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CNN This Morning
Trump Draws MAGA Fury with Chinese Student Ban Reversal; Education Experiment: Did New Orleans School Overhaul Work? Aired 6- 6:30a ET
Aired August 27, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
M.J. LEE, CNN ANCHOR: -- Netflix show, "With Love, Meghan," which was released on Tuesday. In episode three, she admitted to her guests that she knew she loved her now-husband, Prince Harry, on their third date.
[06:00:11]
Of course, that date ended up lasting for five days as the two camped out in Botswana.
The couple moved to the U.S. in 2020, and they now live in California with their two children.
Meghan also talked about missing life in the U.K., especially a radio station called Magic.
And thank you so much for joining us here on EARLY START this morning. I'm M.J. Lee in Washington, D.C. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: The president walks back a plan to revoke visas for Chinese students. Now his base asks, how is this "America first"?
CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
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STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP SENIOR ADVISOR: There should be no foreign students here for the -- for the moment.
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CORNISH: President Trump's response to the MAGA meltdown.
And a deadly semi-truck crash ignites a political firestorm and puts truckers at the center of the immigration crackdown.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There will be job losses. This is worse than COVID.
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CORNISH: Tariffs doubled. India faces some of the highest import levies in the world. What might get a little more expensive for you? And Hurricane Katrina forced New Orleans to remake its school system.
Twenty years later, should the Trump administration do the same across the country?
And a big win for SpaceX. The most powerful rocket ever built blasts off after some explosive setbacks.
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TAYLOR SWIFT, SINGER: I've been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager.
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CORNISH: In their engaged era. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce saying yes to forever and always.
It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at my hometown, Boston.
Good morning, everybody. It's Wednesday, August 27. I want to thank you for waking up with me. I'm Audie Cornish, and here's where we start.
President Trump backing away from plans to ban students from China from American universities. Instead, about 600,000 students from China will be able to attend schools across the U.S.
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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I like that their students come here. I like that other countries' students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn't? Our college system would go to hell very quickly.
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CORNISH: The announcement this week reverses the ban that had been announced by Marco Rubio back in May. Some of the president's biggest allies have not been on board.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene writes, "Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American students' opportunities? We should never allow that."
Laura Loomer called the 600,000 students spies. Another MAGA influencer writes, "I don't know a single Trump voter in favor of this."
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LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: How is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?
HOWARD LUTNICK, U.S. COMMERCE SECRETARY: Well, the president's point of view is that what would happen if you didn't have those 600,000 students, is that you'd empty them from the top. All the students would go up to better schools, and the bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America.
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CORNISH: The president says he's getting along well with China now, so he decided to lift the ban.
Joining me now to talk about this in the group chat, Sara Fischer, CNN's senior media analyst and senior media reporter at Axios; Melik Abdul, Republican strategist; and Meghan Hays, former Biden White House director of message planning.
OK, so the reason why I wanted you guys to hear Lutnick is because he gives a very specific answer: that there are a lot of universities, schools and universities that would be affected.
"The Wall Street Journal" pointed out that China is the largest buyer of education services, spending on tuition and books to the tune of $14.3 billion. I don't think I fully understood the scale.
Are you surprised at the backlash, the way it has played out and across the board? Right? Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer, they were, like, fighting just a few weeks ago. They're unified on this.
MELIK ABDUL, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Not at all surprised. And this is one of the challenges has been for not just the Trump administration, but Republicans in general.
Think about the H-1B visa debate that was going on during the campaign. You had Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk on one side, and then you had MAGA, who was opposed to this increased number of H-1B visas.
The same thing is happening now. Now, surprise, surprise that Donald Trump changed on this. I'm not surprised at all.
But what it means is that it points to how, when it comes to the MAGA base, that a number on a number of issues, and whether that was Iran and a number of other issues, they've been on the other side of Donald Trump.
Now, what I'm looking to see is how does Donald Trump respond to his MAGA base?
CORNISH: Yes.
ABDUL: Because we saw with the Epstein files, he said, well, I don't need to. You don't. What do you say? Don't support me or something like that.
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CORNISH: Yes. And it was -- he said similar things. Right? He is the president.
And I want to talk to you guys about messaging. You heard how Lutnick responded. Also, we're in the middle of negotiating tariffs with China. This is a tenuous moment.
SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: Yes. Also, a huge number because if you look at how many Chinese students are actually enrolled in the U.S., the number is closer to the 300,000 range.
So, it would make sense if Donald Trump said, I'm going to allow that many Chinese students in, because it would be filling the gap of what already exists.
But 600,000 seems like it is him extending an arm to President Xi, him trying to get some more trade negotiations through the table. And so, I thought that number was very shocking. It seems so, so, so high.
The last thing is when Donald Trump went to war with Harvard University, one of the key points of criticism was how many international students that they are allowing into the university. It felt like that was a lever he was pulling to hurt academic institutions that he thought were too leftist.
This is a complete 180 from that, and there have not been a really coherent explanation --
CORNISH: Right.
FISCHER: -- from the administration as to why they're doing this 180, other than to placate China.
CORNISH: Yes. Or business concerns fundamentally. I mean, Steve Bannon, the sort of MAGA base marquee name, also offered his version, I think, of a compromise in this conversation. Here it is.
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BANNON: Any foreign student that does come here ought to have an exit visa stapled to his or her diploma to leave immediately. Give them 30 days.
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MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING: I mean, I don't know fundamentally why we would want to educate people and then have them leave and go use everything in their own countries rather than make our country stronger with all the education we just gave them, whether it be in engineering or in medicine, or all of the different --
CORNISH: Or A.I.
HAYS: Research, so many things that they could be doing.
I just think that, you know, like, who knows? Donald Trump probably don't remember the number that he was supposed to say and threw out some other wild number. He'll probably turn back on this again.
I mean, when China doesn't want to do what he wants to do, I think he just throws stuff out there. Let's just see where it all lands, see what happens, and then we'll go from there. It's almost like he's negotiating with himself every single time he does --
CORNISH: Yes. We have talked about Something like this. We have talked about the negotiating tactics, as you said: bringing something up, pulling it away.
And it's interesting watching that come in conflict with the differing priorities. If your priority is immigration, this business dealing is not so exciting for you to watch play out.
You guys, we're going to talk about a lot of other things this hour.
Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, they warned FEMA was at risk of a Hurricane Katrina-like failure. Now, the workers who signed that open letter could lose their jobs.
Plus, rapper Cardi B takes the stand. What she told the court about the assault allegations she's facing.
And the return of the old-timer logo. Cracker Barrel heard the backlash and is scrapping the rebrand.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we said we wanted racism out of the United States, we were not talking about Cracker Barrel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cracker Barrel went back to the old logo faster than somebody goes back to their toxic ex.
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CORNISH: It's now almost 15 minutes past the hour, and here is your morning roundup.
Several FEMA employees have been placed on leave after signing an open letter warning about the changes the Trump administration is making to the agency.
In the letter, they wrote that FEMA was at risk of a Hurricane Katrina-type failure. The authors asked Congress to make FEMA a cabinet-level independent agency to keep it free of political meddling.
Cardi B on the stand Tuesday to testify in a civil assault trial. The rapper is being sued by a security guard who claims she was assaulted outside a medical office in 2018.
But Cardi B testified that the security guard was the aggressor.
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CARDI B, RAPPER: You're recording me. Now, you're following me. Like, back up. And she's like, I can do what I want.
It's like, no, you can't. Like, you can't do whatever. You can't do what you want. And that's when we started arguing.
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CORNISH The rapper's team claims there was no physical altercation, just a verbal one.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE Three, two, one.
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CORNISH: A successful flight for SpaceX's giant starship. This marks the first successful test flight after a series of explosive failures for months.
NASA is counting on the spacecraft to take astronauts back to the moon. Elon Musk hopes it will eventually take people to Mars.
And after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, so much of what the Trump administration wants to do with schools nationwide. New Orleans did almost 20 years ago after Katrina. But was that shift to charter schools a success?
Plus, truckers in the spotlight. Some worry new immigration enforcement rules might lead to racial profiling.
And good morning to Phoenix. Monsoon storms there could trigger flash floods and dust storms. The worst storms could be this afternoon and later this evening. Please stay safe.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: How do you think the city has improved?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like with -- with schooling? Because now we have charter schools. And a lot of schools are more on top of it. And like, we had to rebuild a lot of the schools so they look better.
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CORNISH: An education overhaul in New Orleans. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina leading to one of the most closely watched education experiments in U.S. history.
New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school systems before Katrina. After the storm, the state took over and created the nation's first all-charter school district. Union contracts dissolved. Thousands of teachers were fired and had to
reapply for their jobs. Nonprofits ran the new charters, and parents had more choice in which schools their kids attended.
Twenty years later, all but one of New Orleans schools remains a charter school. And with the Trump administration looking at dissolving the Education Department and supporting similar kinds of reforms nationwide, what can New Orleans tell us about what works?
Well, joining me now to discuss is one of the authors of a new report on that, Jamie Carroll. She's with the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. Good morning.
JAMIE CARROLL, EDUCATION RESEARCH ALLIANCE FOR NEW ORLEANS: Good morning. Honored to be here.
CORNISH: Let's start with the basics. What did you see in terms of test scores?
CARROLL: Yes. So, work done by my center. Over the past decade to really understand what happened with this -- the post-Katrina reforms, found that the district was ranked at the bottom of the state, as you said earlier in this -- in the intro.
And it moved to about middle of the state after the first ten years of the reforms. So, that's for individual students, about 10 to 15 percentile growth in student test scores compared to what would have happened otherwise, had there not been these reforms.
CORNISH: I noticed you said so-called reforms. And maybe that brings me to teachers. They were forced into a new accountability standard.
And your report shows a lot of teachers, for instance, from local colleges didn't really make the cut. Can you talk about how the quality of teaching changed, as now these teachers were working for these charters?
CARROLL: Yes. I was one of the teachers that came from outside. I was a Teach for America teacher back in 2008 that joined the teaching workforce, not realizing that I was taking the job of an otherwise local New Orleans teacher.
And it was really challenging for people coming from outside to go into the school system and connect with the students and understand the community, and also try to understand how this trauma that the entire community experienced impacted their learning every day.
And anytime you have someone coming from outside a community, there's going to be less opportunities to connect. And that makes it harder to learn.
In general, we have found that, on average, students in New Orleans say that they're challenged, similarly as students nationally, in terms of the teaching experience in the classroom. But they feel the teachers don't care as much about them. Only about half of students in New Orleans say that they think
teachers care about them, and that's been consistent in the past couple of years.
CORNISH: How did not having a union affect teacher pay, the ability to fire low-performing teachers?
CARROLL: Yes. Great question. I think that the -- the flexibility that charter schools have allowed them to have more power to fire teachers that they felt were low-performing.
It also gave them more power to hire teachers they felt would be high- performing.
But at the end of the day, what is the pool of teachers you're drawing from? And are you able to recruit high-quality teachers if you're not offering things like support and benefits that you -- usually, unions come with?
Now in New Orleans, each individual charter school or charter management organization has to determine their own benefits package, their own retirement package. Because unions are done at a school- specific level.
So, it does -- it does create less of a power for the teachers to -- to speak up to get their -- their teaching environment better.
CORNISH: Last thing I want to ask about: school vouchers. It's because it's among the most popular education reforms that you hear activists wanting nationwide. And it seemed like the report didn't really improve things for the students in that respect. Can you help us understand why not?
CARROLL: Yes. So, the prior -- the prior voucher program in Louisiana, the Louisiana scholarship program, was unique in that it did actually require students to take the same standardized test. So, we could see how students who transitioned from public school to private school did.
And we found they didn't do as well. Students, on average, did at least the same or worse, three to four years after starting a voucher program.
Now, there's a brand-new program that started this year with the Gator scholarship, which is the Louisiana version of the Louisiana of the education savings account. And, we're -- yes, we're curious to see what happens, because our research has found that private schools don't support students better than public school students.
There's very little that we know about public -- about private schools, because the data is not accessible. And it's something that, you know, as a district and as a community, we're curious to see how it affects our public school system.
CORNISH: Jamie, I only have a short time left, but I have to ask. In the end, do you think it worked? You had a school system, clean slate, added the reforms we've all debated for years. Did it improve things?
CARROLL: So, if you look at the easy-to-measure things like student test scores, student graduation rates, students' college enrollment rates, unequivocally yes.
The school system was much improved than it would have been otherwise without these reforms. And then it was pre-Katrina.
That being said, there's a lot of things that didn't go well in the process, including not creating great supportive teaching environments for students, declining focus on the arts in schools, which is obviously a hugely important to a community like New Orleans.
And one of the big things that we say in our report that we warned people is not -- not to try to do this other places. There are reasons why this was successful in New Orleans, including lots of money coming in and lots of support post-Katrina that we don't think can be replicated in other places.
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CORNISH: Right. Unless you're willing to spend another, what, 18 percent in school funding, I think, was the figure. Jamie Carroll, thank you so much for sharing this data with us.
CARROLL: Thank you so much for having me.
CORNISH: Straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, another hurdle for immigrants applying for citizenship. The policy the Trump administration is bringing back after a 30-year hiatus.
Plus, India hit with a 50 percent tariff. What could soon cost you more?
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