Morning Joe - Morning Joe 6/12/25

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Anti-ICE protests spread across the country

If you only saw the social media and the media reports of what's going on over the last five days, you would think that Los Angeles is on the verge of war. There are 11 million people in this county, 4 million of which live in Los Angeles City. We estimate that there's probably thousands of people who've engaged in legitimate protests, let's say 4,000 people. We estimate there are hundreds of people, let's say up to maybe 400, to use rough percentages, who've engaged in this type of illegal activity.

So what does that mean? That means that 99.99% of people who live in Los Angeles City or live in Los Angeles County have not committed any illegal acts in connection with this protest whatsoever. That's LA County District Attorney Nathan Hockman providing some context to the protests across that area. It comes as demonstrations are beginning to spread to other US cities with more major protests planned through the weekend.

Also ahead, we'll go through new polling on President Donald Trump's approval rating, as well as how voters are feeling about his handling of his signature issue, immigration. Plus, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has named several new members to a crucial CDC committee on vaccines after firing the entire group earlier this week. We'll have much more about his picks and their views on vaccinations. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Thursday, June 12th.

I'm Jonathan Lemire in for Joe, Mika and Willie. We have a very, very busy news day ahead and to help us break us down we have managing editor at the bulwark Sam Stein, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas. He's also the author of the weekly newsletter Home and Away available on Substack as well as of course the host of Way Too Early Ali Vitale, a great group to start us off. And we'll begin this morning with the protests against Donald Trump's, his administration's

immigration policies, which have now spread from Los Angeles to cities across the United States. Thousands of people gathered nationwide yesterday to take a stand against ICE raids, and more demonstrations are planned in the coming days. In Seattle police say the crowd was ordered to disperse after protests turned heated and a fire was set in a dumpster. Elsewhere in Washington State the mayor of Spokane declared a state of emergency and issued a curfew last night after groups of people demonstrated outside an ICE facility there. To Las Vegas now, crowds came together carrying Mexican and American flags.

Local police declared an unlawful assembly due to protesters engaging in illegal activity. And in San Antonio, a crowd of about 200 gathered, chanting, peaceful protest. Texas Governor Greg Abbott had already deployed the National Guard there. Meanwhile, protests in LA turned violent just before the city's curfew took effect. Yesterday's rally near City Hall did start off peaceful and then took a turn, prompting police to declare an unlawful assembly. Officers on the horseback, as you see, began pushing into demonstrators in an effort to clear the crowd. Video shows officers even arresting some of the

demonstrators. This happened just 90 minutes before the city's curfew went into effect. This is the second night that parts of downtown LA are indeed under a curfew. Meanwhile, the commander in charge of the National Guard in LA tells the AP that about 500 members are trained to accompany agents on immigration operations. None so far have detained a protester, but the commander says they have gone through training and are prepared to do so if needed. The White House, of course, deployed about 4,000 troops to Los Angeles, nearly 2,000 of which are already

on the ground there. The commander says the 700 Marines who have been sent to the city are expected to be on the street as early as tonight. Joining us now from Los Angeles is NBC News correspondent, Camille Bernal. Camille, great to see you this morning. Give us the latest there. We just mentioned some altercations right before curfew set in. Give us a sense though, had the streets been quiet overnight, what are we expecting there

today? Yeah, that's a lot of what we've been seeing over the last couple of days. Mostly peaceful protests and then you have a group of people who start the chaos, who either throw things at police officers, and then the difference that you've had over the last couple of days is a very strong show of force from police officers dispersing those crowds very quickly

as these protesters continue to gather. We're obviously under that curfew right now, and it's a curfew that Mayor Karen Bass says is working. She says it's working because what they're doing is arresting dozens and dozens of people who defy that curfew order. And on the other hand, she says that you're not having the vandalism, the looting, the graffiti

that you had earlier in the weekend. That's why she believes that this curfew is working. Yes, we did have some people marching outside of those curfew areas because we've talked about the fact that it's a very small area in comparison to all of LA. What they're doing at times is walking out of these curfew areas, but you have LAPD again,

showing up in large numbers, dispersing those crowds, even if they are outside of those curfew zones. So in addition to the strong show of force, you are also seeing federal officials coming out and saying that they're going to prosecute the people who are causing that chaos and saying that they're going to go after people who are throwing rocks at police officers

or harming police officers, and also going after people who are throwing Molotov cocktails into the crowds and doing that sort of thing. Also saying that if you wear a mask, that is not going to stop them from finding you. So you're seeing a lot of that enforcement as people again continue to peacefully protest, mostly earlier in the day showing up and saying that they want their voices heard. Back to the issue that we've been talking about all week, which is the ice rates and people not wanting to see that military presence

here in Los Angeles, not wanting to see the raids and the deportation of their coworkers or friends or family members. You're of course, seeing this sort of be mirrored around the country in other cities as well. You showed some of the images from around the country. And organizers here saying there is no timeframe or time limit as to how long they're going to protest. They're organizing mostly through social media

and a lot of them say they're going to be here for as long as the National Guard is here. So we'll see what happens today. NBC's Camila Bernal live for us in Los Angeles. Thank you so much will keep an eye on developments there in Sam Stein. These are human stories of course first and foremost, but let's look at it through a political lens for a moment and about what's to come protests still continuing in

Los Angeles protests beginning to spread throughout the country with a lot timed for this weekend, as well as reports that there are going to be these ICE raids, these tactical ICE raids are also going to pick up in cities across the country in the coming days. If we start seeing scenes in LA be repeated elsewhere, you know, are we, are we, is this an immigration issue that perhaps is not great for Democrats, or is this a overuse of federal authority of the military issue that I know a lot of people think Donald Trump has gone way too far with?

It's a great question. I mean, what we know factually is that the administration does want to ramp up the amount of deportations that it's seeing to something like 3,000 a day. And that is kind of what precipitated where we are right now. Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, DHS, they began targeting Home Depots, they began targeting laborers. It expanded beyond people who were here who had criminal records and to people who were here who had been here for decades.

And that was what precipitated the response protests to the ICE raids. If they're going to continue to ramp up, obviously they're going to start reaching into other cities. They already have, frankly. And that will, in all likelihood, spark another blowback, which in turn will spark use of the National Guard and so on and so forth.

You get the sense, just talking from people in and around Trump's orbit, that they don't mind this fight, that they think that they're on the right side of the issue, that coming down hard with the federal government even with the military is a proposition that Americans are comfortable with and frankly that they promised during the campaign. But then you do and I know we're gonna be talking about it get some polling numbers that does suggest that the public is a little bit queasy with what's going on here.

And I am curious, I honestly don't know, as these images continue to spool out, as we continue to talk about it, are people going to be comfortable with what they see on their TV, on their social media feeds, and so on and so forth? Yeah, we're starting to get a snapshot of that from some new polling, which we'll dive into in just a second. But Richard, first, just a brief beat from you, if you will, about just the presence of the military on the streets of American cities. National Guard already there, Marines in the area, potentially on the streets of LA as

the day goes on. And President Trump has suggested there might be more coming. There will be more coming. Because what you have, if you will, are two dynamics. You have the let's arrest and deport up to 3,000, say 3,000 people a day. Do the math. That's a million people a year. And that could go on.

That could be a feature of the rest of the Trump administration, just given the numbers we're talking about. Then you're going to have protests and you're going to have the dynamic between protesters, police, national guards, and potentially the military. For the military, I think it's bad in lots of ways, Jonathan. If they're doing this, then they're not available for other things, the readiness impact. They're not trained for this. Military is not trained for interacting with civilians.

That's not their... Military is trained to kill, for the most part. This is not what it is they do. I also worry about unit cohesion, the politics of this seeping into the American military a little bit. This could become a flashpoint within it. It could cause all sorts of internal friction and unrest. And it also breaks some of the bonds between the US military and the American people.

Let me think about it. Since Vietnam, the military in some ways has become the most successful institution in American society. And what we are doing in some ways, I would argue, is putting it at risk by asking it to take on an enormous domestic mission, which is not essentially what it is trained for. And ultimately, this is going to bring forth fundamental constitutional issues and political issues in this country. A military that President Trump is trying to make more and more political, it would

seem. So let's turn now to that new polling. It's from Quinnipiac University, and it shows that 38% of voters approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president. That's lower than other recent polling, to underscore just 38% approve, while 54% disapprove of his performance in the White House. The president is also underwater on some of his top issues, including immigration. On that issue, Trump's approval rating has dropped down to 43%.

Trump is also upside down on questions of deportations, on the economy, trade, his handling of the nation's universities, as well as the conflicts in both Gaza and Ukraine. A majority of the voters also had objections to his signature piece of legislation, which of course he has deemed the big beautiful bill. Fifty-three percent of those polled do not support the legislation. Twenty-seven percent do support it, and another twenty percent offered no opinion. So Mike Barclay, some other polls have lately have him a little higher than this.

This is the lowest we've seen. But although the trends are there, he has definitely, his approval rating has declined, especially in the last week or so. And let's just start with the idea of on his signature issue, because we heard from Sam a moment ago, he's right, immigration was perhaps one of his key campaign promises. He said, I'm going to do this. Perhaps Americans though didn't anticipate the presence of American soldiers on American streets as well as some of the other in-your-face tactics.

What do you see in these numbers? I see the same thing in these numbers as I see on television. This is such a visual nation. And it begins with the spark of a flame in Los Angeles. And it occurs in a street that's maybe less than a mile long. And yet within six hours, because of what we see on TV, it explodes into this myth that Los Angeles is under siege, that Los Angeles, according to Kristi Noem, is filled with bad people. is under siege, that Los Angeles, according to Kristi Noem, is filled with bad people,

that there are riots throughout Los Angeles, when that was just not the case. And so now we're into the contagion factor, Jonathan. And with regard to the president's popularity on this, again, we go back to the visual. People see on their home screens, watching the news, they see men jumping out of SUVs, wearing masks, grabbing American citizens off the street, and within 24 hours that citizen, he or she, might end up in Texas at some prison or in Arkansas at some prison, whether they're taken off the streets in New York or Boston or Somerville, Massachusetts, where that happened to a young woman. So you've got all of that going on at the same time.

This portends to be a long, hot summer, because the contagion factor has now set in. As we were just reporting, from city to city to city, people are out. And sometimes the local police departments aren't up to handling it. The Los Angeles Police Department made one initial mistake. They waited too long on that first day to tell the demonstrators, we have the power of arrest. These are handcuffs. You take one step forward, you raise any prospect of violence against us, you're going to jail.

They just waited a little too long. They're doing fine now, but this is a troubled country with a troubled issue. Yeah, a lot of eyes will be on the protests this weekend. Numerous planned. And Ali Battali, the Trump administration basically has made two big bets, right? One's on immigration, just talked about that. The other is this signature piece of legislation, where it's the entire Trump Republican agenda in one package. And this poll suggests Americans don't really like what they're seeing. And yet they're reportedly, the Trump administration, trying to sell this on Capitol Hill as popular in

various ways. For example, telling lawmakers that not letting tax cuts lapse, basically saying that they're cutting taxes even though they're just preserving what's already there, is popular with the American people. So they're trying to make that political sell to lawmakers who, with the passage of time, might be getting more and more uncomfortable with this bill. But I also think it's important to lay out the landscape and kind of build upon what Mike Barnicle was just saying, that this idea of protests spreading throughout the country and the backdrop of just this last week alone, the White House starting the week by leveraging these National Guard troops in Los Angeles against the objections of key state leaders there, then following through to the entirety of the week that will culminate on Saturday

with this military parade that most Republican senators say they're not going to be able to go to for scheduling issues or because they have concerns about the cost. All of it is meant to leverage the military might of this country, put it on display, and show that Trump is atop of it. It's clearly an optics feature that he is very keen on, the White House keen to say that it's an outgrowth of their immigration mandate,

and yet most of the sources that I talk to who are concerned about this optic say that the more that it gets into a military space and the less it gets in an immigration space, that's where the scales could potentially tip. More on this in a moment. We want to turn now to this breaking news out of India, where a passenger plane has crashed. Video shows plumes of smoke in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad.

Officials say that the Air India plane, a Boeing jet, crashed in a residential area just five minutes after taking off. This is a live look at the scene. The flight was headed to London with 244 people on board. It's not clear how many people were injured, but officials say that they are being taken to the hospital. Let's quickly bring in NBC News foreign correspondent Claudio Lavagna. Claudio, good to see you this morning. What more do we know about this unfolding tragedy in India? Good morning, Jonathan. What we know so far from local authorities and Air India is that a Boeing 787 operated by Air India, which is the country's flag carrier, crashed into a residential area near the airport shortly

after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad. Now according to Air India, the plane was carrying 242 people, 230 were passengers and 12 were crew members. Now local television footage shows as you've seen smoke billowing from the crash area. The flight was bound to London Gatwick Airport and was scheduled to land here later today. Now, we also just got a breakdown of the nationalities of those on board from Air India. 169 people are Indians, 53 are British, one Canadian, and seven of them are Portuguese. Jonathan. All right. NBC News foreign correspondent Claudio Lavagna, thank you.

We of course will be following this all morning long here on Morning Joe. Heartbreaking images there, including a piece of luggage we just saw removed from the scorched debris. We will stay with it. All right, next ahead on Morning Joe, nuclear talks with Iran appear to be deadlocked, leading to rising tensions in the Middle East. We'll dig into that as the United States partially evacuates embassies in the area. Perhaps an ominous sign.

Plus, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell presses Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the administration's stance on the war in Ukraine. We'll play for you his response. And also ahead, we'll explain just what's going on with the DNC as its vice chair is stepping away just four months after he was elected. And of course a reminder that the Morning Joe podcast is available each and every weekday featuring our full conversations and analysis. You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. You're

watching Morning Joe. We'll be back in just 90 seconds. Welcome back. Time now for a look at some of the other stories of making headlines this morning, beginning with Israel, which may be preparing to strike Iran without U.S US support, even as the Trump administration continues to push for a diplomatic nuclear deal with that country. That's according to five people with knowledge of the situation who spoke to NBC News. Sources say that Israel views the emerging deal framework as unacceptable and may decide to act alone. American embassies in the region have been ordered to assess risks

and non-essential personnel are being evacuated. Now, while the United States is not expected to participate militarily in any possible strike, officials remain on high alert as Iran could retaliate against American targets. So Richard, let's take a moment and discuss this. The next round of talks, I believe Oman just announced that the sixth round will happen this weekend. So the Trump administration is still trying to get a deal. The Prime Minister Netanyahu may not be waiting.

And I think the backdrop of this, of course, is the frayed relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, where the US has had, well, for a couple of years now, little to no control over what the Prime minister of Israel does. What do you see in these days ahead? How likely do you think it is that we'll see military action? Look, Jonathan, at the moment, you can prepare for military action, in this case, Israel, and that also can be supportive of the negotiations. It focuses the Iranians on the alternative to a negotiation.

And you can also be preparing for military action. I do not think the Israelis would use military force over American objections. If Donald Trump goes to Bibi Netanyahu, hold off. I simply do not believe any Israeli prime minister would act militarily here. I just don't buy that. The consequences of that would be too great. So I don't think we've yet reached that point. But yeah, because also you saw the report from the nuclear so-called watchdogs, the

International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has gone much farther down the path towards accumulating an enormous enriched uranium stockpile. They are not that far from having a significant capability. So I think, whatever cliche you want to use, yes, the clock is ticking. But again, I simply don't see the Israelis doing this over American injections. But at some point, if this administration gives up on the agreement, on the negotiations, they may tell the Israelis, fine, because they do not want, for good reason, Iran to

have multiple nuclear devices. I think one big question for the administration, are they willing to compromise at all on Iran's ability to have any enriched uranium? And right now, that seems to be the sticking point in the negotiations. Earlier this year, President Trump did wave off Netanyahu from carrying out a military strike. We will have to see if he does so again. Moving now from the Middle East to Europe, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

is contradicting President Trump when it comes to the threat posed by Russia. Here's what General Dan Kaine told Senator Lindsey Graham yesterday on Capitol Hill during testimony alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegsef. Is Putin going to stop in Ukraine? I don't believe he is, sir. I think he'll go until... What do you think, Secretary? Is he going to stop?

Remains to be seen, Senate. Well, he says he's not. You know, this is the 30s all over. It doesn't remain to be seen. He tells everybody around what he wants to do. So to make clear, that's the president's top military advisors suggesting that Vladimir Putin wants to conquer other countries beyond Ukraine General Cain also refuted some GOP claims that the demonstrations in Los Angeles Are a sign of the United States is being invaded by a foreign nation

That's sort of important because it's that sort of foreign invasion concept that Trump has tried to legally justify some of the deportation moves that his administration is carrying out. But Richard, let's go back to the Ukraine bit about Russia not stopping with Ukraine. We know that, I mean, Lindsey Graham also, he's one of the co-sponsors in a bill that now has 80 sponsors, a really tough sanctions bill against Russia that President Trump simply hasn't supported just yet. We know for a decade now, Trump has been very deferential to Putin and has blamed this war almost equally on both Moscow and Kiev.

What does it say to you, though, that his top military adviser was unwilling? We haven't seen this much in this administration to defy him. Tell him, no, he's wrong. That's actually welcome. You know, the purpose of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is to speak truth to power. He came in after C.Q. Brown was, you know, fired by this president. I actually thought this was a good thing, and he's right. And by the way, Vladimir Putin, if he wants to, he could do certain things, say in Lithuania or one of these other countries, and there's a real doubt whether the United States would meet its so-called Article 5 If he wants to, he could do certain things, say, in Lithuania or one of these other countries. And there's a real doubt whether the United States would meet its so-called Article 5

commitment, attack on one is attack on all in NATO. I think there's real doubt. He doesn't need to conquer a country. What Putin needs to do is expose that the commitment that's at the core of NATO is no longer certain. If he does that, that's the end of NATO as we've known it. So I actually think this is potentially a really big moment. And that, that's the end of NATO as we've known it. So I actually think this is potentially a really big moment. And Jonathan, now what's still missing? Any sign

that this administration is prepared to help Ukraine militarily in an open-ended way, even if these sanctions were to happen on Russia. Let's be blunt, that would not be enough to get Vladimir Putin to back off. So Richard, off of what you just said with regard to Article 5, with regard to Putin wanted to take over Lithuania at some point and us doing nothing, there's a huge meeting in Ottawa today, many European leaders there. Are we on the verge or are we there? Are we now a nation alone? Well, essentially, we're entering into the what you might...the post-American era in

terms of European security, where our role will go from dominant to something much more junior and the Europeans are increasingly contemplating a future where they might have to be self-sufficient. There's good aspects of that. There's also really uneasy aspects of that, particularly over the next couple of years. And more broadly, Mike, yeah. I mean, think about it, the President's announcement on tariffs, this sort of thing. The United States, whether you want to call it America first.

But I actually think, you know, this turns out this President's not isolationist, but we are unilateralist on virtually every issue, whether it's getting out of the Paris climate thing or getting out of the World Health Organization, the unilateral tariffs, moving back from our commitments in Europe. He won't make certain commitments about Taiwan. What we have essentially done is gone from being a predictable great power, there with our allies deterring our foes,

to now being an unpredictable power, much more essentially listening to ourselves and keeping the rest of the world uncertain. And I think what you're beginning to see is American allies adjust to a world in which the United States, after 80 years, is now playing a fundamentally different role. We'll have much more on the situation in Ukraine a little bit later this hour. Returning back to matters here at home, David Hogg says he is stepping aside from his role at the Democratic National Committee

after the party voted on a plan that would force him to run for his job all over again. Hogg, who had just recently been elected as vice chair, angered many in the party with his plan to spend millions of dollars on primary challenges against fellow Democrats in an effort to bring younger voices into the fold. The move follows the release of an internal audio recording where party chairman Ken Martin is heard complaining about Hogg's role. I'll be very honest with you for the first time in my hundred days on this job and Jessica knows this. And I said the other night, I said to myself for the first time, I don't know if I want to do this anymore.

I don't think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to. So it's really frustrating. And Sam, I think that frustrating is a nice way of putting the way that members of the DNC are feeling right now, because this vote that they took to basically hold another vote on some of their key vice chair slots was actually because of some kind of a bylaw or regulation that members felt that they misinterpreted. But what my sources say is that it very clearly became, if they voted to revote, which they

did, it was a referendum on hog. And I think him saying, I'm not going to run again is reading the writing on the wall. But Eugene Daniels and I were talking about this at the end of my show.

Is it better to have him in the official tent or outside of it still doing the agitating at the grassroots level that he was always going to be doing? To be clear, what Ken Martin said there, I said every day to Jonathan Lemire when I was his editor. I don't know if I have the will to go on. And Ken Martin said there, I said every day to Jonathan Lamir when I was his editor at political.

I don't know if I have the will to go on. And yet here you stand. And yet here I am. So you can survive this, Ken Martin. Secondarily, let's just be clear. David Hogg obviously brings an incredible amount of vigor and energy and youth, which is primarily what they need in the Democratic Party. But it's fundamentally crazy to be a DNC official and launch $20 million worth of primary campaigning against DNC, against Democrats.

I mean, it's just antithetical to the committee. And so it couldn't exist in that fashion. Now is it worse to have him out than in? We'll find out. I mean, he might, as you say, I hope I don't get in trouble. Piss on the tent, is that what you're saying? Yeah, something like that. I was saying it without saying it.

OK, sorry. I'm sorry if I got in trouble there. I no longer have the will. But I do think, you know, you can't live with that in the DNC. It's just fundamentally not applicable. So they had to get to this place at some point in time. They chose to rip off the bandaid. It was inartful, but there was no other outcome.

That was also my understanding of like the way that the DNC apparatus had been trying to deal with this, Jonathan, is the fact that they were trying to keep David Hogg within the fold, understanding the generational momentum that he was carrying, but then also trying to tell him, hey, wait, we don't play in primaries like that. We have to have neutrality. And ultimately, that tension spilled over quite publicly. Yeah, no question there. Also, some smart analysis there from Sam Stein in his final appearance on MSNBC.

Coming up here on Morning Joe, Elon Musk and President Trump spoke over the phone just before the Tesla CEO publicly apologized for criticizing the commander in chief. We'll dig into that new report straight ahead on Morning Joe. Beautiful shot there from chopper four sunrise here in New York City. It's going to be hot today, 90 degrees, but don't worry, it's going to rain again this weekend. Meanwhile, back to politics. Elon Musk is reportedly trying to make amends with President Trump after the tech billionaire posted a slew of attacks against Trump on his social

media site that he owns, X. According to the New York Times, the pair spoke privately over the phone Monday night just before Musk publicly apologized on social media, doing so Wednesday, expressing regret over the posts, writing that they, quote, went too far. Trump told the New York Post yesterday it was very nice that Musk apologized. But the Post reports the president did not say whether he was willing to let bygones be bygones.

It's not exactly Trump's thing. Musk has criticized Trump's big, beautiful bill and his aggressive tariff policies, commenting that the tariffs will quote, cause a recession in the second half of this year. And now we heard from Elon Musk, now let's hear from former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Steve there has indeed been plenty of speculation about how Trump's tariffs will impact the country. So tell us how does the economy plenty of speculation about how Trump's tariffs will impact the country.

So tell us, how does the economy look almost five months into Trump's second term? Yeah, it's interesting, Jonathan. I think all of us predicted that inflation would start to go up as a result of those tariffs. But yesterday, there was a report that, in fact, it has really not yet gone up, or at least not yet gone up. So the Commerce Department reported that prices for all goods went up by 2.4, I just said Labor Department, 2.4%.

But for what we call core goods, which is you take out energy and other volatile categories like food, they went up 2.8%. And that, as you can see, is flat here and just slightly up here. So pretty good news on inflation. Why? I think people feel there are three reasons why we haven't seen the tariffs yet. First of all, importers stocked up

in anticipation of those tariffs. Secondly, businesses are trying hard not to raise prices, although at some point, I think we expect them to. And thirdly, the tariffs have been on and off and paused and so on. And so the effective tariff rate is actually, at the moment, a good bit lower than what Trump had put in place at the beginning. But economists still expect them to rise by about 3% this year, which means faster than that at the end of the year.

And consumers actually expect them to go up 6.5%. Trump, as you know, has been posting on social media about how the Fed has to cut interest rates, the Fed has to cut interest rates. The Fed's target is 2%. They use a slightly different price index, but close enough. 2% is what the Fed wants to cut interest rates. So there's a tug of war going on right now between Trump and Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed.

But let's look at another indication of what impact the tariffs may have this year. The World Bank, completely dispassionate and neutral organization, put out its semiannual forecast the day before yesterday. And what did they do? They took down growth estimates for the US pretty substantially. They had been projecting back in January 2.3%. Now they're down at 1.4%. It is more than worth noting that 1.4% is exactly half of the 2.8% that we achieved

in the last year of the Biden administration. So the president who promised to quote revitalize the American economy is actually looking at a growth rate of half of what it was last year. And then the other noteworthy point is we may well be shooting ourselves in the foot because the World Bank only took down its estimates for Europe's growth rate, which is slower than ours, but they took it down by a much smaller share. And they didn't change China's growth rate at all. So they feel that China is going to work its way through these tariffs a lot better than

we are. That's such an important point about growth rate. We'll have more to say about tariffs in just a moment as we read from a Wall Street Journal editorial board take about Trump's tariff policy towards China, or lack thereof, really. So Steve, let's move now to chart two. Labor market slowing down. Yeah. So we had an unemployment report last Friday, and the good news is the economy added a lot

of jobs. The bad news is that the growth rate in jobs have been decelerating. Now, some of this was inevitable. This is as we were coming out of COVID, this is a very, very high number of jobs that we were adding. And so it's natural that it would have come down. But now for the last several months, the number of jobs we're adding is actually below. This is the pre-pandemic average. So this is a kind of normal, stable economy, jobs we're adding is actually below. This is the pre-pandemic average.

So this is a kind of normal, stable economy, what we were adding. And this is what we've been adding over the last 12 months. There's one other interesting point about this which is not on here, which is that 600,000 people dropped out of the labor force last month. That is a very big number. We don't know who they are. I don't know who they are. But it's not out of the question.

This may have something to do with Trump's immigration policies. But consumers also have noticed the fact that the job market is weakening. If you look at the percentage who think jobs are plentiful, it's dropped to 32%. It was up here close to 60% as we came out of COVID. That's also obviously a naturally high.

But if you look even before COVID, the number of people who thought they were plentiful was about 45 percent. The people who think not so plentiful, obviously rising. And the people who say hard to get, 19 percent, also well above pre-COVID levels. And Steve, another indicator of this economic uncertainty that just seems so pervasive is your third chart. Home buyers simply aren't biting. Yeah, I think when you talk about those poll numbers you were showing earlier, things like the situation with jobs

and then with houses play a factor in all this. So what's happened? It's really interesting because the number, again, coming out of COVID, ignore all these wild fluctuations, but coming out of COVID, the number of buyers, the number of sellers was kind of in balance.

Now look what's happened. The number of sellers has shot up to almost 2 million. The number of buyers has dropped to one and a half million. And so you've got almost 500,000 houses sitting on the market waiting for buyers. Now why has that happened? Some of it is clearly economic uncertainty. Again, you go back to the Trump economic policies, up, down, backwards, sideways. People do not want to make major purchases when they really

have no idea where the country is going. So that's a factor. But the other factor is that what we call affordability, what an average consumer has to pay to afford his house, has been rising for a good while since we started raising interest rates coming out of COVID. So back here in 21, it was $1,000. Today it's about $2,000.

And so that is a significant impact on consumers. But Trump, who again came to office promising he was going to solve all these kinds of problems, what's happened? Since election day, it's gone from $2,100 up to almost $2,200. And on liberation day, it actually took a particularly large jump because the 30-year treasury took a particularly large jump because of the tariffs. So we're going in the wrong direction on housing affordability at the moment, as well as consumers' willingness to make major purchases as we live in this

world of economic uncertainty. Yeah, lots of warning signs there. So as mentioned, the Wall Street Journal editorial board argues that Trump has no China trade strategy. Its new piece reads in part this way. President Trump on Wednesday hailed the results of the latest trade talks with China as a great victory. But the best we can say is that it's a truce that tilts in China's direction.

Trade wars are mutually destructive. Though Mr. Trump's export controls harmed American businesses as well as the Chinese, his latest walk back shows he can't bully China as he tried to do in his first term. China has leverage of its own. A smarter trade strategy would be to work with allies as a united front to counter China's predatory trade practices. Instead, Mr. Trump has used tariffs as an economic scatter gun against friends as well as foes.

This increases China's leverage and like this week's trade truce, that's nothing to cheer about. Richard Haass, let's again, it's a framework, it's not a full deal just yet, but we were talking just last block about how Trump has strained alliances and how that's pertained to the situation in Europe with standing up to Russia, NATO being weakened. The Journal points out that same approach has really damaged his tactics here against China in his trade battle. Yeah, and what he had to do is relax U.S. export controls in order to get this truth. But let me make a point here because it's not just Donald Trump. People always say we need more bipartisanship, Jonathan. We've got bipartisanship and we got it in two ways here. One is the United States,

under Democrats and Republicans alike, has been unwilling to join trade agreements with our allies in the Asia Pacific. So we have no leverage. We could set up a system with 40% of the world economy and tell China, here's the rules. We refuse to do it because of protectionism under Democrats and Republicans alike. We have given up our leverage. Second of all, we have allowed ourselves to become crazily dependent on these so-called rare earth minerals, these 17 minerals that are central for everything from screens to

certain things on military aircraft and so forth. China controls the market in producing them and processing them. We need the equivalent of what we have in energy, a strategic petroleum reserve. We need a strategic rare earth mineral reserve. We don't have it. China has us over a barrel. And all they did in this truce was agree to issue licenses for six months. We're going to be up against this again in six months.

So because we don't have trade agreements with our allies, and we haven't come up with a domestic stockpiling of these rare earth minerals, we have given China enormous leverage. And this is on Congress and the executive branch, Democrats, Republicans. Donald Trump is but the most recent president who has not dealt successfully with this problem. Steve Radner, final word to you on Trump and China. Yeah, I think Richard laid it out pretty clearly, and I'm certainly not going to wander into his lane of global politics, but I will say something on the economic side.

So he's clearly right. These rare earth minerals are used to make magnets, which are very important, particularly in electric cars, but cars in general. And what was happening is we were running short of them, and car companies are literally shutting assembly lines down because they can't get these magnets. We do have a large supply of rare earth minerals in this country in the ground, but we are not willing to process them here because of various environmental reasons. The Chinese are obviously much less sensitive to the environment, so they have kind of cornered

the world on processing. So we have options, Richard's option, my option, and so forth, but right now China had Trump, and he had no choice but to make this deal. Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner and his charts. Thank you so very much. Still ahead here on Morning Joe, a view from the front lines in Ukraine with the filmmaker behind the new documentary Our War. That's next on Morning Joe. Welcome back. Earlier this week, we reported on Health and Human Services Secretary Rob Duff Kennedy

Jr. removing the entire 17-person CDC vaccine advisory panel. And this morning, we bring you this update. Secretary Kennedy has announced eight new members of the panel on social media. He wrote in part, all of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold standard science, and common sense. The newly appointed members will have a crucial role in the country's vaccination procedures. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices reviews vaccine data and makes recommendations to the CDC on the vaccine schedule. Now, let's be clear. Several of those selected for the panel are well-known vaccine skeptics,

most notably Dr. Robert Malone. Dr. Malone once played a key role in the development of mRNA vaccines, but is now a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine community. Earlier this year, he suggested without evidence that the deadly measles outbreak that happened a few months ago was actually due to medical errors instead of the actual virus. Sam Stein, there are real worries about some of these selections and the overall trend from RFK Jr.'s leadership here. Kennedy himself, of course, a significant vaccine skeptic, and now he's inserting others

into really important roles in the CDC. This could very well change, maybe now, maybe a little bit down the road, Americans' ability to get vaccines and frankly, the nation's health. Yeah. I mean, just because you declare something gold standard doesn't make it gold. Let's just put it that way. It could be fool's gold, actually. These eight people, about half of them have strong credentials but half of them are known

conspiracists or critics of vaccines in their past. And the irony here is that Kennedy says he's doing this in order to restore the integrity of this advisory committee. He may have just killed all the credibility behind the committee. People in the community, scientists, people who believe in vaccines, epidemiologists, they are looking at this with horror. They do not see this as a gold standard expedition. They think this is the logical step of what happens when you put a anti-vax conspiracist

atop the Department of Health and Human Services. And frankly, you'd have to have been a fool not to have imagined that this is where we would end up. Kennedy's later career, I should say, after he became environmentalist and went into vaccine advocacy, has been about sowing distrust with the current scientific consensus, about sowing distrust with vaccinations. And when he took over the most powerful health agency in the world, it was obvious that he was going to start seeding that distrust into HHS.

And I'm just shocked that people like Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, deluded themselves into thinking that he would be consulted on these decisions. Cassidy, a doctor, of course, wavered on Kennedy, eventually cast an important vote to confirm him. Sam Stein, important words. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.