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Government to Cancel Contracts with Harvard; Jeremy Faust is Interviewed about Canceled Federal Contracts with Harvard; Liverpool Car Ramming; Three More Inmates Captured. Clark to Testify in Combs Trial. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 27, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Graham package that's being considered on Capitol Hill would hit China, India and the EU for buying oil, gas and uranium from Russia. So, that would stop some of the money that's keeping the Russian war machine going. But it's not enough because at this point the Russians have so increased their weapons production capacity that they're actually storing weapons up to use in the future on the battlefield. And that's bad news for Ukraine.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It is ominous.

All right, Kim Dozier, thank you very much.

A brand-new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, President Trump upping the ante in his fight with Harvard. The administration is now directing federal agencies to cancel all government contracts with Harvard. The total impact, roughly $100 million. How will Harvard respond?

And investigators looking for answers after a driver plows into a crowd of Liverpool football fans, injuring dozens of people, including children. What we're learning about the suspect this morning.

And a violinist's beautiful performance. But it's not human. It's Google's AI video generator. It turns out your eyes can deceive you. How will we navigate a world where we can't tell real from fake?

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

BERMAN: All right, breaking just a short time ago, the new barrage in President Trump's repeated attacks on Harvard University. We learned the administration is planning to direct federal agencies to cancel the government's remaining contracts with Harvard. The total, about $1 million. Sorry, $100 million worth.

And this hour, a key hearing is set to get underway. A federal judge will meet with both sides for the first time since temporarily blocking the administration's order barring Harvard from enrolling international students. The president is escalating his demand for a list of foreign student names. Harvard's president, in a new interview with NPR, just out a short time ago, fired back at the administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN GARBER, PRESIDENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: We think it's a real problem if particularly at research universities students don't feel free to speak their minds.

What is perplexing is the -- the measures that they have taken to address these that don't even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems. Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country because after all the research funding, it's not a gift.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, the president has suggested he could redirect $3 billion in federal grants from Harvard and give them to trade schools. All of this happening just two days before Harvard's commencement.

Let's get right to CNN's Alayna Treene at the White House for the very latest on what the White House is now threatening.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, John, we're now told from two senior Trump administration officials that the Trump administration is going to be sending a letter to all federal agencies today directing them to cancel all of the federal contracts that they have with Harvard, or to redirect some of that funding to other vendors, other schools, trade schools, perhaps, as the president has brought up previously.

Now, altogether, it looks like a roughly $100 million in federal funding is going to be canceled from going to Harvard, as you mentioned. This is the latest assault we've really seen from the Trump administration in taking aim at Harvard for a number of different reasons. Some of the reasons they've listed about why they want to do this is they believe that Harvard is not doing enough to prevent anti- Semitism on their campus. They are not following the diversity and hiring practices laid out by the Trump administration in an executive order. Again, all reasons that they're saying they are moving against Harvard and wanting to withdraw all remaining federal contracts and federal funding that this government gives to that university.

I want to read for you, though, a statement from one senior Trump administration on what they told me this letter is going to look like. They said, quote, "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. That one of these senior Trump administration officials as well told me that the president earlier, when he said that he wanted to take away some of the $3 billion in grant money from Harvard and potentially give that money to trade schools, they said to keep an eye on that, that that might be exactly what these -- these different agencies are ultimately told to do. Now, just to give you a sense, again, of what we've seen this Trump

administration do as it relates to Harvard. You laid out some of them, John. But one is that the president, just on Sunday, said that he wants the, quote, names and countries of the thousands of international students at Harvard University.

[09:05:08]

Essentially suggesting that they want to look at all of these different countries, but specifically those who may be more hostile to the United States and argue that they should be paying for some of that funding to educate their students.

We also saw last week the Trump administration banned Harvard University's ability to enroll international students. Something we saw a judge immediately intervene in.

And then we've also saw the president earlier this year argue that they -- he should be revoking Harvard's tax exempt status. So, again, we've really seen the president kind of make Harvard a symbol for what he believes is, you know, the, quote/unquote, liberal woke university, really seeing -- seeing Harvard kind of bear the brunt of this administration's assault on higher education.

John.

BERMAN: Yes, having the administration almost every day, it seems, find some new way to go after the university.

Alayna Treene, at the White House this morning, thank you very much.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining me right now for some perspective on this and the impact is Dr. Jeremy Faust. He's an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical University -- Medical School. It's good to see you again, Doctor.

So, you've got two things that are going on -- a lot of things going on all at once. Just the most recent, as Alayna was laying out, the president threatening to try to pull $3 billion in grants, redirect it to trade schools. But this action being taken, at least beginning today, moving to cancel all remaining federal contracts with the university. What do you make of this latest threat and latest move from the president now when you add it on to everything else you're seeing?

DR. JEREMY FAUST, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Well, thanks for having me.

The way I see this is that Harvard is the focus, but this is really about something much greater than that. This is about an attack on American ingenuity, American innovation, American leadership, American Nobel Prizes.

When I was a -- when I was a student and I worked in a laboratory of a Nobel laureate, Mike Bishop, everybody there was from somewhere else. We were the -- you know, and it wasn't -- it was just a meritocracy. And so you had people from China who were celebrating results. And you had a German guy teaching me. And then a guy from Worcester Mass. And I just remember that with such fond memories. And I look now at, you know, this is how we know that certain viruses cause cancer from that kind of work. So, that -- that's what's under attack and the acquisition of knowledge.

Look, 26 percent of Harvard's student body is -- has a foreign visa, but it's much higher in the biological sciences. It is much higher than that.

BOLDUAN: And directly to that point, I just -- I had the dean of Brown School of Public Health, Ashish Jha, on last week, and -- and he said very -- something very similar. He said, it's Harvard today and it's every other American university tomorrow.

Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: This is hugely destructive, and let me explain why. You know, there's a great quote from a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize. And when Germany was trying to recruit him back, he was asked, why don't you go back to Germany? And he said, look, if I go back to Germany, great country, I'll have the brightest minds of Germany working up and down the hall. When I work at MIT, I have the brightest minds in the world working up and down the hall. That's what made American science great. That's what the Trump administration is trying to destroy. And it's very, very harmful to the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What are the conversations like that you're having about what's happening at Harvard and beyond? The -- just the -- the -- the cuts to staffing, the cuts to research funding nationwide, the real impact that you're seeing, because you've been tracking this.

FAUST: Yes. So, I think that there are several ways to look at this. One is simply the -- the legal process, which is that the Congress is voting on a bill for the funding -- for funding for next year. And are they really going to take NIH funding and cut it from $45 billion to $27 billion and $18 billion? Are they really going to take the CDC, which was already kind of short staffed and slashed that budget? If that happens, and we have another pandemic, we're not going to be the ones to come up with the vaccine. We're not going to be the ones to come up with, you know, the innovations that got us out of that emergency phase. So, that's a big part of it.

And then there's this whole discussion about the kinds of grants that are being cut, right? Fifteen hundred grants or more, $2.5 billion. Scientists wondering, should I tell my kid to go into science? Should we tell our daughters to pursue their dreams or not in this country? And this is the first time I've ever questioned that. And that matters so much because the kinds of grants that are being attacked are not just, quote/unquote, woke. They are cancer grants. They are HIV grants. They are things about infectious diseases. And they are -- and they are training grants. Twenty percent of the grants that were cut so far were actually training grants according to a Yale and Harvard analysis led by my dear friend Harlan Krumholz (ph). That's a -- do we really want that? Do we want to say to the future, why don't you take your -- your brilliant innovation and go elsewhere.

[09:10:01]

I'll just say that "The Economists" put out a graph that made my jaw drop, but it kind of confirmed my -- my bias priors, which is that this is really making a difference. Searches for PhD programs in the United States from overseas is -- is down -- are down. It's the only country. Everywhere else, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, people are saying, where can I go and contribute? And for the first time, rates of looking into United States science programs from overseas is down 20 percent.

BOLDUAN: I mean, I saw what you said last week that for the first time you actually advise a student thinking about going into graduate school for the sciences to look elsewhere, to look overseas, and to not look here in the United States. Is that because of the uncertainty around this? I mean, what reaction have you gotten since you said that publicly?

FAUST: Yes, when I said it, I -- I mean that. I -- that I -- that I said that. I certainly still believe that we should fight for our system. And it's my hope that we will still retain our global dominance in training and retaining the best and the brightest. But in this moment it's shaky.

And what I think that people don't realize is, when you want to be a scientist, when you decide, I'm going to study genetics or try to come up with a cancer cure, when you go to graduate school in this country, a lot of that is paid for by the federal government. And so, we have this wonderful training program that says to -- to emerging talent, it's not a lot of money, but we'll pay you to do that work and so you don't have to go into debt to pursue your dreams. Now that's all being gambled based on, I think, some -- some news cycles and some desires to get even, or I don't know what the real motivation is. That's not my expertise.

My expertise is to say what the effect of that is. Which is 20 years from now, instead of, as Dr. Jha said, the hallways being filled with the best and the brightest here, they're going to be at the Karolinska Institute, or they're going to be at the University of Copenhagen. Places that are in Europe. They're going to be in China, who are literally taking advantage of our own goal here and recruiting -- trying to recruit our best and not just retaining and getting back the best Chinese American scientists or Chinese scientists, they're going after everybody because they know where this is headed. This could be a real advantage for other places.

So, we want to keep it here. Look, Harvard is just the -- the emblem of the system. And they can cancel our grants and I support my administration's work fighting that back. But in the short term that's not going to work. We've got scientists everywhere. We've got good people at Northwestern, at University of Pennsylvania, at University of California San Francisco, at Yale, at Brown. Harvard may be easy to attack and makes headlines, but the entire system is what's at play here. And that's what I think everyone should be fighting for, because that's what I'm proud of.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And the question remains with this fight, to what end? What -- to what end? And that's what you're -- that's where the uncertainty comes that you're talking about.

Dr. Faust, it's good to see you. Thanks for coming in.

John.

BERMAN: All right, this morning, police are searching for a motive after a man drove a minivan into a crowd of soccer fans.

And then breaking overnight, three inmates caught after a dramatic high speed chase. Two are still on the loose. We're learning new information about who helped them evade capture.

And what can tinned fish tell you about the economy? Apparently a lot. New indicators of where the U.S. is headed as we stand by for the opening bell just minutes away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:23]

SIDNER: This morning, British authorities are looking into what led up to a horrific moment where a minivan slammed into fans at a victory parade for Liverpool football. Forty-seven people were injured, including four children. Police immediately arrested a 53-year-old British man they say was driving that minivan. Police say it's an isolated incident and they do not suspect terrorism. This morning, forensic investigators could be seen combing the site of the crash where the street is littered with debris and is currently closed off to the public.

Joining us now is CNN's senior law enforcement analyst, Andrew McCabe.

Andrew, thank you so much for coming on.

I do want to talk about the fact that the authorities very quickly, immediately gave some details describing who the victim was, not saying a name, but saying 53-year-old British national, white British national to be specific, and making very clear that they do not have any evidence that this is terrorism. Why did they do this? And how did they do it so quickly?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes, Sara, it's a really interesting approach that we have seen here. And you've raised some great questions.

So, why did they do it? Well, it seems that this is a -- an effort to stem some of the violence, excuse me, that we saw in the U.K. last summer after a stabbing was committed by a British-born man of Rwandan parents who attacked a group of girls at a dance studio, killing three and injuring several others. In the immediate aftermath of that event, he was erroneously identified on social media as being a Muslim immigrant, and that sparked riots across the north of the U.K.

So, it seems that what we're dealing with here that the authorities quickness in relaying to the public that this was -- this attack, accident, whatever it is, was committed by a 53 year old white British man was an effort to kind of stem some of that speculation that could have led to violence.

The problem is, they've said nothing else beyond that. There's yet to be a really fulsome, complete press conference explaining to the public what happened here. Was this an intentional act, or was it the result of something like a medical incident, a heart attack or a stroke. Where did this person come from? What was the route he took? Why did he turn down the street? There's all sorts of questions that could be addressed by the authorities, but so far we haven't heard any of that information.

[09:20:04]

SIDNER: What will they be doing to sort of comb through the evidence they have? I mean they have the person who is responsible for this according to the police, who drove that minivan into the crowd. So, certainly trying to speak with him is one thing. What other things will they be gathering to try and put together the picture of -- of why this happened and whether or not charges will be forthcoming?

MCCABE: Well, presumably they've gotten some information from him that's good enough that they've confidently said there is no essentially nexus to terrorism here. So, where the investigation goes after that is really quite a good question.

Under normal circumstances, investigators would be poring through this person's background. They'd be interviewing everyone they could identify who knows that person. They'd be executing search warrants at his residence, maybe at his business, maybe on his vehicle. They would be looking at his social media posts or any other writings he may have left behind. They'd be looking at his search history on his electronic devices, computers, cell phone, you know, tablets, all that sort of stuff to really get inside his head in the best way they possibly can.

We're not sure really what the authorities are doing here in this situation because they haven't told us very much. Presumably they will pursue some sort of a prosecution. So, they have, if that's the case, then they still need to collect evidence to substantiate exactly what happened here and why this person did it, and why they might be guilty of some crime. But really it's a bit of a black box at the moment.

SIDNER: Yes, and there's the details that you're hearing from people down there saying, look, he -- he first rammed into people, stopped, and then drove forward again, although not with as much speed and force. There are a lot of questions there as to whether alcohol perhaps was involved or something else. But so far they did arrest him, so it appears that it may not have been something to do with a medical scenario.

We will see, Andrew McCabe. A lot more questions than answers at this point, but we do know there are four people, four children, who have been hurt in this incident, and our heart goes out to all the families dealing with this. Thank you for being here this morning.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, the trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs is back underway this morning. What we could learn now from the third former assistant to Combs expected to take the stand shortly.

And hyper realistic and already going viral. Google's new AI video tool producing content that will leave you truly questioning your own reality.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:46]

BERMAN: All right, this morning, a manhunt for two inmates who broke out of a New Orleans jail and are still on the run after ten days. Three other inmates were captured overnight, two of them caught in Texas after a high speed chase.

Let's get right to CNN's Ryan Young for the latest on all this.

Ryan, what are you learning?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, just so many questions about how long these inmates have been on the run, who's helping them, and how did they get so far away from New Orleans? These are the first set of inmates who have been outside -- caught outside the city. In fact, the first suspect was caught around 6:00 yesterday. And that was Lenton Vanburen. He was caught sitting on a bench outside of a department store. So, it seems like someone called that tip in to say he would be there. Wondered if he turned himself in, especially after the fact that several of his family members have been arrested because of the fact of helping him sort of get far away and escape.

But there are so many questions about this case. Who knew? And what exactly happened when that wall where the toilet was inside that jail was taken apart? These inmates were able to get through that area. There's a pipe chase back there that actually has an alarm system on it. At some point that was moved and the inmates were able to get away.

Now, you talk about that high-speed chase. It happened in Texas about 75 miles away from Houston. That's where Leo Tate and a man named Donald was able to escape for quite some time and then get captured. All these questions now lead to whether or not authorities will have a press conference in the near future, telling us about how close they've been able to get to some of these suspects, especially because of Crime Stoppers.

John. BERMAN: Yes, again, two dangerous people still very much on the run

this morning. This story not over yet.

YOUNG: And one thing to mention, John, they believe the two people who are still on the run are the ones who were behind this whole plan to start with.

BERMAN: Again, reason to be concerned.

Ryan Young, thank you very much for that report.

YOUNG: Absolutely.

BERMAN: Obviously, again, waiting for updates on the search for those two men still very much on the loose, especially since two of them, the two most recent, were captured outside of Louisiana.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, John.

Taking the stand soon in the racketeering and sex trafficking trial of Sean Combs is another one of his former employees. Capricorn Clark is Combs' third former employee to testify in the criminal trial. You'll remember rapper Kid Cudi, he actually did mention Clark during his testimony last week. He said that she called him in December 2011 to warn him that Combs had just broken into his home after learning of his relationship with Cassie Ventura. He testified that during that call, Clark sounded upset and, as he put it, on the verge of tears.

Here now, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers.

OK, so Capricorn Clark going to be taking the stand. The trial has begun. It has gotten underway this morning. What is she going to bring to the table? I am assuming some of it is corroborating what Kid Cudi said.

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That's exactly right, Sara. She seems to be another witness who's corroborating what we've heard before from Kid Cudi, but more importantly right from Cassie Ventura. So, you know, we're still on the same track of corroborating the main witness here.

SIDNER: Yes.

RODGERS: I personally want them to move along to proving the conspiracy and the sex trafficking more specifically, but they don't seem to be there yet.

[09:30:00]

SIDNER: I was going to ask you that because we've seen, I think it's been so far 12, this, I think, will be the 13th person who has testified in this case. And I wanted to ask you, if -- if the prosecutors