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West Point Preps Cadets To Lead Amid Trump Admin. Orders; Commuters Scramble As NJ Transit Train Engineers Go On Strike. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired May 16, 2025 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: An exclusive report from the United States Military Academy at West Point, where cadets are taking the last of their final exams. Just days from now, President Trump will give the commencement address to the Class of 2025 as they join the storied, long gray line of West Point alumni.
Meanwhile, school officials have been making sweeping changes to fall in line with Trump's anti-diversity executive actions and Defense Department directives for the military. I visited West Point to see how they're adjusting and preparing future military leaders.
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KEILAR (voice-over): This is not your typical college experience.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five, six, echo.
KEILAR (voice-over): It's the United States Military Academy at West Point, one of the nation's elite service academies, which produces a disproportionate number of the military's top officers. We visited three weeks before graduation as students faced off in the Sandhurst Military Skills Competition, a grueling two-day matchup between teams from West Point, ROTC programs at colleges and universities around the country, and military academies from countries allied with the U.S. At this school, extracurricular activities are of a different variety. Cadet Maggie Pennington is on the parachute team.
[13:35:05]
CADET MAGGIE PENNINGTON, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT: I find it very peaceful. I need to get up there, jump out of the plane, and land safely.
KEILAR (voice-over): They focus on academics, but also physical fitness and military leadership.
CADET JACK WILSON, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT: Every soldier is entitled to fantastic leadership, and it's our job to be able to provide that.
KEILAR (voice-over): As a physical development officer, Cadet Jack Wilson helps other students meet the required physical standards for military officers. A next stop for him is Fort Cavazos, Texas, to be a tanker and lead a platoon. At West Point, the honor code is sacrosanct. It's etched in stone on a wall in the middle of campus.
CADET GABRIELLA SORRENTINO, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT: It's this idea that a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.
KEILAR (voice-over): Cadet Gabby Sorrentino helps make sure cadets live by these words as the school's honor captain. She's also a member of West Point's boxing team.
KEILAR: How many times were you punched in the face?
SORRENTINO: Oh my gosh, I don't think there's a number high enough.
KEILAR (voice-over): And one of West Point's four Rhodes Scholars this year. So is Cadet Shep Dzina.
CADET SHEPHERD DZINA, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT: Really the character component of the United States Army is our decisive advantage over any other military. That is like the bedrock which unites everyone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The concept of iron sharpens iron, I feel like West Point does a really good job of that.
KEILAR (voice-over): This place is a pressure cooker, and right now the pressure at West Point is turned up even higher than usual. In January, President Trump ordered, quote, every element of the armed forces should operate free from any preference based on race or sex. He ordered his secretaries of defense and homeland security to carefully review the leadership, curriculum, and instructors of service academies, which he prohibited from promoting what he called un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories, including divisive concepts, race or sex scapegoating, that America's founding documents are racist or sexist, or gender ideology.
To comply, West Point officials reacted by pulling readings from courses, including, one current professor told CNN, a number of works by revered black Americans, like Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison. And they canceled 12 clubs that represent students of color and women. Brigadier General Shane Reeves is West Point's dean.
KEILAR: Has that changed the student experience at all?
BRIG. GEN. SHANE REEVES, DEAN OF THE ACADEMIC BOARD, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY: I don't think it will. I think that every single person remains valued at West Point. Every single person is part of the team, and everyone is working towards the same exact goal, which is being able to go out and fight and win our nation's wars.
KEILAR: Not considering race, ethnicity, and sex in admissions, is that something that is going to change the student body of West Point?
REEVES: I think West Point has the most varied student body, or the Corps of Cadets, that you'll find anywhere in the country because of the -- the nomination process. And the nomination process specifically requires that cadets come from every state in the Union. And -- and how those state representatives or senators choose their -- their -- their cadets, as long as they're qualified, is up to them. And so I don't -- I don't think so.
KEILAR (voice-over): West Point officials are downplaying the changes. But just days after our visit, Graham Parsons, a civilian professor of philosophy who teaches military ethics, penned an opinion essay in "The New York Times," writing that West Point had, quote, abandoned its core principles of giving cadets the broad-based, critical-minded, nonpartisan education they need for careers as Army officers.
Parsons revealed that he would be resigning from the faculty at the end of the term after 13 years, saying, I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded on X. You will not be missed, Professor Parsons. And the DoD's rapid response account called him, woke. Colonel Terence Kelley, a spokesperson for West Point, responded by saying, in part, that faculty deliberately reviewed their courses when necessary the respective faculty removed content that in their professional judgment did not comply with the orders.
Kelley called Parsons' argument a false dilemma and said, we can maintain our commitment to academic integrity and intellectual discourse while remaining fully aligned with national policy and our military responsibilities. But retired Colonel Isaiah Wilson, a former West Point professor and academic program director, disagrees. He's sounding an alarm. Concerned cadets won't learn important lessons.
COLONEL ISAIAH WILSON III (RET.), FORMER WEST POINT PROFESSOR & ACADEMIC PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Let's talk about the original sin of slavery in America, but in a way that -- that rubs, you know, rubs off some of the -- the sharp edges of real history, right. I mean, dare I call it a whitewashing.
KEILAR (voice-over): Colonel Wilson worries it's an effort to create officers who blindly comply with what he calls legal but unthinkable orders.
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WILSON: This turns future leaders into more of the manufactured technician that is autotomic and goes to an extreme of, we just follow orders, a non-thinking technician as -- as opposed to a developed leader.
KEILAR (voice-over): Retired Brigadier General Michael Meese, a former head of the Social Sciences Department at West Point, sees it differently.
BRIG. GEN. MICHAEL MEESE (RET.), FORMER HEAD OF THE DEPT. OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AT WEST POINT: I don't think the intent is to restrict academic freedom. I think the intent seems to be, at least in my observation, to perhaps change the priorities of what cadets should be learning. And as I said, that is not an uncommon change that sometimes comes from Washington to increase this instruction or decrease that instruction.
KEILAR (voice-over): But he also thinks cadets should be trusted to be exposed to a broad range of teachings.
MEESE: Critical thinking is not insubordination. It's a fundamental trait that you want your officers to have.
KEILAR (voice-over): Cadets are required to remain publicly apolitical, as are all service members. And we found students busy preparing for conflicts of the future. At their annual research symposium last month, cadets presented a toolkit for using A.I. ethically in combat. They tricked out a stealthy four-legged reconnaissance robot and drones. They debuted a tent anchor they'd tested in the frozen tundra of the Arctic Circle. And a hypersonic rocket that surpassed the boundary of space, breaking the amateur rocket altitude record.
CADET WILLIAM LONGNECKER, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT: We're all here to fight and win our nation's wars. We're all here to defend the things that we believe in. We have people from all over the country and all over the world that are defending these ideals and values that we all care about, even though we have varying backgrounds and come from all different places.
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KEILAR: That was Cadet William Longnecker there. But, you know, a lot of pressure. The military is under, West Point's under. Indisputably, though, the cadets are very impressive.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: No question. It makes me hopeful for the nation's future to hear them, right, to hear their perspective on things and how they view things and obviously the technology that they're sort of tinkering with and coming up with. I do wonder how you think next week is going to go when President Trump is set to speak at a commencement address.
KEILAR: Yes, that's right. So he'll be speaking to the class of 2025. It's a week from tomorrow. And I actually went back to his 2020 speech when he spoke last to the students at West Point. And by the Trump standard, it was relatively non-political, which is traditionally the measure that a president is aiming for, whether they're a Democrat or a Republican. So I think that is what a lot of folks are going to be looking at to see what kind of message he's bringing, even as his executive orders are, you know, bringing about a lot of changes.
But it's really something to pay attention to because these service academies, West Point, the Naval Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the Air Force Academy, they're graduating, like I said, a disproportionate number of these top officers in the military. But ultimately, they account for so many of the general and flag officers. They really are the future of military leadership.
SANCHEZ: They're the best and brightest. And you can tell by some of the extracurricular activities. What were you thinking asking that young lady how many times she's been punched in the face? KEILAR: I was just genuinely curious. But the most fascinating thing, and that was Cadet Gabby Sorrentino, I asked her if that was transferable to being at West Point or to getting the Rhodes Scholarship. She said yes. It helps her to just keep moving forward, which makes sense.
SANCHEZ: Yeah.
KEILAR: But wow.
SANCHEZ: Yeah. That's awesome. Keep getting punched in the face.
KEILAR: That's right.
[13:43:24]
All right. We'll be right back with more news.
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SANCHEZ: Right now, trains on the nation's third largest commuter rail service are at a standstill. New Jersey transit engineers walked off the job overnight after the two sides failed to reach a deal.
The strike could impact hundreds of thousands of daily commuters and businesses across the New York metro area. Let's get the latest from CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich, who's live outside of Penn Station. Vanessa, how are passengers there faring right now?
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, if you've ever been to New York's Penn Station, you know how busy it can be, and that is because commuters from Long Island, from outside of the city, and from New Jersey rely on train service to get to and from New York City. New Jersey transit being a critical rail line, 350 trains from New Jersey Transit in and out of this station every day carrying 100,000 people. But that is not happening today as this railroad is now idle.
New Jersey Transit's commuter service is idle because of this strike between the union and New Jersey Transit. The union representing these engineers who drive these trains saying that they want their engineers to be paid more in line with what other engineers make at Amtrak and Metro North. New Jersey Transit saying if they met their demands they would go bankrupt.
I want to bring in Christina O'Donnell, she's been a locomotive engineer at New Jersey Transit for seven years. What does it mean for you to be out here today?
CHRISTINA O'DONNELL, LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER: It's big for me to be here, to be able to support my brothers and sisters, locomotive engineers at New Jersey Transit, the BLET. We've been fighting for a fair contract for several years now and all we're really asking for is equal pay for equal work.
YURKEVICH: And a locomotive engineer, how critical is your job to New Jersey Transit and to the safety of commuters?
O'DONNELL: We spend 20 months in training to learn how to safely operate these trains that carry thousands of passengers in and out of New York City amongst other locations, in and out around the tri-state area. The trains don't move without us and a lot of people don't realize we work very weird hours, we miss a lot of holidays, a lot of time with friends and family and all we're asking is to be compensated fairly, like our fellow engineers on the railroads across the platform.
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YURKEVICH: Thank you so much, Christina. So Boris, listen, New Jersey Transit is trying to put in contingency plans trying to offer more ferry service, more bus service, but that is not going to make up for all of the trains that are sitting idle right now. Also worth noting, two huge concerts, one this weekend, Shakira at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. People get to and from using New Jersey Transit, a Beyonce concert coming up next weekend. These are critical train lines that people rely on that are not currently in service.
If this drags out until next weekend, fans trying to get to Beyonce are going to have to figure out another way to get around, in addition to commuters who are going to be starting work again next week. Boris?
SANCHEZ: It does not sound like a good time. Yikes. Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you so much.
Up next, a destructive storm system heading east with tens of millions in its path. What you need to know in your forecast.
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KEILAR: Forecasters say millions of people are in the midst of an incredibly dangerous day of severe storms. We have CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar in the Extreme Weather Center for us. Where's this headed, Allison?
ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: All right, so it's going to gradually shift eastward as we go through the afternoon and especially the evening hours tonight. So all of these areas you see highlighted here have the potential for those strongest severe thunderstorms. And we're talking some pretty potent severe storms.
We could be looking at strong tornadoes of EF2 or stronger, some damaging wind gusts, 70, 75 miles per hour, and some large hail that could be the size of golf balls or larger. Three separate areas. We're looking at this one across portions of New Jersey, the second area with a severe thunderstorm, watch across portions of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
And the third area out to the west, that's our newest watch, that's a tornado watch that's valid until 7:00 p.m. Central time later on this evening. Again, as a lot more of these showers and thunderstorms are expected to fire up. And you can see that here.
By late afternoon, those other two systems still continuing to progress eastward. But you really start to see the backside of this system. That's when it's really going to start to develop and begin to push into portions of Arkansas, Tennessee, into Kentucky, some of the same areas that already had some showers and thunderstorms earlier into the day, now getting that second round of storms sliding through.
By late this evening and overnight, they continue to spread eastward, but notice how they really start to fill back out as well, continuing into the overnight areas across portions of Mississippi as well as Alabama.
KEILAR: All right, Allison, thank you so much for that.
And ahead on CNN News Central, Sean "Diddy" Combs' ex-girlfriend faces questions on the stand. The prosecution now has a chance to once again ask her questions on redirect after the defense team's cross- examination wraps up. We'll have that next.
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