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Judge Rules Google Ad Network is Monopoly; Ending Birthright Citizenship; Dr. Sarah Fortune is Interviewed about Harvard's Funding Freeze; Mexican Cafe Rebrands the Americano. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired April 18, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: In the coming trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs. His defense team is now asking the judge to block from the courtroom one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence.

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BOLDUAN: A federal judge is now siding with the Justice Department in a landmark case against Google, ruling that Google has illegally built, quote, "monopoly power" with its web advertising business.

CNN's Clare Duffy has the details here.

So, Clare, violating antitrust laws. What does this mean for Google?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS TECH WRITER: Yes, this really hits at the heart of Google's core advertising business that decides what kinds of ads we all see across the internet. The government had claimed that Google was a monopoly with three parts of that business, the tools it provides to publishers to offer up ad space on their websites, the tools it provides to advertisers to buy ads, and then the server software that connects those two things.

[08:35:05]

This federal judge ruled in favor of the government on two of those claims, so it tossed out the claims related to advertiser tools, but said that Google's monopoly on the other tool - on the other two allowed it to raise prices for websites, for people who are placing ads on their sites.

Now, this ruling could force Google to spin off part of its ad business, or to make major changes to how it operates. Google said it will appeal the ruling. The company said, "we disagree with the court's decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective."

So, this isn't over just yet, but it's a major loss for Google. BOLDUAN: Well, and, you know, it goes without saying, Google's reach

and what eventually is kind of the end result here has a big impact, even just like on the way the internet operates going forward, right?

DUFFY: Totally.

BOLDUAN: And so, what does this mean also for the - for everyone else, other than Google?

DUFFY: I mean what's huge is that this is the third antitrust loss for Google to the government in just the past two years.

BOLDUAN: Oh, wow.

DUFFY: And so Google, as a result of all of these decisions, could really make major changes to how it runs, how it operates much of the internet.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

DUFFY: Which means that for all of us, it could change how we use and how we experience the internet.

And on this ad tools piece in particular, we know that so many, in particular news organizations, have struggled to create sustainable businesses with online advertising because they just don't make enough.

So, the hope I think here is that this may make it easier, more profitable, to run an online publishing business because people will have more options.

BOLDUAN: That is really - this really is an interesting one. Thanks, Clare. It's great to see you.

DUFFY: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, dangerous storms and tornadoes ripping through the plains, but the threat of severe weather is not over yet.

And, police say they have arrested a man suspected of vandalizing several Teslas. Why investigators say it wasn't so hard to track him down. Those stories and more ahead.

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court says it will hear the case on birthright citizenship this May. This is about President Trump's efforts to overturn what has been a right, or seen as a right, for well over 100 years. This is the 14th Amendment. How it has been interpreted in the courts and elsewhere has been that if you are born in the United States, you are an American citizen, regardless of whether your parents are here legally or not.

Again, this goes to the court in May. The president says he's excited. He sees this as a chance to get rid of it.

CNN's chief data analyst Harry Enten is here.

So, this effort to end birthright citizenship.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: How do Americans feel about it?

ENTEN: Yes. OK. So, a lot of scholars, legal scholars, will say this is a fringy idea. And I think the American public agrees it is a fringy idea.

Take a look here, ending birthright citizenship. And keep in mind, this polling specifically asked about for children born to immigrants illegally here. Look at this, just 41 percent support, 56 percent oppose. You rarely get 56 percent of the country to agree on anything. But on this one, they do agree that ending birthright citizenship, even for children who are here to parents who were born - who are here illegally, they oppose that idea. And keep in mind, I've looked at every single poll on the subject. Different question wording. In every single one, the majority oppose. Oftentimes, the oppose - the opposition number is actually higher than this 56. If anything, this is the low level, at least at this point in time.

BERMAN: OK, again, to be clear, this is a majority against the president's position on this.

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: How has this changed over time?

ENTEN: OK. So, I want you to take a look right here, right? This is this 41 percent who support that idea currently. Only about four in 10 Americans. Take a look here. This was a stat that I think surprised Mr. Berman. He was surprised by this one. Look, he's shaking his head off on the side.

Support ending birthright citizenship. We get 41 percent. Now, look where it was in 2010 during the Tea Party craze, right, 47 percent. How about in the early '90s? It was a majority who supported. The number has been going down, down, down on this particular subject, which I think is quite surprising to a lot of folks because there's, obviously, the anti-immigration fervor in this country seems higher. But on this particular question, support ending birthright citizenship, in fact, we're near record lows on this number, at least over the last 30 years.

BERMAN: And to be clear, support for deportation is rising.

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: So - so this is running in the exact opposite direction of what you might think. Support for ending birthright citizenship is actually going down.

ENTEN: It's exactly right. And when I - this was one of those things. I just - I kept looking at the polling data. You know, sometimes you get one piece of polling data.

BERMAN: Yes.

ENTEN: Then you look at another. And I - you average it. It's just very clear. It just used to be considerably higher than that 41 percent right now, which again is at the higher level of the polling that we've actually been looking at.

BERMAN: Yes, in a million years this is never what I would have predicted on this, which is why it's so important to see what the polls are telling us here.

How about this issue in terms of being a motivator to get to the polls?

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, it's not just that only about four in 10 Americans support President Trump's position on this. You might also say, OK, but what if it motivates Republicans to go out and vote? Again, this, to me, was so surprising. Makes you merry vote - very motivated to vote, ending birthright citizenship. Just 31 percent of Republicans. This issue actually motivates Democrats more.

[08:45:01]

Fifty-one percent say it makes them very motivated to vote.

This is just from top to bottom a political loser for Donald Trump and Republicans. They may like his stance on immigration overall, but on this particular question of ending birthright citizenship, even the children who are here from parents who are here illegally, it is a political loser. The majority oppose it. And Democrats become quite motivated to vote, considerably more so than Republicans.

BERMAN: Again - again, so interesting given that the White House thinks it is winning the political battle right now in issues involving deportations about Abrego Garcia and others. This, I know, is a separate issue, but again, this is a political battle they're not winning.

ENTEN: This is exactly right. This is a political battle they're not winning. Democrats are winning this political battle. And if I were advising the Donald Trump White House, I'd say, stick to other issues on immigration, not this one, because this one, as I said, is a political loser.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, an education, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, the first real impact - believed to be the first real impact of the Trump administration freezing more than $2 billion of Harvard's federal funding. The lead scientist who's already received a stop work order on her research is our guest.

And there's wild video coming in showing the moment a tornado just rips through Nebraska, with reports of at least 11 tornadoes hitting there and Iowa just yesterday.

We'll be right back.

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[08:50:47]

BOLDUAN: So, it's believed to be the first real world impact of Trump's battle with Harvard University. Years long, groundbreaking research brought to a halt when the Trump administration froze billions of dollars of federal funds to the university when Harvard pushed back against the sweeping demands for policy changes at the school.

And joining us right now is Dr. Sarah Fortune. She's a top scientist at Harvard, lead scientist on this ground - on a groundbreaking tuberculosis study and believed to be one of the first to receive a stop work order from the Trump administration over their work.

Doctor, thank you for being here this morning.

I want to know more about your research here. But first to the mess at hand. You have a $60 million contract with NIH involving a big study, collaborating with a network of researchers and clinicians, all about TB. As of this morning, what is your understanding is the status of your work and that contract?

DR. SARAH FORTUNE, CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF IMMUNOLOGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES AT HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Thank you for having me.

So, yes, we collaborate with 21 labs across 13 institutions. And at this point, the work is totally stopped. Our ability to fund that work was halted.

BOLDUAN: Doctor, what does that - what does that mean when you're in the middle of so much work? I mean, what has that meant for the work and what you can do with it now?

FORTUNE: So, immediate, short term crises and then sort of longer term crises. The immediate, short term crisis was that we had animal studies ongoing, and we were not able to support the animal research. And the longer term crisis is that we have about $34 million in data in our data lake, which is in jeopardy. It tells us about the lung response to TB and other organisms. And we are trying to save the data.

BOLDUAN: Take me back to Tuesday, I think it was. You wake up to a stop work notice. What did it say? And what's your - what was your gut reaction? FORTUNE: So, it said, pursuant to some FA - you know, government

number, work on your contract is ordered to stop. I mean that's really what it said. There was no explanation. It just said work in your contract is ordered to stop. You're not allowed to spend funds for the research in the contract.

And we had known that we were the top of the contracts under review for Harvard for about a week. So, we had been prepared as soon as the university had issued its rejection of the administration's demands that this might come.

At the same time, it was just a gut punch. Terrifying. And yet, you know, there was a sense of resolve.

BOLDUAN: Because you are now unwittingly have found yourself and your work smack dab in the middle of a very charged political climate between the Trump administration and elite universities around the country. You know, it's a new front of Donald Trump versus what he generalizes as liberal ideology. And we heard this week from the White House suggesting that Harvard's - Harvard - I mean Harvard's the wealthiest university in the nation, but Harvard's wealthy enough as an institution that it does not need federal funds.

Can you speak to that kind of suggestion and that point? I mean, can the university, can you find the money to fill the gap if the contract remains frozen?

FORTUNE: So, our contract is $60 million, of which only about $1 million a year comes to Harvard. So, actually, the largest single - the largest loss to an institution is to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Case Western, MIT, the University of Massachusetts.

[08:55:08]

And, no, Harvard cannot. Harvard cannot fill the gap for all of these institutions around the country. They may be able to support me, but they cannot save the research, that work.

BOLDUAN: Doctor, tuberculosis is a disease that infects a quarter of the world's population, kills more than a million people per year. This is what you have been working on for a very long time.

How do you - sum up for me what your research is doing and what you hope people understand about your work being caught up in this mess and the fear you have of what happens now.

FORTUNE: So, this project has been ten years in the making. It is actually what - the NIH's largest single investment in TB. It was a TB moonshot in order to try to better understand why so many people are infected with TB, some do well and some don't, with the idea that we need to better be able to diagnose people with TB, better be able to treat people with TB, and ideally have a vaccine that would protect people against TB. And we just, after decades of research, we haven't known how to do that. We don't have a roadmap. And so the goal of this program was to figure out that roadmap. With best in class researchers across the country, bringing together teams of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to work together on such a globally important problem.

BOLDUAN: Doctor, is this work dead if this doesn't continue soon?

FORTUNE: Oh, I hate to - to ask that question. I hope not. But it's certainly really wounded. You know, I care so deeply about TB. And I hope that we will find resources to keep parts of this going. I care enormously about getting this data into the public domain. That is my next goal is to get the data and the knowledge that we've generated thus far into the public domain, such that it can be used both for TB and other lung diseases. And then we'll have to see where we are.

BOLDUAN: Doctor Sarah Fortune, thank you for coming on. I would really like to continue to learn more about your work and what happens from here. Thank you for your time.

John.

BERMAN: You can really sense the impact there.

All right, this morning, lawyers for Sean Combs are asking the judge overseeing his criminal prosecution to exclude the 2016 video obtained by CNN showing him abusing his then girlfriend in a Los Angeles hotel. His defense attorneys call the video deceptive. CNN, we should note, has never altered the video and did not destroy the original copy. When the video was first released to the public before his arrest, Combs went on social media to acknowledge and apologize, saying, quote, "my behavior on that video is inexcusable."

A man in Omaha, Nebraska, captured video of a tornado tearing across a field.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got a tornado. It's coming this way. We got tornadoes, baby.

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BERMAN: There were at least 11 reports of tornadoes across Nebraska and Iowa. Parts of the Midwest and southern plains could get hit with severe storms this Easter weekend.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, after President Trump rebranded the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, Mexicans were understandably annoyed. Now Mexico is getting into the rebranding movement, starting with an iconic coffee order, the americana, the americano. That's changed.

CNN's Valeria Leon has details.

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VALERIE LEON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A simple coffee order in Mexican cafes now an act of rebellion against U.S. policies. The traditional americano, a shot of espresso with added hot water, is getting a rebrand, swapping the name to cafe mexicano.

SCARLETT LINDEMAN, OWNER OF CAFE CICATRIZ: If my staff wants to rename the americano Mexicano, then we can do that.

LEON (voice over): Scarlett is the owner of Cafe Cicatriz in Mexico City. She opened the spot eight years ago after moving here from her native New York.

LINDEMAN: If you know Spanish, that's the language of the kitchen, because it's mostly undocumented Mexican immigrants.

LEON (voice over): A culinary studies graduate inspired by her interest in how migration influences the kitchen, she soon became a supporter of the movement to rename the americano.

LINDEMAN: Because words really carry power. Like, they carry meaning and they're powerful. So, if someone symbolically wants to shift the name as - as a form of resistance, then all power to them. I think it's really cool.

[09:00:04]

LEON (voice over): The trend, part of a long tradition of renaming products to protest unpopular government policies.