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Inside Politics

At Least 42 Dead After Storms, Tornadoes Slam Midwest, South; NOAA And FEMA Cuts Amplify Concerns On Disaster Preparation, Response; WH Denies Defying Judge's Order To Halt Deportations Flights; Trump And Putin To Hold Call Tuesday To Discuss Ukraine Ceasefire; Remembering Former Congresswoman Nita Lowey. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 17, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:33:45]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: At least 42 people are dead after severe storms swept across the U.S., predominantly in Missouri and Kansas. There were 80 tornado reports. This is Alabama, where most of the state was impacted, strewn metal you see there, splintered wood. You can't even tell that it was a neighborhood.

In Arkansas, two EF4 tornadoes hit something that hasn't happened in nearly 30 years. It's the first set of devastating storms to hit since the nation's top weather and climate agency, NOAA, was forced to cut more than 1,000 people, with more cuts expected at that agency.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is now joining us. Can you talk about the cuts to NOAA and how they potentially already impacted predicting the storms that we just talked about?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Dana, NOAA really, truly is the invisible backbone of everything that we consume. Not only are they responsible for the availability of the weather and climate data that we pass on to viewers, but also the infrastructure that helps make that data available.

Think about radar infrastructure. Think about balloon launches that feed weather and climate models. Think about the satellites that monitor our weather from Space.

[12:35:07]

We have every kind of economic impact that NOAA, the National Weather Service, actually touches, from agriculture to air transportation, to commerce, to tourism. It is all dependent on the weather. And if we start cutting back and rolling back this personnel, there will be chaos.

And the butterfly effects down the road are yet to be determined, really. Just take this past weekend, the severe weather outbreak that you're looking at on your screen. There were over 300 tornado reports, over 650 severe thunderstorm reports. Remember, those all have a human -- intelligent and human fingerprint behind them. When they get issued by these individuals, a human has to see the parameters that define a tornado or a severe thunderstorm. So if we start cutting that personnel, the ability to make those warnings becomes less likely and things could be missed.

Just listen to what this fired NOAA employee had to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

TOM DI LIBERTO, METEOROLOGIST: NOAA and the National Weather Service are the only people who issue tornado watches and tornado warnings. So if you reduce the capacity of the Weather Service to be able to do that, you're going to cause there to be issues when it comes to safety.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

VAN DAM: Remember, NOAA warned about this severe weather outbreak this past weekend, well, a week in advance. Now, the National Weather Service, the arm of NOAA, actually fine-tuned the weather forecast and then issued the actual warnings on the day of the event. So they work in tandem together and cutting personnel potentially could put public safety at risk. Dana?

BASH: Thank you so much. This is such an important story. We all have reported on the cuts and now we are --

VAN DAM: Yes.

BASH: -- watching to see, particularly in areas that are so important to people's lives and security --

VAN DAM: Right.

BASH: -- how they're having an effect.

Thanks, Derek.

VAN DAM: OK.

BASH: Coming up, are some Trump supporters having buyer's remorse? I'm going to talk with two people who have an inside scoop. That's next.

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[12:41:36]

BASH: The White House is denying it violated a federal court order pausing the deportation of hundreds of migrants using the rarely used centuries-old Alien Enemies Act. Now, the White House claims the planes were already over international waters and could not be turned around.

My next guests have been highly critical of what they call the Trump administration's lawlessness, the publisher and editor of The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last. Thank you, both of you, for being here. And to our viewers who don't know, and I'm sure there are none of them who don't, you are both, I would say, never Trump Republicans. I don't even know if that's still a thing, but let's just leave it there.

Sarah, you -- well, you both have been talking about the lawlessness and I want Sarah, you to look at -- and I'm sure you saw it at the time, Stephen Miller put up the following tweet, which I think was prescient for this week. "Under the precedents now being established by radical rogue judges, a district court in Hawaii could enjoin troop movements in Iraq. Judges have no authority to administer the executive branch or nullify the results of a national election. We either have a democracy or we do not."

How do you think that that plays into what we are seeing, just -- I mean, a number of issues, but just the disregarding of judges' orders, not just on immigration, but on other aspects of what is happening right now?

SARAH LONGWELL, PUBLISHER, THE BULWARK: Look, I think for a lot of us who were really concerned and alarmed by a Trump second term, one of the things that we thought may very well happen is that Trump was going to set himself up to deny court orders or just ignore them.

And, you know, the courts have become, in this moment, one of the last refuges of sort of being able to hold Trump either accountable or stop some of the things he's doing. He is going so fast to try to dismantle the government or implement his deportation policies that he's showing a lot of disregard for the law.

And so the judges, whether they're, you know, setting up injunctions or trying to slow him down, temporary restraining orders, like, there's going to come a point, we always thought, where Trump might just say, I'm going to start ignoring these court orders.

And one of the things that he's doing is trying to pick the most unsympathetic people to do this, right, people that a lot of people are going to be like, I don't care about deporting gang members. These are bad people. Now, we don't know exactly -- we're not sure that they're gang members. We're just taking their word for it.

But they are -- they do seem to be hitting the point now where they're trying to get by on a technicality, but it looks like they're starting to be at the point where they want to ignore what judges say, which once you get to that point, once you have a president who's just disregarding what judges say, you're in a totally lawless state.

BASH: So what you both do so well isn't just sort of analyzing what Donald Trump is doing, but you talk to voters on a regular basis who were swing voters who voted for Trump, eventually in 2024.

And Jonathan, you made the argument that many who voted for Trump this past election did so not in spite of authoritarianism or those tendencies, but because of it. Do you still stand by that? And do you think that any defiance of the judiciary or Congress will move the needles with those voters? [12:45:22]

JONATHAN V. LAST, EDITOR, THE BULWARK: Yes, I mean, I think that at least some large percentage of his voters this past time did it because of the authoritarianism. They heard what he was campaigning on. And they said, yes, I want to go get me some of that.

What is -- what made me really depressed over the last 55 days was the fact that his poll numbers really remained remarkably buoyant given how he was converting (ph). He was doing all the authoritarian stuff and his polls weren't dropping. That started to change over the last three weeks or so. We've seen his standing deteriorate.

And, you know, one of the reasons I think he's moving so fast to have this showdown with the courts is because when you look just historically at these authoritarian attempts, at the end of the day, they are reliant upon some form of popular support. It becomes much, much easier for a guy who is like net plus seven favorable to defy the courts than it is for somebody who's like net minus 13.

And for looking from the other side of it, the courts are going to much more able to assert themselves if the president is unpopular. So I think the acceleration we've seen of him over the last three weeks or so has been precisely because his standing publicly is starting deteriorate.

BASH: So interesting.

Sarah, I want to play for our viewers sound from Biden to Trump voters. I believe it's one voter from last month on these issues.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does it look like when I go pick up my kid from school and there's six ICE trucks lined up right outside of the cafeteria, just waiting, right, asking every kid, where are your papers, who's your parents, is that your grandma, where are her papers.

I think just coming to terms with that. I think some things we might not see eye to eye on, but, you know, once you start to see your neighbors and families, like, man, like our grandpa just got deported, you know, or stuff like that. That's just part of what needs to happen.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Sarah?

LONGWELL: Yes. So in that case, that voter was saying that he is supportive of what's happening. He's saying, wow, I can't believe that this is happening. And, look, there's two different ways that Trump voters are interpreting what's going on. There are the base voters who are really excited to see Trump doing the things he said he was going to do and feeling like they're seeing action. And even for some less Trump-based voters, but people who are not used to seeing government sort of move this quickly, what they see is not exactly what Trump's doing. They just see the speed with which he's doing it, the action. And so they're sort of like modestly approving of the idea that he's doing something. We hear that phrase a lot, he's doing something.

On the other hand, there's a lot of voters we're starting to hear the beginnings of a kind of, I say buyer's remorse, but I want to be clear that I don't mean they're saying, boy, I regret voting for Trump and wish I'd voted for the Democrats. It's more that they're saying, well, this is not what I thought he meant he was going to do.

For example, you hear a lot of people on immigration saying, I thought he was just going to deport criminals. I didn't think he was going to deport the grandfather next door.

BASH: Right.

LONGWELL: And so, there's a lot of voters -- and also for a lot of these voters who voted for Trump strictly on the economy because they wanted prices lowered. They're saying, man, he's doing a lot of stuff on DEI or he's firing, you know, people in charge of the nuclear program, but he's not focused on costs. Nothing's getting cheaper.

And I'm worried about the tariffs making things more expensive. And so that's really what we're seeing is kind of the, I didn't really vote for this. This isn't what I thought I was getting.

BASH: And Jonathan, we have like no seconds, but I do want you to have the final word.

LAST: Yes, I mean, so Sarah talked about how the Trump administration is picking their targets here. They want to get the least sympathetic people. And so they say like, oh, these are gang members. I wish the opposition would also pick their own fights.

CNN, I'm sure you saw this, Dana, over the weekend reported on a 10- year-old girl with brain cancer in Texas --

BASH: Yes.

LAST: -- whose parents were deported as they were driving her to the hospital. That ought to be the story. Like, I don't understand why that isn't the ground that the people who oppose this lawless administration are going to fight on.

BASH: Thank you both. I really appreciate you being here. I hope you come back soon. Thanks.

And we'll be right back.

LONGWELL: Thanks.

LAST: Thank you.

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[12:54:05]

BASH: Topping our political radar, new data today adding to worries about Americans spending less. Retail sales numbers out this morning came in for February lower than expected up only 0.2 percent from January, which was down 1.2 percent. Department stores, restaurants, bars, and gas stations, they were all hit hardest with at least 1 percent declines.

And President Trump says he will talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone tomorrow about ending the war in Ukraine. The call comes after U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin last week to talk about a U.S.-backed ceasefire deal Ukrainian officials agreed to following a meeting in Saudi Arabia. Now, Putin has yet to publicly show his hand on that deal.

And former Congresswoman Nita Lowey, a Democrat who represented New York for 32 years, died this weekend after battling breast cancer.

[12:55:06]

Lowey was a pioneer in Congress. The first woman to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee. She was a formidable leader. She was once given an ice pick as a gag gift from a male colleague. You see it there. It was a warning that her signature smile could be accompanied by a sharp jab.

She was a champion for women's health care who successfully fought for women to be included in medical research.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

REP. NITA LOWEY (D), NEW YORK: We discovered that all the tests that were done at the National Institutes of Health were not all done on women and men. And even the lab rats were all male.

BASH: Really?

LOWEY: True story.

BASH: Male rats only?

LOWEY: True story.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Nita Lowey was 87 years old. May her memory be a blessing.

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics on this St. Patrick's Day. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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