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Fed Keeps Rates Steady as Warsh Helms First Fed Meeting; U.S. Releases Official 14-point Agreement With Iran; Trump Urges Israel to Use Good Judgment in Lebanon Military Ops; Trump Cancels DNI Hearings, Urges Lawmakers to Pass Voter ID Bill; Rep. Mike Collins Wins GOP Nomination, Sets Up Senate Battle With Ossoff. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired June 17, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:20]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": A new Chair in charge. Will the Federal Reserve raise rates to fight inflation, cut rates like President Trump wants, or leave them be? We'll find out in just a matter of seconds.

Plus, the text of the Memorandum of Understanding has finally been released. See exactly what is in this agreement between the United States and Iran.

And an admission with an asterisk. Here, Luigi Mangione's defense strategy for his upcoming murder trial. As we follow these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

We start this hour with Breaking News out of the Federal Reserve. The Central Bank making its first decision on interest rates under new Chair, Kevin Warsh. CNN's Matt Egan is standing by the Fed's main office here in D.C. So Matt, what did the board decide?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Boris, no change in rates. The Federal Reserve announcing just moments ago that for the fourth meeting in a row, they are keeping interest rates steady.

Now, this might come as a surprise to some because, yes, the Fed is under new management. Fed Chairman, Kevin Warsh, he, of course, was selected by President Trump who has made no secret of his desire for dramatically lower interest rates. However, this is not something that Warsh can decide unilaterally.

The Fed makes these decisions by a committee. And ironically, that committee is now signaling that the next move may not be an interest rate cut. It may be an interest rate hike. Because new projections that were just issued by the Fed, they are now signaling a potential quarter point interest rate hike by the end of this year.

Now, that is a major shift from the last time they issued projections back in March. At that time, Fed officials were penciling one interest rate cut. What's changed since then? Well, the biggest thing, of course, that has changed is the fact that the war continues to go on and that that has pushed up energy prices and inflation.

Now, I should note that these new projections on interest rates from the Fed, known as the dot plot, they are missing one vote. Normally, there's 19 officials that pencil in where they think interest rates are going. This time, there's one dot that is missing. And we don't know whose that is because this is done anonymously.

But Fed watchers had suspected that Kevin Warsh, he may opt not to participate because he has not been a fan of the dot plot and issuing forward guidance. Perhaps we'll get some more clarity on that later on today when Warsh takes questions from reporters.

Now, the other changes here were the economic projections. The Fed made significant changes. First, they slightly downgraded their projections for GDP growth this year. That likely reflects the impact of the war. The unemployment rate was slightly lowered.

However, the bigger changes came for inflation. The Fed is now penciling in 3.6 percent inflation from PCE. That's the Fed's preferred gage. That, of course, reflects the impact from the war and higher energy prices as well.

Now, the Fed also made sweeping changes to the statement that it issues each meeting. This was a major revamp. It's almost unrecognizable from the last statement. The statement says that economic activity is expanding at a solid pace, despite elevated uncertainty that owes in part to the conflict in the Middle East.

The Fed goes on to say that productivity, growth and capital investment are strong and that job gains have kept pace with the workforce. Lastly, the Fed added this new line where they say the committee will deliver price stability.

One other point here is, I should note that this was a 12-0 vote. So this was a unanimous decision, unlike the last one from the Fed. So here in Kevin Warsh's first meeting as Chairman, the Fed is delivering a bit of unity here in terms of their message. Boris?

SANCHEZ: And Matt, as you're speaking, we're looking at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and you can see that right at two o'clock when this announcement was made, there was a bit of a dip in the Dow, a very modest one. It is slightly down, even though the context, of course, the Dow Jones hitting record highs as of late.

Matt, I wonder how this tentative agreement between the U.S. and Iran might impact future decisions on interest rates. As you've outlined there, it does have an impact on inflation.

EGAN: Yeah, absolutely, Boris.

[14:05:00]

I do think that's one of the biggest questions that we can expect Warsh will face later this hour when he conducts his first press conference as Chairman. The U.S.-Iran framework, it of course has caused oil prices to plummet in recent days and really just the rumor of the deal in the last few weeks has sent oil prices down. That has lowered gasoline prices, so that's going to have an impact on inflation readings going forward.

It also has an impact on inflation expectations. So that's a question for Warsh, whether or not the fact that there is this framework and that there's been this diplomatic breakthrough perhaps takes some of the pressure off the need for the Fed to raise interest rates going forward. But look, there's a whole number of other different topics that we're waiting to hear from Warsh on.

He has spoken at length about a desire to have a regime change at the Fed. He's talked about making a number of different changes to how the Fed operates, to its economic models, to how it communicates. And so perhaps we'll hear some more clues from Warsh later this hour on what the public will expect to change now that he's in charge of the Fed. Back to you.

SANCHEZ: Matt Egan, thank you so much for bringing us that report. Of course, we're going to bring you the news conference live when Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh speaks roughly 30 minutes from now, his first press conference again as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We're also following the Breaking News out of France. The U.S. just releasing its official 14-point agreement with Iran. The Memorandum of Understanding puts in place a 60-day negotiation period to come to final terms on a deal that can be extended if Iran and the U.S. agree mutually to do so.

It is expected to be signed formally on Friday and in this, the U.S. and Iran declare a termination of military operations on all fronts and note that does include Lebanon. Iran is committing to re-opening the Strait of Hormuz but only during the negotiations, with 60 days, not after. Iran also agrees not to buy or develop nuclear weapons.

In exchange, the U.S. is granting immediate financial relief to Iran, lifting sanctions and its naval blockade. The U.S. and regional partners are also ensuring financing of at least $300 billion to rebuild Iran. The president was pressed on why Iran would potentially gain so much so quickly and here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We're not doing anything. We're not putting up money. Only if they're doing things right. If they're doing things right. If people want to invest, they can invest. But they had this $300 billion fund. It's only $300 billion fund. It's only if they're doing things right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by CNN Global Affairs Analyst, Kim Dozier to talk about this deal. We do as we said have this official text and part of it says that the U.S. and Iran agree to resolve the disposition of stockpile enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon. It talks about down blending material on site under IAEA supervision. And we should note that we've heard time and time again from the president, from the Trump administration about destroying that material. So what do you think of this?

KIM DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Part of that is President Trump doesn't do details and part of it is this is what Iran said yes to. Look, the deal -- the good news is we could potentially see the Strait open in 30 days. The pressure taken off the world oil markets. The bad news is Iran got a whole bunch upfront with a promise of a lot of cash in return and no strings on that cash.

In this Memorandum of Understanding, it commits Iran to negotiating for 60 days only on nuclear issues. It doesn't touch human rights, the ballistic missile program, Iran's support for proxies. In return for signing just a nuclear deal, the U.S. is saying it would work to lift all sanctions against Iran. IAEA and U.N. sanctions as well.

They've made a lot of promises that I don't think the U.S. can deliver because you need other parties involved.

KEILAR: That's a very good point. There's two signatories here, right?

DOZIER: Yeah.

KEILAR: And there's other parties to these issues. The text says that Iran gets immediate relief to sell oil and that's important because this is how Iran makes so much of its money and it has oil that it could sell as soon as this is signed, right? There's also this promise of the $300 billion to rebuild supported by regional partners and Trump says, quote, "It's not our money" is what he says about the money that's being paid. This is Iranian money. He makes it out to be different than the JCPOA money. Is it?

DOZIER: Well, so there are a bunch of different parts. The $24 billion or so in frozen ,funds that is Iranian money that the U.S. arranged to have frozen. So Iran will get access to a lot of that if it opens the Strait. Selling the oil, Reuters reported that four ships full of Iranian oil have already transited the Strait before this is even officially signed and the U.S. didn't stop them.

[14:10:00]

So, that will give Iran tens of billions of dollars in its coffer and there are no limitations on what Iran could spend this money on. Normally, U.S. negotiators would say you can only spend the money in support of non-sanctioned parties or organizations inside Iran. They could ostensibly use this to rebuild their ballistic missile launchers and their drone program that has been hit really hard militarily.

KEILAR: You mentioned ballistic missiles. Israel is looking at that part where Iran gets to keep its ballistic missiles, which it has used to shield its nuclear program. And the president was pressed on this. And here is more of what he said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: They have to have some because other people have some. They've got to have some. Somebody said you shouldn't let them have any missile. I said, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles but they can't have them? Yes, sir. It doesn't work that way, you know. It doesn't work that way.

And missiles aren't the problem. Missiles, they hurt a little location, but they don't blow up the planet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: He said they'll -- wow, you said, yeah. He said they will talk about proxies. But the first thing in this 14-point agreement is peace on all fronts, including Lebanon, which Israel is just, I mean, cannot be happy about. How are they seeing what is in this deal?

DOZIER: I mean, this is a poison pill. Israel and Lebanon aren't sitting there as part of this negotiation, and Hezbollah is certainly not part of this negotiation. And any time Hezbollah fires, the Israeli prime minister said yesterday, in an address to the nation, he's going to fire back. Also, Hezbollah is currently largely run by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers ever since Israel took out much of the Hezbollah leadership.

So the IRGC also has a built-in trigger. Any time it doesn't like how the 60-day negotiations are going on, it can just have its officers who are on the ground in Lebanon fire south, order Hezbollah to fire south, and Israel strikes back, and then Iran can say, see, we can't talk right now.

KEILAR: Interesting. There's a lot of agreements to talk about other things in this sort of 60 days, which can slide if they agree on it mutually. But as Beth Sanner, our analyst, put it, this is really about money, right, to open the Strait.

DOZIER: Yes.

KEILAR: That's what it actually achieves right now. And when you look at control of the Strait more long term, the 60-day only thing for, OK, it's going to precede no U.S. naval blockade, there's going to be this toll-free transit, Iran's not going to charge people. But what about in the long term when you're reading this bit about Iran and Oman will talk about defining future administration of the Strait in discussion with all other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with international law? What do you think this could end up looking like long term?

DOZIER: You know, I think Iran, come 60 days, could reassert its control and say it brought up a proposal once before that Iran and Oman would together run the Strait of Hormuz and that they would charge fees for things like safety and insurance. If they decide to go back to that two months from now, I don't think Trump will have the same amount of military forces arrayed in the Gulf, and he'll have even less will.

It'll be closer to the midterms. He won't want to start a shooting war then any more than he wants to start it now.

KEILAR: Real quick, if they're charging like $1 million a ship, what are they actually providing that's worth $1 million a ship, besides you can get through here?

DOZIER: The guaranty that they're not going to fire on them, basically.

KEILAR: They're insuring people against Iran. That's really interesting. Kim Dozier, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Still to come, President Trump throwing a wrench in what should have been a speedy confirmation process for a new Director of National Intelligence. We'll have the latest on that ahead.

Plus, we now know the defense that Luigi Mangione's attorneys plan to present at his murder trial. Stay with us.

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[14:18:53]

KEILAR: Senate Republicans appear to have been blindsided by President Trump today. He abruptly canceled a confirmation hearing for his own Director of National Intelligence nominee, Jay Clayton. The Committee Chair says Trump directed Clayton not to appear for the hearing. Word coming about an hour, only an hour, before it was scheduled to take place.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, and the confusion actually started before sunrise with a pre-dawn post from the president on Truth Social saying that Bill Pulte, his controversial Acting DNI, would stay on the job until Clayton's replacement for Manhattan U.S. Attorney is confirmed. Trump also vowing that he will not approve FISA, critical U.S. spying power, unless lawmakers attach it to his SAVE America Act, requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote.

These, we should note, are two unrelated separate bills. CNN Political Director and Washington Bureau Chief, David Chalian is here with us. David, how do you see this fight between Trump and congressional Republicans over the DNI?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR & WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Yeah, we're in a new phase of the relationship between Trump and specifically Senate Republicans. And I think we've started to see that over the last couple of weeks.

[14:20:00]

And by the way, I don't think not incidentally, after we saw Donald Trump sort of get rid of a couple of incumbent Senate Republicans like Bill Cassidy or John Cornyn in primaries. But when you have the leader, John Thune, being asked about this today, and he says, we have to take it one day at a time, I guess we'll have to have some conversations with the White House. I mean, that could be translated to be like WTF. (LAUGH)

CHALIAN: Like I -- he clearly was caught off guard here. And the Senate Republicans thought they had worked out a plan here with Democratic support as well to -- the way to get FISA renewed, which many Senators across both parties think is critical to our national security, was to fast-track Jay Clayton's nomination as DNI so that Bill Pulte, who Democrats are totally opposed to seeing even as an acting role, doesn't serve in that acting capacity. And Donald Trump just blew it up today.

KEILAR: Normally, the president thinks that FISA re-authorization is important because it accounts for like more than half of what his presidential daily briefing is. So he has an interest himself in that. It's just so strange.

Leader Thune was on Fox yesterday, and he essentially said that the political reality is there aren't enough votes for this SAVE -- the SAVE Act. That's the shorthand for it, the voting bill. He said that to change that, the party has to win more seats in Congress.

What does this tell you about the priorities of the party heading into November?

CHALIAN: Well, first of all, it tells me John Thune knows how to count votes in his conference, and he doesn't have them alone. You need 60 votes. So Dem -- you know, and of course, Trump has called for getting rid of the filibuster for this.

You'll recall that was what Ken Paxton used to prevent Trump from endorsing John Cornyn after their initial race in the Texas primary. He was like, hey, I'll bow out of this primary if the Senate gets rid of the filibuster and passes the SAVE America Act, right? And Trump withheld his endorsement, and it seized on that because this is a favored piece of legislation, even though he knows the votes aren't there for it.

So now, by attaching it to him, he thinks he's applying pressure. But what other people have described it as is sort of throwing a hand grenade in the middle of this process.

SANCHEZ: We did want to ask you about some interesting results last night in Georgia, but quite literally moments ago, well, CNN confirmed that Georgia's Republican legislative leaders rejected a plan by Governor Brian Kemp to redistrict especially minority-majority districts. And obviously, this is notable because of the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act, et cetera.

What is this going to mean for the peach state moving forward and Trump's efforts in other states to redistrict and gain an advantage?

CHALIAN: It might mean that we don't see new maps for '26, but I would imagine the reverberations of the Supreme Court decision that came down in relation to the Voting Rights Act will continue to play out in '27 and '28, and so this is going to have reverberations for years to come. There had been a scramble among some states in the South to redraw right after the decision we saw, but some states have decided not to.

South Carolina, I think, was one of them as well. And now Georgia, again, I see that as a very short-term decision, that they're not going to deal with these district lines for '26, but I don't know that this is the last chapter of that.

KEILAR: In Georgia, Congressman Mike Collins will now go head-to-head with Senator Jon Ossoff, right? And he has a $32 million war chest.

CHALIAN: He, Jon Ossoff? Yeah.

KEILAR: Yeah. There's just a lot of money there --

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: But he's being floated for 2028, so you could -- you know, you need a little extra pocket change for that kind of run, right? Would a win over Collins set the table for something like that?

CHALIAN: You can move some of your federal Senate account money to a potential presidential account, but I have a feeling Jon Ossoff is going to have to spend all of that.

KEILAR: Yeah.

CHALIAN: This is going to be a major battleground in the 2026 midterms. It's a huge battleground state in America. You are right that Jon Ossoff, the Democrat, not only a war chest, but has been really lighting up the Democratic base with his messaging in this race, his ability to go viral. But he understands, whatever the talk of 2028 is, he's got to get through the gauntlet of this big-time Senate race in 2026 and get re-elected, because if he doesn't, all talk about 2028 is off.

SANCHEZ: So speaking about the Senate race and the governor's race as well in the primary, Trump's candidate beat Governor Brian Kemp's on the Senate primary side. The candidate they both endorsed for governor lost in favor of Rick Jackson, someone with zero political experience, but speaking of war chest, a very sizable one.

(LAUGH)

SANCHEZ: How did you read all of these results?

CHALIAN: Yeah. Billionaire, outsider, Rick Jackson totally defeats the incumbent and the establishment support, both from Trump and Kemp. And to me, I read that as saying, there's real value in being portrayed as an outsider, never mind that you could put $100 million of your own money into a race, which is what happened here.

Now, that'll tee up a big time governor's race with Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee in Georgia. And again, because of the nature of how divided Georgia is politically, how critical it is in the landscape of American politics right now, it really is one of the battleground states we'll be paying close attention to in the fall.

[14:25:00]

KEILAR: Can we talk about, at this critical time, how voters are identifying? Because you have this new CNN poll that has independents now at 47 percent. It's the highest number in more than a decade. Republican registered voters dropping from 34 percent to 28 percent since 2024. How does this affect things? How are people actually feeling, even as they maybe sort of reject a party label?

CHALIAN: Independents are on the rise in America. This is a long-term trend. But you're right. We're seeing this number now, the highest in more than 10 years. And what's happening is, as more and more Americans are becoming -- thinking that both major political parties, they're unfavorable towards them, they're dissatisfied with them, they're aligning themselves with independents.

What we're seeing right now compared to 2024, that's impacting Republicans more. The Democratic identification is -- while still an unpopular party -- is staying the same. But we're seeing more and more Americans now shifting away from identifying themselves as a Republican and moving into that independent category.

SANCHEZ: A lot to watch for come November. David Chalian, thanks so much for your perspective.

CHALIAN: Yeah, for sure.

SANCHEZ: Appreciate it. Up next, a stunning strategy. How Luigi Mangione's lawyers plan to fight his state murder charges. And why is the Reflecting Pool in the nation's capital green and murky despite millions of dollars in repairs? CNN actually took a water sample. Wait until you hear what we found.

KEILAR: I have some thoughts, as you know, Boris --

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: -- because I have a fish tank. And we're waiting on the new Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, to speak after the Central Bank keeps interest rates unchanged despite President Trump's clear wish for the Fed to cut rates. We're going to bring you those remarks live.

SANCHEZ: Did you take a sample?

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