Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Soon: Trump Hosts Rwandan & Congolese Officials At White House; Supreme Court Limits Power Of Lower Courts To Stop Trump Orders; Supreme Court Leaves Path For Trump To Ban Birthright Citizenship; Trump Says He would "Absolutely" Consider Bombing Iranian Nuclear Sites Again If He Thought It Was Necessary; Trump Reasserts July 4 Deadline For His Agenda Bill After Saying Earlier It Wasn't The "End All". Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 27, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:02:45]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We are standing by to see President Trump, who just minutes ago aired out his frustrations with Canada, lobbying a new tariff threat. The President saying that all trade talks with Canada are right now terminated.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And as we take a live look at the White House, at any moment he's expected to be hosting top officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, who just signed a peace deal agreement. Let's take you live to the North Lawn with CNN's Kristen Holmes.

Kristen, a busy Friday to say the least. What's the President's message on Canada?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris and Brianna, it was actually quite surprising to see because we just saw President Trump with the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, last week. And it seemed as though things were moving in a positive direction. They were both complimentary of each other. They said that they had different ideas on trade, but they thought that they could get to an agreement point.

And then, today we saw this post from President Trump essentially saying that all ties and all trade talks with Canada had been suspended and that they would just tell Canada what they were going to owe them in tariffs. And this is what he said.

He says, "We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400 percent Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country. They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know that Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven-day period."

Just a reminder, Canada is one of our biggest trading partners. And again, this seems to be quite a different direction than what we saw at the G7 when we saw the Prime Minister and President Trump interacting.

One thing to note, we know that the Trump administration had told Canada not to go through with this digital tax. It seems as though they did anyway. And it appears that the deadline to actually have these U.S. companies pay this digital tax is just three days on June 30th.

[15:05:02]

And part of this would be retroactive, meaning that there would be millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, that these big U.S. companies would owe to Canada, clearly angering President Trump. And now he says these talks are off.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes live at the White House for us. Thank you so much.

Now to the other major breaking news today, a huge legal win for President Donald Trump at the Supreme Court. Earlier, they ruled that the power that federal judges have to stop a president's executive actions should be limited.

KEILAR: CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid has been tracking this for us.

Paula, take us through the ruling and what this means now.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, Brianna, the reason this is such a big deal for President Trump is because he loves to govern through executive action. It's a lot easier to just write something down on a piece of paper and sign it than it is to work with Congress to pass new laws. That's why he has issued a record number of executive actions.

But before today's decision, these were often a challenge in court that any judge anywhere in the country could block one of those executive actions for the entire nation. These are called nationwide injunctions. This is not a Trump-specific issue, though. All modern presidents have complained about nationwide injunctions. They've all faced them.

But again, because Trump governs through executive action so often, he has faced a record number of injunctions. And now, the Supreme Court has limited the power that judges have to block these policies. The majority opinion was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

She writes, quote, "federal courts do not exercise a general oversight of the executive branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too." Even though I said it's bipartisan consensus that these injunctions were maybe a little bit out of hand, the arguments in support of these injunctions were usually twofold. One, the argument that there should be one uniform law governing the entire country. And two, that this gives the - this gives a judge an opportunity to block an unconstitutional policy quickly.

Now, Justice Sotomayor, she was one of three liberal justices in the dissent. She wrote, quote, "Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship."

Clearly, they're trying to appeal to other conservative causes. But here she is making the point that this could potentially be abused by future presidents. And I want to note that they did not decide birthright citizenship today, whether that is constitutional for the President to limit that right. We expect that that issue, that question, will likely be taken up by the court next term. Though, as of now, there is no specific case on the docket.

KEILAR: All right, Paula, thank you so much for that.

Let's talk about this more with immigration attorney Raul Reyes and also the co-founder of The Lincoln Project, Republican strategist Mike Madrid with us as well. Mike is the author of "The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy."

Raul, AG Bondi says that the issue of birthright citizenship could be decided in October when the Supreme Court is back for its next session. In the meantime, what are the implications here?

RAUL REYES, CNN OPINION WRITER: Well, in the meantime, the implications here are huge. Look, this was a procedural ruling that dealt with the use of universal or national injunctions. But this procedural ruling is impossible to separate from the practical impact that we are going to see.

Every year, according to the Migration Policy Institute, there are 225,000 children born on U.S. soil whose parents are here temporarily or without authorization. At best, as a result of this ruling, we will see a flood of lawsuits at the federal level, potential class actions.

But in the meantime, children will continue to be - will be born on American soil and will face major questions about whether they are indeed American citizens, stateless persons or whether their status is something that could potentially change from state to state. And when attorney Bondi says that this will be resolved in October, that is really an unusual statement because the Supreme Court term starts in October. At the earliest, I wouldn't see a decision on the merits of this case until June at the earliest.

So, that is a stretch for me. But this decision will indeed inject a tremendous amount of uncertainty, chaos and confusion into our immigrant populations and beyond.

SANCHEZ: Mike, proportionately, Hispanic communities are mostly being affected by these immigration crackdowns.

[15:10:03]

How do they view the issue of birthright citizenship?

MIKE MADRID, AUTHOR, "THE LATINO CENTURY": Well, broadly, the concept of birthright citizenship has enjoyed a majority of support of Americans broadly, higher amongst Latino Hispanic residents.

Now, look, we have seen a whole lot of discussion, appropriately so, about changing voter attitudes amongst Hispanic voters. Pew Research just came out with a poll yesterday that showed basically a 50-50 split between Trump and Harris in the last race.

Immigration views generally are changing with Latinos, who are more border-security perspective than they have been with a pathway to citizenship. That does not mean, though, however, that birthright citizenship has changed. In fact, I would suggest it's probably gotten stronger in its levels of support amongst Latinos specifically and Americans broadly, because what they're seeing in this country now is not - no longer viewed as simply border security. It's viewed as federal overreach. And I think that this ruling kind of starts to lend credence to the idea that when we start to change some of the basic fundamentals idea, fundamental ideas of American-ness, American identity and literally who is American. You start to see the American public pushing back and Latinos even more so.

SANCHEZ: Raul, what do you imagine the Supreme Court might do when they take up the issue of birthright citizenship? Do you think they might reinterpret it?

REYES: When the High Court actually reaches the merits of the case, I honestly do have confidence that their ruling will be in accordance - that they will uphold it, you know, that it is part of our Constitution. It has been part of seventh law for about 125, 150 years. So, I do think they will uphold the principle. There's just so much potential for damage and chaos in the meantime.

And going beyond immigration, as the - your correspondent pointed out, here today we're talking about national - nationwide injunctions in terms of immigration. What if, say, any president issued an executive order banning mail-in voting, banning foreign students, banning the use of a potential vaccine. By the reasoning of the majority opinion today, those would be allowed to go forward until we saw ultimately a decision from the Supreme Court, which moves very slowly.

And in the instance case, although the Supreme Court may get - will get to the merits of the case, I agree with Mr. Madrid. This Casa - Trump v. Casa case goes to a sense of who belongs in America, what it means to be an American citizen, how we define ourselves in terms of our citizenship.

And when we consider all of those questions in light of the massive uptick of immigration enforcement and ICE raids going across the country, that is the reason why so many people in our immigrant communities are living in fear. And latest polling from Gallup, since you touched on it, on birthright citizenship finds that 53 percent of Americans support it. Only one in four oppose birthright citizenship.

So, for me, the High Court was out of step with most Americans in this decision.

KEILAR: Mike, I wonder, because we've talked about for a long time now how Republicans have recently made such inroads with Hispanic voters. What do you think this is going to do to that?

MADRID: Well, that's the real question. Again, the last time that you saw the Trump administration sort of attack the immigrant community generally, Latinos, I think, felt specifically was during his first midterms, the 2018 midterms. That race gives us really particular insights to this moment, and here's why: The ICE raids and what's happening with deportations are at a much greater scale. But in 2018, we saw the highest Latino turnout in midterm history, and it had a very strong, decisive anti-Republican break.

Latinos essentially handed Nancy Pelosi the speaker's gavel to take out the - take over the House of Representatives. But - and here's the cautionary tale - the two elections after that saw the largest rightward shift of Latinos to the Republican Party.

So, what we're seeing is the Latino community emerge as this largely economic blue-collar voting bloc that only acts as an ethnic community, as an ethnic bloc voter, when it's perceived to be under attack. And I don't think there's any question the community is feeling under attack at just this moment.

So, very good likelihood that Donald Trump is giving back, ceding all of those Latino voters he picked up over the past few election cycles. Of course, we'll have to wait and see. Midterms are a long way off, but the possibility of doing generational damage for the Republican brand is very, very real.

[15:15:00]

KEILAR: Yes, we'll have to see. Raul, Mike, thank you so much to both of you.

REYES: Thank you.

KEILAR: And still to come, details on what President Trump plans to do this weekend to help push his budget bill over the finish line.

SANCHEZ: Plus, the surprising tactic used by Sean "Diddy" Combs' lawyers in their closing arguments. That and much more coming your way in just moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:19:39]

SANCHEZ: We're standing by for President Trump at the White House where at any moment he's going to welcome leaders from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The two leaders signing a peace agreement earlier today, brokered by the White House, ending years of bloodshed. This deal comes as the White House is exploring a different kind of deal, this one with Iran, after what the President is describing as a successful military strike on Iran to dismantle their nuclear capabilities.

[15:20:07]

Earlier today, the President said he would absolutely consider bombing Iran again if future intelligence reports indicate that Tehran was again attempting to enrich uranium. Let's discuss with former Assistant Secretary of State Jamie Rubin. He's also the co-host of the podcast, The X-Files, with his ex-wife, CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Thank you so much for being with us, James. The Israeli defense minister is saying that alongside the United States, they have told Iran to hand over any leftover enriched uranium, even as it's unclear exactly how much remains or even where it might be. Do you think that's something Tehran would consider? And if so, in exchange for what?

JAMES RUBIN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER PRESIDENT CLINTON: Right. I don't think Iran is going to consider just handing over their remaining enriched uranium to Israel or the United States. I do think it's possible if President Trump allows diplomacy to do its work and understands that force itself, even powerful weaponry like the MOP, the mass ordnance penetrator, force itself cannot assure us that Iran is not going to develop nuclear weapons. The only way to do that with confidence is to have an agreement, an arrangement, a diplomatic result, working with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has monitoring capabilities inside Iran now, and which Iran may allow inspectors to return. And then we will know a lot more about what is left in Iran.

There's a lot of doubt and question and uncertainty as to how much of the facility at Fordow that was bombed by the United States remains. Where did the uranium - the powerfully enriched uranium go? Do they have additional centrifuges? And will they start weaponizing their enriched uranium?

These are all big questions that can't be answered by threatening force, by the Israelis, by the United States. That only can be answered if you can marry successfully diplomacy and force. That's the challenge for this administration. So far, they've been a lot better at using force than having diplomacy achieve what our national objectives.

We all want to prevent Iran's nuclear weapons capability from ever coming to fruition. That's what President Biden wanted. That's what President Trump wants. That's what I assume the American people want. But that can't be done by force alone.

SANCHEZ: It seems like you do have faith that diplomacy could provide an answer to that. I do wonder what you make of the assessment that this action has now pushed Iran closer to a bomb, as they may see it necessary for self-defense.

RUBIN: Right. This is the big, big question now as a result of the military attacks by Israel and the United States. Up till now and most Americans don't - and people around the world don't appreciate this. Iran was threatening to make nuclear weapons by building up its enrichment of uranium. But it wasn't actually trying to weaponize that nuclear material. It wasn't testing a nuclear weapon. It wasn't testing the explosive device, the implosion of enriched uranium you need to set off a chain reaction and have a nuclear explosion.

They weren't doing that. They were threatening everyone by enriching uranium to 60 percent and building enough enriched uranium to make many bombs. They were threatening the world, but they weren't seeking to test a weapon. They may now do that in response to these military attacks. And remember, the one country that's an important analogy here is North Korea.

When the Bush administration adopted a maximalist strategy of demanding unconditional surrender effectively or basically capitulation from the North Korean regime, their response was to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty, stop cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and going about testing a nuclear weapon. They then tested it, and now people are reluctant to strike North Korea because they have nuclear weapons.

We don't want that to happen with Iran, and that means President Trump and Israel need to understand that military force alone won't achieve their objectives.

SANCHEZ: James Rubin, fascinating to hear your point of view. Thank you so much for being with us.

RUBIN: You're welcome.

SANCHEZ: Brianna?

KEILAR: President Trump is again ramping up pressure on Congress to pass its sweeping tax and spending cuts bill. He posted on Truth Social, quote, "The House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th - we can get it done."

And this comes just hours after the President appeared to soften his self-imposed target, saying that it isn't an end-all deadline. Let's go to the Hill now, where we have CNN's Manu Raju.

[15:25:00]

All right, Manu, a little slip and slide there with the deadline, it looks like. Where do things stand?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. This is a self- imposed deadline. There's really no reason for this bill to be approved by July 4th, other than the fact that the President simply wants it done by Independence Day. And that is creating all sorts of problems, procedural problems. The Senate is trying to approve this bill along straight party lines.

In order to do that, Republicans need to meet the strict budget rules in the United States Senate. But several of the provisions, some of the key provisions have not met that test. So, they've had to rewrite some of the key aspects of this sweeping bill that deals with a multi- trillion-dollar overhaul of the United States tax code, deep spending cuts, new work requirements for social safety net programs, hundreds of billions of dollars in spending for border security and national security programs, which is one big reason why a number of Republicans are saying, let's take a little bit more time. We want to see these changes that are made, and before we can vote on this measure, not just in the Senate, but also in the United States House.

Remember, if this does pass the Senate as soon as tomorrow, and that is the hope among some of the Republicans, that this will get through the House by tomorrow night - by the - through the Senate by tomorrow night, then the House will have to take it up. And that's where we're hearing some resistance from some members saying, we can't just be rubber stamped with the Senate approved here. We need to make changes of our own.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): I'm not as set on getting this done on July 4th as some of the others.

If they try to jam it through and, you know, the House does - and they go too far in changing what the House did, it runs the risk of it failing here.

RAJU: Do you think it's responsible for them to cut this deal behind closed doors and drop it in your lap and say, take it or leave it?

REP. ERIC BURLISON (R-MO): No, I mean, that's what Washington is good at, is kind of jamming people last minute, giving you something you haven't had time to read, haven't had time to get reflection or input from your district.

REP. KEITH SELF (R-TX): You know, I'm not giving my voting card to any senator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And remember, these Republican leaders can only afford to lose three Republican votes in the United States Senate and also in the United States House. And that is really the challenge here, because there are conservatives who are threatening to vote against this plan because they believe it does not cut spending enough and are concerned about the potential impacts to the budget deficit, potentially trillions of dollars over the next decade or so.

And also, there are some more moderate members and also even some conservative ones who are worried about the cuts to Medicaid in particular. And that issue still has not been resolved. But even so, the Senate Republican leadership is barreling forward and wants to have a vote as soon as tomorrow to begin the process and possibly push this through the Senate by tomorrow night. But we'll see if they ultimately can get there, both by getting the bill drafted. It's not even done yet and gain the votes there. Still open question about whether that can even happen by tomorrow night. Brianna. SANCHEZ: All right. We'll be watching to see. Manu Raju, thank you so much.

Still to come, new details on when jury deliberations might begin in the Sean "Diddy" Combs trial, what the judge just said in court.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)