefer private education. And people are sort of getting private tuition funded with public dollars rather than public education funded with public dollars.

So, it's always been part of their ideology. And unfortunately, he's now in a position to try to implement that ideology. And that's bias against public education.

SIDNER: There has been a lot of hand-wringing since Donald Trump's very long speech attacking, a lot of it Democrats, but a lot of hand- wringing from Democrats on how to respond and who's leading the party. Who is the leader of the Democratic Party, in your mind, right now?

CONNOLLY: Well, certainly here in Congress it's Hakeem Jeffries in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate. You know, it's a difficult period of time. What do you do? You want to keep your composure. You want to keep your dignity, while President Trump is, of course, throwing all kinds of ratchets into the audience aimed at Democrats. So, it's a difficult task. But we'll get through this. And I have full confidence that Hakeem Jeffries is the right leader at the right time.

SIDNER: Congressman Gerry Connolly, it is a pleasure to have you on.

CONNOLLY: My pleasure.

SIDNER: Sorry about that little glitch there. It happens sometimes. I appreciate your time this morning.

CONNOLLY: My pleasure. Thank you.

SIDNER: All right.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Well, right now, European leaders are meeting in Brussels. Ukraine's president is there and thanking them for standing with him, quote, during all this period and last week you stayed with us. As Ukraine's ambassador to the U.K. says the U.S. is destroying the current world order. More to come.

And how Canada is now fighting back against president Trump's sweeping tariffs. We have new details.

And attorneys for Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni back in court this morning. The judge hearing arguments about how little or how much detail will be released publicly.

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[09:19:06]

BOLDUAN: A watershed moment. Those are the words of the head of the European commission at a special EU summit that's taking place today, with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Now after President Trump ordered a pause on U.S. military aid to Ukraine, another country is stepping up, France. The French defense minister is now promising to speed up its deliveries of aid. And the French president is saying he's willing to extend protections from its nuclear arsenal to its European allies. Russia, just this morning, called that a direct threat.

CNN's Nic Robertson is in Brussels, joining us now.

Nic, there's a lot coming out of this summit already. What's the latest?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. And there really is. And it really underscores the concern that Europe has about its support from the United States, not just about the erosion of military support that's coming out of President Trump's White House for Ukraine. The Europeans, when you hear the French say, we'll extend our nuclear sort of umbrella across the whole of Europe.

[09:20:06]

And the subtext of that is, they're worried the United States support for that, which is part of Article Five of NATO, at the core of which is, you know, one nation's attacked, everyone defends all the others and comes to their aid. And the question now is, would the United States really do that? So that - that's where the French are coming from on that point.

What we're going to hear here is a discussion about how the European Union finds an additional 800 billion euros, that's about $861 billion, to finance a massive growth in defense spending. And we've heard from the British prime minister, the French president, the European leaders here all saying, this is crunch time. This is a necessary moment.

We heard also from the European parliament president, Roberta Metsola. You might not remember her, but she stood out because she was the first leader to go to Ukraine in the early days of the war to give support for the Ukrainians. And today she is speaking about how important it is and about time Europe steps up with its own defense.

This is what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTA METSOLA, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PRESIDENT: It is about damn time. This is something that we have been asking for a long time, that the European Union, that Europe is capable of standing up on its own two feet.

For Europe to say that we are ready to put finally our money where our mouth is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: So, what you're actually witnessing here right now is Europe and Europe's leaders working at absolute speed. They can't go as fast as the White House making decisions, but they do do it and can do it quickly.

And President Zelenskyy, I watched him come into the hall here today. Two European leaders, the commission president, council president, were right on him, talking, talking, talking before they even went towards the meeting. That shows you how much is going on in the background.

But this is important for Zelenskyy, not just to know that this military aid and financial and military support is coming, but because he's has such a tough time from the United States recently.

This is what he had to say to the Europeans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE: During all this period, and last week, you stay with us. And, of course, from all the Ukrainians, from all our nations, big appreciation. We are very thankful that we are not alone. And these are not just words. We feel it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: But to go back to the ground reality here, the European Union cannot work fast enough to fill those security and military holes that are popping up in Ukraine right now because of the drawdown of U.S. support. They can put weapons in, in the short term, but they massively need to stand up their own militaries. That's what the meeting is about.

But this is only about how to raise the money. It's not even yet got on to, how to spend the money or having it in their hands, and which weapons to buy. All of that just takes time. And that's a hard reality at the moment.

BOLDUAN: Still, it is quite something to see and really hear this shift that is taking place behind you. It's quite a remarkable thing.

Nic, thank you so much. Thank you so much for being there.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Elon Musk now floating the idea of a pardon for the convicted killer of George Floyd. The new response this morning from Floyd's younger brother.

And we are standing by for the opening bell on Wall Street. Stock futures plummeted this morning. They are still dropping after a new report that U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than in any February since 2009.

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[09:28:14] SIDNER: The former Minnesota police officer convicted of killing George Floyd was set to spend the rest of his life in prison on state and federal charges. But now some are calling for Derek Chauvin to get a presidential pardon. A move that is gaining what looks like support from Elon Musk. Musk shared a post on his platform X from conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, saying, it's something to think about.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN SHAPIRO, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: President Trump should, in fact, pardon Derek Chauvin. He should. He should pardon him of his federal charges. If we are talking about reversing the evils of the last several years in American life.

But when it came to BLM, the inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America's race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime, was, in fact, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd. The evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not, in fact, commit murder of George Floyd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: That is not what a jury found. And we want to note, even if President Trump does pardon Chauvin, his state sentence would still stand, as we heard earlier this morning from the Minnesota attorney general.

Joining me now is George Floyd's brother, Terrance.

Terrance, thank you so much for being here.

I want to ask you what you first thought when you heard this push, and to see Elon Musk, who is at the White House, who is extremely influential with Donald Trump, reposting this idea that George Floyd was responsible for his own death and that he believes that Derek Chauvin should be pardoned for the federal charges.

TERRANCE FLOYD, GEORGE FLOYD'S YOUNGER BROTHER: Well, when I first heard the - a few friends of mine sent me articles from social media. And I was trying to ignore them because I didn't want to relive it, you know.

[09:30:02]

But I - I wasn't surprised because -

SIDNER: Why not?

FLOYD: I was not surprised because I, you know, how they say you trust a liar to lie.