Morning Wire - Trump - Putin Faceoff & NPR Sues Trump | 5.28.25

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Tensions between Russia and the US rise as Trump and Putin escalate their war of words, NPR follows Harvard in suing the Trump administration in order to retain public funding, and MAHA has set its sights on regulating pesticides, but it’s causing a rift among Republicans. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Chevron: Visit Chevron.com/America to discover more. Shopify: Go to https://Shopify.com/morningwire to sign up for your $1 per month trial period and upgrade your selling today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Trouvee de petitions like another.com on Amazon.ca. The U.S. reinforces Europe's northern front as Russia ramps up its assault on Ukraine. Right now, there is zero leverage, strategic leverage that the United

States has over Russia. It's because we have been sleeping at the wheel. I'm Daily Wire, executive editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howl. It's Wednesday, May 28th, and this is Morning Wire. NPR joins Harvard in suing the Trump administration in an attempt to cling to their taxpayer funding. Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard. And it is hard to see the link between that and say anti-Semitism.

And everyone wants to regulate pesticides. so why is the issue causing a rift within the GOP? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. If you run a small business, you know there's nothing small about it. Even the smallest decisions can feel massive.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at Shopify.com, slash morningwire. Head over to Shopify.com slash morningwire. Again, that's Shopify.com slash morning wire. The war of words between Donald Trump and Moscow escalated Tuesday as the president considers major sanctions against Russia. Daily Wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips has more on the growing tensions. Hey, Cabot. So major escalation, a pretty precarious situation with the U.S. and

Russia right now. Catch us up to speed. Yeah, as we discussed yesterday, over the weekend, President Trump took very public shots at Vladimir Putin, calling him crazy after he launched that unprecedented aerial barrage on Ukraine. The Kremlin responded by issuing a sort of sarcastic statement, thanking the United States for their commitment to finding peace and accusing Trump of, quote, emotional overload that clearly angered Trump, who on Tuesday issued a new statement of his own on social media, this time with a clear threat. Quote, what Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia. And I mean really bad. He is playing with fire.

And now the president is considering further sanctions in response. Tell us more on that front. Yeah, a number of reports from the White House suggest those new sanctions against Moscow could come as early as this week. Multiple times over the last few months, Russia has launched new strikes on Ukraine. That prompted Trump to issue new threats of sanctions. And then Putin has in turn responded with promises to come to negotiating table. But each time after those promises, he's really They just stalled on negotiating and continued his invasion. Trump is reportedly concerned that those sanctions could drive Putin even further from the negotiating table and prolong the war. But the reality is, barring increased military support for Ukraine, Trump doesn't have many other options for exerting pressure.

GOP Senator Chuck Grassley, for example, said on social media, quote, I believe President Trump was sincere when he thought his friendship with Putin would end the war. Now, that being the case, it's time for sanctions strong enough so Putin knows game over. So what would sanctions look like exactly? Well, first, Congress has made clear to the White House that they are ready to roll if he gives them the green light. They'd be able to pass new measures, they said, with overwhelming bipartisan support. One idea is to slap a 500% import tariff on any country who continues to purchase Russian oil, petroleum, and natural gas. President Zelensky has cheered on that idea, saying it would, quote,

serve as a guaranteed means of forcing Russia not only to ceasefire, but also to show respect. But look, there are skeptics who question whether sanctions will actually work. To that point, we spoke with Rebecca Koffler, former defense intelligence analyst and author of the book Putin's playbook. The sanctions were never intended to work. It just makes people feel better. Like I said, the economy has been sanction-proof. The companies were mandated to produce indigenously everything that Russia needs. Second thing that he did, he beefed up his sovereign wealth.

fund to an all-time high, $650 billion. And the next thing is he de-dollarized Russia's foreign exchange reserves. And this is why the Russian economy is relatively stable. Koffler went on to explain why Putin feels he has the leverage in the showdown with Ukraine and the West more broadly. To this day, Russia produces in three months more military hardware than the entire NATO alliance produces in one year. Think about that.

It's because Putin transitioned his military and economy on a wartime footing a decade ago in 2015. So after a spring that saw optimism regarding peace talks, Putin is giving new signs that he's in this war for the long haul. Yeah, things rapidly escalating over the last few days. We'll see where this leads. Cabot. Thanks so much for reporting. Absolutely. America is built on hard work and powered by American.

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Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now with the latest. So, Megan, let's start with Harvard. What's happening there? Okay, so last Friday, a federal judge in Boston issued a restraining order blocking the Trump administration from pulling funding for Harvard's international students. Now, the policy would impact over 7,000 foreign visa holders or about 30% of Harvard's entire student body. And the university argues it's a direct response to its refusal to comply with administration demands to have race-blind admissions, NDEI programs, and screen international students for alleged ties to either terrorism or anti-Semitism. Harvard President Alan Garber reacted to the move. It is a warning. they see this as a message that if you don't comply with what we're demanding, these will be the consequences.

Now, this came after Harvard filed a lawsuit that same day calling the ban on its funding unconstitutional and retaliatory. So this conflict began escalating in April when the administration froze $2.2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard. And then on April 21st, Harvard filed its first lawsuit, accusing the administration of violating the First Amendment and due process clause. And then this week, on May 27th, the administration up to the anti-again directing federal agencies to terminate 100 million in remaining contracts with Harvard. Their reason, it's failure to address anti-Semitism and promote national interests. Now, Harvard's president, Alan Garber, told NPR that these actions threaten not just the university, but critical research. This is what Trump said on Sunday.

Part of the problem with Harvard is that they're about 31%, almost 31% of foreigners coming to Harvard. We give them billions of dollars, which is ridiculous. We want to know other people. Now, a lot of the foreign students, we wouldn't have a problem with. I'm not going to have a problem with foreign students, but it shouldn't be 31%. It's too much because we have Americans who want to go there and to other places, and they can't go there. No foreign government contributes money to Harvard.

We do. Now, Trump says he's considering taking this funding and directing it to America. and trade schools to develop our own workforce instead. Now, this is playing out very much in parallel with the administration's showdown with NPR. Recently, Trump moved to block their taxpayer funding as well, and now they're suing to retain those funds. Can you give us the latest on that front? Yeah, so NPR, along with three Colorado public radio stations, filed a lawsuit yesterday in federal court in Washington, D.C., and they're also challenging President Trump's May 1st executive

order to cut off all federal funding to end. NPR and PBS, and that totals about 500 million annually. So this lawsuit argues that the order violates the First Amendment's protections of free speech and of the press. NPR CEO, Catherine Marr, called it retaliatory viewpoint-based discrimination, and she's accusing the administration of punishing NPR for its coverage. But the White House argues that taxpayer money should not flow to politically biased news outlets. Now, do we have any sense of how likely these suits are to succeed?

Well, you know, on Harvard and the foreign students, it looks like it's going to depend on whether the administration can reframe these issues as disputes about national security or fiscal policy. If they manage that and they can get into a conservative-leaning appellate court, then they have a decent chance. For NPR, if the courts decide that the defunding is a legitimate exercise of executive discretion over federal spending, then they win. Well, and just something to keep in mind, Harvard has the large. endowment, I think, of any university in the world. So they're not exactly hurting for cash. Megan, thanks for reporting. My pleasure.

At both the federal and state level, there's a looming battle within the GOP over potential regulations on pesticides. Here to discuss as Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta, Hay Amanda. First, why don't you set the stage for us here? Why are pesticides causing a rift in the GOP? Hey, John. Yeah, some of the Republican Party say that they're worried about farmers in their districts who rely on pesticides like glyphosate, which has caught the eye of HHS. And there have been reports that there are concerns from within the White House that abrupt regulatory action on

these chemicals could trigger supply chain issues. Now, on the other side of this, you have some Republicans and this Maha coalition of activists who want to see pesticides that have been banned in other countries to be banned here as well. Or at the least, there are some GOP representatives who are currently fighting off efforts in their states to shield pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits over apparent harms they cause, including even cancer. Let's look at the federal level first. What's HHS saying about this? Well, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken out about pesticides for years now. He said that they're poisoning American children. He's not backing down from that, but his

department, HHS, is really towing the line between these two camps and the GOP. Top Kennedy advisor, Callie, means, for example, earlier this month, he said that while HHS will state the truth about pesticides, he said, said the department has no desire for nanny state regulatory measures on these chemicals. Here's means at an axiose event. It is a fact that we ingest 25% of the world's pesticides in the United States, and many of our leading pesticides have been, to have other countries across the world have chosen to phase them out or ban them, calling them carcinogenic and disruptive to kids.

The policy solutions from this are not obvious. Pesticides are deeply ingrained into the U.S. agriculture system, and it would be a disaster to phase them out tomorrow. Nobody's suggesting that. Means added that HHS would love to help harness the private sector to help combat this issue. All right, so real hesitance about any sweeping measures there. What about the state level? What are we saying there?

So the big fight here is over pesticide manufacturer Baer. That's a German-based company that acquired Monsanto in 2018. There's legislation on more than a dozen states right now to shield bear from forthcoming legal action over its failure to warn about potential harms associated with its products, specifically Roundup, which contains glyphosate. I spoke to Missouri Republican lawmaker Nick Schroier, who's fighting efforts to shield bear in his state. I think it's approach just to believe that any company, any company in America or anywhere, should get any form of blanket immunity for the products that they're putting in the stream

of commerce. I think the Seventh Amendment guarantees are access to the courts. Schroier told me that there are almost 200,000 lawsuits that have been filed nationwide over Roundup, allegedly causing different diseases, cancers, and even deaths. In his state, Republicans are split on passing a bill to shield bear. Schroer told me that that divide has a lot to do with lobbying efforts. Groups associated with Bayer, associated with the life estate manufacturers. They targeted nine different senators, and we've seen some of the state reps actually

bend the knee and vote yes, even though they had concerns over the bill. However, he also explained that worries about farmers are a real concern for some representatives. Even with the farmers, some of them are split on whether this is a good bill or not. Some of them say, look, if I get cancer, my family gets cancer from this product, you're damn right. I want to have the ability to sue this company. Whereas other farmers are saying, look, if we don't grant them immunity, this product's going to go belly up. And we're not going to have any form of weed killer herbicide that is going to tackle these issues in our fields. So far, GOP-led states like North Dakota and Georgia have passed laws to shield bear other states like Iowa, Idaho, Florida,

Oklahoma, and Tennessee have similar legislation pending. All right, so several states getting involved in that fight. We'll see if the Maha team pushes any further action forward on this federally. Amanda, thanks so much for reporting. You're welcome. Before you go, we're on YouTube now. Watch and subscribe to the video version on our Morning Wire channel. Thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.