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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Trump Administration Demands Harvard Turn Over Disciplinary Records Of Foreign Students Or Lose Its Host Eligibility; White House Removing Wire Services From Press Pool; Chinese Workers, Businesses Grapple With U.S.-China Tariffs. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired April 17, 2025 - 05:30   ET

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

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[05:32:05]

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back.

And now to the Middle East where deadly airstrikes hit some Palestinians who had been displaced because of the fighting in Gaza. Local officials say that at least 15 people were killed in strikes on tent cities in the north and the south of the enclave. Video showed horrific scenes after the attacks with huge fires raging in the area and emergency workers trying to put them out. Palestinian officials say that several people were hurt.

Israel says that it has turned about 30 percent of Gaza into what it calls a security perimeter buffer zone. Now, CNN has reported earlier that the buffer zone is about one kilometer wide and is off limits to Palestinians. Many homes and buildings have been systematically razed to the ground in those area and many Palestinians who have tried to go there have been shot at or killed.

The United Nations says that Israel has ordered some 400,000 Palestinians to evacuate since a fragile ceasefire ended last month. And according to the U.N. more than two-thirds of Gaza is now either under active displacement orders or designated as no-go areas by Israel.

Defense Minister Israel Katz says that the IDF will remain in security zones in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza.

The Trump administration is demanding that Harvard University turn over disciplinary records on international students or says that it will strip the university of its ability to enroll foreign students. The Homeland Security secretary wrote a scathing letter demanding detailed records on the "illegal and violent activities of foreign student visa holders."

Harvard reiterating that it will "not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights."

The threat is the latest effort by the White House to impose new policies on the oldest university in the U.S. The Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in funding

and the IRS is working to rescind Harvard's tax-exempt status. The White House claims that the proposed policy changes are meant to combat antisemitism on campus after last year's contentious student protests over the war in Gaza.

A D.C. circuit court will hear an appeal from the Trump administration today over a ruling on press coverage. Now, the White House is removing wire services, including the Associated Press, from pool coverage rather than complying with a judge's order to restore the AP's access.

CNN's chief media analyst Brian Stelter reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST (voiceover): The Trump administration is escalating its battle with the Associated Press. The White House, this week, removing the dedicated spot news wires by the AP and Reuters have had in the press pool. That's the small group of journalists who follow the president wherever he goes covering his actions and policies.

Newsrooms around the world that don't have their own White House correspondents depend on wire services like the AP, but that's in peril now.

In recent weeks the Trump administration has taken power away from the White House Correspondents Association, the independent group that has historically chosen the daily pool membership. Trump aides are now in charge picking who can ask questions every day and adding more conservative outlets to the pool, sometimes selecting partisan pro- Trump personalities while at the same time sidelining the AP.

[05:35:15]

The administration instigated a fight with the AP earlier this year when the outlet continued to use the name the "Gulf of Mexico" for the body of water the White House has renamed the "Gulf of America."

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America. We're very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America.

STELTER (voiceover): The White House banned the AP from critical White House events in the Oval Office and from flying aboard Air Force One.

CNN's own Kaitlan Collins questioned the Trump administration on their removal of the AP back in February.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Which White House official made the decision to bar the AP reporter from the Oval Office and the diplomatic reception from last night?

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, first of all, let me just set the record straight. It is a privilege to cover this White House. It's a privilege to be the White House press secretary. And nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and as the President of the United States questions. That's an invitation that is given.

STELTER (voiceover): When the AP went to court a federal judge disagreed with the White House's view of the situation saying that the restriction amounted to a violation of the First Amendment. The White House is appealing, and a hearing is set for Thursday.

But in the meantime, the judge's order was supposed to restore the AP to an equal playing field with other wire agencies. Now the White House has removed the wire seat altogether, penalizing the AP and its rivals. The spot previously reserved for wire agencies will now be open to any print journalists which the services would still be eligible for.

The AP says it is deeply disappointed by the move to "restrict the access of all wire services whose fast and accurate White House coverage informs billions of people every single day."

Brian Stelter, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOLOMON: Still ahead for us it's lights out in Puerto Rico. When we return, the massive power outage that hit the largely Catholic U.S. territory just days before Easter weekend.

We'll be right back.

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[05:41:30]

SOLOMON: Welcome back. I'm Rahel Solomon. And here are some of the stories we are watching for you this morning.

U.S. negotiators will meet with their European counterparts in the coming hours to push President Trump's efforts for peace in Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Paris earlier followed by a delegation from Ukraine.

Russia launched missiles and drones against several places in Ukraine overnight killing at least five people.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Cambodia, the late stop in the last stop of a three-country tour of Southeast Asia. Cambodian officials tell Reuters they're looking to partner with Beijing for financial support, including for infrastructure amid a trade war and massive tariffs levied by U.S. President Donald Trump.

And a widespread power blackout plunged Puerto Rico into darkness on Wednesday just as the largely Catholic island is about to celebrate the Easter weekend. Officials say that all 1.4 million homes and businesses on the grid are without electricity and many people also have no running water. Officials say the lights may not be back on for another few days.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will meet with President Trump in a few hours hoping to get some relief on tariffs. Her visit comes amid new predictions about the negative effects of the tariffs on the U.S. economy.

Sherrell Hubbard reports.

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SHERRELL HUBBARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): A new warning from Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell as he called the Trump administration's tariffs unprecedented in modern history, saying their effects remain highly uncertain.

JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.

HUBBARD (voiceover): With investors feeling the effects of Trump's tariffs daily, Wall Street reacted to Powell's word almost instantaneously sending stocks tumbling. Businesses and consumers are on edge.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that's just it. I mean, we don't know. Every day it's something different, you know. So it's on or it's off, or it's this or it's that.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM, (D) CALIFORNIA: The uncertainty is pronounced, and it is profound in the state of California.

HUBBARD (voiceover): California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state attorney general announced Wednesday they are suing to try to stop the tariffs, saying the president does not have the authority to impose them.

Meantime, the Fed is responsible for promoting full employment and helping keep inflation in check, but Chairman Powell says tariffs have the potential to threaten both.

POWELL: Unemployment is likely to go up as the economy slows in all likelihood, and inflation is likely to go up as tariffs find their way and some part of those tariffs come to the -- come to be paid by the -- by the -- by the public.

HUBBARD: I'm Sherrell Hubbard reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOLOMON: All right, let's now bring in Keith Bradsher. He is the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times. He joins us live this morning from Beijing. Keith, great to have you.

I'm not sure if you heard that report in our last maybe 10 or 15 minutes or so, but it was from our Beijing-based correspondent Marc Stewart. I thought it was striking. He spoke to business owners there and one woman reported that she has already lost six figures in sales -- one businesswoman that he spoke to.

You also recently spoke to factory workers in the Guangzhou region. What are they seeing? What did they tell you about the impact from tariffs?

KEITH BRADSHER, BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF, THE NEW YORK TIMES: There's a mixed response.

I was in one of the factories that makes equipment -- ovens for restaurants at the time that the tariff plan took effect. That particular owner was bullish saying well, practically all of his competitors worldwide for very cheap, low-end ovens were within a few miles of him so they'd all be hit by the same tariffs. He didn't fear as much losing business to other factory owners.

[05:45:05]

But other factories had already suspended operations, particularly in garment manufacturing where there are lower costs -- lower tariff alternatives in places like Bangladesh.

SOLOMON: Hmm -- OK, that's interesting to hear anyone, really, being bullish about the impact of tariffs.

To be clear though, Keith, the expectation is that largely, the trade war between the two largest economies in the world will impact people in both countries -- Chinese, American.

We just heard from Jay Powell there saying that on the U.S. side tariffs will almost certainly mean higher prices, higher unemployment.

How much pain do you think Beijing is willing to withstand?

BRADSHER: Beijing is willing to withstand a lot of pain. This is a fairly united society that also does not tolerate -- the government does not tolerate dissent or disagreement.

It is painful for the country in the sense that this is coinciding with a severe housing market crash that has erased about twice as much value as was lost during the American housing market crash. It has ruined the life savings of much of the middle class in China.

It's also a problem for China because you had the most extraordinary boom in factory construction and factory equipment purchases that have produced an enormous -- well, what the Biden administration's United States trade representative Katherine Tai called -- she said it was a tsunami is coming for everyone.

So there is a vast amount of goods now starting to be made at these brand new factories in China for which there is very little or not demand in China. And they need to be able to export those goods in order to pay all the loans that they took out to build those factories. So if Chinese enterprises don't have the option of exporting, if other

countries are not willing to close their own factories and shift -- and shift to Chinese production, this could get very painful for China. But so far, there's no indication that they're going to in any way back down.

SOLOMON: Yeah, that's the interesting part. There seems to be no indication on either side that either side is willing to back down, which sort of feels like we're in this game of chicken here.

Keith, what's your sense -- if I still have you -- I think I do. All right.

BRADSHER: Yes, I'm here.

SOLOMON: What's your sense -- OK, great. What's your sense on China's next move? The White House says the ball is in China's court. China says talk to us as equals respectfully.

You have covered business and economics for more than three decades. For almost one of those decades you've actually lived and reported in Mainland China. So what's the next move here for Beijing?

BRADSHER: I think it's worth watching what the contacts are between various intermediaries -- between people with government connections here but not speaking to the government trying to sound out the United States on what might be a possible compromise. But so far, the two sides are very, very far apart.

The Trump administration wants to see -- wants to see action first by China. China wants to see action first by the United States. And at a fundamental level they disagree.

So this is -- this is really something that started in the last year of the Biden administration that the United States government has been extremely concerned about.

Where are all these goods from all these brand new factories being built are going to go? What market are they going to go to? And you've seen this growing view on the part of the U.S. that it does not want all these goods from these new factories to come to the United States.

SOLOMON: Hmm.

BRADSHER: But China wants international free trade rules to prevail here. It says look, we built all these factories, and these are the lowest cost providers of a wide range of goods, and we should be allowed to sell them. So it is -- in many ways an intractable situation.

Lending for factories and equipment, and so forth went from $80 billion a year in 2019 to as much as $600 billion a year in the last several years. So the scale of lending for new factories and factory equipment here makes the Inflation Reduction Act look like small potatoes, but that lending can only be paid back with exports.

SOLOMON: Yeah.

You know, it's an interesting point as you sort of bring up fiscal support and monetary support.

China just released its Q1 GDP numbers this week. They were strong -- stronger than expected, especially. But Wall Street is essentially sort of united on this belief that was then and this is now. Tariffs will bite in a big way in Q2 and the quarters to come.

What kind of measures, Keith, is Beijing considering both in terms of additional fiscal support or monetary support to weather this storm or period perhaps of pain?

[05:50:00]

BRADSHER: The -- there has been talk of more direct subsidies to consumers, but they've been very reluctant to do that on a big scale.

One of the most promising ideas put forward by one of the country's most famous economists at Tsinghua University is to increase sharply the minimum pension payment.

So in this country minimum government pension payments are only $20.00 a month for people in rural areas, which even in rural China does not buy much more than a few groceries. And there has been talk of whether that should be increased to more like maybe $110 a month in the short term and perhaps even two or three times that over the next few years. If that were to happen, that would start putting money in people's pockets so that they could afford to buy immense tsunami of production coming out of all these newly built factories.

There are already some measures that have made a difference here in China. There's a consumer manufactured goods subsidy that helps you buy an electric car or a washing machine, or even a rice cooker or a microwave oven. And those programs have made a difference. Sales in those categories have jumped sharply.

And the one reason the economy did pretty well in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year when that program had not yet been begun -- but once you get to the second and third and particularly, fourth quarters of this year then you're starting to compare this year's sales to the year ago sales when they already were providing subsidies for people to go out and buy an electric car or a new washing machine. And then it's going to be much harder to show year-on-year growth unless China can keep expanding these exports.

Exports in December were already to 17 percent up year-on-year growth in the physical volume of these exports.

SOLOMON: Yeah.

BRADSHER: And we don't have really good physical volume numbers yet this year because the Lunar New Year tends to distort the calculations.

SOLOMON: Yeah. BRADSHER: But it's -- there's really just a tremendous volume of goods coming out.

SOLOMON: Yeah, and a tremendous volume of uncertainty moving forward.

Keith Bradsher, we'll have to leave it here, but appreciate you being here this morning. Thank you.

BRASHER: Thank you.

SOLOMON: All right. Later today a hearing will get underway in California to whether the Menendez brothers might be eligible for a lesser prison sentence in a path to parole after more than three decades behind bars. Eric and Lyle Menendez were jailed for life for the 1989 murders of their parents in Beverly Hills. The case turned into one of America's most infamous trials of its time.

The brothers have long maintained that the killings were carried out in self-defense after years of sexual abuse from their father. Their supporters argue that the severity of their sentence should be revisited due to a deepened cultural understanding of such abuse. Dozens of Menendez relatives also say that the brothers have demonstrated years of remorse and rehabilitation.

But the L.A. county district attorney calls their self-defense claim fabricated and says that the brutal crimes were premeditated.

We are learning more about Cody Balmer, the man accused of setting fire to the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. According to search warrants Balmer told 911 operators that he targeted the governor over his supposed views on the war in Gaza.

Shapiro says that one of the most difficult parts of this experience has been trying to explain violent motivations to his children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO, (D) PENNSYLVANIA: Well, it's very hard as a parent to answer to children, like, why does this kind of stuff happen in life. Forget targeting me or my family, or the governor's residence, but why are there people out there that want to do harm to others? Those are hard questions to answer for kids.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: Now, police have not said yet if they think the attack was motivated by antisemitism though it is believed that they are considering that possibility.

Well, it was all hands on deck as eager volunteers create a book brigade for moving day. Details straight ahead.

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[05:58:30]

SOLOMON: Welcome back.

In what could be a landmark discovery, scientists have found what they say is the strongest evidence yet of possible life beyond Earth. Using the James Webb space telescope researchers detected two gases, which on Earth are only produced biologically by things like algae. They say that the possible biosignature came from a large exoplanet about 124 light years from Earth and the constellation Leo.

While the findings are promising, scientists are not saying that actual living organisms have been found and stress that more research is needed.

The popular pastime of decorating eggs for Easter may not be as practical this year because of the high cost of eggs. So just in time for Easter Sunday, Jet-Puffed Marshmallow is selling a dip-and- decorate kit exclusively on Walmart's website for about $2.00. It comes with an egg carton, a 24-ounce bag of egg-sized marshmallows, food coloring, and pens to decorate the marshmallow eggs. We'll call it that. You know what we mean.

Well, the owner of a small bookstore in Chelsea, Michigan decided to relocate to a building nearby. Look at this. She got help from hundreds of helping hands from enthusiastic townspeople. About 300 volunteers created an assembly line on Sunday to move all 9,100 books by hand to the shelves in the new store. It took them less than two hours. The owner says that the new store should be open in about two weeks.

All right. And before we go this morning, bursts of springtime color were on full display at a farm in the U.K. It's the Tulleys Tulip Festival in West Sussex. Visitors posed for photos among the rows of flowers.