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Dodgers and Trump Administration at Odds Over Presence of Federal Agents; No Sign Yet of Tariff-Induced Inflation that Worried Economists; United, American Airlines Pause Passenger Flights to Middle East. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired June 20, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: There are conflicting accounts of what caused a tense scene outside Dodger Stadium yesterday when federal agents were seen just outside of the stadium's parking lot. And moments later, protesters rushed to the area believing that the agents were there as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Los Angeles police were also there.

CNN's Josh Campbell is in Los Angeles. Josh, explain what happened here.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a lot of confusion because we have these conflicting accounts. What we do know is that yesterday this group of federal agents showed up outside Dodger Stadium and then members of the community, protesters, also showed up and LAPD was brought in to provide separation. But here are the conflicting accounts.

I'll read you first what the Dodger team said on social media. They wrote that this morning ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. They said the game would continue to play last night.

Now, ICE denied that they were the ones that were there. But DHS issued a statement shortly thereafter saying this had nothing to do with the Dodgers. Customs and border protection vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to an operation or enforcement.

Now, there are serious questions being raised for DHS today regarding that statement. I mean, those of us who have covered these recent immigration operations can see that this appears to be a similar makeup to these arrest teams.

You have a large group of federal agents in unmarked vehicles with vans used as prisoner transports, many of them wearing masks. And, of course, we know that they have needed remote areas for their staging grounds because they've come under such scrutiny from certain protesters. Interestingly, CNN also heard from a member of the community who said

that they were at a raid at a Home Depot yesterday, and they actually followed a group of agents to this very location outside Dodger Stadium.

And the person told us that they asked one of the Border Patrol agents, what are you doing there? This person allegedly said that we're here processing people that we have arrested.

It's also worth noting that the LA Times is reporting today that they've actually received photos showing that at least two of the vehicles that were at that Home Depot raid actually matched two of the vehicles outside Dodger Stadium. They made that identification based on license plates.

So, again, a lot of members of the community here questioning the veracity of that DHS statement, this blanket denial, that they weren't involved in any type of operation. We're waiting for additional information.

The final point I'll note is that the Dodgers themselves here in LA are also coming under scrutiny from certain community members who want them to do more to speak out against these immigration raids.

[14:35:00]

Of course, what the community says is that Latinos make up such a core part of the Dodger fan base. They've been asking for the Dodgers to speak out. The team was supposed to issue a statement yesterday indicating what they're going to do to try to help the community, immigrant community. That didn't happen. So, again, we're waiting to hear what they're going to say next as well.

KEILAR: All right. We'll wait. Josh Campbell, thank you for the report -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Turning now to Trump's tariffs. When President Trump began threatening tariffs in a trade war with some of America's biggest trading partners, many economists were worried that it would lead to soaring inflation. But so far, across the board, price increases have not yet shown up on store shelves.

Joining us now is Gavin Bade. He's a trade and economic policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Gavin, why is it that we haven't seen the inflation that so many economists were worried about?

GAVIN BADE, TRADE AND ECONOMIC POLICY REPORTER, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, there's a number of reasons here. First of all, you know, those Liberation Day tariffs, the biggest tariff action that he took back on April 2nd, those have been paused for 90 days. And so that was supposed to give the administration time to work out trade deals that could potentially take many of these tariffs off the table.

The deadline for those deals is July 9th. So far, we've only seen one framework for an agreement. That was with the United Kingdom. So they're really rushing to get a lot of those together. And I think the other aspect is that there have been other tariffs

that have been put in place. For instance, the automotive tariffs, 25 percent on imported cars. And we recently doubled the steel and aluminum tariffs. They're now at 50 percent. Those are still working their way through the economy.

So most economists would say this summer is when we were going to start seeing those price increases hit. And I think people will be looking for that over the next few weeks and months.

SANCHEZ: That is what Fed Chair Jerome Powell seems to be prognosticating, that there's going to be a tipping point this summer where we'll see price increases, in part because you'll see pre-tariff inventories start to strain. There was one Fed board member, though, that predicted that there would be a one-off increase to inflation as opposed to a tipping point that we would see sort of go across the economy.

How do you think this is going to unfold if we don't see an announcement of these tariffs being relieved?

BADE: Yes, so the Fed this week decided to stand pat, keep rates where they were. And when Jerome Powell was having his press conference, he really expressed a lot of uncertainty about where the economy is going here. You know, this was the first Fed projections for the economy that we had gotten since Liberation Day.

And they both had inflation slightly up and unemployment expectations slightly up. So a risk for the dreaded stagflation there, where you see both of those measures going up, that can be very challenging for the Fed. But he was clear in his press conference that we don't really know which way this is going to go.

I mean, on July 9th, does Trump say we're going to charge a bunch more tariffs for our biggest trading partners? Does he extend that deadline? What other sectoral tariffs, like auto, steel, you know, critical minerals, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, those are all on the table.

And so there's a lot of really important policy decisions. And the deadlines seem to be coming very, very quickly here. So that's why the Fed has to say, throw their hands up and say, we don't really know what's going to happen here. A lot's going to happen, you know, what he thinks in the White House.

SANCHEZ: And given that uncertainty, it's probably not likely that we'll see a rate cut the way that Trump wants, right?

BADE: Maybe not in the way that Trump wants. I mean, the Fed officials are very divided on this. Some of them think, you know, about 10 of the 19 said we'll have two or more rate cuts this year.

Two of the 19 said we'll probably do one rate cut. The rest said, you know, we will probably stand pat for the rest of the year. That's a lot of disagreement amongst these very important economic officials. I think it just represents the uncertainty here. And it's important to note that that's uncertainty that doesn't only affect academic economists and prognosticators. That reflects uncertainty for businesses who, if you do want to invest in a new factory, if you do want to say, OK, maybe I'm going to take on that other shift, very difficult to know what your input costs are going to be three months down the line here.

That's going to be very challenging until we see some of these things get worked out.

SANCHEZ: And what is your read on where things stand right now with these trade deals? Come July 9th, do you think we'll see an extension of negotiations, in other words, a delay, or do you think we'll see some announcements?

BADE: A lot of rumors swirling across multiple continents right now. What I think we'll see is what we call term sheets, kind of agreements in principle on certain issues and an agreement to keep talking.

That's what they did with the UK. That's what they're working on with the European Union, with Japan, with South Korea. The question is, how substantive are those term sheets going to be? And is there going to be sort of a light at the end of the tunnel where we can say, now we have certainty and businesses can make investments?

That, I think, is anyone's guess at this point.

SANCHEZ: Elusive at this point. Kevin Bades, thank you so much.

BADE: Appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Next, a look at how the Israel-Iran conflict has punched a gaping hole in the airspace around these nations as airlines attempt to skirt around the fighting.

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SANCHEZ: The Israel-Iran conflict is now taking a toll on commercial air travel. United and American Airlines have now paused passenger flights to places like Dubai and Doha due to the escalating tensions. The unrest in the region, as well as Russia's war in Ukraine, is disrupting air traffic, forcing airlines to either reroute or cancel flights altogether.

KEILAR: Yes, take a look at this map. It's a recent image showing where planes were flying, and then these big holes over Israel, Iraq, Iran and Ukraine. Most air traffic now being squeezed into corridors that skirt around those countries.

So let's bring in CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean to talk a little bit more about the impact. That map really spells it out.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's pretty dramatic. And airlines tell me they're not really doing this because they have some sort of special insight into what's going on in the Middle East. But really because of the unpredictability of missile fire there in the Middle East.

[14:45:00]

You have to look at some of this video, which is pretty incredible, which shows missiles launching from Iran being captured on a passenger jet. Now you get kind of the idea of why airlines are avoiding overflights of so much of the Middle East.

Let's just sort of backtrack to the latest here. United Airlines says it's stopping its flights between its major Newark hub in New Jersey to Dubai indefinitely. American Airlines is suspending its flights between Philadelphia and Doha in Qatar until June 22nd.

And Delta is suspending flights between Kennedy and New York and Tel Aviv until the end of August.

But consider these expiration dates more of a suggestion than anything else. Remember that airlines have been cancelling flights between the U.S. and Israel since the October 7th attack. So in the 20 months since, service between the U.S. and the Middle East has been relatively spotty. And consider the fact that Donald Trump, the president, said just yesterday that it's going to be two weeks until he makes a decision on what to do about Iran. So it's pretty up in the air right now when airlines could potentially bring this service back.

They've really been pulling it down for a long, long time now. And so now this is kind of becoming the new normal for airlines as we see these tensions escalate. And we just saw last month, airlines did this between, United and American did this on flights between the U.S. and Delhi in India when there were tensions between India and Pakistan. So it's a pretty good example of why they do this.

Those flights are so long. Some of them are 12, 13, 14 hours long. And so if they had to carry extra fuel on these planes to be able to divert and turn around, some airlines are telling me that the planes would be only half full of passengers. So it really doesn't make a lot of financial sense here.

And so the airport in Ben Gurion, the airport in Tel Aviv is closed indefinitely right now. And there are no U.S. flights in and out of Iran. But it's still something that airlines are really considering big time, even if these flights aren't going specifically to those places.

KEILAR: Wow, it really is disruptive. Pete, thank you so much for that. Really appreciate it.

The new Pope taking on a new issue. Coming up, his message for tech leaders about artificial intelligence.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour.

A nationwide listeria outbreak has killed at least three people and caused at least one pregnancy loss. Officials have linked the outbreak to a popular ready to eat chicken fettuccine Alfredo meal. The pre- cooked meals were sold at Walmart under the Market Side brand and at Kroger under the Home Chef brand. These meals have been pulled from shelves, and the FDA says anyone who currently has them in their fridge or their freezer should throw them away or return them.

Also, Aflac is now the latest and the largest company to be targeted in a spree of hacks against insurance companies. Aflac says it's too soon to know exactly what information may have been stolen, but it may include customers social security numbers and health information.

Sources tell CNN the techniques used in the attack are consistent with a group of young cyber criminals based in the U.S. and the U.K. who are known for aggressively extorting their victims.

And the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders have scored a touchdown of sorts in the form of a huge raise. One of the women says their pay just went up by 400 percent. The cheerleader's salaries, that was a major plot point in the first season of the Netflix docuseries America's Sweethearts. The show revealed how many on the squad were forced to work second jobs despite the Cowboys franchise being the most valuable pro sports team in the world, according to Forbes -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: As the Trump administration dismantles DEI programs created to address the history of racial inequality in the United States, there's an old Southern family in South Carolina that is attempting to do quite the opposite. They're uncovering their history, sharing it and using it to come together as one giant multiracial family. CNN's Sara Sidner has more from this week's episode of the whole story with Anderson Cooper.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This story is an incredible piece of American history that never made it into the history books. It's also a deeply personal story told by a family from the deep South. One side of the family, descendants from enslavers, the other side, descendants from slaves.

But two members on the opposite sides of that family began digging up the truth together about what happened, grappling with it and figuring out a way to reconcile and rejoice with one another. This is the story of the South Carolina Simrills.

SPENSER SIMRILL JR., "DOUBLE L" 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 Curll with two L's. And this 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-HARMON: 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 Simrils. So they added another L to their name.

[14:55:02]

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

SIDNER: I got to be honest, I was not prepared for the twists and turns in this story. From the Klan's terror campaign with this family over voting rights to freedom that took them to Liberia, the black and white Simrills. I can't wait to share it with you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: And we can't wait to share it with you, too. Sara Sidner, thank you so much for that. An all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER" airs Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

Still plenty more news to come on NEWS CENTRAL. Diplomatic talks between Iran and European leaders have just wrapped up in Switzerland. We'll discuss what came out of them right after this.

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