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Key Report to Reveal How Trump Tariffs Impacting Economy; Trump Says He Could Bring Back Mistakenly Deported Man but Won't; Interview with Rep. Dave Min (D-CA): Democrats Ramp Up Opposition to Trump as His Poll Numbers Fall; Harvard Promises Changes After Reports on Antisemitism, Islamophobia. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 30, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Experts, though, say fluoride is safe in helping people prevent it -- preventing against cavities, and the CDC called it one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.

A Texas highway, another highway, also shut down Tuesday for hours after crews spent spent those hours working to pick up millions of dimes, loose change scattered everywhere. Officials say a semi-truck hauling about $800,000 worth of dimes overturned, scattering the coinage across the highway.

Aerial footage shows crews using everything from shovels to vacuums and also picking up their hands to get the spare change out of the way. The driver and one passenger, they were taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. And there you have it.

A new hour of NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Today, the markets will tell us if Trump's tariff war has been terrible for the economy or not. Key numbers will cut out this hour, showing whether the American economy is growing or shrinking. The GDP report, just minutes away.

And a pair of long-awaited reports just released on how Harvard is handling anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus. The university now pledging change after students report fearing for their safety.

And overnight, another Russian assault on Ukraine, a new wave of deadly strikes as President Trump reiterates his threat to walk away from peace talks if progress isn't made soon.

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

BOLDUAN: And new this morning, we're 30 minutes out from a critical report and look at the economy. An initial reading on U.S. economic growth for the first three months of the year, the first major measure of the beginning impact of President Trump's second term agenda, what impact that is having and how American consumers are dealing with it. According to many economists, it will likely show growth slowed in the first quarter, potentially the worst quarter since the pandemic.

Now also likely to hear from the president soon on this. He's set to hold a meeting with his cabinet this morning, but this comes after he held a big rally in Michigan for his 100th day in office last night and telling that crowd he's only getting started and, quote, you haven't seen anything yet.

Even as CNN's most recent polling shows, a majority of Americans now say that his policies are making economic conditions worse right now.

Also happening this hour, an important interviewer, colleague Erin Burnett, is sitting down for a live interview with the CEO of Ford, talking to Jim Farley about all of this, and how Trump's tariffs are impacting the auto industry. You won't want to miss that.

Let's start off this hour with Rick Newman, a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. It's good to see you again, Rick. Let's talk about GDP. When it comes out this hour, what's it going to be able to tell us and what is it not?

RICK NEWMAN, SENIOR COLUMNIST, YAHOO FINANCE: It's going to be a low number. It could possibly be a negative number, but it's going to be distorted because we know that during the first three months of 2025, American importers were loading up on stuff from overseas because they anticipated the Trump tariffs and imports actually detracts from GDP. So it's not going to tell us a lot.

And then when we get the GDP number for the next quarter, the one we're in now, it's probably going to be distorted in the other direction because imports are going to slow dramatically. That's already happening. So that's going to tell us, you know, what we know from the first three months of the year.

I don't think markets are going to pay a lot of attention to the GDP number. Markets are much more focused on data and indicators telling us what's going to happen in the next three, four, six months. And that is stuff like consumer confidence.

We're going to get job numbers on Friday. Those could be down, showing that employers are becoming reluctant to hire. So we're going to get a weird number today and then we're going to move on.

BOLDUAN: Weird numbers. I'm here for it. Wrap in what you were talking about, the consumer confidence report that also just came out. What does that add into this picture?

NEWMAN: Consumer confidence is tanking. It is at recessionary levels. And it's for one reason. It's because Americans are hearing a lot about the tariffs. They're not really seeing the effect yet in stores, but they know that tariffs are a tax that is going to push prices up. They expect inflation to get a lot worse.

In fact, by one measure, the University of Michigan survey, consumers think inflation is going to be worse under Trump than they expected it to be under Biden. And as a reminder, inflation hit 9 percent under Biden in 2022. It was the worst problem for him and Americans are bracing for even worse.

So once these effects of the tariffs actually start to show up in stores, people are going to buy less.

[08:05:00]

People are going to get concerned about the health of the economy, about layoffs. We're probably very soon going to start seeing slowdowns and layoffs with port workers and truckers and transportation workers, because there's not going to be -- not going to be any pallets of imports to be moving from ports to the rest of the economy.

So all this stuff about tariffs that has been kind of scary, but mostly theoretical, it is going to start to become real very soon.

BOLDUAN: And you're seeing kind of some of the real impact, at least just on what the uncertainty is doing. You know, you had General Motors saying it's no longer standing behind its guidance for improved profits. And in this year, the quote being: Given the evolving nature of the situation, we believe the future impact of tariffs could be significant. So we're reassessing our guidance and look forward to sharing more when we have greater clarity.

I mean, I think that that statement could apply to, you know, every CEO in every industry right now. What should that tell folks if GM saying we no longer can stand by it?

NEWMAN: Yes, you're spot on, Kate. So GM is being nice when they're putting it that way. What they could say is, dear Mr. President, you're completely screwing up our business. We're just going to see massive distortions in the auto market, assuming the Trump tariffs remain in place. Prices are going to go up. Big companies are going to be extremely reluctant to invest because they don't know what their cost structure is going to be.

Is it worth building a new factory in the United States? I mean, you know, they're all thinking, well, what's going to happen when Trump is no longer the president? Are these tariffs going to go away?

And, you know, it takes several years and five billion dollars to build an auto factory in the United States. So they might just wait. There are a lot of companies that might just wait this out.

And meanwhile, you know, the average cost of a car is around $48,000 right now. That is going to go up. It could go to $55,000 or higher.

The cost of getting your car fixed is going to go up because auto parts are going to get more expensive. And one last pressure is the cost of auto insurance is going to go up, too, because the cost of everything else goes up. So their costs are going to go up as well.

BOLDUAN: Yes, one thing Mary Barra said that's sticking with me is it takes soup to nuts. It takes five years to build a car.

So, I mean, like that one example is just sticking in my head of the impossible situation that they and others are in. It's good to see you, Rick. Thank you -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Great discussion there.

All right. New this morning. I could, but I will not. President Trump told Terry Moran of ABC News that he could pick up the phone to secure the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. He said he could, but he will not.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERRY MORAN, ABC NEWS: You could get him back. There's a phone on his desk.

TRUMP: I could.

MORAN: You could pick it up and all the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say, send him back right now.

TRUMP: And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.

MORAN: But the court has ordered you.

TRUMP: But he's not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, so those comments appear to contradict his earlier stance that the U.S. does not have the ability to bring him back, that he does not have the ability to bring him back. And remember, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.

With us now is CNN legal analyst, criminal offense attorney, Joey Jackson.

Counselor, great to see you in court. Justice Department lawyers have argued that we can't get Kilmar Abrego Garcia back, that only the El Salvadoran president can release him. So their legal position is they can't.

President Trump's position to Terry Moran last night was, I could.

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, John, good morning to you. We're in very troubling and difficult times, and I don't want to overstate it at all, but I do want to be objective and I want to be fair and I want to be honest. People talk about a constitutional crisis.

The reality is, is that we are in a constitutional crisis as we speak right now. That reality is plain and apparent. We have a Supreme Court of the United States who said to facilitate, right, to facilitate the process.

I don't know how much we can debate with you right now as to what your meaning of facilitate is and what mine is, but it's very clear with respect to what you need to do. Picking up the phone would be that. And so when you have a situation where the president of the United States is ignoring a co-equal branch of government, that's troubling, problematic and very concerning.

And so, yes, he's indicating that he's flouting it.

Another point, John. Remember what the administration did to an attorney of the Department of Justice who was in court and was honest. The judge asking him questions, as judges do, and the judge giving the indication of, hey, you know what? What happened here? Oh, it was a mistake. I can't get a clear answer, said the U.S. Department of Justice attorney, from my client with respect, the government, with regard to what happened here. That person was fired. And so we're in bizarre times in the twilight zone.

This is not how it's supposed to work. It's working that way. And that's troubling.

[08:10:00]

BERMAN: Justice Department lawyers appear before a federal judge today, and they need to inform that judge what they've been doing to try to get Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. How does the president's statement that he could pick up the phone, he could do something, how does that change the legal situation? How will the judge read that?

JACKSON: I think the judge reads it as we all read it, right? And that is that the administration is doing what it wants. This is not how democracy works. You can't come to court and make an argument that contradicts reality. And if you have the president, who, by the way, is the head of the Justice Department -- I know it's actually the attorney general, but make no mistake about it, it is the president. When you have arguments that are legally contradictory to what's being said in public, where are we?

I mean, just for some context, people argue, oh, constitutional crisis, we may be getting there. We're in one. This president has issued 143 executive orders.

Biden, for context, issued 40. Obama issued 19. George Bush, one and two, 12 and 11, respectively.

You have a Congress that's supposed to pass laws. That's not happening. There's been five passed since his first 100 days.

And so we could go on and on with regard to what this does. But you have co-equal branches of government. Each has a role.

And when a Supreme Court of the United States tells you to do something, you do it. There's no question to that. There's no flouting what facilitate means to that. You just comply.

There's not compliance here. That, to me, is not democracy. That's totalitarianism. And we're in an abyss. We're in a problem. And I'm just wondering where we go from here. BERMAN: Well, we will wait to hear what the White House from the press room perhaps says to spin what the president said, but also what the Justice Department says now in a courtroom to explain what he said by I could, what he meant by I could. Joey Jackson, counselor, always great to see you. Thank you -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, John.

Democrats are excoriating Donald Trump for his policies in his first 100 days.

Joining us now is California Democratic Representative Dave Min. First Congressman, thank you so much for being here. I want you to hear how Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), MINORITY LEADER: To the details there, but there's a feeling of incompetence, of indecision and chaos eating away at much of the country. And that is emanating from the man who's in charge, Donald Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Couldn't some of those words be used to describe Democrats right now who are pulling even lower than President Trump and Republicans?

REP. DAVE MIN (D-CA), OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE: Well, I use a different frame to describe Donald Trump, and I call it the three I's. Everything they've done in the first 100 days is illegal, immoral, and incompetent. And your previous guest just laid that out, whether it's the tariffs, whether it's the reverse Robin Hood of trying to cut programs like Meals on Wheels or Head Start, also billionaires and foreign investors can get a tax cut, or whether it's just the sheer incompetence of everything they're doing on the economy, on, you know, trying to slash the size of the government and find efficiency. We are just seeing the chaos emerge right now.

But to your points, I've talked to so many of my constituents and what my constituents at Orange County are telling me is they want to see Democrats step up. And so yes, we are suffering from lower poll numbers right now, but that's not because we're more unpopular with Republicans or Independents. It's because we're so unpopular with our own party right now. They want to see us be aggressive. They want to see us fight for the rule of law, for the things that matter, for our core American values, which are under attack right now.

SIDNER: Look, you just mentioned Democratic constituents have been showing up and being very vocal at town halls, especially demanding sort of more aggressive, stronger Democratic leadership. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker stayed to sit in on the steps of Capitol Hill to protest Republicans' budget proposal that they were trying to cut $1.5 trillion from the government budget. And Schumer, for his part, wrote a terse letter.

Is this the kind of effective opposition that you think that your constituents want to see?

MIN: We need to get our message out there. Whether it's town halls that my Democratic colleagues have been doing across the board. Town halls, which, by the way, Republicans are not doing right now because they're so scared of their constituents. We need to get that message out there because right now Donald Trump and the Republicans have the bully pulpit, and they're using that every single day.

Whether it's Donald Trump, who we just saw lie again, whether it's Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, who lies every single day many, many times, like every other word's a lie, or whether it's all the members of his administration, we are seeing a propaganda spread right now that should never happen in a Democratic state.

And so I know that my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, we are struggling with the idea of how do we get our message out there when we don't control any of the bully pulpits that tend to get us the attention. So we're doing all we can, and I know that my constituents, we heard a lot of great praise for that town hall that Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries and others did the other day.

They want to hear that message out there.

[08:15:00]

They want to hear the truth, the facts about what's happening right now, just the indecency of the Trump administration. And again, you mentioned $1.5 trillion in cuts. I'll just point out that this has never been about efficiency or finding waste, fraud, and abuse. It's always been about parceling paying for $7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America and the world because by the way hundreds of billions of dollars of those tax cuts go straight to foreign investors.

So we are cutting key programs, lifeline programs, we're talking about cutting Medicaid, also that Saudi billionaires can get a bigger tax cut. That's just wrong and we need to stand up and message as much as we can.

SIDNER: Congressman I do want to ask you about attack that you have tried that is a bit different than the sit-ins and a terse letter. You partnered with ranking member Jerry Conley to investigate Trump's threat of using executive orders against law firms that represent parties who sued him or took part in investigations against him. You said that the agreements which provide millions of dollars in what the White House is calling pro bono legal concessions to avoid being targeted by the Trump administration mean that America's promise of equal justice under law will perish if the legal profession allows itself to be coerced into denying representation to the people who need it most.

Why was this issue so very important to you?

MIN: Yes and that letter that ranking member Conley and I wrote together followed on a letter that I led a few days before that with 14 other members of Congress where we called out the law firms that had settled.

And I want to just be clear about what's happening right now. Donald Trump has threatened these law firms and said that unless you accede to my demands, give us hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono which now add up to $950 million for the causes of his choice, that he will go after their core businesses. He'll prevent their lawyers from going into federal courthouses or talking to federal lawyers, that they'll go after the clients of these law firms. So this is bully tactics, it's blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, it's a direct attack on the rule of law.

He's going after a lawyer's livelihood right now and using the full power of the executive branch to do that and unfortunately no one in Congress on the other side of the aisle is stepping up to hold this -- reign in and hold him accountable even though we all know this is not only unconstitutional, this is basically fascism playing out right now in America.

SIDNER: Those are some strong words for us this morning. Thank you so much for coming on and having a chat with me, I appreciate it -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us this morning, Harvard's president is apologizing after a lot too long-awaited reports were released. The task force finding reports of fear, antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus promising change is coming now to Harvard.

And severe storms are expected to sweep across the United States today after what was already a mess and a deadly day of storms yesterday. We've got a forecast for you.

And breaking overnight, new deadly drone strikes in Ukraine as President Trump says he still believes that Vladimir Putin wants peace.

[08:20:00]

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BOLDUAN: This morning, Harvard is promising change. After a task forces released scathing reports about the university and life on campus.

These long-awaited internal reviews compiled hundreds of pages. In one report of how anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias were handled on campus. And another on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias and how it's handled on campus.

Harvard's president writing in a letter about it all. This --

The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful. I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community.

There's so much more in this. CNN's Kara Scannell has much more. She's here with us now. And also must be said, Kara, against the backdrop of these come out at a really sensitive time. You've got Harvard, the president right there, speaking out in a massive legal battle with the Trump administration, over billions of dollars of federal funding, having to do with their review of anti-Semitism on this campus.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. So it's kind of this fine line for Harvard. And all along, even in their negotiations with the Trump administration and their public statements, they have acknowledged they do have a problem with anti-Semitism on campus.

Their issue is they want to be the ones to fix it. They don't want the federal government to tell them how to do it. But this report will certainly give the White House a lot to work with because of how raw it is in Harvard's descriptions through these task force of what their findings were.

And they surveyed students and faculty and staff after October 7th, 2023, and really focusing in over the first half of 2024. That's when they conducted this survey. As you say, it's hundreds of pages.

And the overall takeaway seems to be that whether you were a Jewish student or an Arab student, there was this sense of the climate on campus was hostile and that Harvard wasn't doing enough to address it. So hearing that kind of from both of these reports.

Alan Garber, the president, kind of sums up some of the issues in this letter that he wrote accompanying it, in which he did apologize.

He says, Some students reported being pushed by their peers to the periphery of campus life because of who they are or what they believe, eroding our shared sense of community in the process.

And what these two reports find collectively is that both Jewish students and Muslim students had felt alienated on campus, that they felt uncomfortable being there.

I mean, in the anti-Semitism report, there's talks of one student who or some students that had hid their identities because they had this feeling that even being known to be Jewish or associated with Jewish was treated as being offensive.

[08:25:00]

On the other side, you had some Arab and Muslim staff and faculty and students saying that they felt abandoned and silenced from their perspectives on this and that one student was subjected to doxing where her face and her phone number was put on a truck around campus and she had received death threats, according to this.

So there are some recommendations in here. You know, some of them, interestingly, could be viewed similar to what the White House wants, although there are certainly different extremes in how they're implemented. But one recommendation is making some changes to the admissions process, asking questions of prospective students, things such as, you know, how do you handle dealing with someone who has a different perspective than you?

And looking for students who answers go more toward bridge building than taking polarizing positions and also suggesting there should be better oversight of some student organizations. It seems that they found that some of these were being run without supervision and being one more biased than being one more inclusive.

BOLDUAN: So interesting. And there is a lot in this and you'll be sure a lot that will be talked about from here for sure. Kara, thank you very much -- John.

BERMAN: All right, we are just a few minutes away from the release of a major economic report. Really, the final window will get into the condition of the U.S. economy before the president's tariffs really kick in. It's a very important indicator of where things stand. As of now, you can see market futures a little bit down. We'll see where they are after this report comes out.

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