>> did i choose. >> uv protection? >> and that's. >> included in the $95. >> oh. >> welcome to. >> warby parker. >> march madness. >> it gives you. >> all the feels. >> crowd going crazy. can you believe this? ice in the veins. >> emotions on full display. this is what. >> march feels like. >> i've got that feeling, baby. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> well. good morning. you are live in the cnn newsroom. i'm pamela brown in washington, and we begin with breaking news in a new look at how you are feeling about the economy. one month into president trump's second term, just last night, trump was touting his lowering of prices in a speech to

not coming down at least yet. according to the consumer price index, prices have jumped by half a percent since december. and americans are feeling it most at the grocery store. and any moment the university of michigan is releasing its consumer survey for february, it's expected to show that confidence in the economy is on the decline. joining us now, cnn business and politics correspondent vanessa yurkevich and cnn global economic analyst rana foroohar. vanessa, to start with you. what else are we expecting from this report? >> well, i can tell you what february's initial indicators have said. the university of michigan puts out a preliminary estimate for how people are feeling just in the few days, the first few days of february. and here's what they found. they found that consumer confidence fell for a second month by about

5%, the lowest level reading since july of 2024. and as we dig into this report in a few moments, i think that trend is likely going to continue for the rest of february. but the initial reading found that people were concerned about spending and buying and prices because of tariffs. a drop in 12% in terms of confidence in that, and a 6% drop in how they were feeling about their personal finances. that is the lowest value that we've seen in this report since october of 2023. and we saw in this initial reading concerns about inflation and where that is going to go in the next year. there was such a large increase from january to february in this initial reading. it was only the fifth time in 14 years of this report that that that the people who are producing this report have seen such a stark increase. so in just a few moments, we're getting that new data. i'll sift through it, but we're expecting that trend to continue. folks

feeling more pessimistic about the economy. that is a turn from how they felt over the summer, when people were feeling pretty good about the direction of the economy. >> pan rana, to bring you in. president trump. he has been back in office for just a month. is that enough time to make progress on inflation and in particular, prices at the grocery store? >> well, in a word, no. and this gets to the point that, you know, presidents like to take a lot of credit for the economy when it's going well. um, they don't want to take responsibility when it's not. you know, president trump talked a lot on the campaign trail about how he was going to lower prices. but the fact is, his policies, from tariffs to limits on immigration, rounding up migrants, whether you like it or not, more immigration has been responsible for lower wage inflation. um, and just the general geopolitical stress and uncertainty is actually increasing risk premiums. it's it's raising inflation. and i think that he's in a tough spot

because the things that he says he wants to do policy wise, are not the things that are going to make people feel less pain in the grocery store, at the pump when they're paying their heating bills. et cetera. >> yeah. and when it comes to, for example, this tariff plan, some of those tariffs haven't gone into effect. right. and so i think that that uncertainty about well what will happen when that does go into effect in terms of inflation prices. and there's this new cnn poll, 62% of americans feel that president trump has not gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods. that comes as walmart, the largest retailer in the u.s., warns that its sales and profit growth will slow this year. i mean, could trump's lack of apparent focus right now on lowering prices come back and bite him sooner rather than later? ronna. >> well, a 100% and i mean, this gets into one of the challenges for the trump administration, but it was also something that biden struggled with. when you want to make a fundamental change in the economy, when you want to shift to an economy

that, frankly, for the last 50 years has been all about lowering prices and jacking up stock prices, and suddenly you want to change it to something that's much more about producing things at home, creating, creating better jobs. i mean, that's a great goal, but that's something that takes years and decades. and during that time, there are periods of real pain and they have to be well managed. and i think that there's a sense that with all the sort of high speed moves that this administration is making, that the markets are really not sure how this change is going to be managed both at an economic or a political level. >> and trump, for his part, he has talked about his inflation reduction plan involving cutting taxes, ramping up energy, drilling leases, massive spending cuts by doge. is that all taken together enough to bring inflation down to. >> i'm not at all convinced about that. for starters, i'm not convinced that doge is actually going to be able to make the kind of efficiency cuts

that would really be meaningful. also, on the flip side, i'm hearing from a lot of businesses, for example, in the energy sector, that are saying, gosh, suddenly there's incredible regulatory uncertainty. you know, the permitting process is being changed. entire agencies are being ripped apart. and so, again, business doesn't like uncertainty. and that actually could end up dampening investment in some of the areas that the president cares about. energy critical minerals manufacturing. so we are in an unprecedented period right now. and businesses are really in a in a wait and see mode right now. >> vanessa, you've actually had a chance to review this new report. what can you tell us? >> yeah. just taking a look at the top lines from this report. consumer sentiment in the month of february fell by 10%. initially, the initial readings were closer to 5%. this is 10%. so folks clearly not feeling great about the direction of the economy. this was unanimous across age groups, income levels, and this report looks at

about five indexes about how people are feeling. the biggest plunge that we saw was 19% in how people were feeling about spending, buying things, because this report says of tariffs, the uncertainty around what tariffs are going to mean for their bottom line, also for personal finances, how people are feeling about their own finances declining by about 10% in february, and sentiment for democrats and independents fell. but for republicans in this report, it kind of stayed the same. so republicans may be feeling a little more encouraged in terms of where things are going with inflation. it's about the same as the initial reading that we saw. folks are expecting inflation to pick up, and they do have concerns about that, but unchanged from the initial report, which was still a steep increase, i might note about a full percentage increase. that's about just the fifth time in this report that they

have noted such a steep increase. so unfortunately, the sentiment among consumers, the feeling how people are feeling doesn't seem to be going in the right direction, at least for the president, and how people are feeling about their own. bottom line. pam. >> what jumps out to you, ronna, from what you just laid out? >> well, you know, i'm pulling back the lens and thinking about no matter who was going to be in office at this point, even if kamala harris had won the election, i would have been expecting a slowdown. i mean, if you discount, um, the blip, the downturn and upturn that we had during covid, um, we're several years overdue for an economic slowdown. i mean, they happen, right? and so this isn't unexpected. um, i think that the fact that there's so much uncertainty around trump's policies and there's just i mean, we have not been in a in a tariff or a real tariff and trade war, you know, close to 100 years. uh, people don't know what to expect. uncertainty tends to make them want to sit on savings, be cautious, batten down the hatches.

>> yeah. and it's interesting because, you know, if you talk to i interviewed peter navarro, who works the white house overseeing the trade policy. and he says, well, the first time around, you know, we didn't see inflation that everyone was warning about. but the difference here is that what trump is trying to do is much more dramatic, right? ronna, in terms of the tariffs, yeah, 100%. >> you're seeing you're seeing across the board. you know, i'm not necessarily against tariffs. i agree with navarro and bob lighthizer and others that there are there are reasons to use this in targeted ways against sort of mercantilist practices on the part of china or other nations. but i think across the board, tariffs that are reciprocal and that are hitting all at once, that's really unprecedented territory. i think it's really hard to argue that this is going to be an easy ride. >> yeah. and like you said, it's really the bottom line is the uncertainty right now of how this is all going to play out. rana foroohar vanessa yurkevich, thank you both. and we are following some more breaking news. the defense department is now pausing its plan to carry

out mass firings of civilian employees. cnn's natasha bertrand joins us. so what's behind the pause here? natasha. >> yeah. pam. so we reported earlier in the week that some defense officials were raising concerns with their superiors that these mass terminations that could impact over 50,000 civilian employees inside the pentagon could actually run afoul of u.s. law, of u.s. law governing how civilian employees are managed within the armed forces. because these kinds of mass terminations, they can't actually be done according to this law unless the secretary of defense carries out a pretty thorough review of how it might impact military readiness. because, of course, a lot of these civilian employees are in very critical national security roles like intelligence and cyber security. and so there is a pause happening now, we are told, so that the secretary of defense can carry out that kind of thorough review, and also to make sure by pentagon lawyers in the office of general counsel that they are not running afoul of this law, that they are in compliance with this. so it remains unclear at this point just how long this pause is

going to last. the office of the secretary of defense declined to comment on this, but still, it is a temporary reprieve for a lot of employees inside the pentagon who, of course, were worried about losing their job as soon as today. and we have seen other instances, of course, where doge has acted so quickly in agencies that are very critical to u.s. national security that they've actually had to hire people back right after firing them. so i think that part of this also is that the defense department just doesn't want to have to do that claw back employees that they have fired because they serve in these very mission critical roles. >> and also, trump's executive order this week that we've been reporting on giving him more control over independent federal agencies is actually raising some concerns about among legal experts when it comes to the impact it could have on the military. tell us about that. >> yeah. so my colleague haley britzky, she has some great reporting on this. and essentially the order that trump signed earlier this week, it says that the president, quote, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch, which dod, of course, is a part of. and it's raising concerns among legal experts who say that that could

have a chilling effect on the decision making amongst military judges and the military justice system. essentially, the concern is that military judges, for example, won't be as inclined to disagree with an order from the president, who is the commander in chief and who does have the ability, of course, to interfere with the military justice system. but they will be less likely to push back on a kind of unlawful order. and military commanders in particular, they could be susceptible to this. according to the legal experts that we spoke to, because whereas sometimes they will or often they will go to military lawyers and say, is this legal for us to do? the concern is that if trump's executive order and his legal authority kind of trumps that, will they stop doing that? and so there's a chilling effect that experts are very concerned about here. >> all right, natasha bertrand, thank you so much. and while the department of defense may be spared for now, several agencies are being hit by doge firings. and it looks like elon musk's team is not stopping anytime soon. up next, more on the judge's decision to allow the mass firings to move forward.

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because there have been so many lawsuits. help us understand where things stand. so many lawsuits and initial rulings. >> that we're getting. these lawsuits are nowhere near the end. but what judges have been saying so far in at least two cases is that, you know, we might not be the appropriate place to step in and tell donald trump he can't fire federal workers. it might not be something for the courts to deal with. so what happened last night? there was a judge in washington, d.c., a democratic presidential appointee to the bench several years ago, very well respected judge said, you know, the union for the treasury workers, which isn't just the treasury department, that's workers across the federal government, irs workers, forest service workers, hhs workers. they had sued and said, don't let the administration fire us or somehow get rid of us. and he said, i don't actually think that this is something that the courts should be dealing with, with right now. this is a

question for labor boards to deal with instead. that was a very similar decision as to what we saw happen with the fork in the road way that the federal government was getting rid of 75,000 workers, prompting them to resign, a judge said, i'm not going to step in and stop this either for the same reason, and then we're waiting for another decision today about usaid workers. if they can be fired, waiting to see if the judge there says a similar thing. >> and there are also hearings on the trump administration wanting to cut funding to the nih and nonprofit and states that receive federal funding. >> yeah. and, pam, whenever you look at this, there's the firings and then there's the freezing of funds. that's the other big issue in court. there's also a lot of cases about doge, but we won't talk about that today. >> we'll talk about that later in the show. >> later we'll be time. um, but on the funding cuts, that question also comes down to can he do that? can the president and the people at the agencies cut off funding in different ways? there is a major hearing right now happening in rhode

island, where states are saying we're losing our ability to get federal funding for highway road work, for health care, for substance abuse programs, hiv treatment programs, natural disasters. they want the judge there to make sure that funding stays in place for them. it's unclear, though there's a lot of confusion on what's happening there. and then also the nih. can they cut funding in a case out of boston that's going to have an all day hearing today as well. >> you have been so busy, katelyn polantz, thank you so much. and we're going to continue to be busy with all these lawsuits. well, coming up, it predates the formation of the united states. but major changes could be coming to the u.s. postal service. i'll talk about what privatizing mail delivery would mean and concerns with democratic congressman gerry connolly. that's next. >> lockerbie sunday at nine on cnn. >> who has more subscriptions. >> we're a package deal, baby. and your subscription is my subscription. all right. we have about 100. but with experian

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needs. we got you connect with the provider at. ronen bar. >> the whole story with anderson cooper. sunday at. >> eight on cnn. >> new this morning. president trump is now reportedly planning to take control of the u.s. postal service. trump reportedly wants to disband the independent board that oversees the usps. a step towards privatizing the service and one of the main functions of the postal service is ensuring that all homes can get deliveries, not just the ones that are profitable. even private companies depend on the postal service for the last mile delivery to some homes. and interesting fact that might surprise you. the postal service is one of the most popular federal agencies. pew found that it's only second to the national park service, with an approval of 72%. joining us now is gerry connolly, the congressman who is the ranking member of the oversight

committee. hi, congressman. so the white house is good to see you. the white house is denying these reports. um, but what would the impact be if president trump does go through with privatizing the postal service, which has been floated around for a while? >> you know, the postal service is one of the most ubiquitous government quasi governmental services we've got. it reaches every household and every business every day. uh, it is the last mile of delivery for even private sector delivery companies like fedex and ups. it has 640,000 employees. they're all unionized. it has 30,000 plus facilities all over the country. uh, especially in rural america. uh, and it's got the second largest vehicular fleet in america. only after the pentagon. 235,000 vehicles. so it is an omnipresent, ubiquitous, a service that goes back before our country was

actually independent. ben franklin was our first postmaster general in colonial times. uh, and he set about to make sure that it was affordable and accessible. to your question, if he privatizes if we were to try to privatize that kind of, you know, mammoth operation, uh, it would increase prices for everybody and it would make rural delivery, especially in remote parts of america, almost impossible. it would be not affordable and it wouldn't be profitable. so, uh, having a service that isn't focused on profit but is focused on delivery and service is critical to the, you know, lifelines of america. we saw that in the pandemic. one of the reasons, to your point, pamela, why it's so popular, the postal service is because people saw how absolutely essential it was when we were in the midst of a deadly pandemic and getting medicine, food stuffs, supplies, clothing, you name it. it was

all delivered by the postal service and done well. >> well, proponents of privatizing the postal service say other countries, i believe germany, the netherlands, uk, they do it. it would improve innovation and efficiency. what do you say to that? >> well, we're not germany or the netherlands. we're a country of 335 million people. uh, huge expand. big, big states with remote rural areas that need to be serviced. you look at a state like alaska. if you privatize the postal service, there's not a piece of mail that could be delivered in alaska for any kind of reasonable price. by having a national service, we're able to sort of spread out the costs and make sure that everyone is treated fairly and equally. so we don't have the same kind of situation that they have in germany or the netherlands. and i think it's a false analogy. >> i want to pivot to doge. your committee is launching a probe into elon musk's status as a government employee. you sent a

letter directly to president trump about it, requesting substantive documentation about musk's role. have you gotten an answer? >> i haven't gotten an answer yet, but this is triggered in part by the white house itself under oath, a guy named joshua fisher, who is in charge of administration at the white house, saying that elon musk is not the administrator of doge, is not a government employee. and he said all of that under oath. well, if that's the case, with what authority is elon musk doing anything, let alone laying off thousands of workers, you know, transferring thousands of workers, offering early retirement for thousands of workers. where is he getting that authority if he's not, in fact, an employee of the government? >> yeah. and the white house says he's a special government employee. they gave a statement to my colleague phil mattingly, saying he is overseeing the efforts and certainly some mixed messages coming from the white house as it pertains to elon musk and doge. um, so i want to ask you another question about your colleagues in the senate

offering amendments targeting doge. all of them were rejected. what is the unified democratic message regarding doge? is there one? >> well, i think i think there is one. i think that doge is operating, uh, unlawfully. uh, i believe that they're making decisions that are sweeping and that contradict, uh, statutory language in legislation that congress has passed into law. uh, and i think that has to be upheld. earlier you were talking about courts. litigation is going to be really important, but we can't have courts kind of squirrel out of their responsibility. they're going to be the place of last resort in adjudicating. which who has what jurisdiction, who has what power. but the kind of sweeping power being asserted by elon musk and, uh, his co president, donald trump. uh, i believe it goes way beyond constitutional norms or acceptable limits with respect to legislation already in the books.

>> well, and musk his role as a senior advisor, but i, i want to ask you because i know a lot of americans, i'm sure you're hearing from your constituents are concerned about what is happening and that they're overstepping their bounds. but this has gone before. some judges and the judges gave doge gave elon musk wins. they analyzed it. they looked at the facts, and some of them have said they can move forward with their cuts. are there any of those cuts that you do support? >> um, i don't support the process. doge. uh, and elon musk are employing, which is a wrecking ball. uh, there are plenty of places to trim carefully. uh, but it's got to be done carefully, right? i mean, if you're if you're just taking a wrecking ball to the center for disease control, you're risking public health. if you take a wrecking ball to the fda, you're risking the safety of food and pharmaceuticals in america. and we know what can go wrong with that. um, if you're taking a wrecking ball to the national

security council, you're jeopardizing national security. >> i'm wondering because, um, your republican colleague in the house, rich mccormick, had a town hall in georgia and several of the constituents there were unhappy with how doge is operating. sort of laid out what you just laid out. and i'm wondering if now the reality is setting in with all of these firings and the freezing of aid and so forth. um, what you're hearing from your republican colleagues privately who may not be coming out publicly saying really what they think right now, but are they expressing anything to you? uh, privately, about doge. >> um, yes. um, a number of them really, frankly, privately believe that elon musk, uh, is way beyond his skis here. uh, they believe that a lot of the people surrounding trump are incompetent. uh, and that it's going to get them in trouble. uh, those from rural america are particularly worried. uh, we

mentioned the postal service. you know, postal service is just an essential service in rural america. but, i mean, hospitals are at risk in rural america. nursing homes are at risk. airports are at risk. the farming economy is at risk. if you're starting to slap on tariffs and reciprocal tariffs are slapped on so that we're not exporting grain and food, uh, to our normal customers. uh, you know, in border places both in texas and canada. uh, texas and the northern part of the united states. with respect to canada, you know, they're worried about, you know, two way trade, which is essential for their local economies. so, yeah, there's rising concern that this is kind of mindless and reckless. there's no pattern to it. there's no rhyme or reason to it. and it's going to hurt, uh, average american families, especially in their constituencies. >> congressman gerry connolly, thank you so much. >> my pleasure. >> coming up, who is running doge? we were just having that conversation. the white house in that court filing says it's not

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>> let's talk about let's talk about. >> these doge dividend checks that everybody is talking about this week. and i know you tweeted out that you were going to is everybody want like a $5,000 check in the mail. it sounds kind of good right? and the best part about it would be knowing where it came from, that that's five grand that you sent them last year. >> totally. it's it's money that's taken away from from things that are destructive to the country, that and from organizations that hate you to you. >> with me now is cnn's phil mattingly. all right. so, phil, you have been digging into this question. who is running doge? is this by design? keeping it sort of nebulous. tell us what you've learned. >> you know, we were talking about this in the break. it's difficult, given how fast things have been moving in the first month of the trump administration, particularly with the doge work, to actually get your head around what they've been doing. and i think what was most striking by kind of a combination of hundreds of pages of court filings, where there's been a number of lawsuits related to doge, interviews with government officials, government memos that we were able to obtain. my colleague and i recognize that this has been a deeply

strategic, intensely planned operation. starting from day one. day one, everybody was trying to figure out, well, where would doge be? is it outside the government? is it inside the government? the executive order put it inside the government. that was intentional. that means it's in the executive office of the president. disclosure requirements basically don't exist. they're protected from them until after doge is long gone. um, and so the kind of ambiguity about leadership, about structure, about staff, about organization is a feature. it's not a bug. and in large part, that has been an accelerant to their ability to do what we've seen over the course of the last 3 or 4 weeks. the agencies where they've put appointees, the teams that they've had going into various agencies that are detailees, that aren't necessarily tied to any specific agency, but they all have agency emails at all of the agencies that they go to. so they're in directories, they're working there, they're serving as engineers. they're really leading the doge efforts. but no one really knows what specific entity they're tied to. don't

think of that as kind of an ad hoc, kind of half baked effort. they know what they wanted to do, and they've been implementing it with a lot of efficiency the last month. >> it's so interesting because and you just heard my conversation with congressman connolly, who was saying, look, they're taking a wrecking ball to these agencies. and a lot of people think this is all just kind of ham handed the way it's being done. from your reporting, this has been thought out. it's strategic in the way that it's laid out. but at the same time, we have seen some big, you know, stumbles, mistakes, firing some of the, you know. the energy department employees that they try to scramble and get back, you know, and we have seen that in different agencies. what how does that square. >> the way i've kind of reconciled what we've seen in the last month is the doge officials and aligned political appointees don't necessarily know how washington works, but they know what makes washington work. and that is so essential, because if you look at what happened on january 20th, the first couple of days after

president trump was sworn in, where their political appointees showed up, not doge team people, political appointees took senior roles and really wrested control of the entire agencies at places like the office of personnel and management, the general services administration. places that we don't usually talk about on tv, but those are the places that really underpin the personnel, the technology, the real estate portfolio, the entire kind of nervous system of the federal government. all of those political appointees, almost to a person either used to work for elon musk at musk, related companies were close advisers to elon musk, worked with him on acquisition deals. in one case. um, they are permanently there. so they're not doge folks, but they are deeply aligned with the doge team. and so their ability to come in on day one wrest control of these nerve centers. that's what's driven the mass firings of government officials. that's what's driven the probationary period. that's what's driven all of the executive order implementation. they control it now. and i think what we have learned over the

course of our reporting is government officials who didn't know what they were going to do, weren't sure how it was going to actually operate. and by the time they started to realize kind of the scale of what was happening, to your point, how they've just kind of gone in and made radical changes, broken some things as they've done it. it was too late. they already had lost control of the office of personnel management and gsa. there were people inside the treasury officials, and you've seen them go agency to agency since then. but that is kind of the backbone of the effort that we've seen. >> so then what is elon musk's role with doge bottom line? >> officially, yes. not a role. according to a sworn affidavit in court from an administration personnel official. look, the reality is this karoline leavitt, in a statement to cnn, said he's overseeing their efforts. donald trump is directing their efforts. the ambiguity is the point here. they don't necessarily want to have a centralized target, the administrator, who it actually is, what that role actually entails. people like gerry connolly would love to know that. they'd love to bring them

up to testify. they would love to bring. >> americans would love it, too. >> exactly. but the lack of transparency, i don't see it as something that they just hadn't figured out. it very much seems intentional. and to try and allow them that level of opacity helps, i think, in their efforts to get into agencies, do the things they want to do as fast as they want to do it, without a lot of attention. i think the reality is, though, musk very clearly drives things under trump's kind of authority. but musk's top advisers most crucially steve davis, who's been with him for two decades of his closest advisers, really kind of the operational manager of things. but it's not a centralized organization. i think it's very diffuse. it has a lot of tentacles, and that's very clearly by design. >> phil mattingly fascinating, really important reporting as we're trying to wrap our heads around what's going on. thank you so much. and still ahead in just a couple of hours, luigi mangione will be back in a new york courtroom to face murder and terrorism charges. what makes these charges so unique? we are live right outside that courthouse. up next.

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>> with. >> cookbooks. >> corporate fat. >> cats, swindling socialites. doped up cyclists, and yes, more crooked politicians. i have a feeling we won't be running out of those anytime soon. >> a new season. >> of united states of. scandal with jake tapper. march 9th on cnn. >> well, this afternoon, murder suspect luigi mangione is due in a new york courtroom on charges related to the december murder of united health care ceo brian thompson was shot and killed on a manhattan sidewalk last december in what police have called a targeted attack. the 26 year old mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state's murder and terror charges. cnn's kara scannell joins us from outside the courthouse, where mangione will appear. so, kara, this is his first court appearance since he was arraigned. tell us what's happening in today's hearing. kara, can you hear me?

all right, we got the old. you've got me. >> for a minute. >> we are expecting. yeah, we. >> are expecting luigi mangione to. >> appear in court just a few hours from now. this will be his first court appearance since he pleaded not guilty to those 11 state charges for allegedly shooting and killing united health care ceo brian thompson and my colleague. lauren inside, she said. there's already dozens of women lined up waiting to try to get into the public section of the courtroom. we did see people show up the last time. there was a lot of public interest, although it's very cold outside, we are not seeing any protesters or people with signs here just yet. there's still a few hours to go. what we do expect to happen at the hearing today is it will be relatively quick. it's a status conference. we expect that the attorneys will be discussing the types of evidence that they have in this case, and how they've handed that over, including some of the surveillance video that they said they have thousands of hours of that would be turned over to to mangione defense

team. that, of course, capturing the suspect, leaving the crime scene, heading up to upper manhattan on his way out of the city. also today, they'll likely discuss a motion schedule. what is going to be the next stages in this case, and potentially set a trial date. all that, though, yet to play out later today when mangione is back in court, we'll see him walk down that hallway into the courtroom to see the judge for the first time since he had that dramatic arrival in new york on the helicopter, and that very public perp walk. pam. >> kara scannell, thank you so much. let's continue this conversation. joining us now is nick akerman, a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district. nick, thank you for joining us. so prosecutors say mangione left a string of evidence, fingerprints, dna near the scene and the apparent murder weapon. and a spiral notebook also found in his backpack when he was arrested. how will his attorneys defend him with all of that evidence? >> well, if you're just going. >> based on that evidence, i don't think they have much of a

defense. i think the real question here is whether or not he has some kind of a mental defect defense, some kind of insanity defense. we know that for a period of time, he was really off the grid. his family didn't know where he was. he was gone for, i don't know, matter of months and seemed to do things that were contrary to kind of his normal way of operating. so i'll be curious to see whether or not there's some kind of motion raised today, or letting the judge know whether or not there may be a motion that in somehow relates to his mental capacity with respect to understanding what he was doing at the time. um, we'll just have to wait and see. >> we'll have to wait and see. he also faces federal prosecution and the threat of the death penalty. how much is his defense complicated by this dual track of prosecution? >> well, it really doesn't

complicate his defense. i mean, the defense is going to have to be the same in both, um, venues. the state is going to go first, and there's a good possibility that if he is convicted in the state, which is a likelihood because of all of the evidence that's there, um, that that would really end the matter. and the federal government might not step in, however, um, now, with donald trump as president, who is big on the death penalty, uh, which is the one, um, remedy that you cannot get in the state of new york? uh, the federal government may go ahead with that case on the on after the state case, even if mangione is convicted, uh, in the state. >> if you were his defense attorney, would you seek a plea deal? >> uh, i definitely would if i didn't have a some kind of a mental capacity defense. uh, and knowing what the evidence is, i would try and make a deal as

quickly as possible. and, in fact, i would try and make a deal with both the state and the feds, try and get a all encompassing deal. uh, that would essentially, i think, require him to be in prison for life and would avoid the death penalty. i think that would be the smart thing to do. >> it is such a fascinating case. um, also because he received this massive outpouring of support online, just one single crowdfunding site, just one, has raised more than a half million dollars for his legal defense. as a former prosecutor, how worried would you be that jurors will be influenced by that same sympathy toward him? >> i don't see it because what happens in the real world, in a real trial, uh, people come in, they judge, and the lawyers question, um, the jurors, the prospective jurors, to determine

whether they can be fair and impartial. uh, it's a process that is done in every single criminal case in new york state. they actually allow the lawyers to do the questioning, whereas in the federal side, it's only the judge that does the questioning. um, but it's a pretty thorough process known as jury voir dire, um, which is translated to mean to tell the truth. and the whole point of that is to try and determine whether you can get a jury that is fair and impartial. uh, and certainly they can do that here. that is going to be the winnowing process that will start with jury selection. they did it with the donald trump case in manhattan. they came up with a fair and impartial jury within two days, i believe. so there's no reason why it can't be done here. >> nick ackerman, thank you so much for sharing your perspective. and in just minutes, president trump will meet with a bipartisan group of governors at the white house. we're keeping a close eye on what may come out of that meeting. and that's ahead.

>> it's the news. >> welcome back. >> but it's also kind of not the news. >> we don't fact check here. we don't care, man. why suhl the information on this show so terrible? >> have i got news for you? >> tomorrow at 9:00. >> on cnn. >> cidp is no walk in the park. >> that's true. >> but i take the. >> same. it's the first major innovation in cidp treatment in over 30 years. >> it has been proven to significantly reduce the risk of symptoms getting worse. >> and my cidp can be treated with once weekly injections that take about 30 to 90s. >> do not use. >> trullo if you have a serious allergy to any of its ingredients. serious allergic reactions like trouble breathing and decrease in blood pressure, leading to fainting and allergic reactions such as rashes, swelling under the skin, shortness of breath, and hives have been reported. the most common side effects are respiratory and urinary tract infections, headache, and injection site reactions. it may increase the risk of infusion related reactions and infection.

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>> well, good morning to you. you are live this in a newsroom. i'm pamela brown and washington and we begin with the breaking news. >> president trump is about to