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Judge Orders Kennedy Center Must Remove Trump's Name During Appeal; Trump Administration Outlines Prospective Agreement With Iran; Ariana Grande Tells White House to Stop Using Her Music; Storm Threat Shifts East After Tornadoes, Winds Kill One in Midwest; SpaceX Goes Public With Historic Offering of Stock; USA Plays Its First Match Tonight vs. Paraguay in L.A. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 12, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:32:09]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We do have Breaking News. A federal judge, as you are looking at these live pictures, just ruling that the Kennedy Center must remove all signage bearing President Trump's name. The Art Center's board had sought to keep the name on the building while it appeals the case. It filed that appeal on Thursday ahead of today's deadline to remove all references to the Trump-Kennedy Center.

The judge saying in his ruling, the board, quote, "Have not made a strong showing that they are likely to succeed on the merits of an appeal." So again, these are live pictures that you're looking at, at the Kennedy Center, as we see a work crew there. We're going to keep an eye on this, and we'll bring you this as this continues throughout the day. We'll see what exactly is happening there.

We do continue to follow Breaking News on the war with Iran. A senior U.S. official just gave some details on the framework, and this includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. It also calls for the dismantling of Iran's nuclear program and would relieve Iran of a lot of economic pressures that they have been under for years.

This comes after Pakistan's prime minister announced that the U.S. and Iran have reached what's described as the final agreed-upon text of a possible peace agreement, adding that the two sides are working to finalize the next steps. Let's talk about this now with Javed Ali. He's a former Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council under President Trump. He's also an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan.

OK, this is really interesting, the reopening of the Strait, lifting of the U.S. blockade, dismantling Iran's nuclear program, which would include the U.S. obtaining Iran's enriched material, destroying it on site, then taking it out of the country, and then this sort of euphemism of relieving Iran of its economic pressures. That's giving them money, right? But that's huge. How are you seeing this? JAVED ALI, FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR OF COUNTERTERRORISM, NSC UNDER TRUMP: So, Brianna, nice to be with you again. And yes, this deal, if the key points as described, it seems like it's the maximalist U.S. position that has been agreed to, or at least some level of that maximalist position, and the Iranians are going to now have to comply with these different conditions. But they also have probably made -- the U.S. has made concessions to get Iran to get to this point of the deal, and so we're just going to have to wait and see the mechanics and the timing and verification of compliance. This is where -- that's the hard part of this, beyond just the words on the paper.

KEILAR: OK, we'll talk about that verification in a second. But this sort of relieving Iran of a lot of the economic pressures that they've been under, this has been the tricky part, because Iran wants money, and their economy has really been struggling for years and years at this point.

And Trump has been loath to want to be seen as doling out cash to Iran. This is something that he criticizes the Obama administration for, and its JCPOA. How do you see this part of things?

[13:35:00]

ALI: So yes, it is going to be about unfreezing billions and billions of dollars of Iranian, assets to include large cash reserves, lifting some of the sanctions, getting the military pressure off the Iranian ports and allowing more Iranian traffic to navigate through the Strait of Hormuz. These are all things that Iran needs to rebuild its economy that has been so damaged and under pressure for decades, not even just years.

KEILAR: The handing out of money, relieving this economic pressure, how do you phase that in? How does the U.S. phase that in without being in the position of giving Iran something for an agreement that it may not make good on and then Iran is still out the door with money?

ALI: Well, this is when it comes down to the compliance and verification of that compliance. The U.S., I would have to believe, is going to build an architecture from an intelligence perspective and other types of capabilities to look really closely at what is Iran doing to live up to the terms of these conditions. And if based on whatever that intelligence picture shows, if they're not, then the U.S. may resume the sanctions, put more -- resume economic pressure, who knows, maybe even military operations. But I think that's the terms that have been agreed to.

KEILAR: OK, so how are you seeing this? It seems like you are looking at these agreements and you're kind of waiting to see. But we also saw the president with his Truth Social post yesterday talking about, you know, a signing is kind of TBD. I don't know that we'd heard him say something like that before, but we've heard him so many times talk about a deal being near. It's just a few days away. It's hard sometimes to know if that's actually the truth. So how are you seeing this? ALI: Sure. So, yes, for the last several weeks, if not a couple of months, we have heard that in the past, both sides were close to a deal with different terms or different conditions. But I would argue over the last 24 hours, all the indicators suggest that a deal has actually been agreed to unless --

KEILAR: And why is that?

ALI: Because of the statements from not only President Trump, but what you're seeing from the Iranian foreign minister, the Pakistani foreign minister. I don't think we would be seeing those kind of statements and those kind of assertions unless the Iranians have agreed to live up to some aspect of this.

KEILAR: So how do we see the issue of the Strait playing out here in the near term? I mean, what do you think the timeline could be for that?

ALI: This is going to take weeks, if not months, I would have to believe, because there have been ships sort of still resting in the Strait for weeks, if not months as well. So it's going to take time for this navigation to open up. And Iran will theoretically not be able to interfere with that shipping and certainly not be able to fire or attack any of those ships as well.

And if they do, again, does the U.S. decide to strike Iran? And how does that affect the MOU at that point?

KEILAR: Yeah, the president does seem reticent to do that. He really is looking for an off-ramp here.

ALI: I agree.

KEILAR: We'll have to see. I mean, this is pretty interesting news. Javed, thank you so much for being with us.

So who wants to be a trillionaire? Elon Musk is now the world's first after SpaceX goes public. Should you invest? We'll talk about it on the other side.

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[13:42:58]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Now to some of the other headlines we're watching this hour. Singer and actress, Ariana Grande is calling on the White House to stop using her music after the administration posted a video promoting its immigration policy. The 14-second long TikTok video shows officers, including ICE agents, handcuffing and arresting people as her 2024 song, "Bye," plays over it.

Grande responded to the video writing, "Please do not use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense." In response to her comment, a White House official says, what is barbaric and heinous are the people who have illegally crossed the border and have injured or murdered American citizens.

Also, new research is partially blaming the nation's declining fertility on smartphones. The study was led by an economist with the National Bureau of Economic Research and focused on the four-year period after the first iPhone came out in 2007. It found that in U.S. counties where more than 90 percent of residents had smartphone access, the fertility rate fell significantly more than in counties where less than 10 percent of people had network coverage.

And a powerful storm system is now targeting much of the East after unleashing tornadoes and hurricane-force wind gusts across the Midwest, leveling entire neighborhoods and killing at least one person in Iowa. Police say a 54-year-old man died after being hit by a tree at a homeless encampment in Des Moines.

A cameraman rushed to help a man trapped under the debris of a collapsed home in Streator, Illinois, just south of Chicago. Look at this video.

Police were able to arrive and pull him out of that rubble to safety. The storms have generated nearly 1,500 damage reports this week. Hundreds of thousands remain without power. Brianna?

KEILAR: SpaceX, we have liftoff, the company launching on Wall Street this morning with a historic initial public offering of stock. The IPO turned Elon Musk into the world's first trillionaire, and it raised more money than any company's IPO ever, $75 billion. The other numbers, just eye-popping here.

[13:45:00]

Shares were listed at $135 each. At the current price, SpaceX is now valued at well over $2 trillion and making it the sixth most valuable company in the U.S. Right now, you're looking there, you see that stock is trading at $173 a share. So, should you get in on the action? I think a lot of people might be wondering this.

Let's check in with Jack CRIVICI-Kramer, co-host of "The Best One Yet" business podcast. He's also a former investment banker who sold his last startup to Robinhood. All right Jack, so this was a really oversubscribed IPO to put it mildly here, reportedly four times the amount of stock available. You tried to buy SpaceX. Did you get any?

(LAUGH)

JACK CRIVICI-KRAMER, CO-HOST, "THE BEST ONE YET" PODCAST: I requested 150 shares from Robinhood and at about 11 p.m. Eastern last night, I was informed that my allocation was one share. And it's really funny, Brianna. You know, I was in Los Angeles last week and I took an Uber and a Lyft to and from the airport. Both drivers, upon hearing that I hosted a markets podcast, asked me what I thought of SpaceX.

Name recognition often wins elections. Well, SpaceX has name recognition among everyone, especially among those who don't usually invest. And that's why I was only allocated one share of my requested 150. Everyone wants a piece of this company. CRIVICI-KRAMER: All right well you have one, right? On your podcast though, you said the stock was wildly overpriced based on the fundamentals that this is essentially a bet on Elon Musk. Tell us more about that.

CRIVICI-KRAMER: Yeah, so a million people have asked me, is the stock going to go up or is the stock going to go down. Here's the thing, trying to predict the price of SpaceX stock is like trying to predict the price of a Pokemon card because SpaceX stock is like an Elon Musk trading card. You're buying it for emotional reasons, not financial.

And like a Pokemon card, those are trading at record high right now. SpaceX stock could get you rich, like Tesla has for so many people. But what is a Pikachu card worth? Well, Elon said yesterday, it's worth $135 per share, take it or leave it. And the reason so many people are taking it is because Elon's emotional appeal is so strong. The lore of Elon Musk is that he's gotten millions of people rich, thanks mostly to Tesla.

And anybody who's ever bet against him has lost their money. And the reason Tesla stock is so high is the same reason SpaceX stock is so high. Elon's ability to tell awesome stories. For Tesla, the story was at first sustainable energy, then it was robotaxis, now it's putting Optimus Prime, humanoid robots in everybody's home.

And for SpaceX, we've seen a similar evolution of the storytelling, but all of them just keep you wrapped on the edge of your seat. First it was colonizing Mars, now it's data centers in space, powered by the Sun. Someday it's going to change again.

You know, Nick and I jumped in to the first -- to the S1, the IPO paperwork, and the first sentence of that for SpaceX, it read like a sermon at a church, but it was written by Elon Musk. So this stock is purely about the emotional appeal. So don't try to calculate the financials and figure out the right valuation based on the profits. This is like owning memorabilia of an artist that you love, an Elon Musk trading card.

KEILAR: Really interesting. All right. I do feel like I should know the cost of a Pikachu card, by the way. I'm at that point in my life with my children.

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: SpaceX's main drivers of profit are its rocket launches and its Starlink satellite business, but it really sees this future growth in A.I. where it's facing a ton of competition, right, from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic. So knowing that --

CRIVICI-KRAMER: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- how risky is this stock?

CRIVICI-KRAMER: That's the wildest part of this whole SpaceX IPO story. SpaceX arguably has two monopolies, which is pretty incredible. It has a rocket launch monopoly, so it can become an interplanetary species someday, and it's got a space connectivity monopoly.

So 80 percent of the rocket launches and nearly 100 percent of satellite internet through Starlink. So those have both seen profits in the past, the rocket launch business and the space connectivity business. But now, after SpaceX acquired xAI earlier in the year, Elon is saying that A.I. is the only business that you need to care about.

So he famously calculated this total addressable market, a TAM, of $28 trillion. That is the potential revenue that SpaceX could make in the future, according to SpaceX. Now for context, that's about the size of the United States GDP.

So Elon Musk thinks SpaceX can make the entire economic output of the United States in one year of sales. But if you look closer at that number, 93 percent of SpaceX's TAM is A.I. So only 7 percent of SpaceX is the two monopolies that they are running, the rocket launch business and the satellite connectivity business.

[13:50:00]

So A.I. is simultaneously the only reason to buy the stock because it's the biggest opportunity according to Elon. But it's also the only reason not to buy the stock --

KEILAR: Yeah.

CRIVICI-KRAMER: -- because it's the horribly unprofitable part of the business.

KEILAR: Yeah, it's the wild card. It is the Pikachu card, if you will --

CRIVICI-KRAMER: Yeah."

KEILAR: -- in all of this.

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: Jack CRIVICI-Kramer, full circle, we went there. Thank you so much. Really appreciate all your insights and expertise. And you can hear "The Best One Yet" wherever you listen to podcasts.

Coming up, Team USA about to kick off its World Cup journey at a time when soccer's popularity is hitting new heights here at home, or football as a lot of people call it. We're talking about what's at stake.

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[13:55:18]

SANCHEZ: The long four-year wait for soccer fans across the globe is finally over. The World Cup is officially back. The U.S. men's national team kicks off its quest tonight against Paraguay and hopes to maximize its advantage with a rowdy home crowd at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Over the next five weeks, more than 100 matches will be played in 16 cities across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. And this year's tournament has the largest field ever, 48 teams vying for the Cup, 16 more than in 2022.

So, how will the U.S. stack up against the competition? Let's discuss with Paul Tenorio. He's a Senior Writer for The Athletic and the author of "The Messi Effect: How the Global Legend Changed the Future of American Soccer." Paul, thanks so much for being with us.

Now that we're on the verge of the U.S. opening game, what does this mean not only for North America, but for the United States in particular, to play host to the largest sporting event in the world?

PAUL TENORIO, SENIOR WRITER, THE ATHLETIC: It's an enormous opportunity for the sport in this country to grow and to continue to kind of find its mark in the domestic sports landscape. I think it's an opportunity for the U.S. men's national team to change the way people think about American men's soccer players and the U.S. team.

Obviously, the women's team has been at the top of international soccer for a long time, and the men have just won one knockout game in the modern era of the World Cup. This is an opportunity now to do something different. You have the home field advantage. You have the opportunity to play in front of big pro-U.S. crowds. Can that be the difference maker?

And at the same time, hosting all these games gives an opportunity for what MLS and American soccer has built over the last three decades to be shown off across the world.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, so how do you think the U.S. side is going to fare this year?

TENORIO: It's a difficult one. Look, they're in a group that doesn't have the big giants of international soccer because they were in pot one as a host, but they also didn't draw any minnows. This group has teams that are very evenly matched -- Paraguay, Australia, Turkey, and the U.S. Actually, when you look at all of the groups in the World Cup, there's the least amount of difference between them in the FIFA rankings and in the Elo rankings, which shows strength of the team. So I think the U.S. has the opportunity to do well.

They should have -- having the home field advantage, they should be able to get results against these teams. But there won't be a game that they're going into and saying we should win this a hundred percent. For me, my expectation around this team is, they should win the group. Playing at home in a World Cup tournament means the expectation, the bare minimum, is that they win the group. Because it's an expanded tournament, they'll have to win a knockout game to get to the Round of 16, which is where they got in 2022.

And for us to really feel like there's been progress around a group that has had so much hope and hype, this "golden generation of American soccer," I think they need to win that Round of 16 game as well for this tournament to feel like a success.

SANCHEZ: And which teams are you penciling in as most likely to reach the final?

TENORIO: Well, I think France, for me, is the favorite. It's interesting because Spain and France are the two best teams in this tournament, but they could end up seeing each other in a semifinal if this tournament plays out with chalk.

Some of the other groups and teams I'm looking at to make runs, I think Portugal has a better team than most people realize. And obviously, Cristiano Ronaldo playing in his last World Cup, in the same way Argentina kind of was galvanized around Messi and trying to win a World Cup for Messi, I think there's some elements of that with this Portugal team. I also think, we saw Mexico open the tournament yesterday at home at the Azteca in Mexico City. They have the best home field advantage of any team in this tournament.

And while they don't have their strongest team, and this isn't the Mexico teams of their biggest strengths with their star players, that home field advantage, the opportunity to play at home, at altitude in Mexico City, I think gives them a possibility of being the dark horse of this tournament, a team that could end up making a run deeper than most people realize. Keep an eye on a potential Round of 16 matchup in Mexico City between Mexico and England, one team that a lot of people are picking.

I think Mexico could pull off an upset in that game and be the team that we all kind of are talking about in the same way that Morocco did in 2022.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, that was a crazy run for Morocco. A lot of action to keep track of. Paul Tenorio, thanks so much for walking us through that.

TENORIO: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course. A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

KEILAR: It's all in the details. The White House outlining a possible agreement with Iran to end the war.

We're going to look at what that could look like.