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Russia-Ukraine Talks Stalled?; Supreme Court Hears Case on Birthright Citizenship; Sean 'Diddy' Combs Trial Resumes. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired May 15, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:02]

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It is nonnegotiable that we must have some kind of enrichment capability for civilian purposes.

You have some voices in the Trump administration saying, no, that's not acceptable. But the negotiations do continue. We have just had the fourth round. Proposals have gone back and forth. A fifth round is in the works. So that does look promising, but we don't know how big the daylight is, how far apart the gap is.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you all, rock 'n' roll show. Appreciate it.

Thank you for joining INSIDE POLITICS today.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. I'm Boris Sanchez, alongside Brianna Keilar, in the nation's capital.

And breaking this hour, we're standing by for Sean "Diddy" Combs' defense team to resume cross-examination of key witness and accuser Cassie Ventura. The sex trafficking trial is about to get back under way after breaking for lunch.

The defense's strategy so far, highlighting a number of e-mails and text messages, including some X-rated ones between Combs and his ex- girlfriend, jurors seeing multiple examples of the pair discussing some of their sexual encounters.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And, at one point, Combs' lawyer asked Ventura -- quote -- "To make him," meaning Combs, "happy, you told him that you wanted to do freak-offs?" referring to the drug-fueled sex performances the couple sometimes did together.

Ventura answering -- quote -- "There's a lot more to that."

CNN's Kara Scannell been inside of court. She's with us live now.

This is a really big day in this trial, Kara. What are the big takeaways right now?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is a big day, Brianna. It's the first time that Combs' attorneys are questioning Ventura.

And for about two hours, Combs' lawyer has gone through a number of text messages, many of them at the beginning of the relationship. And they're -- she's using them to show that there was a lot of love and a lot of affection and effusiveness that was back and forth between them.

Some e-mails also deal directly with these freak-offs, which Ventura has testified she felt she had to do because she felt threatened by Combs, either he would physically assault her or harm her. Some of these text messages that the jury has seen today shows Ventura saying that she's going to go to the store and pick up supplies, set up the room and take her vitamins, LOL, oblique reference to the drugs that they were taking, which the defense would want to argue that this is her willingly participating in these freak-offs.

Now, Ventura says she did it eventually at the beginning, but then she eventually grew to not want to continue to do them. And she had testified on direct examination that she had had -- engaged in these freak-offs with 19 different male escorts.

Now, also in the cross-examination today, the defense tried to get at the concept that this was a racketeering conspiracy. And so they were asking her, were members of his staff knowledgeable of the freak-offs? Did they know? Was it the security guards? Did they know? The personal assistants, did they know? And Ventura said that she never told them.

Obviously, the prosecutors pushing the theory that they were involved and that their involvement was evident by them supplying some of the supplies that were needed, the baby oil, the lubricants and setting up some of these hotel rooms, paying for the damages that occurred after the freak-offs.

But his team trying to chip away here at some of what Ventura is saying, making it to be more of a complicated relationship than what the prosecution has alleged is a sex trafficking crime. And that is because Combs' defense is that there was domestic violence in this relationship. He's not running away from it, but he says it wasn't sex trafficking.

And they say that a lot of those fights came because of infidelity between both of them on both sides. And that was what was fueling that. But they said that that's not what he's charged with. That's not the crime.

Now, she is going to be resuming cross-examination shortly. And Combs' team saying that this is taking a little bit longer than they anticipated, and they think that their cross-examination could go through the end of the day tomorrow. Of course, the judge wanting to get her off the stand because she is more than 8.5 months pregnant, ready to have birth -- give birth to her third child.

So they're trying to speed this along. The lunch breaks are getting shorter. The days have gotten a little longer, the judge really pushing to wrap this up. But she is expected to be on the stand resuming this cross-examination shortly, where they're going to get in some of these other bigger issues at issue in this case.

I mean, another point that they were trying to undercut was, they were talking about drug use and Combs' temper and how she was so afraid of him. Well, she testified that her own personal withdrawal from opioids, she said, made her irritable. She said that Combs was also irritable when he was coming down from that.

And so that's another way that the defense here is trying to create a more complicated scene than what the theory of the prosecution's case is -- Brianna, Boris.

KEILAR: All right, Kara Scannell, thank you so much. We will keep following along with you.

And back here in Washington, the Supreme Court hearing arguments today on whether President Trump can enforce his executive order to end birthright citizenship. But the issue before the court goes beyond that specific case. It could actually have a ripple effect on other parts of President Trump's agenda that have been challenged in court.

[13:05:13]

SANCHEZ: Yes, specifically, the justices are considering whether a single federal judge anywhere in the country could have the power to block a president's policies nationwide.

CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid is live for us outside the Supreme Court.

Paula, talk to us about how these arguments went today.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Boris, this was fascinating because the stakes are so high for President Trump and his ability to quickly implement his agenda.

Here, the judges were considering whether one judge anywhere in the U.S. should have the power to block a policy for the entire country. These so-called nationwide injunctions are something that have plagued every modern president, but none more so than President Trump, because he does so much through executive orders.

He's issued more than 200 of them this term. And 39 times, they have been blocked by district court judges. And, in this case, it arises from his executive order trying to end birthright citizenship, the right that, if you were born here, even if your parents aren't citizens, that you are a citizen.

And that's an interesting case to bring this larger question to the court, and we -- because we saw the liberal justices really point out the fact that, when it comes to something like, are you a citizen or not, it is important to have one policy for the entire country.

Justice Kagan made this point in her questions to President Trump's lawyer, John Sauer. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ELENA KAGAN, U.S. SUPREME COURT ASSOCIATE JUSTICE: I think that that's the important question in this case. Let's just assume you're dead wrong. How do we get to that result? Does every single person that is affected by this E.O. have to bring their own suit? Are there alternatives? How long does it take?

How do we get to the result that there is a single rule of citizenship that is not -- that is the rule that we have historically applied, rather than the rule that the E.O. would have us do?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

REID: Kagan really sort of crystallizing how the liberal justices are clearly skeptical of this idea that nationwide injunctions should be limited, even though the administration is arguing that these judges are usurping the power that belongs to the executive or the legislative branches.

But I also want to note this is not just a Trump issue. The past five Justice Departments have all said, this is a problem, it's something the court needs to address. So it's really interesting that they have chosen to address this issue with a challenge to birthright citizenship, which most experts agree is unconstitutional.

But the administration only needs five conservative justices -- I say only because there are a few to spare -- to have things go their way. And it does appear that they likely have at least five justices willing to limit or completely stop these injunctions, so this case arguably the biggest of the term, enormous consequences for President Trump and future presidents.

So we will see what the justices decide next month.

KEILAR: All right, we certainly will.

Paula Reid, thank you so much for this.

We have CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams with us now on what is just a huge case here in two very big different ways, right?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.

KEILAR: But let's talk about this injunction issue, just kind of looking at how big of a deal this could be. How would the Trump administration, what they're asking for, even work?

WILLIAMS: That's the problem and that's the challenge here.

I think I would even go further than Paula. I think all nine justices, I think at one point, expressed some skepticism about the idea of a single judge issuing a ruling for the whole country. But the question that came up multiple times through the day is, how do you effectuate that? So the best example I think of the day was Justice Sotomayor in the

morning had said, imagine a president were to say, no guns. I'm going to take everybody's guns away, and a court in Texas ruled on it. Now, what -- that affects everybody in the country, but are you going to say that only people in Texas can't have guns, but everybody else can?

It just -- so what do you do? And I think the justices did seem to grapple with this question of when something is a core constitutional right, like citizenship or the right to bear arms or whatever else, how do you handle rulings that might affect the whole country?

SANCHEZ: Chief John Roberts sort of alluded to the idea that there might be some way to expedite a class action lawsuit that would then find its way to the Supreme Court.

But it's not that easy to assemble a class action lawsuit, meaning that, in theory, the government could pursue a policy that eventually is found to be illegal and a ton of folks would face issues, damages, deportation because of it, but it wouldn't be resolved until there was a class action law -- until everybody found a lawyer.

WILLIAMS: Right.

I do think the tell of the morning was Chief John Roberts asking John Sauer, you have faith that the Supreme Court can rule quickly in issues. We have proven that we have done it before in other instances. But class actions, certainly, parties would have to opt in to being a part of the class. And,again, it -- a class action would not necessarily apply to everybody in the country.

[13:10:02]

Now, that's a solution. There's no question about that. But if you're talking about potentially millions of people, regardless of where anyone is on this issue, whether they should be citizens or not, creating multiple different tiers or classifications of citizenship based on where someone is in the country simply is just not workable as a practical matter, forget a legal one.

KEILAR: So, considering this case has so many issues, what are the different things that the court could weigh in on or maybe not weigh in on, birthright citizenship, injunctions? What are the -- choose your own adventure here?

WILLIAMS: And -- exactly. It's sort of a choose your own adventure.

Now, I guess they could say, nationwide junctions totally banned, never could happen anywhere in the country. That's one way. Perhaps they could say, if a party wishes to sue, they can do so in a local court and file a class. That's a nationwide class. They could limit -- as one of the parties who was representing interest groups later in the day said, well, what if you just limited this to core constitutional rights that a judge can, if something is so basic like the right to bear arms and someone's suing over it, apply that to the whole country. But if it's just Elliot suing Boris, OK, that just applies to us and

the people that are a part of our suit. So, yes, there is a choose their own adventure, but it's incredibly complex, given how important the issues are and how hard it is to apply rights to individual lawsuits.

SANCHEZ: Why would you sue me, bro?

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAMS: I know.

KEILAR: You guys are friends.

WILLIAMS: We are. We are.

KEILAR: Off air too.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAMS: ... get paid, Boris. So pay me my money.

KEILAR: That's another issue.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: All right, Elliot Williams, thank you.

And with us now is Jose Antonio Vargas. He is a former undocumented immigrant. He's the founder of Define American. He's also the author of "Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen."

It's so great to have you, Jose. Thank you for being with us.

And, as we were talking, this is a case about two things, birthright citizenship and then this injunctions issue. I want to talk about birthright citizenship first. What do you worry would happen if birthright citizenship is ended for children born in the U.S. to parents who were in the country unlawfully or who were in states lawfully but temporarily?

JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, DEFINE AMERICAN: Well, this is a question I have been asking since, what, 14 years ago, when I outed myself was undocumented. It's the question of, how do you define American?

And that is -- this is what this case is about, right? Who's American and who's not? And the reality here is, what the president, what the administration is trying to do is unconstitutional. Birthright citizenship, it would take, as you and I both know a tremendous act of Congress to overturn, right, to undo the 14th Amendment.

I actually think what the Trump administration, what Stephen Miller, what Steve Bannon are after is something even more destructive, which is changing the culture, is ask -- getting all of us, right, to start looking at each other saying, wait a second, are you a citizen? Are you a citizen? Do you deserve to be here, right?

And I think that destruction, I think that's been in place for a decade now since Donald Trump announced he was running for president the first time in 2015.

KEILAR: You discovered -- you said you outed yourself 14 years ago, but you discovered when you were 16 that you were undocumented.

And it occurs to me that reversing birthright citizenship could open up so many more people born in America, maybe not aware that their parents are here unlawfully, to that exact personal experience that you had. What do you think that would be like on an even wider scale?

VARGAS: Well, it's utter panic. It's utter panic. It's chaos. The fear that has engulfed immigrant families across this country -- it doesn't matter if you're in California or if you're in Alabama.

And this is something that I'm personally aware of, given that I'm friends, acquaintances. I have been -- I have been traveling nonstop for, what, 14 years now. The fear is tremendous. And, again, I think the president is something -- it's -- the win here is more than a political one. It's a cultural one, right?

I mean, look at the question we're being asked here, right? We're being asked, wait a second, you can't be a citizen because you come from this illegal alien person, when the law is settled. If you were born in these United States, you are a citizen. And now, all of a sudden, we're questioning that. We're questioning the legality of that.

KEILAR: Do you think -- as you said, there's a political element to it. The Constitution enshrines birthright citizenship, and let -- yet this effort has proceeded.

To you, is it a real effort to end birthright citizenship or is it just looking for political division?

VARGAS: I think it's sowing political division even more. And I think this -- this, for me, as somebody who's had a front row seat watching all of this happen in real time, I think what the president, what the Trump administration and Stephen Miller are after for is changing our culture, changing -- having us look at people who don't look like what we think of as American from the 1950s, right?

[13:15:22]

The reality in this country right now -- and I am a journalist by training -- there are 48 million immigrants in America today, according to the Pew Research Center. From those 48 million, about 11 million or so that we like to say is undocumented who are here illegally.

You can't separate the people who are here legally from the people who are here illegally, because, most often, we're in the same family, right? We're in the same family. They're -- they're called -- we're called mixed-status families, right? And what the president is after here is having all of us question

everybody's right to be in this country, regardless if you are a citizen or not, regardless if you have papers or not. And I think, on that score, on that cultural score, I think they're winning, right? I think that has now become mainstream.

KEILAR: Jose Antonio Vargas, we appreciate you being with us today. Thank you.

VARGAS: Thank you so much for having me.

KEILAR: And still ahead, we will be following the latest on the criminal trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Plus, Walmart says it will raise prices on some items because of President Trump's tariffs. When you can expect to see the prices go up there.

SANCHEZ: And as we wait to see if Ukrainian and Russian officials meet in Istanbul, CNN is learning that the Kremlin is amassing forces on the front lines for a possible new offensive.

What this could mean for diplomatic efforts -- when we come back on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[13:21:15]

KEILAR: Breaking news into CNN, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will no longer attend talks with Russia scheduled for tomorrow.

Rubio says the only way to find a breakthrough in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine is for President Trump and Vladimir Putin to meet face-to-face.

CNN's Kylie Atwood is with us now from the State Department.

What does this portend for where things are going, Kylie?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Essentially, Brianna, this shows us that the meetings that are expected to happen tomorrow really hold, frankly, no significance.

The secretary of state, who President Trump said just earlier this week was going to be attending these meetings, said that he is not going to be doing that. Someone from the United States' side will be there. But the level of officials who are attending from the Russian side is not at the level that the United States wanted it.

Therefore, the secretary of state feels that it is effectively not worth his time to be at the table. He echoed what we heard from President Trump earlier today on his foreign trip, in saying that the only way for a breakthrough here is for President Trump to have engagement with Russian President Putin. Rubio spoke about-face-to-face engagement, effectively keeping the door open for direct engagement, a meeting between President Trump and President Putin here. When a reporter asked him about the timeline for that, he didn't really give one. He said that we're going to have to see what happens during the meetings that happen tomorrow between the Ukrainians and the Russians and after President Trump concludes his foreign trip.

But this does call into question what we have seen over the last few weeks is this engagement at the lower levels by the Trump administration with the Ukrainians and the Russians, particularly the engagements that President Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has had with the Russian side, because the Russians have not agreed to any cease-fire.

It was President Putin who put out this idea for direct engagement in Turkey this week, and then sent very low-level officials. So, effectively, this dialogue has gone nowhere. We're now watching to see what the administration does to potentially put together this direct engagement between Trump and Putin -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, that will be big news.

Kylie Atwood, thank you so much.

SANCHEZ: Let's discuss with CNN senior military analyst and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis. He's also a partner at The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm.

Admiral, thanks so much for being with us, as always.

So, Vladimir Putin proposes these talks, then decides he's not going to show up. Is he simply stringing along the Ukrainians and the United States?

ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET.), CNN SENIOR MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, the word I like to use is rope-a-dope.

I mean, there's an old boxing technique where you just kind of lay back on the ropes and you let a couple of punches go by you. You're not really engaging. All you're trying to do is tire out the other side. This is a classic example of Putin doing so, particularly kind of stoking everybody's hopes.

Another term would be bait and switch, talking about high-level talks in Turkey, and then, oops, not only am I not going, Putin. I'm not even going to send Sergey Lavrov, my minister of foreign affairs. I'm going to send the C team.

I think it's, frankly, an insult to the president of the United States. And I think Putin ought to wake up to how he is mishandling the Trump account, because it's going to come back to bite him as these negotiations unfold.

SANCHEZ: To that point, I wonder what you make of how the president handled all of this. He sort of initially said that he believes that Putin wanted him there. Then, later, he said that he really wasn't paying attention to the delegation. He sort of pivoted when he was asked to talk about the trillions of dollars in deals that he's brokered in the Middle East.

[13:25:05]

Do you think Putin would have actually gone if Trump had said that he was attending this meeting?

STAVRIDIS: I don't see a universe where, if Trump had been forthright and said, I am going to be there, Vladimir, you need to come, in that universe, I think Putin would have shown up.

However, if you're the president of the United States, you have got a lot of options about how to spend your time. And so the judgment to spend a lot of time working commercial deals and allies in the Arabian Gulf, as opposed to going to Turkey, may well pay off dividends for the United States.

And final thought. The irony here, Boris, is that we may get a deal with Iran before we get this deal between Ukraine and Russia. That Iranian deal is looking better by the day. So I think, if you're in the White House, your argument would be, look, President Trump has a lot of options as to where he goes, and he has chosen to put a focus on the Middle East.

He's pushing this Iranian deal forward, and we will get to you, Putin, when it's time to get to you. That's a signal back to Moscow, maybe not a bad one.

SANCHEZ: How do you think the U.S. should respond, as you have Russia on one side, the chief of the Russian delegation saying that the Kremlin is prepared for possible compromises, but sources have told CNN that it appears Russia is amassing forces for a new offensive in the east?

I mean, do you think that that response from the U.S., sort of pushing it to the side, is enough? When would you draw the line at installing new sanctions?

STAVRIDIS: I would go with our European partners here.

And, notably, France, United Kingdom, Poland all came together with Germany just last week. They're the ones who proposed the idea of additional sanctions. I think it's time now for the United States to be part of that approach.

And then, secondly, Boris, you didn't mention it, but I will. The best way to force Putin to the table is to provide further armament, long- range missiles, cruise missiles, artificial intelligence, all of that, more ammunition to the Ukrainians.

Look, the Ukrainians aren't asking for the 82nd Airborne, the U.S. Army, to show up and defend themselves. They're willing to fight. Let's give them more weapons systems, more tools, more ability to reach into Russia itself. I think that is the path to getting Putin to the table.

SANCHEZ: Admiral James Stavridis, appreciate your point of view. Thanks for joining us.

STAVRIDIS: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: So, it has been a tense day of testimony in the criminal trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs. His defense team is grilling his ex- girlfriend Cassie Ventura, as the jury sees sexually explicit text messages between the two of them. We're tracking it next.

And we have an alarming new report to share with you on FEMA. There's this internal review that was obtained by CNN suggesting the agency is not ready for hurricane season, which starts in just a few days.

Stay with us.

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