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Federal Judge To Indefinitely Block Trump From Banning Harvard University From Enrolling Foreign Students; Harvard President Gets Extended Ovation At Commencement; Trump Administration To "Aggressively Revoke" Chinese Student Visas; Tariff Ruling Could Threaten Trump's Entire Economic Agenda; Trump On Chickening Out Allegation: "Don't Ever Say What You Said, That's A Nasty Question". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 29, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today Inside Politics, caps, gowns and a gavel. We're following the collision of Harvard's graduation and a key court case in President Trump's spiraling war with the country's oldest university. We'll tell you what the judge just decided.

Plus, tariffs torpedoed. The Trump administration is claiming Americans are, quote, living under a judicial tyranny after a panel of federal judges ruled the president overstepped when issuing most of his sweeping tariffs. And Elon Musk is hanging up the chainsaw after a tumultuous, 128 days attempting to gut the federal government. But journalists digging into the DOE's receipts will be here to report what the richest man in the world is leaving behind.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

And we start with breaking news on Harvard's graduation day. Just a few miles away from the commencement ceremony, a U.S. district judge ordered the Homeland Security and State Departments not to make any changes to the university's student visa program indefinitely.

CNN is covering the story from all angles. Paula Reid is following the updates inside the hearing, and Danny Freeman is next to Harvard's campus where graduation is wrapping up. Paula, first walk us through what the judge said.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So, Dana, for now international students can still come to Harvard. Now, today the judge was looking at this move by the Trump administration to revoke the university's student visa program. This impacts their ability to host international students because if you come here to attend school from another country, you have to be enrolled in a school with a valid student visa program.

The university has argued this is a violation of their free speech and other constitutional rights. And today, this was a high stakes hearing in this ongoing battle between the university and the administration, and it was almost, almost derailed by a late-night filing last night by the Justice Department. This was a formal notice to the school that they intended to go forward with this, and it kicked off a 30-day period that would have given the university an opportunity to respond.

Dana, that's the kind of boring procedural stuff that can completely delay or derail a hearing like this. But today, the judge was not having it. She said, she did not want to leave this issue open, and instead, she said she wants to, quote, maintain the status quo. So, she is going to continue a temporary block on this policy, and she wants the two sides to the university and the Justice Department to hash out a permanent pause on this policy.

She said, it doesn't need to be draconian, but I want to make sure it's worded in such a way that nothing changes. So, that pause will remain in effect while these larger constitutional questions are litigated and until a final court decides that this is a violation of the constitution. And as you know, this is just one of the many ongoing battles between the school and the Trump administration on everything from funding to DEI.

BASH: That's right. And as we mentioned -- as we speak, there is a graduation wrapping up in Boston. And as the graduation was happening, the students at Harvard gave the school's president Alan Garber, a minute long standing ovation. Danny Freeman, you are right there. What are you hearing about the events on campus today?

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Dana, here on campus, there's really a mix of emotions. Obviously, we've seen a lot of the pomp and circumstance that you would expect with any graduation right there. Families and parents here that are all dressed up. They're thrilled for their graduating seniors. There are a lot of people in caps and gowns all over the place here again, celebrating their own achievement from graduating from Harvard.

But make no mistake, this ongoing battle with the federal government really has been looming large over this entire community. You noted it. We saw that standing ovation for the president of Harvard, Alan Garber, earlier. He's really become the face of the resistance against the Trump administration, and that was noteworthy.

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But he really stayed away from politics in his remarks to the class, although I will note, he did say at one point, members of the class of 2025 from down the street, across the country and around the world. And he noted, around the world, just as it should be. And that line right there got tremendous applause as well from the folks on Harvard's campus at that moment.

But other than that, stayed away from the direct subject of what is going on right now, but a lot of speakers since then have alluded to this idea that Harvard is in a battle and is worthy of defending. Take a listen to what one of the student commencement speakers said on this topic just a little while ago now, Dana.

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THOR REIMANN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUAL: Harvard at the center of a national battle over higher education in America. Now, look, our university is certainly imperfect. But I am proud to stand today alongside our graduating class, our faculty and our president, with the shared conviction that this ongoing project of veritas is one worth defending.

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FREEMAN: Now, Dana, all that being said, and Paula's update aside, while there might be some slight relief from that judge's order today and keeping that ban basically not from happening at the moment, there is still concern for the community of international students here.

Make no mistake, speaking to folks throughout the week, not just for them, but also for this larger battle of federal funding that is currently being cut or frozen for many researchers here. So, this story not quite over, though, a cheerful day here on commencement day on campus, Dana.

BASH: Yeah. Sure, seems that way. Thank you both for that update. Appreciate it. And I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here at the table, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, at the Washington Post's Sabrina Rodriguez, and Jonah Goldberg of the Dispatch. Hello, everyone.

Jeff, this -- the politics of Harvard is ever changing, both on campus and also with regard to kind of how that school is perceived across the board, especially by the man in the White House. Maybe that hasn't changed so much, but it is escalating, and he is absolutely not backing down.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: He's not backing down. Harvard is a symbol to him. It's a symbol of elitism. Never mind that several Harvard grads work in the White House, which is always the case, of course. But I do think that Harvard has been making the case here that it's not just about them. This is about something that could hurt the American people, hurt the American economy, hurt the American sort of ideal.

So, making this much more about simply Harvard University, but it's going to be interesting to see where this goes from here, because the judge, of course, is temporarily blocking this. Of course, that's not the final word, and we're already reading and hearing that some international students are frightened by this or concerned by this.

Some may leave on their own accord, so it could still have the intended effect without the legal effect. But there's no doubt the president at the White House loves to pick this fight with Harvard for a variety of reasons that I think go back to his upbringing and more than that.

BASH: Yeah. Although, he did go to Penn.

ZELENY: He did. BASH: So, I think it's really interesting, Jonah, that Columbia, which was kind of first on the administration's target list. When they had their graduation, the interim president Claire Shipman, who, by the way, used to be a reporter here. She made an allusion to all of the tumult that's going on there, and there was a lot of tumult going on in and around that particular graduation.

Here it seems as though, right now, we'll see how the afternoon plays out, that what the president is doing has unified the Harvard campus in a way that did not happen, and it was not the environment a year ago where Jewish students genuinely felt upset and worried and scared and the people who were protesting, you know, felted the way they felt. And the fact that they seemed to be coming together with a pushback on the way that the Trump administration is attacking Harvard across the board is really noteworthy.

JONAH GOLDBERG, CO-FOUNDER/EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE DISPATCH & CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah. Although, the causality is different, right? Columbia, which in many ways, it was a bigger hot mess than Harvard is.

BASH: Definitely.

GOLDBERG: And also, capitulated to the Trump administration. So, well, I agree with you that, like the cultural residents are going after Harvard and all that is a big factor here. One of the reasons why the administration keeps doubling down is because Harvard's not capitulating.

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BASH: Right.

GOLDBERG: And it's -- so if it had been yale not capitulating, they would go after yale, right? Because what part of it is the signaling effect that you're referring to, which is, they want to do this to other schools. They -- you know, they ran through a whole bunch of law firms, and as long as they capitulated, I think they moved on to the next one. It's the ones who fight it that they don't want that signal going out there.

And so, I actually have some -- I think Harvard deserves a lot of grief and it has made some enormous mistakes over the last quarter century, and deserved some correction, but not the way the Trump administration is doing it.

At the same time, I think the Trump administration just has better cards at the end of the day, with the law, with the ability to discontinue future grants, which the school depends on, and they're already figuring out a way to sort of disqualify whole classes of foreign students, which means some of their legal remedies are saying, you're signaling us out. Go away. If they're saying no foreign students at any schools, then they can't say Harvard is being picked on. So, I think at the end of the day, the Trump administration, sadly, has better cards than Harvard does. BASH: Yeah. And as you were sort of alluding to there are different lines and areas of attack. I mean, at this point, the Trump administration is basically using all of the lines or all of the cards to continue on your metaphor. And that is especially true when it comes just to the money.

My understanding is that, on that note, when the president found out how much Harvard gets in federal grants, knowing that Harvard also has a lot of money from private endowments. That was part of the -- you know, we all know his mentality when it comes to the word fairness, that's what's driving his tariffs policy right now. And so that was part of the Harvard agreement.

GOLDBERG: Because they had a trade deficit with Harvard.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, exactly, exactly.

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yeah. And I mean, the thing is, there's a political calculation here, too, for Trump. You know, Trump is calculating that his base is going to be pleased with the actions he's taking against these universities. Because, as you were saying before, just this, look at, oh, the elites of this country. And he talked earlier this week about, oh, he could use the money that he's freezing from Harvard to, you know, invest in trade school.

So, there's a political calculation here, but the polling sort of shows that there's a disconnect between what the Trump administration thinks people want and what the American public actually think of all of this.

Because even before the escalation, the latest escalation with Harvard, we saw that a majority of Americans don't like what he's doing with universities, and that even Republicans are sort of divided on the actions that he's taking against universities. So, there is sort of a question that, as he continues to double down, will there be any kind of shift if this really isn't going to play well with folks?

BASH: And you mentioned the broader question of students, particularly from abroad beyond Harvard. Well, we saw what the Secretary of State said late yesterday about Chinese nationals. He said, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

First of all, I think if you live in China, it's hard not to have a connection to the Chinese Communist Party. A Chinese spokesperson in response said, this is politically motivated and discriminatory, move exposes the lie of America's long touted claim of being free and open and will only further damage the United States' international image and national credibility.

ZELENY: Look, there are a lot of people who believe that, and you know, they're obviously the next chapters of business development, the next entrepreneurs and things, you know, are produced by Harvard and great universities, as is research.

And the idea of closing the U.S., sort of down to the great minds, is very controversial, and I think it'll have lasting effects much more than we know right now. But as for Secretary Rubio, he is a China hawk. There's no doubt about it, and this sort of gives him a way to vent on that, I think, a little bit that's often hard in this administration.

BASH: Yeah. So, there's the soft power of it all, the idea that if you bring Chinese students here, they obviously have an exposure to American democracy that they never would have. And then they bring it back to China. What are we talking about here? We're talking about just last year alone, about 275,000 students. And then there is the money part of it. This is -- we're talking about $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy supported more than 378,000 jobs. These are international students, contributions to the U.S., not just China.

GOLDBERG: Yeah. I mean, look, one of the things, what -- again, I'm conservative guy. I think there are notional, directional things that Trump is talking about, or Rubio is talking about that have merit to them. It's the blunderbuss way of their implementing it. I mean, we're on Inside Politics just to -- like it feels very much that Rubio and Kristi Noem are trying to up their profile as the real leaders of MAGA inside the White House when Vance can't for institutional reasons.

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And so, Rubio is really leaning into stuff that if you he was -- if I had a lunch with Marco Rubio 10 years ago and said, here are the things you're going to do when you're Secretary of State, he would have slapped me, right? And -- but it's -- for internal MAGA world, I think it's smart politics. A lot of it is really terrible policy.

BASH: Yeah. We could talk about this for hours. We are going to talk more about it and more about something else that is sort of throwing a little cold water on President Trump's entire economic agenda, and that is blocking the bulk of his tariffs. That happened in a kind of obscure federal court. We're going to talk about that after a break.

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BASH: The Trump administration is brushing off a court ruling that has the potential to sidetrack the president's economic agenda. The Federal Court responsible for cases that deal with international trade laws ruled yesterday that most of the White House's quote, reciprocal tariffs are unlawful.

The President Trump's top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, told Fox Business this morning that ruling wouldn't impact the president's tariffs agenda. My smart reporters are back here. And Sabrina, you have covered tariffs. And as we were saying, somehow when there's a big tariff day, you always happen to be here. Lucky us. I just want to show our viewers what we're talking about and what is also not included in this -- in this ruling. The answer is most of it is halted. What is still in place are tariffs on auto, steel and aluminum.

RODRIGUEZ: And what's interesting here is this, this court ruling is sort of a reminder. One that the international trade court exists for many folks that don't know this, but also the fact that, in reality, Congress has ceded so much of its power on tariffs. This is a question of something that Congress should be weighing in on. Trump during his first term, sort of learned the way that he could work around this, and Congress slowly allowed him to do so.

So, he's taking advantage of that now, and this is where now he's seeing he's being stopped. But what's interesting here, though, is, I mean, there's so many tariffs that it's hard to keep track of which ones are he is he pursuing today? Which ones has he stepped back from? But we're in the middle of that 90-day pause on those tariffs.

So, I think there's a real question around, when we get to July 9, what exactly is going to happen? Because he talked very much about 90 deals -- 90-days, getting many done. We haven't seen that come to fruition. And you and I have had this conversation before. There is just a real question right now about Trump, the dealmaker.

So, while he frames this as, oh, it's the courts getting in the way, he's had all this time to sort of negotiate these deals, and we haven't seen that really happen yet, and we haven't seen Congress weigh in either.

BASH: Such a good point.

ZELENY: I mean, this creates a variety of problems. One, a revenue problem. I mean, the whole heart of the Trump economic agenda is the revenue or the money coming in from a tariff. So that's a problem. But also, I think it's so interesting to see, if you look sort of deeper into this lawsuit, who filed it? I mean, this mom-and-pop businesses, obviously brought forward by a libertarian legal advocacy group as well as the states.

But it sort of belies the fact that, yes, these have had negative impact on a lot of small businesses. You don't hear that a lot from the White House, but as we talk to business owners, as we sort of read about them, that has been a big issue here. So, I think that this is just one more example of a legal fight. We do not know how it's going to end. The Supreme Court is likely to have to decide this as well. But I do think that it is a -- the biggest black eye, I guess, yet on a centerpiece of Trump's policy.

GOLDBERG: So, it's a good point about small businesses. And Ilya Somin, who's one of the lead lawyers, he's a great guy. It's also telling the big corporations didn't bring these suits because they're terrified of the political consequences of it. The thing is, they can absorb some of the pain that comes with this and pass it on to their consumers. Coke and Pepsi can just charge a nickel more for a can of soda, but some little regional soda company goes out of business. And so, the fact that the -- for the small companies, small businesses, this is existential, and for the big businesses, that's a pain in the butt. Shows you how, like this sort of big player economics, the corporatism is one of the real problems with Trumpism as an economic.

BASH: Yeah.

ZELENY: I mean, they're afraid of the White House. So, big businesses are afraid to weigh into the White House, and the ones who do sort of get their hands slapped, but these mom-and-pop businesses are --

GOLDBERG: They don't have no choice.

ZELENY: Yes. They have no choice, and they're not afraid of it.

RODRIGUEZ: And a fear here too is, I think, for some of the small business owners. I was just recently in Bucks County, sort of swing area in Pennsylvania, and talking to some business owners there. They just want certainty. They just want, OK, this is what he's going to do, and we can make plans around that.

But with him, you know, announcing sweeping tariffs, implementing them within days, pausing them, then 90 days later, saying he's doing it, that back and forth makes, it's a very difficult for major companies to do it, but especially for small ones who are counting to figure it out.

BASH: So, that's main street or mom-and-pop businesses. And then there is the way that Wall Street has kind of tried to game the Trump system. The president was asked about that, actually, during the show yesterday. Listen to that moment.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I kick out?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Chicken out.

TRUMP: Oh, chicken out, I never heard that. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation, but don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question.

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BASH: And then there was this tweet from an investor who said the following. The first rule of the taco trade is that you don't tell Trump about the taco trade. I mean, when I saw his face when he realized that the reporter was saying that they think you're a chicken. I thought, oh boy.

GOLDBERG: Yeah. I mean, look, when you mentioned before that one of the big problems is revenue. This is one of the problems. The fundamental problem with Trump's trade policy is it's incoherent, right? They simultaneously want to have this thing where they're going to raise a lot of money from tariffs, but it's the art of the deal, and they're using tariffs to bring down trade barriers.

Which is it? Because it can't be both. And that internal contradiction is that at the end of the day, as Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute says, the basic explanation for Trump's trade policy is he just likes tariffs. He thinks they're awesome and he wants them, and every time it looks like they're -- he's being managed to get rid of them, he says, where are my tariffs. I want them back. And that's incoherent economic policy.

ZELENY: But as we saw with Walmart, I mean, he clapped back at Walmart. The whole idea that it being passed on the consumer, which we all know that that is how it works. It's a tax that's how it is. But I think watching the president in that moment with the new a U.S. attorney from Washington, a Judge Jeanine Pirro was, a certainly a moment.

BASH: That was definitely a moment. All right, everybody. Coming up. Elon Musk signs off as an employee of the Trump White House. How close did he actually get to the promises he made on the campaign trail? We'll talk about that next.

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HOWARD LUTNICK, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF COMMERCE: How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?

ELON MUSK, CEO of TESLA: Well, I think we can do at least 2 trillion.

LUTNICK: Yeah.

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