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Barry Appleton is Interviewed about Tariffs; Numbers on the Special Election; Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) is Interviewed about the Special Elections; Pro-Isreal Group Gave List of Protesters to Deport; Kathleen Sebelius is Interviewed about HHS Cuts. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired April 02, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Just hours from now, President Trump will reveal aggressive new tariffs on countries around the world. He's called it liberation day, that's what he's called it for weeks now. But as one investor put it, I'm not sure we're going to be liberated from all the uncertainty. The White House has said that the tariffs will go into effect immediately, but the rest, what the plan is, still a mystery at this hour.

Joining me now is Barry Appleton, co-director and senior fellow of the Center for International Law at New York Law School, as well as distinguished adjunct professor.

Thank you so much for being here.

Let's start with this. The White House says these will take effect immediately. We're expecting to hear what they are at 4:00 p.m. With something this big, what does that actually mean? How does that work?

BARRY APPLETON, CO-DIRECTOR AND SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW, NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL: Well - well, first of all, Sara, immediately is a political headline. It's not really an operational reality. So, for the customs officers, the importers and the retailers, the people in the supply chain, it means a lot of confusion at the border and it's going to mean chaos immediately as we try to implement something that usually takes months and months to put into place.

What we do know is that this is going to send a real shockwave through pricing and contracting, especially for goods that are already in transit or those that are already under contract. In trade terms we call this a snapback, but this one is sort of snapping without any warning or a cushion.

SIDNER: Do you think that the markets, in looking at this and - with all that you have said, how it's going to affect prices, things that are already in transit, things that have already been purchased, do you think the markets are responding the way that you'd expect them to? Right now the Dow futures down. And we've seen the market sort of tank over the last few days and weeks. APPLETON: Well, it's kind of hard to believe this given all the

volatility. But I think the markets haven't fully priced in what's going on.

I think the easiest way to think about it is that Wall Street may be hedged, but main street is not. Investors are fundamentally underestimating the policy depth, the scope of the retaliation that's going to take place, and the legal minefield that I think is going to come next.

And the markets, I think, should be - what they're doing is, they're reacting to numbers, but they really should be reacting to trust, because that's really what's being torched in this process. And the allies to the U.S. are quietly pivoting. And they're not doing this out of anger, but out of realism, because they simply don't trust the U.S. to keep its word. And that is really what's underscoring what's going on with the markets.

SCIUTTO: So you think the markets are actually reacting more - more positively than you think they should be, in other words?

APPLETON: I think we're likely to have a downside surprise when the actual tariffs come out later today in that beautiful event at the Rose Garden and the White House. I suspect that the markets are going to be unhappy with what they're going to see.

SIDNER: So, the president is using emergency powers to invoke these tariffs, putting them in place. Could there be a legal challenge? Because you alluded to the possibility of that.

APPLETON: Yes, well, absolutely, because these powers are being imposed under emergency powers that are at best on shaky grounds. And there's no credible link between the tariffs and the declared emergencies. And the Supreme Court has already pushed back on the Biden administration and the Trump one administration on - when they tried to do things in the past because emergency powers are meant for crises. They're not meant for cutting ribbons on a political announcement.

And so, foundationally, if this - what the court is going to have to decide is if this is an emergency. And if it's not, the court could very well conclude it's an abuse of power. And it's not really an emergency I think when the lawyers are the only ones who are sounding the alarms. But we'll find out. And we'll find out pretty soon.

SIDNER: We will. We will find out in the next few hours what the plan actually is, because no one outside of Donald Trump right now really knows what he is going to announce.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. That was really great. Barry Appleton, appreciate you.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Stories still to come this hour. A bloodbath. That is how one FDA employee is describing the massive wave of job cuts that has really sent shockwaves through the country's top public health agencies. And also, Val Kilmer, the actor who has been in everything from "Top Gun" to "Tombstone," passed away at the age of 65.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:38:26]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, you can find some Democrats smiling. Maybe for the first time in the last few months. That after some good special election results. An outright win in Wisconsin and some better margins in the state of Florida.

So, what does it all mean and what really happened? CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is here.

Let's start with a little bit of Wisconsin, right. An amuse bouche on Wisconsin. This was a race - Elon Musk spent big in this race to sway the supreme court race there.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Big.

BERMAN: And he also went to Wisconsin.

ENTEN: He did.

BERMAN: Which may, honestly, have backfired.

ENTEN: Yes, I think it may have backfired. Look, I think if there's one thing we should be taking away from the results in Wisconsin and the polling that we have from Wisconsin and the national, if you are a Republican candidate running in a swing state, you don't want Elon Musk anywhere near you. Yes, maybe you like the money, but you do not want his presence in your state.

Why is that? Elon Musk, simply put, is an unpopular guy. He is political poison. Look in Wisconsin, his net favorable rating, minus 12 points. Twelve points underwater. That is an even worse number when you look nationally. Look at that, it's minus 17 points.

So, if there's one big lesson to take away from Wisconsin is, Elon Musk does not help Republicans when he shows up. If anything, the data suggests that he hurts them. Republicans, stay clear of Elon Musk if you want to win in a swing state, at least in terms of his physical appearance in your state.

BERMAN: All right, what did we see in terms of swings in Florida?

ENTEN: What do we see in terms of swings in Florida? You know, we were talking about Florida's Six. And you can see it here. The election margins in the U.S. House district. You know, Donald Trump won the Six by 30 points.

[08:40:01] Last night, what do we see? We saw the Republican Randy Fine win by 14. That's a swing of 16 points. But that's not anywhere near the swing we saw in Florida One. Look at that. Donald Trump won it by 37 points. The Republican won last night, but only by 15. That's a 22- point swing. We're talking about an average 19 point swing from the baseline back in 2024, in just a matter of four or five months, these are massive shifts. These are massive shifts to the left. Democrats really have to like this. Even if the Republicans added to their majority in terms of what this potentially means down the road, you take this type of swing, you put it on some swing districts, that's very good news for Democrats.

BERMAN: Now, all of us who have the certain political sickness over the last 24 hours, we're talking about Kansas, Harry.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: Why are we focused on Kansas?

ENTEN: Kansas is on my mind, and it's not just because I want to go home, Toto. Look at this. Kansas Fourth District election margins. If you go back in time to 2017, what did we see? You know, you remember back in 2016, Donald Trump won the Fourth District by 27 points. And then all of a sudden this ruby red district, Rron Estes won in April of 2017 but just by six. Ergo a 21-point swing. Very similar to that average 19 point swing we saw in those deep red districts last night in Florida. And then you say, OK, this tells us something about the political environment going into 2018 where Republicans, of course, lost. And, of course, generally speaking, we look back, special elections and midterm results. If a party outperforms in special election since 2005, five out of five times, they went on to win the U.S. House. Perhaps last night in Florida is a sign of things to come.

BERMAN: And again, and it's an explanation of why Elise Stefanik is not going to be the ambassador to the United Nations.

ENTEN: Bye-bye. Yes.

BERMAN: All right, Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, guys.

Joining us right now to talk more about this is the Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, Mark Pocan.

Congressman, thank you for coming in.

This was a big win last night. A win by ten points for this state supreme court seat. What do you take as the biggest lesson or takeaway from last night?

REP. MARK POCAN (D-WI): Well, thanks for having me. I mean, clearly this not only was a ten-point win in a purple state,

but the turnout was so high. It was people coming out to say what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing is not supported. People don't want their health care and long-term care cut. They don't want education cut. They don't want food assistance cut. Also, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump can get a tax cut. This was a very strong, resounding vote. And the vote was absolutely against the Trump-Musk agenda.

BOLDUAN: Were people voting for Susan Crawford or were they voting against the influence that Elon Musk was trying to - to - to put in this race?

POCAN: Look, Susan Crawford is a very qualified judge, and she's going to be a great supreme court justice. But I think she'll even tell you, most people probably couldn't identify her if they were in line with her at a grocery store. That's just kind of the way it happens.

But it was clearly a vote against what's going on right now in Washington. The turnout, the intensity was all signs of that as well.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you about Florida. The house majority leader, Steve Scalise, told reporters last night that picking up those two seats, holding those two seats would be a, quote/unquote, big improvement for the party's current majority, where it stands right now.

Byron Donalds was just on speaking with Sara, and he said, everything is fine. Everything is - "everything in Florida is just fine and going to get better from here."

Does the results last night make your job harder?

POCAN: No, in Florida, I mean, I hope no one falls down from being so dizzy from that kind of spin. I mean, look, when you have 10 to 20 point shifts in votes in Florida, you know, there's a reason. When you have the commerce secretary, a billionaire, telling people can - if they don't get their Social Security check, like his mother-in-law, that they can - you know, they wouldn't call and complain. If you did, you're a fraudster. Forty percent of people live just off their Social Security income. And clearly, in Florida, that matters.

The attacks that we see coming from the Trump administration and from Elon Musk right now are epic. And people don't like them. And Republicans who are complicit are going to pay a price. So, whether it be Florida's elections or Wisconsin's elections or any other elections that we're looking at across the country, Pennsylvania earlier this month, this is all a signal that the Republicans had better take a quick look at their agenda because if they continue to do this, which I - I hope they continue, because the American people are strongly against this and we will beat them back, they're in trouble.

BOLDUAN: I want to ask you quickly about tariffs, because the president's set to make this massive tariff announcement today. Yesterday I spoke with Wisconsin Republican Congressman Bryan Steil, who told me that when it comes to the tariffs, he's kind of in wait and see mode. That, of course, was yesterday, on these tariffs. Are you also in - in wait and see mode?

POCAN: No. Trump's tariffs are taxes on the average person. I mean there's reasons to have tariffs.

[08:45:02]

If someone's dumping cheap steel in this country, we should put tariffs on it to support the American workers and the industry. But that's not what's happening. This is across the board tariffs that somehow Donald Trump does out of either spite or who he's upset with or whatever rationale he's using. But at the end of the day, the people who pay it are the consumers.

So, you know, in November, the single greatest issue Donald Trump had was the economy. Fifty percent of the people said they voted for the economy when he won. Now it's his single greatest detriment because he's not doing what he promised. He's busy doing Project 2025 and conservative dogma rather than reducing the cost for the American people while he's - he's really bringing the stock market down as well with these dumb ideas.

So, people are not happy with what he's doing.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you really quick. You say that what last night shows is that voters are voting against what they've seen from the Trump administration so far. My question, though, is, are they - are they voting against - are they voting - is there anything that they're voting for when it comes to for Democrats, that Democrats are providing? We know there is a big conversation, fight, whatever you want to call it, going on within the Democratic Party after big election losses of who is really leading, what direction should you lean? Should you lean more liberal? Should you lean more moderate going on?

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, calling the Democratic brand absolutely toxic and really problematic. Are Democrats - have the Democrats shown yet that they are giving voters anything to vote for, or is it simply just against Donald Trump?

POCAN: Well, we're going to make sure that Social Security doesn't get cut. We're going to protect Medicare and Medicaid. We're going to make sure that education is still funded, and we're not cutting things like food assistance or veterans hospital assistance. I mean we're already having problems with people getting veterans hospital appointments because of the cuts by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

First of all, we want - we're normal, right? We want to go back to normal. And I think that means something these days. But it is harder when you don't have a singular point person that's the spokesperson for the Democratic Party. I acknowledge that, but right now people know who's fighting for them and who's not. And I think you're going to keep seeing this - this movement from people, understanding that the Republicans right now are a party that's really just about the wealthiest, the oligarchs, so to speak, in this country, about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and people who can belong to Mar-a-Lago, and at least Democrats are standing up for the middle class wherever we can. BOLDUAN: Democrats need that point person, spokesperson. Need it

pretty quick.

It's good to see you, Congressman. Thank you for coming in.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Kate.

New this morning, a self-described pro-Israel advocacy group says it has shared a list of non-citizen protesters and activists with the U.S. government for possible deportation. This comes as a number of students have been detained. You're seeing a video right there in broad daylight of a student being detained by DHS there. And they are awaiting deportation proceedings. Some of them have been pro- Palestinian protesters.

CNN correspondent Gloria Pazmino here with the details.

I guess the big question is, with this group putting this to the administration, how the government is using this information.

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're absolutely right, Sara. That is the most important question. And part of what we try to get at in this story.

What's important to remember here is that its not new that we see a coordinated effort by a group of people to try and identify another group of people that is associated with the movement they may disagree with. We've seen this during the civil rights movement, during the antiwar movement. But we are now living in a very different time, right? The digital age where our photos, our information, our social media footprint, every information about - about us is out there on the internet for people to gather.

So, there are two groups. They're called Betar and Canary Mission, and they have made it their whole purpose to help identify protesters at - at - that have joined these anti-Israel Hamas war demonstrations. And they have created lists - they admit to this - that help identify people who have participated because they believe that those people are anti-Israel and want to foment hate towards Israel.

Now, to your question, is the government using that information? We couldn't really get a clear answer. But here's what Betar did tell us on the record. We spoke to a spokesperson who said that the group has been gathering a list. They said, quote, "we submitted the names of hundreds of protesters and activists to the Trump administration/DHS urging ICE to deport them under the executive orders."

Now, the Department of Homeland Security has said that they are using intelligence to help find people, but we don't know exactly what kind of intelligence they are talking about. In the meantime, several of the people who have been arrested have been identified by these groups, including Mahmoud Khalil, including Rumeysa Ozturk, the woman in Boston who was arrested.

And we've also spoken to some people who have been profiled but have not been detained.

[08:50:03]

And talk - and they talk about the fact that their information is out there and how difficult it's made it for them to have these profiles out on the internet.

SIDNER: The operative word there is intelligence. When you hear that from the government, intelligence can mean just about anything. So, it could very well be very much linked to these groups being that the same people that they have listed are the people that have so far been detained.

PAZMINO: That's right.

SIDNER: Thank you so much, Gloria. I know you'll stick on this and give us updates. Appreciate it.

John.

BERMAN: All right, five days after the devastating earthquake that killed thousands, a man is pulled from the rubble alive. We've got a new account of how it all happened.

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[08:55:08]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: It is a bloodbath. That is how some employees are describing the thousands of job cuts that began setting in yesterday through the health - at the Department of Health and Human Services. Here's how the job cuts break down throughout the 13 agencies within HHS. The FDA saw the biggest layoffs, about 3,500. CDC, you see there, about 2,400. Another 1,200 people are being fired from NIH.

What is clear today is that the full impact of the scope and scale of these some 20,000 people being laid off or put on leave from America's public health agency is still setting in. People not even able to - showing up to work, not - and only learning once their key card didn't give them access yesterday.

The reaction from noted scientists has been abrupt. Like Michael Osterholm saying this, "today was simply a tragedy. We are going to pay a price for this for years to come."

And the former director of the CDC, Mandy Cohen, saying this, "these cuts leave our country less safe, less prepared, and also without the necessary talent and resources to respond to health threats."

Joining us right now is the former secretary of Health and Human Services under President Obama, Kathleen Sebelius.

Secretary, thank you.

I mean, calling it a bloodbath, I mean, it feels like really the size and scale of these cuts aren't - haven't really been fully grasped yet. But what is your reaction? How do you describe what's now happened?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, FORMER HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Well, I agree with the folks that you've already quoted. And I don't think Americans fully understand, and they shouldn't have to, what all HHS really does. How integrated it is to our daily lives. And this has a devastating impact, not to just people who work inside the beltway in Washington or work in CDC in Atlanta, but all over the country.

Let me give you an example. They pulled the health workers from CDC out of every state health department. We know that states are way down in personnel. That means helping to track diseases. Knowing if I'm going to a family reunion in west Texas, and I'm a pregnant woman, and I want to know where the measles outbreak is so I could protect myself and my baby, that data is very difficult to get, very difficult to share.

FDA does everything from food outbreaks. So, if there's peanut butter on the shelf in the grocery store that needs to be recalled, those are FDA officials working with the food industry to make sure that happens in a timely fashion, that people don't get sick or die.

So, this is not just about what's happening inside D.C. But, Kate, you cannot fire 20 percent, 25 percent I think is about the total, of the workforce. And they don't care. And they don't know what these folks do, what they're responsible for. They're just taking a hatchet to various agencies. That has an enormous impact on the health and safety, not only today and tomorrow, but ten years from now.

BOLDUAN: Let me read a couple things that the now secretary, RFK Jr., had said about the layoffs, saying that they would "focus on paring away excessive administrators while increasing the number of scientists and frontline health providers." And also saying, "we are going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization."

I'm going to have - the control room can put up a graphic of some of the high-profile firings and reassignments that are the heads of some of these - what you're talking about, these agencies that do all of this. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. You know that as, Anthony Fauci used to head that up. Jeanne Marrazzo has - she's part of this. The top tobacco regulator, the top veteran - veterinarian working on bird flu. The top official - a top official on drug regulation also part of this.

Do you see - really being clear eyed, and you know this organization - the organization here. Do you see any way that all of this could create more - a more efficient health agency to better protect Americans?

SEBELIUS: I have no idea how that can happen. And what I can tell you is, RFK Jr. has never run anything that I can determine, more than a handful of people looking at kind of whacko science. But this is an enormous agency. I was a governor of a state. I was

used to a cabinet. I was used to big budgets in a state. I knew the legislative process. This is a 13 department agency that touches Americans from birth to death. It is involved with state governments all over the country.

[09:00:00]

It is involved with local officials, tribal lands. It took me months to just learn about the amazing assets within this department.