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CNN This Morning

Trump Signs Travel Ban Proclamation for Countries in Middle East, Africa and Caribbean; New Book Examines A.I.'s Path to Power and Who's Really in Control. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired June 05, 2025 - 06:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- weak, underweight and alone. After biologists were unable to locate the cub's mother, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife transported the young bear to the San Diego Humane Society.

[06:00:13]

The cub is now receiving enrichment and feeding sessions from staff wearing bear costumes to mimic maternal behaviors and prevent the bear from bonding with humans.

The cub will remain in the Humane Society's care for a year, with the goal of ultimately returning him to the wild.

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RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: Very cute. Thanks for being with us here today. I'm Rahel Solomon, live in New York. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: What's happening right now on CNN THIS MORNING.

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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I am signing a new executive order placing travel restrictions on countries.

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CORNISH: Trump travel ban, take two. Which countries are on the president's list this time around, and which are not?

Plus, the GOP's push for major changes to Medicaid, starting with work requirements. Will the red tape cause more people to lose coverage?

Then, newly-released documents take us inside the mind of Luigi Mangione months before the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO. What his journal entries reveal.

And the new rules proposed for artificial intelligence. Would they spark innovation or protect big tech? It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A beautiful look at New York City.

Good morning, New York.

Good morning to you. I'm Audie Cornish, and I want to thank you for waking up with me.

So, here's where we're going to start: that travel ban 2.0. The president signed a new proclamation last night, banning travel from 12 countries. And it also put partial restrictions on seven others.

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TRUMP: The list is subject to revision, based on whether material improvements are made, and likewise, new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world.

But we will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm.

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CORNISH: The ban takes effect on Monday. It will fully restrict the entry of nationals from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Seven other countries will have partial bans, including Venezuela and Cuba.

So, according to the White House, the president was considering the ban before the antisemitic attacks in Boulder last weekend, but that incident accelerated the process.

Joining me now in the group chat, Phil Mattingly, CNN anchor and chief domestic correspondent; Michael Warren, senior editor at "The Dispatch"; and Sabrina Singh, former deputy Pentagon press secretary.

All right. First, I want to start with you, Phil, because I feel like you have had such a good beat on, like, how the White House has been thinking this time around.

This seems like something that Stephen Miller, et al, will make sure is more airtight legally than the first time around.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR/CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I think that's been demonstrated by the process they went through to reach to this point, the State Department decision or review that was done in advance, the efforts that were made to try and establish the legal underpinning before they actually made this move.

I think it's really important to understand. We all think back on the travel ban in the first term.

CORNISH: Yes. It was, like, one of their first things out of the gate.

MATTINGLY: It was a mess. CORNISH: Yes.

MATTINGLY: It was a disaster. And Sean Spicer was trying to explain it. And the airports were complete chaotic disaster, as well.

What people don't remember from the first term is they actually ended up getting a version of the travel ban implemented and signed off on by the courts, including the Supreme Court. And that underscored a process that, I think, has just been so formative to everything they've done in these first four or five months.

They learned.

CORNISH: Yes.

MATTINGLY: They learned, and they understood, OK, we can't do it this way. The courts said that's a problem. We're going to fix that.

CORNISH: Which is why we're probably -- and then at the same time, that doesn't stop there from being legal problems. But it's a different approach.

You guys, let me take you to this side. What are you thinking this time around with this list of countries, for example, or in approach?

SABRINA SINGH, FORMER DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I mean, they're saying that this wasn't in response to the attack that happened in Boulder, but yet, you know, it comes just days after that attack in Boulder. And that individual was from Egypt. And Egypt is notably not on that list of countries.

CORNISH: So, you don't think this was sitting in a drawer somewhere. It feel -- it feels like they've been waiting.

SINGH: I think they've been working and waiting on it. And I think, to Phil's point, they've been doing -- they've -- they've really taken their time and been more precise.

I think this is going to immediately come to the courts. There's going to be a challenge. You know, let's see what happens. But it's going to play out in the legal system.

CORNISH: So, the American Immigration Council weighing in, saying, "These travel bans do nothing to make us safer or more prosperous. They harm our economy and indiscriminately punish immigrants who otherwise qualify to come."

And I raise this because some of these are war-torn areas, like -- it's not exactly, like, an influx of people coming here, especially given asylum laws. So, what does this accomplish?

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MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": I don't know, because the justifications so far are kind of a little all over the place. Right? This whole idea of a visa overstay problem, which is clearly a real

problem. And we don't -- you don't have to look to Boulder to see it. I mean, that's --

CORNISH: Isn't even from these countries. Exactly.

WAREN: This is my point. I mean, it's -- I think it is a solution that was waiting for an opportunity to be unleashed. That's, I think, what the Trump administration was looking to do with this.

Their -- immigration requires a lot of resources for enforcement. It's really hard, actually, to find people who are here who have overstayed their visas or who are otherwise -- are here and should not be here.

And I think the administration is finding themselves, you know, unable to do what they had thought they might be able to do in terms of that enforcement.

CORNISH: Right. And I think they're even looking at a massive hiring effort, basically, to supplement.

WARREN: Right. I think they're looking to kind of deal these things out as ways of saying, hey, look, we're doing something. Because the actual work of it is actually pretty hard.

CORNISH: Well, one thing, it has been effective as is changing the world's sort of view of the U.S. as a welcoming place. But here's an example from a top Venezuelan official, who says being in the U.S. is, quote, "a big risk for anyone, not just Venezuelans. If you're really that foolish, then go to the United States. They're supremacists who think they own the world and persecute our people for no reason."

MATTINGLY: I actually -- I think it's an important statement, because that's a feature, not a bug, for this administration. And I think the -- the mistake people make when they look at individual policies is not understanding that this isn't happening in a vacuum. This is part of a significant kind of --

CORNISH: Reorientation effort. Yes.

MATTINGLY: -- effort to try and invert a system. We're not trying to welcome people in. We're trying to make people prove why they should be here, in terms of the U.S. government.

And it's something that starts on. They know who's working at the consular level in these countries, and if they don't feel like they're allied with that version of how we do immigration, they want them out.

And when you think, well, that's pretty granular, that's pretty ground-level for the federal government, the West Wing, the White House to know about. No, no, they -- they know about it.

And personnel from that level all the way to the West Wing is part of this consideration, as is every single thing they've been rolling out over the course of the last couple months.

CORNISH: I love that you said that. I want to underscore something you said.

It's not just about keeping people out. It's making them prove why they should be here. And I think that's like a nuance sometimes people don't hear when they think about these bans.

All right, group chat, stay with me. We've got a lot to talk about this hour.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, in just a few hours, Germany's new chancellor is going to be at the White House. Is he going to get the same treatment as all the other world leaders?

And the wait is over for all you gamers. The new videogame console bringing long lines as hundreds wait for its release.

And the fight to be New York City's mayor. Democrats take the debate stage, and it was a pile-on for Andrew Cuomo.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Andrew Cuomo did lie to Congress.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sweep away the corruption of Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The people who don't feel safe are young women, mothers, and grandmothers around Andrew Cuomo.

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CORNISH: It's now 15 minutes past the hour. And here is your morning roundup.

New this morning, the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages have been recovered in Gaza. The husband and wife were killed near their home in Southern Israel on October 7th. Their bodies were recovered in an Israeli military operation.

The family said in a statement that they are grateful for the closure.

And an urgent manhunt underway for a 32-year-old father accused of killing his three daughters near a Washington state campsite.

Police warned that Travis Decker is former military with extensive training, and that he should be considered dangerous. A $20,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to his arrest.

And former Governor Andrew Cuomo is in the hot seat in the first Democratic primary mayoral debate in New York City. He was grilled on sexual harassment allegations and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the attacks, Cuomo believes he's the only one who can stand up to Trump.

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ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATE: He can be beaten. But he has to know that he's up against an adversary who can actually beat him.

I can tell you this. I am the last person on this stage that Mr. Trump wants to see as mayor.

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CORNISH: And if you're wondering where the current mayor is, Eric Adams, he's still seeking reelection, just as an independent.

And gamers are getting their hands on the Nintendo Switch 2 this morning, people across the country spent hours camping out ahead of today's release.

The wildly popular console sold about 150 million units when it was first released eight years ago. The Switch 2 will cost you around $450.

Ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, President Trump ordering an investigation into the Biden White House. What he's accusing the former president's aides of doing.

Plus, how should A.I. be regulated? Some lawmakers believe less is more.

And good morning to Baltimore. That's where the Coast Guard is investigating an oil spill in the Inner Harbor there. We're waiting for an update on that, as well.

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REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I rise today to address the House about a clause that is in the One Big, Beautiful Bill.

This clause would take away state rights to make laws or regulate A.I. for ten years.

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CORNISH: Sounds like there's some buyer's remorse there. Turns out Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and other House Republicans are having a bit of that.

I want to get into the substance, though, of what she is talking about. This is a provision in the bill. It would say that states could not pass their own laws regulating A.I. for a decade. Now, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also posted on X that she

would have voted no if she had known the provision was there, and that this sort of carve-out for A.I. companies to develop and deploy A.I. on their own terms, basically forces its way into our everyday lives.

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And so, I'm actually talking about that this week on my podcast, "The Assignment." It's a subject of a new book by tech journalist Karen Hao. It's called "Empire of A.I." And she joined me for this chat.

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KAREN HAO, AUTHOR, "EMPIRE OF A.I.": The reason why I call my book "Empire of A.I." is a nod to this argument that I make in the book that these companies need to be thought of as new forms of empire.

And the reason is because empires of old and empires of A.I. share all the same features. First, they lay claim to resources that are not their own, but they redesign the rules to suggest that it was always their own. So, they're scraping the Internet, saying this was free for the taking.

But you know, people did not give their informed consent to the idea that, just because you post on social media, you're suddenly going to be fodder for training models that could potentially restrict your economic opportunity. You know?

The empires also exploit labor all around the world.

CORNISH: Exactly.

HAO: And yes, with these A.I. companies, that -- that not only refers to the fact that they contract a lot of workers around the world that then work in extremely poor conditions to do data cleaning, data annotation, and then content moderation for these companies.

But also the fact that these organizations are ultimately building labor-automating technologies. OpenAI's definition of AGI is highly autonomous systems that outperform humans in most economically valuable work.

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CORNISH: All right. To talk more about this, Kylie Robison, senior correspondent at "Wired."

So, I want to come back to what Karen is talking about, this kind of A.I. arms race. But first, tell me about this legislation.

What's the argument here for saying that states can't make their own regulations, because we're in this moment where they are actually starting to move against smartphones, for example, or social media requirements.

KYLIE ROBISON, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, "WIRED": Yes. And thank you for having me.

So, this provision would ban state regulation for ten years. And some of the arguments that you'll hear from the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and people who want to see regulation at a federal level, they say we don't want a patchwork of state regulations.

But this would prohibit state regulations for the next ten years. And it preempts about 1,000 state-level regulations already in progress, and also takes away some of the regulations already made by, you know, places like Colorado and New Jersey that have fought for regulation against deepfakes and misinformation.

So, this ten-year moratorium would stop that kind of work.

CORNISH: It kind of shows the power of the industry already. I mean, I think about that Middle East trip by the president and all the tech leaders that were there. So, I was seeing, you know, Sam Altman of OpenAI in the Saudi court. We're hearing about Elon Musk, who, of course, has his own A.I. company.

Is this an arms race? And if it is, what are some of the red flags?

ROBISON: They would like us to believe that it's an arms race. And I'm sympathetic to this argument.

However, what we saw with DeepSeek, one of China's biggest A.I. labs, is that they did something called distillation with OpenAI's model, which they used OpenAI's most powerful model to train their own. So, they're only going as fast, it seems, as fast as we're moving.

So, it doesn't make a ton of sense to go in front of Congress and say, we need to ban -- we can't have state level regulation for the next ten years when we might not even have the next couple of years. We might not have time to institute any rules that stop this progress before it's too late.

CORNISH: Yes. I mean, A.I. moved so quickly. Ten years might as well be 100 years.

What do you think of Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking out about this? Is there a nascent movement, or is this just, you know, kind of a general Republican states' rights argument?

ROBISON: Well, you know, it's a good thing that regulation against some of the biggest tech companies in the world is becoming a bipartisan issue.

You know, 59 percent of voters in a recent poll said that they opposed this, and 81 percent said that they think that this is moving too fast and don't want to see a ten-year ban. It's a little aggressive.

So, it's important for the people in charge to read what they are signing and voting for before it goes into law. And I think that it's really important that she's speaking out about this specific regulation. CORNISH: Kylie Robison, senior correspondent at "Wired." Thank you so

much.

ROBISON: Thank you.

CORNISH: If you want to hear more about this topic, there's a new episode of "The Assignment" out now. They drop on Thursdays. Get them wherever you get your podcasts.

Still ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, we're learning more about the sweeping impacts of the massive GOP spending bill. We're going to take a look at how changes to Medicaid could lead to millions losing their insurance.

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Plus, what new documents reveal about the mindset of the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO last year.

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TRUMP: My administration has been working on improved vetting procedures, and we will shortly take new steps to keep our nation safe.

Foreign --

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