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Trump's Moves Hurt Programs that Could Cut Migration to U.S.; Pope Francis Rebukes Trump's Immigration Agenda; White House Blocks AP Reporters From Attending Events; Study: Ozempic Reduces Alcohol Cravings and Intake. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired February 13, 2025 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. Let's check some of today's top stories.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Washington for a meeting today with President Donald Trump at the White House. The meeting comes as Mr. Trump is expected to unveil another round of tariffs and a week after Indian migrants were seen in shackles as they were deported from the U.S.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is meeting with his NATO counterparts today in Brussels. Many of those attending say any negotiations to end the war in Ukraine must actually include Ukraine.

Hegseth denies the U.S. is betraying Kyiv by working with Moscow on a timetable for talks.

And both the U.S. and Russia are touting a seemingly productive call between their presidents. The two leaders discuss Ukraine, the Middle East, artificial intelligence and other matters. As a result, President Trump says negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine will start immediately.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi says the Trump administration is suing several New York officials over policies that limit the state's cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

MACFARLANE: New York's Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James are among those targeted in the lawsuit. In a press conference Wednesday, Bondi compared the challenge to the one filed in Illinois last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAM BONDI, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: If you don't comply with federal law, we will hold you accountable. We did it to Illinois. Strike one.

Strike two is New York. And if you are a state not complying with federal law, you're next. Get ready.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MACFARLANE: Well, in a statement, New York's Attorney General said, our state laws, including the Green Light Law, protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe. I'm prepared to defend our laws just as I always have.

FOSTER: About 14,000 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in the U.S. since Donald Trump's inauguration. That's according to the president's border czar, Tom Homan.

MACFARLANE: Speaking with 77 WABC Radio on Tuesday, he said a vast majority had criminal histories but did not provide details. Homan said border crossings are down 92 percent in the same period. He revealed he will head to New York City on Thursday to meet the mayor and discuss cooperation with its police force.

FOSTER: U.S. President Donald Trump made reducing illegal immigration the cornerstone of his presidential campaign. But now some of his moves to gut government agencies and eliminate their staff could work against that pledge. Stefano Pozzebon has the story from Cali, Colombia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEFANO POZZEBON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR (voice-over): It's lunch time in Alexandra's home. Today is chicken, but food is not always guaranteed for this family, where she is the only provider for her two children, a younger sister and her mother.

In 2019, Alexandra left her native Venezuela alone, walking to Colombia with other migrants while her family stayed behind and joined a few months later. Now in Cali, she's looking to hit the road again.

ALEXANDRA GUERRA, VENEZUELAN MIGRANT (through translator): Other countries offer better opportunities. After six years, I still don't have a formal job here and now with these decisions, it will be even worse.

POZZEBON (voice-over): These decisions are edicts from U.S. President Donald Trump that flipped Alexandra's life upside down 2,400 miles south of Washington. She was applying to a safe mobility program to legally move to the U.S. After two interviews UNHCR told her by e-mail that the program was shut down. Ten days later, a tailoring course she was taking was also halted after a stop work order for USAID, the U.S. agency that was funding the course.

This is her classroom now. Sewing machines untouched. Nobody at these computers.

POZZEBON: All of these machinery was purchased more than 20 years ago with funds from USAID. And since January 27th, it stays like this, still unused.

[04:35:00]

Now, the worry is that many of the migrants who were coming here to learn a job and find work will need to go somewhere else to find it, maybe to the United States.

POZZEBON (voice-over): The project director doesn't know if the courses will ever come back. The paradox, he says, is that these are the kind of projects the White House should fund if it really wants to reduce migration.

Alexandra's classmates were mostly Venezuelans who settled in Colombia, and here would gain qualifications to enter the job market. And now they're all weighing their options.

POZZEBON: What's most interesting about listening to these stories is that this place had become a community center. They would not only receive an education, but also access to psychologists, a network of contacts, opportunities, social workers that in the process of migration is key. And that's why they feel that all of that effort has now gone in vain.

AYARITH OLIMPIO, VENEZUELAN MIGRANT (through translator): My whole family hangs on this decision. This is personal. Migrants are not just a face you see on social media. We are people.

POZZEBON (voice-over): Feeling betrayed by the White House, Ayarith sees no future here and no good options ahead.

Stefano Pozzebon, CNN, Cali, Colombia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Pope Francis speaking out in condemnation of the Trump administration's deportation push. On Monday, the same day, he appointed a pro-migrant bishop as Archbishop of Detroit. The pontiff wrote a letter rebuking Mr. Trump's plan.

CNN's Christopher Lamb has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: This is an unusual and significant intervention by Pope Francis rebuking the Trump administration for their policy on deporting immigrants and instructing Catholic bishops in the U.S., the local church leaders, that this is the position of the church. Now, the Pope got some pushback from Trump's migration czar. Immigration czar who told the Pope to stick to the Catholic church and the problems in the church.

But Pope Francis is determined, and in his letter, he said that the policy of deporting immigrants hurts migrants' dignity, that it will not end well. And he said it was wrong to assume that illegal migrants were involved in criminality.

Now, the Pope also rebutted J.D. Vance, Vice President J.D. Vance's theological justification of the immigration crackdown. Of course, J.D. Vance is a Catholic.

Now, more broadly, the Pope is showing that he is unafraid to criticize President Trump, that he is emerging as one of the most outspoken figures of opposition to the Trump administration on the world stage. Francis, on the eve of President Trump's inauguration, said that the planned deportations of migrants were a disgrace, and he has appointed a Trump critic, Cardinal Robert McElroy, who has also been outspoken on the migrants question, to be Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Francis may be 88 years old. He's had some health difficulties, but he's determined to speak out on a matter that has been a hallmark of his papacy.

Christopher Lamb, CNN, Rome.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACFARLANE: Now, for the second straight day, the Trump administration has blocked an Associated Press reporter from attending a White House event.

FOSTER: This appears to be punishment for the news agency's refusal to use the term Gulf of America instead of Gulf of Mexico. CNN's Hadas Gold explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: The Associated Press says two of its reporters were blocked from events at the White House on Tuesday as a direct result of the Associated Press continuing to use the term the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Gulf of America. The AP is saying that it was notified by the White House staff that they would not be allowed into these White House events, which included press conferences with the president as well as Elon Musk, unless the AP adhered, they said, with President Donald Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Now, when this executive order came out that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed Gulf of America, the AP said that because of hundreds of years of precedent as well as the fact that other international countries, international organizations are still calling it the Gulf of Mexico and the fact that the AP is an international organization, they would continue referring to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging that President Trump had renamed it to the Gulf of America.

When it came to another renaming, that of the Mount Denali in Alaska to being named Mount McKinley, they did update their style guide, the AP did, to calling it Mount McKinley because it is fully within the United States, fully within President Trump's authority to change that name.

[04:40:00]

Now, the AP is pushing back hard against the reporters being barred from these events, saying in a statement, It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish the AP for its independent journalism, limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP's speech. Not only severely impedes the public's access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.

The White House Correspondents Association has also called the blocking of the reporters unacceptable.

Now, AP reporters were at the White House press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, so it's clear that they have not been blocked entirely from the White House grounds. But the Trump administration has a long track record of blocking reporters, blocking news organizations from events from the White House that they disagree with. This despite the fact that the White House has touted itself as an administration that they say is trying to promote free speech and remove government censorship and promote transparency, and yet they are still blocking reporters whom they disagree with.

This is what the White House press secretary had to say in regards to blocking the AP reporters on Wednesday.

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Let me just set the record straight. It is a privilege to cover this White House. It's a privilege to be the White House press secretary.

And nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That's an invitation that is given. And there are hundreds of outlets on this campus, many of you in this room who don't have the privilege of being part of that pool every single day and getting to ask the president questions.

We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office. And you all have credentials to be here, including the Associated Press who is in this briefing room today.

GOLD: Now, the AP has followed up with a letter to the White House chief of staff. Not clear yet, though, whether they plan to take any legal action.

Hadas Gold, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Despite Donald Trump's many promises to bring down prices, inflation is again on the rise in the U.S. The latest data on the cost of living, next.

MACFARLANE: Plus, from weight loss to diabetes, Ozempic has been praised as a game changer in health care, but it's not done yet. What a new study says could be another potential health benefit.

[04:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.

Together, we're going to cut your taxes, end inflation, slash your prices, getting them back down.

Under our leadership, we're going to defeat inflation, bring down prices.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, despite those promises from Donald Trump to bring prices down, they're actually going back up.

MACFARLANE: Many common goods and services in the U.S. got more expensive last month, driving inflation in the wrong direction, to its highest rate since June of last year. Consumer prices rose half a percent from December. That's the fastest pace since August 2023, resulting in an annual inflation rate of 3 percent for the 12 months that ended in January.

FOSTER: U.S. stocks fell mostly -- or mostly fell, on Wednesday, with investors concerned that inflation has reversed its recent progress and could lead to higher interest rates.

MACFARLANE: Now, the CEOs of two of the largest U.S. automakers are speaking out against Donald Trump's proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The leaders of Ford and General Motors say the duties would disrupt their operations and their profitability. The tariffs are on hold at the moment, but automakers are preparing, nonetheless.

GMS's chief executive says her company would be able to mitigate 30 percent to 50 percent of the tariffs for the short term, but the head of Ford says long-term tariffs on Canada and Mexico would burrow a hole into the U.S. auto industry like we've never seen before.

FOSTER: U.S. oil giant Chevron will lay off up to 20 percent of its workforce by the end of next year. Reuters also reports the company hopes to save $3 billion throughout next year. The statement comes on the heels of Chevron's first quarterly loss in its refining business in four years.

Chevron is also embroiled in a legal battle with rival ExxonMobil over the acquisition of oil producer Hess. That expansion is the cornerstone of Chevron's plans to increase production. A source says the company is offering buyouts to employees through April or May.

MACFARLANE: Now, drugs like Ozempic have been hailed for their benefits with weight loss and type 2 diabetes, but now a small study seems to confirm another benefit some people have claimed, that Ozempic leads them to drink less alcohol. CNN's Meg Tirrell explains why.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we've heard from people who are taking Ozempic and similar medicines that they not only reduce the amount of food that they want to eat, but also for some people, they can reduce the amount of alcohol that they feel like drinking. But this really hadn't been studied in an organized way until now. So in this new clinical trial, they looked at 48 people who reported having signs of sort of moderate alcohol use disorder.

And they put half of the people on Ozempic, low doses of Ozempic, and half on a placebo. And over nine weeks, they monitored how much alcohol they drank and also their cravings for alcohol. And what they found is a significant effect on both the amount of alcohol they drank and how much they craved it.

In fact, at the end of the nine weeks, people on Semaglutide, or Ozempic, drank about 40 percent less alcohol than those on placebo. Now, they think that this might be working in this way because we know that these medicines work not just in the gut, but also in the brain. And there might be an effect on sort of the reward system around things like alcohol.

Interestingly, they also looked at cigarette use in the trial among about 13 people who reported also smoking. Now, that's a very small sample size, but what they saw is that over the course of the nine weeks, people on Ozempic reported smoking fewer cigarettes per day as well.

[04:50:00]

Now, this needs to be borne out in larger and longer clinical trials before these drugs could be prescribed widely for things like alcohol use disorder or smoking cessation. And additional trials are underway, but this is really sort of the first study that we've seen in this really organized way to show this effect. And so there is hope that these medicines could add to an arsenal of addiction treatment, which unfortunately has been fairly lacking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Still to come, rain, snow, and flash flooding across the U.S. causing problems on both of the coasts. We'll have the latest forecast.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: At least 20 people were injured in a fire in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday that destroyed a factory making costumes for Brazil's upcoming carnival. That's according to local health authorities. A state hospital says 10 people were in a serious condition due to smoke inhalation and burns to their airways.

Footage show people stuck at and being rescued from windows and plumes of smoke. Rio Carnival starts in about two weeks.

MACFARLANE: Evacuation warnings have been issued in parts of Los Angeles County ravaged by deadly wildfires last month. Tens of millions of people in California are under some risk of flooding rainfall. The storm is expected to be the most significant so far this winter in Southern California as well as bring very intense rainfall according to the National Weather Service.

Stoking fears of life-threatening debris flows and high risk of mudslides. Authorities are making preparations. The worst conditions are expected to arrive in the coming hours.

Meanwhile, on the U.S. East Coast states are dealing with a series of storms expected to dump snow and rain throughout the day. CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam has more on the conditions as they spread across the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: A trio of winter storms is impacting the U.S. Believe it or not, this is the first of the three storms that brought snowfall to the nation's capital. They'll be clearing off the roads here through the next several hours, but rain will fall on top of the snow that fell, which accumulated to just under a half foot at Reagan National Airport.

So that bumped the D.C. area up to one of the snowiest winter seasons to date in the past several years. There were higher snowfall totals, look at Virginia, over a foot in some locations. All of this active weather being driven by a very powerful jet stream running from west to east across our country pushing through these storms across the country in less than 72 hours. So this very transient and very active weather pattern continues.

[04:55:00]

The secondary storm system that brought a swath of snowfall to the Great Lakes and parts of the Plains, that is going to exit the picture through the course of the day today, but on the deep south it brought heavy rainfall and it will continue to bring more showers through the course of Thursday morning. But there was several inches of rain that fell in and around Georgia and into portions of the Tennessee River Valley.

Now the west coast, this is the third storm of the week and this is going to bring heavy rainfall across the coastal areas and several feet of snow through the Sierra Nevada mountain range, but what I'm concerned about is what will take shape into southern California. Remember the wildfires in January of this year across Los Angeles, well the burn scars there make any rainfall that falls from the sky, makes that vegetation very vulnerable, so mud slides, debris flows, is a real possibility, especially when we have this moderate risk of excessive rainfall that could lead to the flash flooding, so there is a high concern for that into those recently burned areas.

Nonetheless, there are still the flood watches in place for much of California, particularly across the coastal regions and then don't forget, we have winter storm warnings as snowfall and moisture continues to pile up the snow in feet. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACFARLANE: Now actor Scarlett Johansson is calling on U.S. lawmakers to pass laws to better protect people from the dangers of artificial intelligence.

FOSTER: This comes after a deep fake video went viral, it showed Johansson, Adam Levine, Lenny Kravitz, Mark Zuckerberg and other celebrities wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a hand giving the middle finger Kanye West name and a Jewish star. It implied the celebrities were responding to West's most recent anti-Semitic remarks and a swastika shirt that he was selling on his website. Johansson has been very vocal on the issue of AI without consent.

Now this year's nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were revealed on Wednesday and they include the artists behind smash hits like White Wedding, Blue Monday, Wonderwall, Time After Time and The Twist.

MACFARLANE: As well as the 2003 banger from Andre 3000 and Big Boy. Well, ATLiens Outkast are among the nominees appearing on the ballot for the first time and other newcomers include Chubby Checker, Bad Company, Billy Idol and Phish.

FOSTER: Mariah Carey, Cindy Lauper and Joy Division have been nominated before and are back in the mix. To be eligible an artist or band must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years ago.

MACFARLANE: I love that. Among the selection criteria, the performance impact on music culture, overall influence and longevity, the inductees will be revealed in April.

FOSTER: Amazing to see how little they've all changed.

MACFARLANE: I love a bit of Cindy Lauper and Mariah Carey. Take me back to my youth.

That's it for us here at CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Christina Macfarlane

FOSTER: I'm Max Foster. CNN "THIS MORNING" is up after a quick break.

END