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Trump Slams California Gov. Newsom in New Post: He's "Incompetent"; Part of Downtown L.A. Under Curfew Amid Immigration Protests; Inflation Rose Less Than Expected in May; Expert Warn of Impact of Slashing Medical Research Funding. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 11, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: -- tweet out or they can text out to someone. I saw a strange guy walking now that everyone knows that there's a hunt in this area. I suspect they're going to get a lot of information about the behavior of someone that they see on the hike.

[08:30:15]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Obviously, people should be careful out there. Tell authorities if you see anything immediately.

Juliette Kayyem, great to see you. Thank you very much.

All right. The dramatic late-night speech from California Governor Gavin Newsom. What is the political opportunity he might see now in taking on the president? And how is it playing this morning in the polls?

And FEMA be gone? The president says he plans to dismantle the disaster response agency after this hurricane season.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, President Trump is waking up and going after the California Governor Gavin Newsom once again, posting on social media about the ongoing protests against his ramped- up immigration raids and the unrest that followed.

[08:35:01]

Newsom is now taking the president to court over Trump going around him and sending in thousands of National Guard and hundreds of Marines, a move that the governor of California calls a direct assault on democracy and an abuse of power.

At the center of this is this back-and-forth fight, an escalating tension between these two leaders. Harry Enten is taking a look at this back and forth.

Where do you want to start? HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Let's just start off, if Gavin Newsom wanted to take on Donald Trump and loves the attention, he has 100% gotten it. Take a look here. Google searches of Gavin Newsom with Donald Trump. Get this up 9,700% versus a week ago. More folks are Googling Gavin Newsom's name with Donald Trump than ever before. And Google searches dating all the way back since 2004.

Donald Trump was able to make a name for himself through The Apprentice, through all of his business ventures. He is now making a name for Gavin Newsom, who seems more than willing to relish in this fight.

BOLDUAN: What are the numbers and how can you kind of gauge why Newsom would see, if we're taking this purely political, why Newsom would see benefit in taking on Trump?

ENTEN: Why is it that Gavin Newsom is more than willing to take on Donald Trump? And you know, it's all about 2028 and it's all about where Democrats want their candidates to be. Should Democrats oppose Donald Trump more among Democrats?

Look at this. Eighty four percent, 84% of Democrats nationwide say they want Democrats to take on Donald Trump. This is not 2017 anymore, where the majority of Democrats want to compromise with Donald Trump. No, they want a fighter with Donald Trump. And at this particular point, that is a big reason why Gavin Newsom, in my opinion, at least politically speaking, is leaning into this fight because he is thinking ahead to the future. He's thinking ahead to 2028. And with a vast majority.

Look, you rarely get 84% of Democrats to agree on anything except for the dislike of Donald Trump. And that is what we see right now. They want that opposition of Donald Trump. And that is why Gavin Newsom seems to be more than willing to take him on.

BOLDUAN: In the wildly too early, likely unreliable look at where things stand for the 2028 race, where is Newsom?

ENTEN: Yeah. This is so important to point out. Where is this race right now? The top chances would be the 2028 nominee. Look, it's a clown car at this particular point. All these candidates squish together. But you'll notice that one name is ahead of the rest, and that's Gavin Newsom at 12%. You see Ocasio-Cortez 10, Buttigieg 10, Shapiro 6%. But Gavin Newsom certainly is up there right now in terms of the candidates who are best in position to get that 2028 nomination.

And he knows that the best way to get this 2028 nomination is, again, to oppose Donald Trump, that 84% of Democrats who want it. And at this particular point, he's getting all that attention, as we see in those Google searches up 9,700% versus a week ago, Newsom with Donald Trump.

BOLDUAN: And what it also, of course, will come down to going forward is not just taking him on, but how and how effective you are, which is what we'll see --

ENTEN: We'll see.

BOLDUAN: -- amongst all of those people that were on that list. Thank you, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Let's go back to California. Sara, on the ground.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We are just about 20 minutes away from the curfew ending here, the light coming up. And you can kind of see the scene behind us as to what's happening, things slowing, traffic now flowing here this morning.

I want to take us to now Democratic congressman from California, Ami Bera. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Can you give me a sense of what you make of what has happened here over the last five days?

The president has brought in about 4,000 National Guard troops. There are 700 Marines standing by outside L.A. to potentially come on to the streets here. Judging from that this protest was in about a one square mile area of downtown L.A., do you agree that that number of troops was necessary or not?

REP. AMI BERA (D-CA): No, it was not necessary. I mean, I think President Trump has intentionally chosen to escalate this. You know, the vast majority of folks are doing peaceful protests. There are some agitators, folks that are breaking the law, you know, attacking law enforcement, police officers, but that's not the majority of folks that are peacefully protesting. You know, talking to my colleagues in Southern California, the folks that represent L.A., it does seem like Los Angeles law enforcement, others, have this under control. They are pushing back. I think Mayor Bass did the right thing with the curfew last night, trying to deescalate things. And, you know, the National Guard should be under Governor Newsom's control, not President Trump's.

SIDNER: President Trump did not ask the governor's permission or have conversation with him. He just federalized the National Guard.

[08:40:00]

I do want to ask you, though, what you think of the leadership from Mayor Bass and from Governor Newsom. Do you think they are doing a good job with how they are handling these -- these protests, which -- I mean, this is their city, this is their state, they are the people in charge, with the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies saying that they have this under control. Is that how you see it, and how do you rate how the mayor and the governor have handled this?

BERA: You know, at this point, again, I think Mayor Bass did the right decision by having a curfew, trying to ease tensions, calm things down. Peaceful protest is fine. I fully support the LAPD and other law enforcement in maintaining the peace.

You know, anyone who's setting cars on fire, you know, throwing things at police officers, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And I do worry about President Trump federalizing the National Guard. There's no place for the Marines here.

I mean, it seems like there's more Marines in Southern California than there are in Iraq right now. So, this is not a war zone. This is a protest. We don't want to see, you know, riots in downtown L.A., we've seen that before. But it does seem like, you know, things are under control at this point. If they need help, then Governor Newsom will call on the National Guard.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you about California's position. They are a sanctuary state. It was the first state to become a sanctuary state under then-Governor Jerry Brown. And the city is a sanctuary city. Do you have any concerns that because there is a pushback to help ICE in its mandate from the federal government to enforce, you know, immigration status, to enforce immigration laws, that there will be retaliation from President Trump in other things, for example, taking away grants? He has also threatened some of the, you know, the monies towards schools for other things. What are your concerns there?

BERA: Absolutely. We think President Trump, and we've been preparing that he is going to target California. He's probably going to use laws and target sanctuary cities, sanctuary states, withhold grant funding. We've got to be ready for that.

Look, California is the fourth largest economy in the world. We send more tax revenue to the federal government to other states than we get back in our state. I don't think, if we want to be the United States of America, we've got to support one another as 50 states, not individual states against one another, red states and blue states. We've got to work together here.

SIDNER: Democratic Congressman from California, Ami Bera, thank you so much for joining us and talking us through this.

Back to you guys.

BERMAN: All right. We do have breaking news, brand new inflation data just in. Prices up, but not by as much as had been anticipated. Let's get right to CNN's Matt Egan for the latest on this. Matt, what are you hearing?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, John, look, we got another month of positive inflation news. Despite these historic tariffs, the latest numbers do show that inflation remained relatively tame in May. So, the big number is the annual rate that came in at 2.4%. That is a slight acceleration from 2.3% in April, but this was better than expected. Month over month, prices were up by just 0.1%. Again, that's better than expected, and that's actually a deceleration from what we saw in April.

Now, one reason why these inflation numbers came in very much better than expected is because we did see a drop in energy prices, in particular, gas prices were low. Now, economists like to look at core inflation because that excludes food and energy. But that also came in better than expected. I'm digging into some of the categories. We did see that egg prices, they did fall on a month over month basis again. So, that is a good sign.

Year over year, egg prices are still up significantly, up more than 40%. But still, we are seeing some of that pressure ease. Now, we're still digging into this report, looking at some of the different categories here.

And a lot of the economists that I talked to, they do still believe that this is the calm before the storm because we are seeing these historically high tariffs. And we do know from surveys that a lot of companies say they are passing along some, if not all of those costs on to consumers. And so the expectation is that in the months ahead, we're going to see that inflation rate tick higher because of tariffs.

But at this point, John, we're not really seeing that in the headline numbers. And again, that is in part because we've seen pretty low gas prices. And so that that is helping.

[08:45:04]

And I do think big picture, this is a -- this is a good report when it comes to the cost of living. We know there's been a lot of concerns about what's going to happen to inflation. It's still possible. That inflation does tick higher. But at this point, we're not really seeing it in these numbers. John?

BERMAN: Yeah. And the markets do seem to like it. Market futures turned up. They had been down a little bit after the CPI numbers came up. They did turn up market futures. So, we will see after the markets open in a little bit.

Matt Egan, thank you very much.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, John. We have spent months on the story I'm about to tell you about. There's this old Southern family in South Carolina that is doing something extraordinary as the Trump administration tries to dismantle DEI. They're really showing a map as to how they are dealing with it. They're uncovering and sharing their family history and coming together as one multiracial family, even though one side of the family were slave holders and the other side of the family were the enslaved on that plantation.

This is the story of the Simrills, who spell their name differently, but have a common goal.

SPENSER SIMRILL: My great grandfather, he was a football star for the South Carolina Gamecocks. And you find in 1916, it's spelled with one L and then it's spelled with two. So, we think that he did this because his fiancee, his wife, her last name was -- was Currell with two L's. And it sort of aligns more, I guess, symmetrically. That was sort of the family story. But then we also wondered if he did it to distance himself from the black Simrills.

DEBRA SIMRIL TISDALE-HAMON, "SINGLE L" SIMRIL: The reason there was a difference in the L's was because the white Simrills did not want anyone to know that they were related to the black Simrills. So, they added another L to their name.

S. SIMRILL: Now we call each other the single L's and the double L's.

SIDNER: How do you know Spencer?

MICHAEL SIMRIL: He sent a letter out to some family members about 11 years ago.

SIDNER: Did you know him before then?

M. SIMRIL: No, didn't know him from a can of paint.

S. SIMRILL: I probably sent 40 copies to everyone in the Carolinas with a variation of the Simril name.

SIDNER: One was addressed to Michael.

M. SIMRIL: Hello, fellow Simril or Simrill. I don't know about you, but I have often wondered about the name Simril or its origin, English, French. 30 years ago, my dad told my uncle, we're Italian, the Simrils. And for 30 years, my uncle believed him.

RITA SIMRIL FEE, "SINGLE L" SIMRIL: I remember him opening the letter and he said, mom.

M. SIMRIL: At the University of Georgia, I put together a course on family history where I would research alongside my students. Inspired by Henry Louis Gates, we would use Ancestry.com as our textbook and trace our family origins as far back as we could.

SIMRIL FEE: My family in South Carolina never talked about our legacy of slavery and racial terrorism. It was a crime forgotten. We did not speculate about a black family across the tracks with the same name spelled differently. S-I-M-R-I-L.

M. SIMRIL: When I ran Simril through Google Books, I was horrified. For two nights, I could not sleep after discovering the fate of Harriet Simril.

S. SIMRIL: What I find just completely takes my breath away. I find Harriet Simril. She testified in this government document. The shorter word is the Ku Klux Klan report.

SIDNER (voice-over): Harriet was born enslaved in the 1840s. Spencer could almost hear her talking to him. And it set him off on a decade- long mission to learn her whole story and share it with both the single L and double L Simrils.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Look, I have to tell you, the story of this family is almost unbelievable. When you hear what happens, what Harriet Simril was able to do, how she moved about in a time when she was under attack, the family under attack by the Ku Klux Klan. But you will hear something that I have never heard in American history, in a history between blacks and whites having to live with one another after the fact of slavery. It is an incredible story that I hope you will stick around for. And that story will air. It is called "The Simril(l)s: A Family in Black and White." Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern, we're airing the whole story with Anderson Cooper. Guys.

[08:50:18]

BOLDUAN: I look forward to seeing much more of that. Sara, thank you so much.

Also ahead for us, an existential threat. That is what one leading medical group now warns the administration's cuts to medical research will mean for medicine and patient care across the country. The head of the organization is our guest.

And it's called the Labubu. And it's a craze sweeping the world. A rare edition of this very popular toy just sold at auction for $150,000.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:55:00]

BERMAN: This morning, New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIver has been indicted on federal charges. The Democrat is accused of impeding and interfering with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center last month. McIver said, the allegations are baseless and defended her presence at the facility as part of her authorized role as a member of Congress.

This morning, if Pokemon cards and Beanie Babies are not enough for you, now there are Labubus. That is what they look like. Very attractive, although the teeth need some work. This one is a rare size of a human one. It was sold for more than $150,000 at an auction in Beijing. The auctioneer says the figurine was the only one like it available in the world. Imagine a one of a kind like that.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: You just can't wait to bet on a --

BERMAN: $150,000, where wouldn't that look good?

BOLDUAN: I am what -- you can't use that money for anything else, of course.

BERMAN: Nothing.

BOLDUAN: None at all.

BERMAN: There's nothing you'd want to spend 150 grand on other than that thing.

BOLDUAN: What's that? I think it's a face only a mother can love.

All right, let's turn to this now. New this morning, there's a dire warning coming out from the Association of American Medical Colleges about the very real impact of proposed federal cuts to medical research. Cuts, it calls an existential threat. In a new report, the organization found already more than 1,100 NIH grants have been already been terminated since the start of the second Trump administration. That includes at least 160 clinical trials, studying everything from cancer and mental health conditions to HIV/AIDS.

The association saying this, that "This is the first time that all the missions of academic medicine simultaneously face these threats from our federal partners. Yesterday, an NIH researcher feeling these cuts in real time and spearheading an effort to speak out, told us this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNA NORTON, NIH EMPLOYEE: What we see on the ground is not thoughtful review of research, it is keywords and phrases that this administration doesn't like that is causing studies to be terminated, right? So, they are looking for specific words they find offensive, terminating research based on that, not based on the rigor or quality of the research.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And joining us right now is Dr. David Skorton. He's the President and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, the group just out with this new report and this new warning this morning.

Doctor, thank you for your time. Talk to me. What is the existential threat?

DR. DAVID SKORTON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES: Well, Kate, first of all, thank you for your interest in our report. And if I might just take a moment, if you'll permit me, the title of the report refers to academic medicine. And for those joining your program who might not know what that means, let me just tell you quickly.

The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the world of academic medicine. That includes patient care all over the country. It includes the training of tomorrow's doctors, medical schools that grant MD degrees, and it includes biomedical research so we can solve the problems.

My first faculty position, which was at the University of Iowa was in January of 1980. So, I've been in this sector for roughly 45 years. And this is the first time in my career in academic medicine and in medicine that I've seen what I'm considering a perfect storm, where there are threats to our ability to deliver the patient care that we want to deliver today, this very day, to train tomorrow's physicians, and to do biomedical research that will lead us to future discoveries to help people in ways that we cannot even imagine now. So, that's why I'm concerned. It feels like a perfect storm.

BOLDUAN: And hearing the description, kind of the threefold, the three elements you talk about, is an important perspective on this that I don't think many have put together of just how broad the impact is now and the tail and how long the tail will be in the future if there isn't course corrective steps taken.

More than -- I just played that a little soundbite from a conversation I had yesterday, and there's more than 300 NIH employees. They just put out a letter to the director of NIH, basically speaking to what you're discussing, cuts to NIH that have already happened and additional cuts to come.

And the two researchers were actually on, and I want to describe, you're talking about the impact on patient care now. They're also seeing the impact on key research in real time. Let me play what they describe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IAN MORGAN, NIH EMPLOYEE: I've talked to researchers across the country and at the NIH, and right now, cancer patients are not receiving novel cancer treatments and are being cut off when their only other option is hospice care.

JENNA NORTON, NIH EMPLOYEE: The harms that I'm seeing, though, in my role at NIH are trials where people have implanted devices inside their bodies being terminated with no safety protocol, no shutdown procedures.