Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Scientists Monitor Climate Change from Earth's Highest Peaks; Trump Administration Planning to Cancel All Federal Contracts with Harvard; Dozen Injured After Car Plows into Crowd at Liverpool Soccer Parade; Polls: No, Trump Does Not Have a Clear Plan for Tariffs and Trade. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired May 27, 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]

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I spoke with National Geographic Explorer and Nevada State climatologist Dr. Baker Perry during his most recent expedition back to Mount Everest.

DR. BAKER PERRY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER: We know more about the weather on Mars than we do on the highest peaks of the Himalaya here on our planet.

It's critical to have a station here on the glacier.

VAN DAM (voice-over): It's a mission that began in 2019, documented by the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition.

PERRY: This is critical in the context of climate change and water resources and the fact that we've got hundreds of millions of people that live downstream from these water towers that sustain the communities.

VAN DAM (voice-over): Vital too for other environmentally stressed regions across the globe including Argentina, where in February Dr. Perry led researchers on a similar mission in the Andes to Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas.

The WIWA project, an international collaboration between the U.S., Argentina and multiple research institutions, installed weather stations along the mountain glaciers to monitor conditions and added a crucial link in collecting meteorological information around the world.

PERRY: The weather station network is critical for improving our understanding of climate change.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAN DAM (on camera): I want to show you the near real-time data from their actual weather stations here in Argentina. All those blue dots, that's where they installed the weather stations and capturing this data and some of the glacial activity. But I want to show you some of the highest previously reporting stations on Everest. That is before they were actually destroyed by 150 mile per hour winds and temperatures of negative 40. So John, this shows us how little we know about the most extreme environments on the roof of the world. Back to you.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, so much to learn. That is so cool. All right, Derek Van Dam, thank you very much.

Brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we begin with breaking news. President Trump launching a new assault this morning on Harvard, now planning to order federal agencies to end all government contracts with that university.

And new details about the horrifying moment, a car slammed into a crowd of celebrating soccer fans in Liverpool, England. Dozens have been injured, including children. What we're learning about the suspect today and why police are not calling this terrorism.

And a former police chief serving time for rape and murder now on the run after breaking out of an Arkansas prison. Authorities saying he dressed up as a law enforcement officer to make his escape.

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: We do have breaking news coming in this morning. The Trump administration planning now to cancel all of the federal government's remaining contracts with Harvard University. The expected total of that would be roughly around $100 million. That's according to two senior administration officials.

This directive is set to go out to agencies in a letter today. And it comes as we're also standing by for a hearing in the legal fight that's already existing between President Trump and the school. A federal judge is going to hear from both sides for the first time since temporarily blocking the administration from halting enrollment of international students at Harvard.

Now, those foreign students, they make up more than a quarter of Harvard's enrollment. And on Monday, the president escalated his fight and demand for a list of names of those students even further.

And just last hour, we spoke with an international student who's about to graduate from Harvard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEO GERDEN, INTERNATIONAL STUDENT AT HARVARD: I think Trump is going to make new threats and say new things every day, but we simply have to stay focused. We're going to fight this with all means that we have, whether it's the funding. But I think especially what is hitting the hardest right now at the heart of this community, it is the threat to essentially deport all international students. Because without this international student body, then Harvard is not Harvard anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House. CNN's Mark Preston also standing by. Alayna, let me get to you.

You tell us more about this new reporting you're just getting in about the newest move from the Trump administration.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Kate, it's clear that Harvard has really become the symbol of the president, but also that of his top advisers. Their belief that Harvard and other liberal universities are a representation of the woke front.

[08:05:00]

And we're beginning to see some of that retribution and consequences of the Trump administration's actions for what they argue are what Harvard is doing to really go against what the administration believes in. And we're seeing that today with what we're learning now.

I spoke with two senior Trump administration officials who told me that they will be sending out, the Trump administration, a letter today to all federal agencies directing them to either cancel or direct federal funding for Harvard to other schools and universities and potentially trade schools.

Now, of course, this is the latest turn of the wheel that we've seen the president and his administration try to use to hold Harvard accountable for, again, in their eyes, not embodying the type of principles that they believe they should.

Now, I want to read for you just one statement from one of these senior Trump administration officials who gave me some insight into what they'll be doing today.

They said that the General Services Administration, GSA, will send a letter to federal agencies today asking them to identify any contracts with Harvard and whether they can be canceled or redirected elsewhere.

Now, I'm also told, as I said, that this letter is going to go out today, but that the entirety of these contracts is roughly somewhere around $100 million. However, we've also heard the president argue that he wants to try and revoke $3 billion or so in grant money for Harvard as well.

And just to run you through some of the key actions we've seen this administration take against Harvard in recent weeks. You mentioned some of them. One of them is, of course, the president said that he wants to revoke or, excuse me, ban Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, something we've already seen a judge get in the way of and halt that ruling.

Another one is that he said he wants the names and countries of the thousands of international students at Harvard University, suggesting essentially that these countries that are hostile to the United States should be providing some of the funding for these students to go there. He's also threatened the president to revoke Harvard's tax- exempt status. That was mainly over what they argued was the university not agreeing to diversity in hiring practices that the Trump administration laid out in a previous executive order.

Again, all to say, we are really seeing the president put the full weight of his angst of these, quote-unquote, liberal, woke universities on Harvard and seeing them really bear the brunt of this assault on higher education.

BOLDUAN: Yes, the question then becomes to what end? Alayna, thank you so much. Great reporting, as always. Much more to come with that.

Mark, at the same time, you have this hearing that Alayna was talking about the ban on enrollment of international students. There's a hearing that's happening today, another one happening on Thursday, just as students are going to be, or this is graduation week, that's commencement day at Harvard.

And the question then becomes like, what is actually going to happen here? How does this end?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, we're not necessarily sure how it is going to end, but we do have a little bit of an idea. We saw on Friday now that there was a temporary injunction put aside against the federal government based upon them freezing the money. We'll hear that this week.

We're also going to hear, you know, what you have talked about on Thursday as well. We're talking about with the international students. What we're seeing right now, Kate, is really an attack on the humanities, the arts and humanities that we've seen from the Trump administration.

We saw it with the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C. We see it with Trump now, not only doing this with Harvard, but also other academic institutions across the country, who he wants them to conform to his way of thinking.

Now, the Harvard president Alan Garber spoke this morning with NPR. He said that the federal government needs to take a step back. More importantly, that institutions, the leaders of these institutions across the country need to redouble their commitment to the good of the nation and the world. Basically, what he's saying is we need to stand up and fight back.

BOLDUAN: Mark Preston, always great to see you. Thank you so much. Alayna Treene at the White House for us. Much more to come from there as well -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Right now, investigators in England are working to figure out what led a British man to plow his minivan into a crowd of football fans in Liverpool. 47 people have been injured. At least four of them are children. It happened as a victory parade for Liverpool football club was winding down yesterday. Police arrested the suspect at the scene.

Moments later, an angry crowd of fans surrounded the suspect's vehicle. You can see that there, the window broken in the back, at one point rocking the stopped vehicle.

Joining us now, former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. Thank you so much for being here for us. I do want to talk about what authorities are saying about the suspect. Very deliberately and very quickly they said, we do not believe this is terrorism.

A, they gave a description of 53 year old white British man and of the vehicle, a gray minivan, no other suspects. What is your take on why they did this so quickly and how they ruled out terrorism?

[08:10:00]

ED DAVIS, FORMER BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: Good morning, Sara. These are very complicated questions and I do have some questions about exactly how they were able to do that so quickly.

But the bottom line is there are a number of things that could cause an incident like this. And in this particular case, there had been an incident that happened some months ago where a suspect in a violent crime had been misidentified as someone seeking asylum in the country. And that set off a series of riots. So I assume that the police right now are putting that information out there about this suspect to quell any kind of potential uprising among the citizens after this horrible incident.

SIDNER: Yes, I think you're absolutely correct about that. It was about, I think it was 17 kilometers from there. There was in Southport, there was the knife stabbing, the stabbing and killing of three people. And social media went crazy. They blamed it on this man who they said was Muslim, who was an asylum seeker. And all of that turned out not to be true. But it did lead, as you said, to righting.

I do want to ask you about in this particular case what have we gleaned from the scene? Because they're saying, look, no, this isn't terrorism. But clearly, something happened here because they arrested the suspect. It wasn't that, for example, he had a heart attack.

DAVIS: Right, clearly, there's something going on here. First of all, and foremost, I think, police around the world, not only here in the United States, but in places like France, have put up barricades on access streets so that this type of an incident can't happen.

For some reason, they didn't do that. So the UK officials are going to have to look very closely at their strategies there. But somehow this car made its way into the route where the crowd was gathered and accelerated rapidly into the crowd at first, then stopped and the suspect was set upon by people in the crowd. And then it accelerated again, more slowly this time.

So if you look at the circumstances, are you dealing with someone who had a mental health issue? Is there another possible explanation? Intoxication, for instance, where someone did not have the requisite elements for a terrorism charge behind it, but it's still a criminal charge. So they're going to have to sort that out. And I'm sure the officials have that information already.

SIDNER: Yes, I guess the big question is like, what all are police going to be looking at? As obviously they have determined this notion that this isn't terrorism. Clearly, they have spoken with the suspect. They have him in custody. We don't know what or if he has said a whole lot.

But a robust look at this, what would you be doing to sort of try to figure out exactly why this happened?

DAVIS: Well, certainly, you know, getting the suspect to a hospital and doing a drug and alcohol testing is the first step in these things. It's happened almost immediately in a case like this, in most cases. And I can tell you that a background investigation into the individual, speaking to his friends and relatives, looking at posts online, checking to see what his normal habits are, is usually a good indicator of what you're dealing with as far as intent.

The terrorism law requires intimidation and coercion to influence public policy. It's a hard charge to prove unless you have very specific statements or confessions. And in this particular case, they don't have it.

SIDNER: Yes, I want to move on to something that's going on here in the United States. To New Orleans a week and a half ago, about 10 inmates broke out of a New Orleans jail. Three of the escapees were finally captured Monday. There's only two people who are at large at this point.

Is there any sense of how something like this could happen? This jail, I think, was built in 2017, if I'm correct here, or 2015. I mean, it was supposed to be quite the state-of-the-art jail.

DAVIS: Right. This was an interesting case. Almost immediately, the officials in charge of the institution were putting the blame on their employees. That almost never happens. So there must have been some egregious activity that occurred here.

Clearly, it's not a case of a 100-year-old institution that had serious security flaws. This was supposed to be a state-of-the-art facility built after the hurricanes down there. So there's something going on here, and that's evidenced by the fact that nine people have already been charged in various ways, both facilitating the escape and providing aid to the suspects afterwards. So they have to clean up their house there.

[08:15:04]

The credibility of the correction system is in question right now. And people want to know that people who have been incarcerated are being securely held. They want to be treated fairly, but you can't have this kind of an incident occur.

SIDNER: Yes, I mean, just looking at the picture there that the inmates had written an arrow down to the window that has bars on it saying, "too easy, LOL". So like you said, something is going on there. As you mentioned, the authorities immediately said that someone inside that jail in a position of authority may have helped them.

Ed Davis, it is always a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this for us this morning. Great analysis.

DAVIS: Thank you, Sara.

SIDNER: All right -- John.

BERMAN: All right. We are standing by for new testimony this morning in the criminal sex trafficking trial of Sean Combs, as his former assistant is expected to take the stand.

And a bond market revolt and a sharp rise in tinned fish sales. New indicators on how the economy is reacting to the president's on again, off again trade war as we stand by for the opening bell on Wall Street.

And an urgent manhunt underway after a former police chief in prison for rape and murder escaped from an Arkansas prison. We've got details on the disguise he used to break out.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, market futures are up this morning. This after President Trump backed off a new threat of 50 percent tariffs on the EU, which he made after pulling back on a threat of reciprocal tariffs that he made on the EU, which he first made on Liberation Day. So he threatened them, he backed off, he re-threatened them, and he backed off, if you're keeping score at home right now.

So how clear do voters think the president is on the issue of tariffs? One man has the answer. Seeing a chief data analyst, Harry Enten. You know, crystal clear, Harry, right?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: I got to admit, while you were reading that back, I was confused, and I'm supposed to know this stuff. And you know what, Johnny B?

The voters, they are confused too. Trump, a clear plan for tariffs and trade. The majority answer here is no. No, Donald Trump does not have a clear plan for tariffs and trade. This is the one thing that perturbs voters and the markets more than anything else. It's not whether or not you put tariffs on or not, it's whether you are going to actually do it and stick to your guns.

The American public does not believe that Donald Trump sticks to his guns. 55 percent say no, he does not have a clear plan for trades and tariffs. And I will note, of course, the center of the electorate, the all-important independent vote, 64 percent of independents say no, Donald Trump does not have a clear plan for trade and tariffs. And I will note that this no number has been creeping up, according to CBS News YouGov. So, as Donald Trump's presidency goes on, the American people think he's becoming less clear over time.

BERMAN: Harry, if only there were a way to measure the level of uncertainty that people feel.

ENTEN: Yes, if only there were a way. It turns out there is a way. OK, Trade Policy Uncertainty Index.

Get this, compare now to last year at this time. The Trade Policy Uncertainty Index, through the roof. Up 846 percent versus a year ago.

They have been looking at this index going all the way back. You got to go all the way back to 1960. It is higher now than in any month prior to 2025.

We just are consistently breaking records this year, whereby it seems the further along we go, the more uncertainty there is in terms of the trade policy in this country. So the voters are thinking one thing, and the reason they are thinking one thing, that is that Donald Trump does not have a clear plan for trade and tariffs, is because, simply put, it doesn't seem, at least according to this metric, that he does. So everything is kind of matching up here, whereby the voters are agreeing with what the anecdotes are saying, which is what the actual policy is. That is, there is tremendous uncertainty.

BERMAN: 846 percent is usually outside the margin of error. Just saying.

ENTEN: Just a little bit. Just a little.

BERMAN: All right, so I mentioned that the president backed off his most recent threat of 50 percent tariffs on the EU. Frankly, I've lost track of where he is on the tariffs he threatened on Apple.

But picking on Apple and the EU, which he did in one single day last week, it was Friday, what's special about those particular targets?

ENTEN: Yes, I think the thing that's going on here is that Donald Trump is picking on folks who are very important in terms of the American economy. What are we talking about? Well, what is number one in America?

What's the number one smartphone in America? It is the iPhone. 155 million active units alone. It's the number one smartphone in America.

How about what's the number one trade partner to the United States of America? It's the European Union. 4.9 percent of U.S. GDP in 2024 is because of the trade with the European Union. So when Donald Trump is threatening these two companies, Apple and then, of course, not the European Union, it's not a company, but these two entities, what's essentially going on is he is threatening the U.S. economy. And that is why we've seen the markets do a little bit of this.

BERMAN: Keep going. All right. Good. Made coming in today worthwhile. Harry Enten, thank you very much for all of that -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: You totally read my mind. I was like, how long will it go? All right, Harry, you can stop now.

OK, joining us right now is political strategist Madison Gesiotto, CNN political commentator Paul Begala. Don't worry, guys. We're not going to make you.

But, Paul, if you feel like showing us your dance moves, please do. I want to get to trade.

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I could walk like an Egyptian. I don't know if Harry's done that one yet.

BOLDUAN: So well. So well. Let's get to trade in a second.

I want to start with the breaking news that we saw at the top of the hour, which is that President Trump is planning to direct federal agencies to cancel all remaining government contracts with Harvard University.

[08:25:02]

The estimation is this will roughly come out to $100 million. The directive could be sent out today to agencies.

Paul, where is this headed?

BEGALA: Well, more chaos, Kate. You know, a whole lot of that money goes to like cancer research, Alzheimer's research. I applaud anybody who stands up to anti-Semitism. OK, we don't want that. But we also want free speech. And so even speech I hate has to be legally defended if you actually believe in freedom, which I do.

But why on earth cut medical research, scientific research? These researchers funded by our government at Harvard, they could unlock the secrets to cancer, Alzheimer's, a variety of other crises facing humanity. So I think it's nuts and it's very much self-destructive.

America leads the world because we are the smartest and most innovative. And he is trying somehow, for reasons I don't understand, to undermine that brilliance and that innovation. It's a terrible strategy.

BOLDUAN: One thing that Donald Trump, though, does have is great political instincts in terms of survival, Madison, which is why I kind of jumping off of Paul, I wanted to pose the question that was posed by the president of Harvard this morning is worthy of reading because it gets to this point of the why and where is this headed?

The president of Harvard said a new interview with NPR this. Why cut off research funding?

Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country because after all, the research funding is not a gift. The research funding is given to universities and other research institutions to carry out work that the federal government designates as high priority work. It is work that they want done. They are paying to have that work conducted. Shutting off that work does not help the country, even if it is to punish Harvard. And it is hard to see the link between that research funding and, let's say, antisemitism.

What is the quote, unquote political win here, Madison?

MADISON GESIOTTO, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: I think the president is clearly taking a hard line stance against Harvard, as he has in many of the other negotiations that we're seeing going on across the country with universities and, of course, across the world when we're talking about some of the foreign policy things we're seeing play out right now. Whether this continues to escalate, I think it may. I think we may see this obviously play out in the courts.

As we've been seeing over the past few weeks, the president's very frustrated with what's been going on at these universities, as is a lot of Americans across the country. I talk to people that have been on some of these campuses, especially a lot of Jewish students, a lot of Jewish people that I know that have felt very scared, that have been very frustrated with the way things have played out, and they don't feel that the universities have had their back in obviously a very inappropriate way.

And so I think the president is standing for these students, standing up for what he believes is right and what needs to be done.

Obviously there's negotiations to be had. We can see some of that funding restored from the federal government if Harvard were to come to the table. But, of course, Harvard obviously is a very well-funded university outside of the federal government.

And I think the point that Trump's making is that, hey, listen, this is not aid that is guaranteed or this is not money that's guaranteed. And in order for us to continue to give it to you, you need to come to the table and talk about this with us.

BOLDUAN: The point is, is that this isn't just Harvard. This is research funding that helps the world. This is research funding that the federal government wants the universities to do. It's about punishing Harvard. Alan Garber's almost like, figure out a way you can punish Harvard without punishing research funding. That's where this evolving set of priorities and targets --

GESIOTTO: But Harvard isn't the only place the research funding could go, Kate.

BOLDUAN: It's a huge source of where research funding goes, a huge source of it, as you well know.

GESIOTTO: I'm saying it's not the only place that that funding can go. That funding could go somewhere else.

BOLDUAN: Sure. Paul, some of the commentary I've seen -- BEGALA: He's also cutting funding more broadly. He's cutting the

National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health. He seems to be against any kind of research. And by the way, those funds are guaranteed.

Once you make a deal, like the whole basis of contract law is a deal's a deal. The federal government says we're going to hire you to research Alzheimer's. You actually can't legally pull that back in the middle of it because you don't like some protest on the campus.

It's actually not. I mean, Harvard will go to court. Harvard will win. But it'll take years. And those researchers will maybe move to France or China or somewhere else where they're not going to have Mr. Trump cutting off their funds.

BOLDUAN: This gets to an overarching question -- hold on a second -- this gets to an overarching question which applies to this fight with Harvard. And also, you can apply it to what John and Harry were talking about in terms of the trade war, which is to what end, actually?

Because Harvard has already put out two reports saying that they did fall short. They did not do enough. They did have a problem with anti- Semitism on campus. They say that they're putting steps in place in order to address that.

But now Trump is demanding a foreign student list to know where all international students are coming from. Harvard already shares a list as of October 2024. There's information on that.

Donald Trump now says that is not enough.