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Trump's Tariff Announcement Remains Largely A Mystery; Marine Le Pen Slams Court Ruling Barring Her From Election; Burst Gas Pipe Sparks Colossal Fire In Malaysia; 72-Hour Golden Window For Finding Trapped Survivors Ends; China Launches Military Exercises Around Taiwan; Trump: Ukraine Trying To back Out Of Minerals Deal; Bodies Of Missing Aid Workers Found In Gaza Mass Grave; Columbia Student Targeted By ICE, Not Charged With A Crime; Astronauts Speak For First Time Since Unexpected Space Stay. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired April 01, 2025 - 01:00   ET

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

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[01:00:23]

JOHN VAUSE, CNN HOST: Mark your calendar. Wednesday set to be a major turning point in world history. Ahead on CNN Newsroom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They're reciprocal, so whatever they charge us, we charge them. But we're being nicer than they were.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: With the U.S. President set to announce reciprocal tariffs and an end to global trade as we know it.

So what's the French word for lawfare?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARINE LE PEN, DEPUTY OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY (through translator: If that's not a political decision, I don't know what is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: France's far right leader and convicted embezzler plays the Trump card after a guilty verdict and a ban on running for political office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The majority of those still missing now thought unlikely to be alive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And the death toll of Myanmar surges as rescuers struggle with a natural disaster on top of a civil war and a military coup amid a political crisis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN Newsroom with John Vause.

VAUSE: It's a rare moment when the world knows a major turning point in history is about to happen. But if the U.S. President is true to his word, and that remains an if, Wednesday could be the day when he announces dollar for dollar reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, a move which would reverse 80 years of liberalization of global trade in favor of a new America first policy.

President Trump calls it Liberation Day. He's been talking about it for weeks and still exact details are not known and much seems to change day to day. But we do know a big official event is scheduled Wednesday in the White House Rose Garden. The president and his cabinet are expected to be there.

Presidential advisers have put forward multiple plans with a variety of options, some with exemptions or delays or negotiations. The ultimate decision is with the president. Keep in mind, though, when it comes to tariffs since the start of his second term, President Trump has made announcement followed by a reversal, then maybe some exemptions and sometimes within hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's going to be something that's going to bring a lot of wealth back to our country, tremendous wealth back to our country, actually. And other countries are understanding it because they've been ripping us for 50 years longer, but they've been ripping us off for years right in the beginning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Even before this announcement, the verdict on tariffs is in from Wall Street, which has seen its worst quarter since September of 2022, with many economists predicting the higher cost of imports will mean a greater chance of an economic recession in the United States this year.

Here are the U.S. stock futures you can see right across the board right now. It's been that way for hours now. And around the world, countries are bracing for economic turmoil with leaders in Europe and Asia ready to fire back in their own shots in the trade war which was started by Donald Trump. These are the Asia Pacific markets right now. It was in the red earlier, but now green across the board. More details from CNN senior political reporter, politics reporter Rather, Stephen Collinson.

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STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR REPORTER: He's got the whole world hanging on his every word, and that's just how he likes it. Donald Trump said in an extraordinary White House Oval Office news conference that Liberation Day is beckoning the United States on April 2, that's the date when he plans to unveil his promised tariffs on U.S. trade partners and foes, which promise potentially to rock the global economy.

But we don't know exactly what the president will say. He says that will all be unveiled on Wednesday in the Rose Garden of the White House in an event that will be looked at around the world. Will the president, for example, impose those across the board tariffs dollar for dollar against countries that put similar duties on U.S. imports? Will he go country by country, try to wring out deals with various U.S. trading partners and other trading blocs? We just don't know.

But the risks are huge. Many economists fear that tariffs will push up prices for American consumers who are still feeling the effects of that inflation that came into force during the pandemic years and that has not really dissipated for many Americans who are very frustrated about the price of groceries, of rent and of mortgages.

And the problem there is that if those -- if that hurts consumer confidence, that could put the U.S. economy into a cycle of recession.

[01:05:00]

But tariffs are a weapon that Donald Trump has believed in for decades, ever since he was a businessman in New York in the 1980s when he was warning of the competitiveness of the Japanese economy and said that could hurt the American economy.

Now the trade foes are China and the European Union, but Trump's belief is still the same. Now as the president, who has few checks on his power. Now he can put all of those years of economic orthodoxy into practice.

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VAUSE: A political earthquake in French politics Monday. French far- right leader Marine Le Pen, who is also the frontrunner in the next presidential election, has been officially banned from running, leaving her party scrambling to find a replacement while also crying political interference.

The court imposed an immediate five-year ban on Le Pen after she was found guilty of embezzlement. She left the court without waiting to hear the sentence. While the decision is well within the law and has been imposed a number of times on other political leaders in France, Le Pen, along with National Rally Party leader Jordan Bardella and far-right leaders across Europe have all accused the court of denying democracy to millions of voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LE PEN (through translator): What the judge is doing here is saying I'm going to make you ineligible straight away, and I'm doing it precisely to stop you from being able to be elected president. If that's not a political decision, I don't know what is.

It's the voters who decide in a democracy, and I'm here to tell them this evening, don't worry, I'm not disheartened. I am like you, scandalized, indignant. But that indignation, that sense of injustice, is maybe another driver in the fight I am waging for them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Here's CNN's Melissa Bell with what this actually means for the French political landscape.

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MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: It was a very combative Marine Le Pen who took to French airways in primetime in the wake of the verdict and sentencing that has seen her barred seeking political office for the next five years.

This was a trial that concluded in Paris in November. The verdict and the sentencing handed out this Monday saw not just Marine Le Pen but several of the National Rally's MEPs found guilty of embezzling European funds that should have gone to funding parliamentary assistance and the court found, were in fact used. The money was used to fund party political workers here in France.

That vast system, as the judge described it, spanned several years and was of such severity that she had decided to hand down the most severe sentence sought by the prosecution. Even before she heard it once Marine Le Pen began to understand what kind of sentencing she was received, about to receive she left the courtroom and it was to that anger that she spoke on French television in the wake of the sentencing, announcing that she is a fighter, that she will not take this sitting down, and that she will do everything she can to fight against what she described as a political decision.

The presiding judge in the case as she delivered the verdict and the sentencing, however, very clear to explain that it was precisely to protect democracy and the affront that had been done to it by this embezzlement of Marine Le Pen's party that she was seeking such severe sentencing.

Still, it is now a very political and very loud fight that the leader of the National Front intends to wage against this, and in the name she hopes of being able to salvage her political career. Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: We will stay with the story a little longer. Dominic Thomas, CNN's European affairs commentator, joining us now live from Los Angeles. Welcome back.

DOMINIC THOMAS, CNN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Thanks for having me on the show, John.

VAUSE: OK, so the court's ruling to immediately ban Le Pen from running for office for the next five years is without doubt an incredible moment in French politics. But there is no consensus, really on why. Here is the convicted embezzler Marine Le Pen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LE PEN: Do you realize what a dark day this is? Monday, March 31, 2025. What a dark day this is for our democracy and our country, where millions of French people will be deprived by a judge of the candidate who is considered the favorite for the presidential election. That should scandalize anyone who cares about democracy and the rule of law in reality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: That is straight from the Trump playbook, and it's been echoed by far right politicians across France and beyond. And just like Trump supporters in the United States, it seems the argument they continue to make fails to mention one key factor. A real crime has been committed and Le Pen was found guilty.

THOMAS: Yes. And the broader context is that this criminal activity was invested for years and with a full understanding that a guilty verdict would be scrutinized and also that accusations of politicizing the legal system would be made.

And so I think in this particular case, there's even skepticism in the Le Pen camp as to the sort of what an appeal would look like, a realization that it would most likely be futile.

[01:10:00]

But also they've got themselves in a trap in a way, because going down the road of appealing this particular sentencing would actually then go about legitimizing a system that they're seeking to decredibilize in order to deflect from the very serious crime that has been committed.

And that's why on national television earlier today, she said that ultimately, straight out of the Trump playbook, as you mentioned, this has to go back to the people and with it there once again a kind of misunderstanding that the legal system is precisely there to operate independently of politics in order to secure those institutions of the French Republic. And that's what they ultimately did today. John.

VAUSE: If there is some surprise in all of this, it seems to be a surprise that the judge actually went ahead with this immediate ban on the pen from running for office. This is not some old obscure law which came out from hundreds of years ago. It's been around, what, for about a decade has passed, I think in 2016. Even Le Pen predicted her political death would happen if she was found guilty. So this isn't out of the blue.

THOMAS: No, it's not. And it's actually then a misunderstanding or willingness to, an unwillingness rather to talk about this. In 2016, political embezzlement was upgraded, right, to a ban, a five-year ban. And so it's gone from being a man, sorry, it's ended up being it's a mandatory sentencing guidelines here. And in this particular case, it's five years ineligibility for office. So this was known throughout the particular process. It's just another way to undermine this, John.

VAUSE: Well, here is the reaction from the US President, Donald Trump himself, straight from his playbook. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: That's a big deal. That's a very big deal. I know all about it and I don't know if it means conviction, but she was banned for running for five years and she's the leading candidate. That sounds like this country. That sounds very much like this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Except it doesn't. Le Pen was found guilty. She'd be held accountable, I assume, for her crimes and her political career is over. Donald Trump is president, so there doesn't seem to be a lot of comparisons there.

THOMAS: Yes, well, he's making the comparison by essentially describing a witch hunt and that basically the law, the courts, the constitution are there when they serve you, and when they don't, then they are to be criticized. And that's precisely what Marine Le Pen is attempting to do here.

Now, President Trump is right. She is right now the frontrunner in this race. But as we know, the French presidential system, the particularity of it is it's a runoff system. And all three times in recent history when a Le Pen candidate, her and her father, have made it through to those runoff states, there are particular guardrails in place and the Republican front has been there to block this particular candidate from accessing the presidency.

And let's not forget that in the first round of the French presidential elections last time around, over 70 percent of the people did not vote for her. So ultimately, moving forward, the appeal of the sort of the MAGA agenda, and this argument remains to be measured out in French society. But I don't think that actually she's going to get the kind of traction she hopes to get out of this moving forward. John.

VAUSE: It will be an interesting time to have French politics without a pen there somewhere in the political landscape, but that will be the case. Dominic, thanks for being with us. We really appreciate it.

THOMAS: Thank you.

VAUSE: Well, shortages, fear and a frantic search for survivors. The latest on the devastation from the deadly Myanmar earthquake and the obstacles which are now hindering rescue efforts.

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VAUSE: With this just in the CNN, a gas pipeline has burst in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, causing a massive fireball which can be seen from miles away. Authorities say several homes caught fire while others were evacuated. A number of people are being treated for burns. The full extent of

damage is still being assessed. The national oil company says the fire erupted just after 8 a.m. local time. And the issue is limited to just one pipeline. Authorities say a valve to that pipeline has now been shut off, which will eventually put up the fire.

Almost four days now since Myanmar was rocked by a deadly and powerful earthquake and the chance of finding survivors alive under the rubble are growing increasingly unlikely. According to the ruling military dictatorship, more than 2,000 people are confirmed dead and aftershocks continue to rattle the country.

Aid groups say ongoing communication problems with Internet services being cut by the military continue to hamper rescue and relief efforts. But in neighboring Thailand, which was also impacted by the 7.7 magnitude quake, rescue crews reach one man under a mountain of rubble in the capital, Bangkok. CNN's Mike Valerio following all of this live for us from Seoul. So what's the very latest down the situation there in Myanmar?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we really have three storylines that are changing in this afternoon hour. We're talking about Bangkok, Mandalay and USAID. So we're going to start with Bangkok. In fact, we're going to take live pictures that a control room has up.

This is the scene, John, of that 33 story skyscraper that imploded when the primary and secondary waves that the magnitude 7.7 quake reached a thousand kilometers away into Bangkok. So ever since, John, that 72-hour golden window, the golden opportunity to find people alive has passed yesterday afternoon. There have been no reports of anyone pulled from that wreckage. But there are still family members who have no other choice.

[01:20:02]

Their lives are paralyzed. They are still congregating as close to that wreckage site as they possibly can, sitting and waiting for any word of potential remains or a potential miracle for their husbands or family members to be pulled out of that rubble. To that end, there are still machines with heat detecting technology to try to find the upwards of 70 people who the Thai government says are unaccounted for likely underneath that concrete pile. So that's latest with Bangkok.

Moving on to Mandalay. This comes from Rhea Mogul, who's one of our Southeast Asia reporters based in Hong Kong keeping track of this story, working with our connections there. She's just added this to our story on CNN.com when this earthquake struck closer to the epicenter, there are 160 plus monks who are taking an exam and their exam classroom starts to shake. And according to her latest reporting, 160 monks killed because of the earthquake, their classroom crumbling and 85 other monks as they were about to begin this exam also hurt.

They all sort of went to the one exit for this classroom. A rescue worker was telling Radio Myanmar late yesterday. So just a sense of the human toll and catastrophe of just a one look at, you know, the victims of this quake, horrifying as more and more of these stories are uncovered.

And then finally USAID. Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the State Department in Washington late yesterday confirming that a USAID team based in the region will be helping with the earthquake relief efforts beginning today on Tuesday. So because USAID has obviously been in the news because of how the Trump administration wants to reshape the agency according to how it thinks it should function, reorganization, changes, cuts, firing people, morphing the organization into its vision of how it wants USAID to operate.

You can bet that there will be so much scrutiny, so much attention as to how this team operates, what exactly it's going to do. The government of the United States has said it's going to contribute $2 million, John, through Myanmar based relief efforts. China our latest reporting, contributing about $14 million. And it had one of the first teams to arrive just hours after the quake. So no doubt we'll be keeping an eye on those three storylines in the hours ahead. John.

VAUSE: So the earthquake happened Friday. They're getting there Tuesday, right? Mike, thank you. Mike Valerio there in Seoul.

We'll stay with the story a little longer. We'll go live in Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. And Alexander Matthew, he's with us now. He's the Asia Pacific regional director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Thank you for being with us.

ALEXANDER MATHEOU, ASIA-PACIFIC REGIONAL DIRECTOR, IFRC: Thank you for having me.

VAUSE: So rescue efforts after any 7.7 magnitude quake in most parts of the world will always be difficult. They will always come with challenges. But Myanmar seems to be in a category all of its own. We're looking at a natural disaster on top of a political crisis, on top of a multi sided civil war. So what impact is that all having right now on any kind of international rescue efforts?

MATHEOU: Well, first of all, it means that some of the most vulnerable people in the world have just been dealt another terrible, terrible blow. I hadn't heard about the story about the monks, but I was there two weeks ago and I was in monasteries and in temples where families were bringing their children to be monks with such PR, dressed beautifully and the thought that they were in a classroom that collapsed upon them and killed them all, it's really heartbreaking.

The severity of the vulnerability in Myanmar is exacerbated precisely for the reasons that you've said. Anyway, it is a country that is linked, listed as one of the 10 most vulnerable countries in the world. 1.4 million of the people who live in Sagain province are displaced by conflict. So they are living in monasteries.

It's monks and monasteries providing shelter for them where they have nowhere else to go. They really only earn about $1 a day from daily labor. So they're extremely poor. And now those highly vulnerable people have lost the one shelter they had. And if they survive, they're on the street in extremely hot weather with no access to food or water, at least very little. So the search and rescue effort is of course, in the first instance

about finding people under the rubble. And that is, of course, the right thing to do in the first few days. It's also about clean drinking water. There's no power, no water's being pumped. So it's very hard to get clean drinking water. People need shelter. It's very hot. It was plus 36 degrees last night at the nighttime. So you can imagine what it's like in the day.

And people not feel comfortable going back inside of houses that have been damaged or where there's still tremors and aftershocks. And people need obviously food and medical care, especially if they've been wounded.

[01:25:00]

So you can imagine the range of services that need to be provided. Lots of, not lots. Help is arriving at the moment. The Myanmar Red Cross is there. They're providing first aid. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies had pre-positioned stocks for 8,000 families. They're being delivered. But given the size of the earthquake, of course, that's not enough.

VAUSE: We just heard from Michael, our reporter covering the story from Asia, that we're now hearing that the USAID will be a presence on the ground Tuesday with about $2 million in assistance for Myanmar. How does that compare to, say, other disasters like this that USAID had been involved in prior to the cuts, which we've seen coming from the Trump administration?

MATHEOU: You know, it might sound terrible to be giving many a few days after an earthquake, but to be honest, from where I'm sitting, having dealt with these responses for years, the first response is just chapter one. It's just what you have to do in the first few days. The consequence of an earthquake lasts for months and it lasts for years. People lose their homes, they lose their livelihoods, they lose loved ones. They're traumatized. It really is no good flying in for four weeks, handing something out and disappearing again.

They still don't have anybody anywhere to live. They still can't earn any income themselves. I am really committed. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is committed to being alongside these communities for years, not just the next four weeks.

So the U.S. aid money is coming a little bit later than you might think. It might miss the search and rescue phase. That doesn't mean it won't be useful. It'll go to good use to protect very vulnerable people.

VAUSE: And just with regards to the situation in Mandalay, one of the issues that we've seen over the last couple of years since the military dictatorship in the coup is that the Internet has essentially been cut off and communications has been very difficult before the earthquake. How is that now impacting, you know, trying to get people and rescue efforts into Mandalay, into the city, the second biggest city in Myanmar? MATHEOU: Well, the communications are not great, it's true. I mean,

it's not just in Mandalay, to be honest. Just before I was speaking to you, I was on a video call with the Red Cross societies of Southeast Asia about how they can support emergency assistance into Myanmar. Our colleagues from Myanmar were on the call, but we kept losing them every two or three minutes. The communications are really not good. They weren't good before the earthquake and this has probably worsened it.

You drive around Mandalay at night or Saigon province after 7:00, 8:00 in the evening. There's no lights, no power. It's pitch dark by 10 o'clock. So these problems are not new. They existed before. It's just that now they're more life threatening.

VAUSE: Alexander, thank you for being with us and for the update on what's happening on the ground there in Myanmar. And obviously this is a long term issue which require a lot of money, a lot of help in national community. Whether that arrives or not is another question. Myanmar always seems to be on the end of the help list, it seems internationally. Thank you for being with us.

MATHEOU: Thank you for having me.

VAUSE: For more information on how you can help Myanmar earthquake victims and survivors, Please go to CNN.com impact.

Well, Beijing orders new military drills around Taiwan, again escalating tensions in the region. We'll have the very latest in a life report in just a moment.

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VAUSE: Welcome back everyone.

I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

New military drills involving China's army, navy, air force and rocket force now underway with orders from Beijing to close in on Taiwan from multiple directions, a move which the military says will act as a stern warning and forceful deterrence.

Taiwan's national security council chief condemned the drills as reckless and irresponsible.

Live now to Hong Kong. CNN's Ivan Watson is with us. So, Ivan, tell us about what these drills are like, how big they are and how long they're expected to be underway.

And when Beijing says the exercises will act as a stern warning and forceful deterrence, against what exactly?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, we don't really know many specifics about these drills. They come as somewhat of a surprise, an announcement that came from the Chinese military's Eastern Theater Command. And as you pointed out, it said that there -- they were, approaching Taiwan from multiple directions, that this was involving all four branches of the Chinese military. That's the navy, the air force, the army, and rocket force.

And that amid a number of kind of these military objectives that they want to perform and exercise which includes blockading the island, that it is a serious warning and powerful containment of Taiwan's independent, separatist forces.

[01:34:48]

WATSON: And of course, Beijing refuses to -- it considers the self- governing democratic island of Taiwan to be effectively a renegade province and says that it is asserting its sovereignty.

Now, Beijing has been stepping up these types of military maneuvers around Taiwan for years. The question is, why is this happening now? In the past, it's been linked to things like a visit of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, something Beijing didn't like, or last year's inauguration of the Taiwanese president, who, I might add, was the target of a propaganda visitor -- video coming out of Eastern Theater Command ridiculing the president basically calling him a parasite, President Lai Ching-Te and accusing him of working, conspiring with foreign forces really directed at him.

Now the Taiwanese government, in response, the defense minister has said that Taiwan is paying attention to this. The only real details we have about the Chinese military assets that are in play here is that he said that the Taiwanese are closely following the Shandong Chinese aircraft carrier group, which he says is operating to the southeast of the island. And this is what more he had to say.

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WELLINGTON KOO, TAIWAN DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): I'd like to point out here that such an action fully reflects it is damaging the peace and stability of the region.

It is obvious that China is a very obvious troublemaker. There have been a lot of reports related to corruption problems within the People's Liberation Army. I think they should properly resolve these internal problems instead of destroying peace and stability in the region.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Now, an official in the Taiwanese government, a security official has gone on to argue that perhaps what Beijing is doing these military maneuvers is tied to a recent visit by the new U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to the Philippines and to Japan, where Hegseth talked about a need to deter China, what he described as the threat of Communist China in the region and to work closely with U.S. allies in the region.

That is one official's kind of interpretation of what's taking place here. Again, this is part of a broader pattern, John, that we've seen of aggressive Chinese military maneuvers around this self-governing island.

VAUSE: Ivan, thank you. Ivan Watson, senior international correspondent, live for us from Hong Kong. Thank you.

After failing to end the war in Ukraine on day one of his second term, on day 71, Donald Trump warned secondary tariffs on Russian oil could be imposed unless Moscow starts cooperating.

Over the weekend, the U.S. President said he was, quote, off by Vladimir Putin's lack of cooperation, later adding he believes the Russian president will follow through.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump accuses Ukraine of trying to back out of a rare earth minerals deal. But the Ukrainians say the Americans keep changing the terms.

CNN's Clare Sebastian has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With efforts to get to the point of a ceasefire in Ukraine essentially stalled, the U.S. Appears to be stepping up efforts to get a mineral deal over the line, a central part, of course, of President Trump's strategy to ensure the U.S. gets something in return for helping Ukraine.

Well, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN on Friday, the U.S. has put forward a new proposal and one that goes beyond the original arrangement that was set to be signed on February 27th, the day of that Oval Office spat between President Trump and Zelenskyy.

Well, the new proposal would apparently give the U.S. more access to Ukraine's mineral reserves and would apply to all mineral resources, including oil and gas, according to those sources, who also said it does not contain any promise of postwar security guarantees for Ukraine.

Zelenskyy, who has maintained he's open to signing a mineral deal in principle, let slip some frustration last week. He said on Thursday that the U.S. keeps changing the terms of the deal. And on Friday he called the new proposal an entirely different document, which contains some things that hadn't been discussed and some things that had already been rejected.

Well, on Sunday, President Trump hit back.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think Zelenskyy, by the way, I see he's trying to back out of the rare earth deal. And if he does that, he's got some problems -- big, big problems.

SEBASTIAN: Well, the risks for Ukraine are clear. Last time President Trump and Zelenskyy fell out, the U.S. paused military aid and intelligence sharing, though later reinstated it.

The difference now, though, more than a month on, is that Trump is signaling he's also willing to get tough on Russia and ramp up economic pressure to sign on to a ceasefire, without which, of course, the U.S. cannot start reaping the benefits of Ukraine's mineral wealth.

Clare Sebastian CNN -- London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[01:39:41]

VAUSE: Still to come here on CNN, masked Homeland Security agents on the hunt for a foreign graduate student at Columbia University without offering a reason. She managed to flee to Canada and is now sharing her story with CNN.

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VAUSE: A week after they went missing, the bodies of more than a dozen aid workers have been recovered in southern Gaza. It appears they died during Israel's renewed military offensive.

[01:44:47]

VAUSE: Aid organizations and the United Nations have expressed outrage over the attacks which killed them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN WHITTAL, HEAD OF U.N. OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS: Health workers should never be a target. And yet we're here today digging up a mass grave of first responders and paramedics.

Seven days ago, civil defense and PRCS ambulances arrived at the scene. One by one, they were hit. They were struck. Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave.

We're digging them up in their uniforms with their gloves on. They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: More than half of the bodies recovered were identified as members of the Palestine Red Crescent Society. The Israeli military has previously confirmed it fired on ambulances and fire trucks, believing they were being used by Hamas and Islamic jihad militants.

The Trump administration is threatening to revoke nearly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts for Harvard University, accusing the school of failing to protect students from anti-Semitism in the wake of -- in the wake of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration is conflating criticism of Israel's war in Gaza with antisemitism.

Harvard's president says the university has addressed anti-Semitism on campus and will continue to do so. But warns without government funding, life-saving research will be halted.

Well, the first knock on the door came about a month ago. Three border security agents looking for a Columbia PhD student whose visa was recently revoked. By the third time they came wearing masks, Ranjani Srinivasan was gone. She fled to Canada.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has her story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ma'am, you were asked to stay in the room. Hey, why don't you just stay in there? If not, you can leave.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This new cell phone video captured by a roommate and obtained exclusively by CNN, shows masked Homeland Security agents inside Columbia University housing searching Ranjani Srinivasan's apartment after the Trump administration revoked her student visa targeting her for deportation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a warrant to search these premises for electronics, documents related to Ranjani Srinivasan.

PROKUPECZ: The search inside the apartment in mid-march lasted just minutes. This was the third time federal agents came to her door. By then Srinivasan, an Indian national, was already gone, having fled to Canada in a panic, leaving her home of nearly ten years.

RANJANI SRINIVASAN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDENT: It still doesn't feel real.

PROKUPECZ: Do you miss being there?

SRINIVASAN: Yes. Yes. All my friends are there, you know, my home, like my cat. I don't know when I'm going to actually be able to go back.

PROKUPECZ: Do you think you will?

SRINIVASAN: I mean, I want to all my friends and family, like my entire life is there right now.

PROKUPECZ: It all began when the state department abruptly canceled her student visa, triggering a disturbing set of events.

Immigration agents started showing up at her door. She and her roommate didn't allow them in.

SRINIVASAN: They basically started yelling in the corridor, saying my name, saying my visa had been revoked. And she just said -- she asked them, do you have a warrant? And they had to say no. And she was like, sorry. Bye.

PROKUPEZ: Did you have any reason to understand why they were doing this?

SRINIVASAN: No, I was -- I was stunned and scared. I -- when she told me, she turned back and told me ICE is at the door and I was just shivering.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's not resisting.

PROKUPECZ: Within days, she heard of the high-profile arrest of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. Scared she was next, she went into hiding.

Were you afraid that they were going to take you and then detain you and hold you in a -- in ICE detention center?

SRINIVASAN: Yes. I was very afraid. But that fear was not borne out of something I had done, because I had done nothing wrong. It was more about the other things that were happening around us.

There have been disappearances. There have been random arrests. So I could not predict what would happen next.

PROKUPECZ: Srinivasan's troubles trace back to two summonses she received during protests outside Columbia University on April 30th of 2024. DHS said she never reported them on her visa renewal.

Srinivasan says she was trying to return home and wasn't part of the protest. Those summonses were dismissed months before she applied for renewal. And there should have been no record of their existence.

When people aren't fingerprinted, when they're not charged with a crime, convicted with a crime, that's information that New York City and New York state has said they don't make available to the federal government and this raises very serious questions about those representations.

The question that Srinivasan's lawyers are grappling with now. How did she even get on the radar of federal authorities?

For one, records reviewed by CNN show she was not in New York City during the peak of the campus protests and never participated in the encampments.

[01:49:44]

PROKUPECZ: That didn't stop Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from posting this video of Srinivasan at LaGuardia Airport on March 11th and calling her a terrorist sympathizer.

SRINIVASAN: I'm not a terrorist sympathizer. I'm not a pro-Hamas activist. I'm just literally a random student. It just seems very strange that they would spend so much, you know, like vast resources in, like, sort of persecuting me.

PROKUPECZ: The former Fulbright scholar who earned a master's degree from Harvard, was just two months shy of achieving a lifelong dream, getting her PhD from Columbia University. For now, that's all in jeopardy.

What are you worried about? SRINIVASAN: I mean, without a degree -- I mean, all of this is, you

know, it's not going to be recognized, Any of this work. My five years is completely wasted.

PROKUPECZ: Now, CNN has reached out to all of the agencies named in our story, the Department of Homeland Security, the NYPD, Columbia University, the New York City Mayor's office which told us they would look into this. They never got back to us.

All of the agencies have not responded to our request for comment.

Shimon Prokupecz, CNN -- New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: We shall pause right now. Take a short break. Back in a moment.

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VAUSE: A week after returning to earth, NASA astronaut Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are now speaking publicly about their nine-month long unexpected stay on the International Space Station. They say they never felt abandoned or stuck, and were honored by the global interest in their journey home.

Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is none other than Suni Williams.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For the first time since Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore returned to earth with fellow astronaut Nick Hague, the crew faced questions about the saga that engulfed their space mission.

BUTCH WILMORE, ASTRONAUT: We had a plan, right. The plan went way off for what we had planned. We pivoted to all that training we did that we didn't think we needed to do.

SUNI WILLIAMS, ASTRONAUT: There's a huge group of people who are looking at the whole program and understanding how and what was the best time and way to get us back home.

We knew that. And we were ready to wait until that decision was made and that was fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Godspeed, Butch and Suni.

LAVANDERA: Williams and Wilmore launched into space last summer on a test mission of the Boeing Starliner, but the spacecraft suffered helium leaks and thruster outages.

NASA determined the Starliner wasn't safe to bring the astronauts home, turning a mission that was supposed to last about ten days into 286 days in space. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And splashdown. Crew-9 back on earth.

LAVANDERA: When you reentered the earth's atmosphere and came back to gravity, can you talk specifically about any kind of weird either sensations or experiences that you've had dealing with that over the last couple of weeks?

WILMORE: I can tell you that returning from space to earth, through the atmosphere inside of a 3,000-degree fireball of plasma is weird. And the whole capsule starts shaking and twisting, and then the parachutes open up and you're like, I've said it many times, there's not a better feeling returning from space than the parachutes open and work.

LAVANDERA: Did you know that you guys had been greeted by dolphins when you splashed down?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh. Dolphin cam back again.

WILMORE: I had requested dolphins as kind of a joke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WILMORE: Somehow they pulled it off.

[01:54:44]

LAVANDERA: Williams and Wilmore spent more than nine months on the International Space Station, which forced them and their families to adjust to a new timeline. They missed the holidays at home, but they marked the occasions with their space family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Merry Christmas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Merry Christmas.

LAVANDERA: Suni Williams, wearing an eye patch, celebrated her birthday during "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" with space-made strawberry cakes.

The crew even simulated Olympic style sporting events inside the International Space Station.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore are working to remove that.

LAVANDERA: The astronauts also carried out crucial mission work on the space station, including various scientific experiments and mesmerizing spacewalks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That RFG is just in front of Suni.

WILLIAMS: When something doesn't go your way, you just have to take the blinders off and look around you and see what other really great things are waiting for you. LAVANDERA: Despite the troubles with the Boeing Starliner, both Butch

Wilmore and Suni Williams say they would fly the spacecraft again in a heartbeat and say they're committed to helping the team of scientists and engineers fix the Starliner.

WILMORE: We're going to look forward and say, what are we going to use, our lessons learned from this whole process and make sure that we are successful in the future.

LAVANDERA: Both astronauts say they are reacclimating to the earth's gravity very well. They credit the exercise regimen and routines that are in place now on the International Space Station to help them prevent more bone loss and that sort of thing, and that has helped them re-acclimate to the earth's gravity very well.

They have been here in Houston going through that re-acclimation process since they landed almost two weeks ago.

Ed Lavandera, CNN -- at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Monday marked international transgender day of visibility with protesters marching across New York City waving signs and flags to show their support as the Trump administration continues to threaten transgender rights across the U.S.

Marches too on the streets of Mexico City, as many tried to highlight their ongoing struggle for equality.

Thank you for watching. I'm John Vause.

CNN NEWSROOM continues with my friend and colleague Rosemary Church after the break.

I'll see you right back here tomorrow.

[01:56:58]

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