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President Trump Likely to Sign Executive Order Dismantling Department of Education; New Report Indicates U.S. Employers Cut More Jobs Last Month than Any February Since 2009; Representative Madeleine Dean Interviewed on President Trump's Anticipated Order to Eliminate Department of Education. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 06, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: The only thing we're really going to see kind of linger is going to be a lot of these gusty winds. You can see portions of the northeast stretching down to the southern Appalachians. You're still looking at those wind gusts up around 60 miles per hour.

Also, winds going to be very gusty. We're talking about the potential for fire, so New Mexico, Arizona, portions of Texas and Oklahoma, same thing. Some of these areas could see those winds up around 40 to 60 miles per hour. When you take that, combined with the very dry conditions, yes, you are looking at the high potential here for some wildfires. Again, most of this stretches from southern Colorado all the way down to the Texas-Mexico border. Those wind gusts, the dry air, and also including portions of that ongoing drought for much of this area.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you for tracking it all, Allison Chinchar.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking this morning, President Trump planning to sign an order as soon as today to dismantle the Department of Education.

More breaking news, an economic stunner. A new report that U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009.

And then a dramatic rescue caught on camera, a car in flames on the side of the road before an officer springs into action.

I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Breaking this morning, we are learning today is likely the day President Trump signs away the Department of Education. Sources say he is preparing to sign an executive order that will direct new Education Secretary Linda McMahon to eliminate the agency. But hold that thought, because Senate Democrats would have to be on board, and they are not. But deep staffing and program cuts will likely continue. All of this amid new details on a behind-the-scenes, closed door

pressure campaign playing out on Capitol Hill as Republicans look for control over billionaire Elon Musk's firing decisions. Just moments ago, stunning new data out on DOGE's effect that finds U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than February since 2009.

CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston with me now. We will get to Musk in just a moment. But first, your reaction this morning to this new order against the Department of Education. Now, to be fair, Trump has been promising this for a long time. It is also one of the key objectives of Project 2025. What's your read?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I mean, no doubt, and you're absolutely right, he has been saying this for years now. He said it in the first administration his first time around. And this is something that Republicans have been talking about since it was first created back in 1979. They didn't like the idea of the federal government having any role in state education.

You are right, though, just because Donald Trump says that he is going to have an executive order signed to eliminate it doesn't mean that it is gone, poof, it goes away. The reality is, is that it houses two major funding programs. One of those has to do with disabilities to help local schools with funding to help children with disabilities. And of course, the other one is Title One funding.

Now those are funded by Congress. They were done differently than the Department of Education. But you are absolutely right, Donald Trump is going to be able to go into the Department of Education, and he will be able to gut a lot of those programs.

SIDNER: I mean, he can essentially gut it and make it not function without completely closing it and getting that permission. We will see what happens and what that does to the teachers and the principals, and of course, the students and parents that have to deal with all of this in the end.

All right, let's go on to Elon Musk. He was on the Hill yesterday having a private meeting with Republicans who are facing backlash at town halls over some of his cuts. What do you make of this emerging relationship? Is there one.

PRESTON: Well, first of all, Elon Musk, I was surprised that he was so, quote-unquote, deferential to House Republicans and senators yesterday when we went up on Capitol Hill. The reality is that Congress hasn't had any role in this DOGE process. And we now hear the House speaker, the Republican House speaker, saying that he's now going to be in touch with Elon Musk. But the reality is, again, and I'm going to keep on saying reality, is that House members are going to have to go home to their constituents. And we have seen this so far already, and they're going to have to answer for the actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Who's not up for election in 2022? Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Thats why you're going to see some pushback from these Republicans.

SIDNER: I love it when you bring reality to us at 8:03 a.m. It really is great.

PRESTON: Wake up.

(LAUGHTER)

SIDNER: Have plenty of coffee. When Mark Preston is here, you've got to be ready for him. Thank you, Mark, I really appreciate you. Kate?

[08:05:05]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, joining us right now to talk more about this is Democratic Congresswoman Madeleine Dean from Pennsylvania. It's good to see you again, Congresswoman. Thanks for coming in.

There's a few headlines that are coming through this morning I wanted to get your take on. First, what we're hearing that President Trump could sign an executive order today that, as they were just discussing, to officially dismantle the Department of Education. It's something that they've been teasing for a while. Do you think this will -- this is going to happen? What can Congress do to stop it, if Congress can.

REP. MADELEINE DEAN, (D-PA) APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: Kate, I have real sympathy for you and your reporting, because it is also what I struggle with, the outrage of the day. There are so many issues I want to talk to you about, but it is pathetic and ironic that we start the day with the threat to cut -- to close down the Department of Education.

But it is no surprise. I'm a former educator. I'm a former teacher. What you do want is an educated electorate, but not if you're Donald Trump and his cultlike members. They want citizens who are not educated. Take a look at Project 2025, page 319, the chapter on education. This is what the first sentence says -- shut it down, eliminate the Department of Education.

I'm a mom and a grandmom. We don't want to eliminate the Department of Education. We want our children educated so that they can grow up and be whatever they want to be. But Donald Trump doesn't want that. Will he do it? Sure, he'll do it. Will it stick? No. He's so erratic. He's so unreliable. This is an incompetent administration that is making life very difficult for my constituents.

BOLDUAN: Let's see what next moves happen and what, as we have seen, legal challenges may come from it.

Another headline that just came through, and this has to do with you have been outspoken in criticizing the DOGE moves, and were seeing evidence of the impact of it in a new way this morning. New data analysis just came out that says U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009, the largest share of job cut announcements coming in the government sector. Your reaction?

DEAN: And what a sad tally that is for the United States economy. And this is allegedly a president who wants to grow jobs. What we saw in the last administration under Joe Biden was month after month after month of job growth. My constituents are calling me. My constituents are calling to say they've lost their jobs, talented career people who worked for the federal government, whether it's the V.A., USAID, the Department of Education, other places, they're calling me.

So this president is doing everything, as I said, so erratically and incompetently. And the jobs report is a reflection of that. Take a look at what "The Wall Street Journal" did in terms of the erratic nature of the tariffs. Of course, employers are going to be losing jobs and laying off workers. They can't predict supply chains, they can't predict the cost of goods that they will bring into this country. So, sadly, as "The Wall Street Journal" said, this is sort of the dumbest tariff policy that they have seen. This is an economy that was robust and growing. Inflation was coming down. That's not going to happen with this president and where he's headed.

BOLDUAN: And more word today from an internal memo that the Department of the V.A. is looking to cut maybe more than 70,000 positions, taking it back to 2019 levels. So it does keep coming.

I want to ask you also about an effort that you have been spearheading in Congress. You are a cosponsor of the House bill, the House version of the Take It Down Act, which is something that the first lady, Melania Trump, has come forward and is now championing. It's an effort to combat deepfake revenge porn. It is something that the president highlighted this effort during his address Tuesday. How closely are you working with the first lady on this?

DEAN: Well, I was delighted that when she came to Capitol Hill, she touted our bill, a bill I introduced a couple of sessions ago to protect young women and girls, but anybody, actually, against A.I. generated images, sextortion, and the terrible kinds of revenge porn. So I'm delighted to have the first lady on my side for Take It Down. I think we will get it passed because I think there's a real recognition.

And when I heard the first lady actually speak about our bill, I asked my team, let's draft her a note and say, we're happy to work with you. I want to do things that work for the American people. But take a look at, and I have to go back and take a look at what happened only 10 days ago. I'm thinking about the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

[08:10:02]

We're no longer talking about the fact that the United States in the U.N. disgracefully voted against Ukraine. We're not talking about the fact that we in Congress passed $183 billion worth of aid. And what did this president do? He has blocked the last $100 billion. He's blocking the sharing of intelligence for a country at war in Europe. We're not talking about the disgraceful behavior in the Oval Office on February the 28th, not even a week ago, where our global standing was just so diminished by the two-bit bullying of a vice president and a president.

It's so sad that we are in such erratic, chaotic times as a result of this president. And please pay attention to the Republicans, who in a cult like way, cheered him on with his lie after lie after lie with the State of the Union, or the joint address. As I say, I have some sympathy for you. I imagine you have some sympathy for me. We are chasing the chaos, the incompetence, the compromise. When you've got Elon Musk, who has $38 billion worth of contracts with the United States, going in and tampering with our information.

BOLDUAN: One good thing I know is CNN has a lot of people working on it all the time to cover it all, and we are proud to cover all the news coming from all of it. So, Congresswoman, thank you for very much, thank you very much for coming on. John?

BERMAN: All right, this morning, in a major new ruling, an appeals court allows President Trump to remove the head of a federal watchdog agency for now.

Breaking this morning, you heard Kate mention it, recession level layoffs in the country that we haven't seen since 2009. Details from a surprising new jobs cut report.

And a three inch long flaming hot Cheeto has sold for almost $90,000. If you want to know what separates us from the animals, it's this.

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[08:16:09]

SIDNER: A new development in the legal challenges over one of President Trump's key firings. A federal appeals court now allowing the President to go ahead and fire the head of the special counsel for now.

The Independent Watchdog Agency investigates whistleblower complaints and protects government employees from mistreatment and retaliation.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is joining us now. Give us some sense of what the judge said, and then what happens after this?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, this is a procedural order from the D.C. Circuit. And just a reminder, we're talking about a guy named Hampton Dellinger, the special counsel. He's not Jack Smith, he's not Robert Mueller, he's not John Durham. He's a different kind of special counsel.

He's a person that investigates complaints from the federal civil service. And then argues on their behalf if he thinks they should be reinstated.

So, he's the guy that's really at the center of a lot of these fights over Donald Trump and his power to fire people in the Executive Branch. Not only is he the person that's arguing for, say, 6,000 probationary workers at the Department of Agriculture to get reinstated, which is something that he successfully argued yesterday, at least temporarily, for them to go back to their jobs.

He is also at the center of Trump wanting to be able to fire people, right, Trump wants to remove Dellinger from his job. A lower court reinstated him temporarily. Now, it's at an appeals court, they said, no, actually, we can let him stay, sit out for now. We're going to look at this into the spring. They're going to hear legal arguments, at least on paper, into April. They'll probably try and take up this case pretty fast, but this is an issue going straight to the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, the Justice Department has made very clear that's what they want to happen here, ultimately and there's going to be a lot of court proceedings before we actually see whether or not Hampton Dellinger gets to stay in that job.

SIDNER: Yes, Katelyn, also, I want to get to this. A recent court filing, shedding some light on the chaos inside the CFPB after employees were ordered to stand down on their work that happened last month. What is the ripple effect of this?

POLANTZ: Yes, Sara, we're now starting to see evidence in these cases where people are suing against the Trump administration, saying you can't shut down agencies, you can't have all of these people fired. And in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Sara, there was a series of internal e-mails that were posted in court yesterday showing just how chaotic it is in an agency like that when you fire everybody or try and fire most people at the CFPB.

Right now, a judge has paused a lot of the dismantling of that agency. But just this week, one of the internal e-mails from a person who directs research there, a man named Jason Brown -- he wrote two others at the CFPB, "I know that as we are resuming our work, we are confronting a few challenges. The firing of much of our staff impacts our ability to complete assignments as planned."

He then went on that e-mail to say, "If you can take on other jobs, if you're still working, that would be helpful." Also, we have a lot of issues with I.T. right now, but there aren't I.T. people because they lost their jobs. So, we're trying to figure out what to do there as well. Quite a mess -- Sara.

SIDNER: Very messy. But you know what's not messy? Those snazzy glasses you got on today. I love them. Very nice.

POLANTZ: Thanks.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Katelyn -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Snazzy. Not used enough.

Coming up for us, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance blimp at the southern border. It gets caught in big winds, sending it some 600 miles off course.

And actor, Steve Carell with a surprise for high schoolers recovering in the aftermath of the California wildfires.

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[08:23:41]

BOLDUAN: The new headlines this morning, U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009. The largest share of job cut announcements coming in the government sector, which is where, of course, DOGE has been bringing about mass firings by the company, Challengers, count there were more than 62,000 announced cuts across 17 federal agencies, and in all, the analysis showed job cuts across sectors of more than 172,000.

CNN's Harry Enten joins me now to talk more about how people are feeling about when we're talking about the cuts that DOGE is bringing about. How are they feeling about it?

HARRY ENTEN CNN, CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes, this to me was one of the more shocking figures that I saw. It made me go, wait a minute, hold on one second -- whoa! Americans on Trump and DOGE's efforts. Musk and DOGE should influence government spending and operations. Look at this, 54 percent. The majority say that he and they should.

How about approve of Trump trying to cut staff at government agencies? Again, you get a majority here, 51 percent.

So yes, Elon Musk might not be that popular, but these cuts and the idea of spending cuts, at least within the federal government and cutting at government agencies, that actually has majority support.

I was truly surprised by this, Kate. But the numbers are the numbers.

BOLDUAN: Well, there is there is a view that cuts across Democrat and Republican of people thinking that Washington is too big, bloated federal government waste, fraud and abuse. I mean those are -- drain the swamp is what people run on over and over again. How do they feel? What do they think they're actually cutting?

[08:25:07]

ENTEN: Yes, what do they think they're actually cutting? Democrats want to argue that the type of spending that Musk is cutting is mainly necessary programs, but that comes in at just 36 percent. The wasteful spending actually wins the plurality here at 42 percent, according to a recent Washington Post-IPSOS poll.

And I think that is the reason why you see that when it comes to Dusk and MOGE -- Musk and DOGE, you see, in fact, the majority believe he should have some influence because they believe, the plurality believe that he is cutting wasteful spending, not necessarily programs that Democrats are arguing.

BOLDUAN: Tomato, tomato. I do like Dusk and MOGE, though.

ENTEN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: I think we need to keep that around, but the definition of wasteful is, I think what is really starting to come into play.

ENTEN: Correct. BOLDUAN: What people -- necessary to one is wasteful to another. We are seeing that and finding that. How are Americans feeling about the size of the government?

ENTEN: Yes, so, what is exactly going on here? What is sort of driving these numbers underneath? Government is doing too much or too little.

Back in 2020, when Trump lost re-election, 54 percent said, too little. By the time he won re-election in 2024. Look at that, too much won the majority at 55 percent. It was the inverse. So, I think there's this real push from the American public to want spending at the U.S. government to drop. And I think that's part of the reason why they're giving Musk and DOGE that majority, at least at this point, when it comes to his influence over federal government.

BOLDUAN: They're giving him running room on this. But that's why I think these numbers show a wide transparency in what is actually being done, and why the problems of they've made mistakes in putting things up on their wall of receipts that didn't actually happen or not. Why that is so important and critical.

ENTEN: I think that's exactly right. We'll have to wait and see what happens. What's popular one moment may not be the next. We'll see.

BOLDUAN: It could change quickly. Good to see you, Harry, thank you -- John.

ENTEN: Nice to see you.

BERMAN: By the way, Dusk and MOGE is my favorite new clothes.

BOLDUAN: That sticks and it is a song.

ENTEN: Dusk and MOGE, my dear friend, back to you at the desk, yes.

BERMAN: Thank you very much. Harry Enten, winning a Grammy near you.

All right, a little more on the breaking news this morning on this really stunning Jobs Report.

U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009. It's a recession level spike in layoffs. This report comes from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

They say it is the 12th highest monthly total in the 32 years Challenger has been tracking job cuts.

The 11 others and four of them came during the pandemic, all occurred when the U.S. was in recession.

With us now, Bakari Sellers, political commentator, and Matt Mowers, he is a former Trump administration official and president of VALCOUR Global Public Strategy and friends, I want to put up stock futures because the markets did not like this report, reacted very sharply. We can see, I think hopefully soon. There we go. Wild swings downward. The Dow, the NASDAQ, the S&P all down more than one percent. They were up a little bit yesterday on the whole tariff back and forth. But for the week, Bakari, they are way down. And I just want your view on what the economic environment is and the political implications that might have.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I think that the word of the day has to be uncertainty, John. I mean, the economic future of this country is deemed to be uncertain.

When you look at these numbers, there's no economic indicator that shows that we are actually in the midst of a healthy or growing economy. Whether or not you're looking at job numbers, whether or not you're looking at wage numbers, whether or not you're looking at the stock market, there is nothing this President or Elon Musk or the House or Senate have done which actually show that economically were on solid footing.

I mean, and that's just a fact. Regardless of who comes on here, what panelist comes on here, what member of Congress comes on here, they can't point to one economic indicator that says that this economy is growing or going in the right direction.

And again, this is what voters voted for. They voted for this level of uncertainty and this is what we have.

BERMAN: Matt, to an extent, the administration is leaning into policies that could potentially exacerbate some of the numbers you are seeing now. How do you feel about that?

MATT MOWERS, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, look, you just peel through that report you just talked about. I think when you actually break it down and you tell the American people that nearly 40 percent of the jobs came from government jobs, taxpayer funded jobs that are now being eliminated.

Most Americans, I understand in Washington, D.C. and some places that are going to be more impacted, but I think it is a slightly different political calculation. But most Americans across the country are going to say, it's about time.

I mean, look, you've had an ever growth in the expansion of the federal government. You know, they say it's been the most since 2008. What happened in 2008? Barack Obama gets elected President oversees one of the largest expansions of the federal government in recent American history.

It actually kind of stayed flat under Donald Trump. Plus, we then had COVID. You saw an additional expansion under Joe Biden. So, of course you're going to see a reduction right now when you're actually finally saying, we're going to cut the size of government.

And look, there's been, you know, an unholy alliance between Big Government and Big Corporations for a long time. Sometimes corporations are trying to follow where the government is going. They're trying to read the trend. And so, that's part of the reason why you're probably going to see a little bit of an outcry, even from corporate America, because they're dependent on big government often. And that's the system that Donald Trump was elected to change.

I mean, you look at the polling that Harry had talked about, the American people are with them on this. As long as the President is out there explaining it, they're going to give him a long leash to do exactly what they elected him to do, which is to turn upside down the system.

[08:30:33]