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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Vance, Iran Give Conflicting Statements On Nuke Inspections; Now: Trump Addresses State Of Iran Talks; Keir Starmer Announces Resignation As U.K. Prime Minister; Federal Judge Blocks DOJ Subpoena Of Walz & Other Dems. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired June 22, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:00]
DON RIDDELL, CNN WORLD SPORT: And you look at the way Ronaldo is playing in this tournament. Very, very disappointing. I think a lot of people objectively would say he's holding Portugal back.
It's the complete opposite with Messi. This whole team just wants him to succeed and he's doing it.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Our floor director Pablo will have words with you, Don, but we agree fully.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Thank you so much.
"THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts before Pablo starts throwing things at us.
KEILAR: Yes.
SANCHEZ: Thank you so much for joining us.
(MUSIC)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. Welcome to THE ARENA. Kasie Hunt is off today. I'm Abby Phillip.
And right now, talks are continuing between the United States and Iran, with Vice President J.D. Vance expressing cautious optimism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We laid a very good foundation for a successful final deal. The final deal is the House. We set the foundation. We haven't built the House, but we've laid a successful foundation to get to a good place for the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The vice president is now heading home after talks this weekend, and he said that the Iranians have agreed to let international nuclear inspectors back into their country. Critically, though, Iran's foreign minister is pushing back on that claim. For its part, the United States says that it's willing to unfreeze
Iran's assets on the condition that they're used to purchase American agricultural products. But that progress was almost delayed this weekend after Iran's military said it was once again closing the Strait of Hormuz in response to continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Now, that prompted President Trump to seemingly threaten Iran's negotiators themselves. The president telling Fox News his message to Iran was, quote, "you close it and you won't have a country, you won't even make it back to your effing country."
And that led Iranian state media to say that their negotiators were actually leaving the talks, a claim that Vice President Vance today refuted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: But after that initial meeting, there was this, you know, sort of social media firestorm where everybody said the Iranians are going to leave. And then we proceeded to talk to them for like the next nine hours. So I would just encourage the media mistrust a little bit what you see coming out of Iranian social media. They can be confusing negotiators, but we feel like we're making progress.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Let's get off the sidelines and head into THE ARENA. My panel is here, along with CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.
So, Kristen, how is the administration really feeling about the state of these negotiations now that Vice President Vance is on his way back?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They're feeling cautiously optimistic the same way that you heard from the vice president there, but they're not going to get ahead of themselves. They've seen this before and they've gone down a path in which they said that these deals were going to happen any second, that everybody was acting in good faith only to have the rug pulled out from under them.
Now, I will note, President Trump is currently signing an executive order on quantum technology and mentioned that the Strait of Hormuz is completely open, something that we know, at least from the people on the ground there, there's a lot of confusion about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, it was technically supposed to be open, but as you noted, Iran saying that they were closing it back up has led to a lot of confusion on the actual involvement on what is happening with the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, when it comes to the vice president, he spent a lot of time talking about these inspectors, how he was walking out of this meeting and Iran was going to let these inspectors, these U.N. inspectors, onto the ground in Iran. But we never really got any of the specifics there. What sites were they going to be allowed to visit? What kind of access were they going to be given?
And we should note that visiting these sites, these U.N. inspectors visiting, was part of the Obama deal as well, the deal that President Trump ripped up. Now, here is one of the things that Vice President J.D. Vance said about these inspectors coming in, and really these negotiations overall, casting somewhat of doubt over whether or not this was going to be a done deal. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: Whether good faith or bad faith, you can't trust anybody's words. You have to trust what they actually do. Letting in the inspectors is a big deal. But again, we're going to see what they actually let the inspectors do once they're in the country. That's going to continually be a part of our negotiation.
So my point is not that I trust or distrust anybody. My point is that I trust actions. And what the president has asked us to do is verify what they're doing, focus less on what they're saying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: I think that's an interesting concept there. He also said that he was confused at times about the way that the Iranians negotiated and just kind of how they addressed the situation, both with him and publicly through Iranian state media. That's why you heard him there kind of asking people not to listen to them since they have their own political beliefs that they have to get out there and policies that they have to get out there.
The other thing to bring up here is one of the things that Vance described, which as you noted, was this idea of unfreezing the funds. He says this is part of a concept dreamed up by Jared Kushner, where the funds then go back into America to buy food and equipment for the Iranians, so somewhat of a humanitarian effort.
But there's still going to be a lot of skeptics here, because even as the vice president is saying, watching the actions is going to be key here, not just listening to what the Iranians are saying they're going to do.
[16:00:01]
PHILLIP: All right, Kristen Holmes, thank you very much for that reporting.
My panel is here in THE ARENA. Host of "Juan Manuel Benitez Wants to Know podcast", Juan Manuel Benitez; CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali; former Democratic congressman from New York, Max Rose; and CNN senior political commentator, Scott Jennings. We're also being joined by CNN global affairs analyst and Iran expert, Karim Sadjadpour.
And, Karim, I'm actually going to start with you to help us at the table here because I want to know what your take is on Vance announcing that inspectors are going back to Iran as something that is a huge breakthrough in this agreement. Is it a huge breakthrough?
KARIM SADJADPOUR, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I mean we don't know whether it will be a breakthrough until those inspectors are actually given access. So something like that is -- you never celebrate it until --
PHILLIP: Karim, I'm so sorry. Let me just take a pause here. President Trump is in the Oval Office and he's taking questions.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They have 91 million people, they can't feed them. So the money that that we lift is going to go to our farmers, largely to our farmers.
REPORTER: Can you ensure that the Iranians won't use profits from oil sales to rebuild their military?
TRUMP: Well, they're not supposed to be doing that, so we'll see. But they're supposed to use money to buy food for their people, because right now, their people are very hungry, and they're buying it exclusively from us -- corn, soybeans, should be a lot of money. I hope it's a lot of money.
REPORTER: If a war with Iran could cause a worldwide depression, as you noted, Mr. President, are you willing to risk economic catastrophe and strike Iran again?
TRUMP: Well, not the way I'm doing it. It's not going to cause depression.
REPORTER: Yes, but if they don't abide by the --.
TRUMP: Well, nuclear weapon supersedes depression. Depression is real bad. Nuclear weapon will cause depression much more quickly.
The way we're doing it, we have the opposite of a depression. We're doing really well. The numbers are incredible. The oil is at a level that nobody's ever seen before. Oil prices are way down. I think they're very comparable to what they were.
Chris, I don't know. They're pretty comparable to what they were before we started.
CHRIS WRIGHT, ENERGY SECRETARY: They've returned most of the way back down.
REPORTER: So if Iran does not abide by the MOU, are you still willing to press --
TRUMP: Well, I didn't say it would cause a depression. I said it could cause a depression, right? And they said that I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. That's a president I don't want to be because he, you know, he was in charge during the Great Depression. And certainly a lot of bad things could happen. That would be one of the things.
I don't think it would, but if it did, but no, if, if Iran doesn't live up to their agreement or if they're not behaving, I will -- I will do what I have to do.
(CROSSTALK)
REPORTER: Does that give them leverage over you, Mr. President?
TRUMP: Say it?
REPORTER: Does that give them leverage, the Iranians leverage over you?
TRUMP: Oh, you're so -- leverage. You know, their navy is gone. Their air force is gone.
Their leaders are all dead. Their whole country is a mess. Their economy is shut. The, you know, the Times, the fake "New York Times" said, oh, it's about the same as it was four months ago.
No, four months ago, they had a navy, 159 ships to be exact. It's gone. The whole Navy's gone. There are 250 airplanes, all gone.
Their anti-aircraft is gone. Their radar is gone. These guys love radar. Their radar is gone.
Everything's gone. Their leaders are gone. Their whole country is gone. And "The Times" said, oh, they're about the same as they were four months ago.
The reason the news is doing so badly, or let's put it another way, the reason that I wanted a landslide, even though I got 92 percent negative press, all fake press, is because nobody believes the press anymore. And they have to start believing.
You know, when "The Times" and a couple of others, they're grasping for straws, when they say that Iran is about the same as it was four months. Four months ago, they had a powerful navy. They had a powerful air force.
You know, most of their missiles are gone. Most of their launching pads are gone. Most of their manufacturing capacity for drones and missiles is gone, about 87 percent gone.
And then I hear, oh, they're in such great shape. No, they're gone. And their first level of leaders, gone. The second level of leaders, gone.
Their third level of leaders, you have to hear the conversations. Who wants to be president? Well, I don't want it. Nobody wants to be president.
And then we have to read that they're doing well. They're doing so badly.
In the meantime, we're setting records. We have the strongest economy we've ever had. We have 18 to 19 trillion dollars being poured into our country.
[16:10:03]
We're building factories all over the place. We have more people working today than at any time in the history of our country at higher salaries. So when you ask a question like that, it's so stupid.
Here's another beauty. Watch this one. Here's a real beauty. Go ahead.
REPORTER: Earlier today, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his forces are not leaving Lebanon. That is a sticking point.
TRUMP: Who -- did he tell that to you?
REPORTER: He said it publicly in Israel.
TRUMP: Well, we're going to take a look at it.
REPORTER: Well, what would you do to make sure he doesn't --
TRUMP: Well, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do, but it gets solved. I'm a problem solver. I get problem solved real fast, including with Bibi.
Go ahead.
REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
What's the latest you've heard from the vice president? Are you happy with his negotiations?
TRUMP: Yeah.
REPORTER: Can you share a little bit about what Secretary Rubio will be doing in the Middle East this week? I think that they're doing a fantastic job. Our secretary is fantastic. I think he's maybe going to go down as the best ever.
And I thought J.D. Vance this morning was fantastic. I watched his news conference and -- from Switzerland. He's a very smart guy. He did a great job.
You know, when I look at the Democrats -- I call them the Dumocrats. They're dumb -- the Dumocrats. When I watched that, where one of them thought it was World War XI.
She said, World War XI. She read World War II. You know about that, right? This is one of their potential leaders, Ilhan Omar, who married her brother to get into the country, by the way, illegally.
But when I watch AOC, I have no idea what a simple question, what happened when she was over in Switzerland, which she probably never went there before, but she was -- and then I watched somebody like J.D. or Marco. What a -- I said, what a difference. What a difference. What a difference a brain makes.
(CROSSTALK) REPORTER: Sir, you've been quite critical of Prime Minister Starmer, and he's now resigned. Your thoughts? And who would you like to see as the next prime minister?
TRUMP: Yeah. I was critical only for this because I think he's a lovely man, but I said you're really messing up energy. You have windmills all over the place. In the meantime, you have the North Sea oil, and they won't let anybody drift. It's one of the great fields in the world, and they haven't even found most.
You know that The UK buys much of its energy. You know where? Norway. You know where they get their oil? The North Sea.
The U.K. has a much better portion of the North Sea. They don't want to do it for environmental purposes, okay? And I told him, he's a very nice man. I mean, sort of a friend of mine. I mean, he was not good to us with NATO, Pete, right? He said, we can't use the island to land. That was the first for a couple of weeks.
He said, well, but ultimately, I gave it to you. That was a bad move. That hurt him badly. But I mean, I wish him well, but he's got two problems, energy and immigration and crime, but energy and immigration.
And he's, you know, he's really hurt himself very, very badly.
Please go.
REPORTER: Mr. President, can you tell us about your meeting with the defense contractors on Wednesday and what you plan to tell them?
TRUMP: The meeting coming up, because I've met with them before. We're building plants all over the country. They are not allowed to take any more stock buybacks. Do you do stock buybacks by any chance? Not too much, right? No, because he wants to invest in product.
It's just an artificial way of raising a price if you're running a bad company. So they spent $51 billion on stock buybacks instead of spending them on plants. Now they're spending, they can't do that anymore. Now they are spending a lot of money.
We're building many plants throughout the country. They're dealing with General Motors, they're dealing with Ford. But I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons now. They have some plans which are going to switch over. We're going to build weapons, including the Patriot, including the Tomahawk, and lots of other things.
And we're in a big -- we're really in a big, strong economic push to do the weapons. And some of the car companies, if they have any excess capacity, they're making a deal to build missiles, the Patriot in particular.
We have quite a few of them, but we want to make sure we have always a lot of them.
REPORTER: Mr. President, on Colombia, the candidate that you endorses --
REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. Congratulations on the quantum physics E.O. to all of you.
TRUMP: Thank you.
REPORTER: Vice President Vance said that there are mechanisms in place to make sure that there's not escalations with the Strait of Hormuz and with Israel and Lebanon. Can you talk about what those mechanisms are, and are you in direct talks with the Supreme leader?
TRUMP: Well, look, here's the thing. As long as they respect us, I don't want to use the word "fear", because that's an inappropriate word. But as long as they respect us, we're not going to have any trouble. We have total control of the strait.
You know, we have a navy that had a blockade. I think the blockade was more impactful than dropping bombs, if you want to know the truth. It was like I said, they call it the steel wall. Nobody got through.
[16:15:00]
Not one ship got through, able to go to Iran. They got through if we wanted them to go through. And we could set that up again in about 15 minutes.
I would say, Pete, one phone call. How long would it take? Maybe half hour?
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: You can go right now if you need to.
TRUMP: It'll be before we finish the meeting. No, we have -- as long as they respect us, we're going to be fine. If they don't respect us, things wouldn't be good, but they have a lot of respect. Don't forget, we had presidents that should have done this for 47 years. Nobody did it.
Obama gave them a road to a nuclear weapon. I gave them a wall against a nuclear. They can never, under this agreement, they'll never even think about building a nuclear weapon.
REPORTER: Mr. President on Colombia, the candidate --
TRUMP: Oh, El Tigre.
REPORTER: El Tigre, yeah, we know that you had a phone --
TRUMP: I endorsed him. He was in 10th place. I endorsed him, but he won the election.
REPORTER: Yeah, absolutely.
TRUMP: No different than this country.
REPORTER: You had a phone conversation with --
TRUMP: I did.
PHILLIP: All right. You're listening to President Trump in the Oval Office, taking a few questions from the press there, including several on Iran.
I want to go back to Karim, because, Karim, I'm going to switch gears a little bit because at the top, we heard President Trump saying that Iran is going to use money that's freed up from sanctions relief to buy American products for its people. He was asked, what if they fund terrorism? And he says, they're not supposed to.
I wonder what you make of that. And do you think that just -- what we know right now, the oil sanctions relief, that is effective immediately? is protected in a way that would prevent them from using it for any nefarious purpose.
SADJADPOUR: So, Abby, this is a regime which hasn't changed its ideology. It hasn't changed its internal or its external conduct. And it hasn't changed its ambitions.
So I think that the big challenge that both President Trump and now Vice President Vance have is, on one hand, they argued that the regime was so dangerous four months ago. That it warranted a major military confrontation. And now they're put in the position that they have to argue that the regime has changed profoundly enough that it deserves pretty significant economic concessions from the United States.
And so the question I have for the panel I'd love to know is that for Vice President Vance in particular, I'm curious whether this overseeing what could be the end of this conflict is that positive for him? You know, obviously, the American public didn't support this war, wanted to get out of it.
But at the same time, what we saw with Vice President Biden -- with President Biden when he got out of Afghanistan, that was perceived as a humiliation by the American public. Didn't do well for him in the polls.
And so this is, I think, going to be a big question moving forward. How does the American public perceive the end of this war?
PHILLIP: Yeah, very much so. And speaking of the panel, I mean, let's come in here because to Karim's point, there's some good polling out right now about this. Sixty-six percent say that it wants the of the American public say that they want this conflict over. Another 78 percent says that right now the United States should end the conflict right now, 69 percent say that conflict with Iran is not worth it.
So if you're J.D. Vance and you're trying to spin the sanctions relief and all of this stuff as a win for the American people, does that tell you that he's coming from a strong position or he's trying to cover himself?
MAX ROSE (D), FORMER NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN: If you're J.D. Vance, you try to convince the American people that Donald Trump didn't start this war in the first place. Any positivity about this conflict ending, of course, has to be brought back to the fact that Donald Trump started it. The oil prices went up because of Donald Trump. American bases attacked, destroyed because of Donald Trump. Our allies moving away from us because of Donald Trump.
And now we have an agreement that if it were Barack Obama that signed this agreement, the entire Republican Party would be unified in opposition to it, saying rightfully so, that it is giving billions of dollars away to one of our principal enemies. It is a disgrace, and it makes Donald Trump look like the weak president that he is.
PHILLIP: Scott, speaking of what the Republicans would be saying if Obama had signed this deal, the oil sanctions relief, which is effective immediately. It's according to this report, these new market rate transactions could translate to roughly $14 million in additional daily profits, or about $840 million to the Iranian regime over a 60- day window.
So they're getting cash immediately.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah, and apparently the purpose of that is for them to buy agriculture products to provide humanitarian relief that has to be stayed on top of.
[16:20:04]
I will say one of the main purchasers of the sanctioned oil before all this was China, and they were buying it at a huge discount, so now China's going to have to buy market rate oil, so this won't be good for the Chinese. You said --
PHILLIP: For the Iranians, though. I mean, I think that what --
JENNINGS: It would be great for the Iranian people is that they're able to feed the people.
PHILLIP: Iranian -- Iran gets to charge now $10 a barrel more than they were charging before. So whoever's paying for it, it could be China, it could be anywhere else in the world, they're getting the proceeds.
And I mean, I have real questions about this idea that they're supposed to be buying American products. Who's enforcing that? You just get the money.
JENNINGS: I do, too. I want -- I want -- if they're getting money, I want that money to be spent on feeding the Iranian people. Now, what they do with it, that has to be monitored. So I agree with you on that point.
You said Donald Trump started this. He seemed to have some amnesia about the fact that Iran has been at war with the United States for 47 years. And as the president said, he's finally the one that's dealing with it. They've killed thousands of Americans. They've funded terror proxies that have destabilized the region. They've been after us chanting "death to America" for five decades. And you think that we just decided to pick on Iran for no reason this
spring? This was long overdue. And if at the end of it, they don't have nuclear weapons, and at the end of it, we do have a stable Middle East. And at the end of it, and at the end of it, we do have a situation where they're not funding terror proxies, terrorizing our friends and allies over there, that'll be a good thing.
JUAN MANUEL BENITEZ, HOST, "JUAN MANUEL BENITEZ WANTS TO KNOW" PODCAST: How do we know that they don't have nuclear weapons? Can we --
JENNINGS: We put inspectors in. Did you hear the announcement today?
BENITEZ: Did you hear what Donald Trump just said, that the U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz? That Iran is destroyed as a country, so then why are we negotiating with Iran?
If the situation is so badly -- is so bad for Iran, why do we have the vice president going to Switzerland to negotiate some sort of like end to this conflict?
JENNINGS: So the alternative is we would just keep bombing a country in perpetuity, or is the alternative you bomb, you get them to the table, and then you get an outcome, the outcome is no nuclear weapons, and we try to get the region stable with our allied partners over there.
TIM NAFTALI, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: I think it would be helpful to reframe this a little bit. Somebody convinced the president that there was a once-in-a-generation opportunity for regime change in Iran. It's true, the opportunity existed, but the odds were much lower than whoever told the president. And that, by the way, that person should be fired.
So it turns out it was wrong. There wasn't a really good opportunity for regime change. Now, we've got to get out of this.
We'd already ruined their nuclear program. Their ambitions, no, they remain. But their program was ruined, and we know where it is, and we can bomb it again. So we went to war for regime change, and it failed.
We're a superpower. What we need to worry about is our credibility as a superpower. That's what we should be worried about. We're losing it.
So I think we get out of this, we find a way to get out of this, save face, and then remind the Iranians that we're still powerful and we're still in the bloc, and we'll deal with them. That's a regime that should fall. This is not the right time for it. We shouldn't have gone to war over.
PHILLIP: All right. We do have to leave it there. We're unfortunately out of time for this one.
Karim Sadjadpour, thank you very much for being with us.
And the rest of my panel, don't go anywhere. They're going to stand by for us.
Next for us in THE ARENA, a new court ruling this afternoon on a major part of the president's election policy in the lead-up to the midterms.
Plus, exclusive new CNN reporting about how the Trump administration is trying to use tens of millions of dollars in federal funding as a way to force states to change the way that they conduct their elections.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:28:14]
PHILLIP: With the 2026 midterms just over four months away, a federal judge today has blocked the Trump administration from using American Social Security information to find foreigners on U.S. voter rolls. The judge writing in her ruling that by overhauling the country's citizenship data program, the federal government has, quote, "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," adding, "The court cannot stand idly by while this happens."
And as the administration aims to exert more federal influence over how the U.S. elections are run, CNN has new exclusive reporting today, but the administration is now threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funding from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of new election changes. That, according to multiple sources and documents obtained by CNN.
CNN's Gabe Cohen joins us now with that exclusive reporting.
Gabe, take us through what we've learned about this.
GABE COHEN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: So, Abby, it looks like the administration is trying to use this Homeland Security funding as leverage, adding these new rules to these grants that are expected to deliver about a billion dollars to cities and states this fiscal year. But what these mandates say is that if states want all of that funding, they're going to have to implement these election security reforms. And if they refuse, they're going to lose 20 percent of the money, which in some cases could be millions of dollars.
So what exactly is mandated here? Well, the administration is telling states they need to start a transition from electronic voting systems that use QR codes and barcodes to hand marked paper ballots, something that Trump and his allies have talked about for a long time. They expect states to conduct manual election audits, but specifically using methods that are established by this administration.
[16:30:04]
They expect states to use a government approved system to verify the citizenship of all workers at polling locations across the country. And perhaps most controversial of all, they are expecting that states are going to run their entire voter lists through the SAVE System at DHS, that same system you just referenced that the judge ruled on this afternoon, this tool that is used to look for non-citizen or ineligible citizen voters.
The Department of Justice right now is suing 30 states trying to force them to hand over their voter list so they can be run through that system, Abby. So it's been a major point of contention over the past year across the country when it comes to election administration and what this administration is trying to do.
I will tell you that I reached out to the Department of Homeland Security. They wouldn't comment specifically on these guidelines because they said they have not totally been finalized and sent out to states yet. We're expecting that in the next couple of weeks. But they did say any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent.
So that tells you a little bit of their mindset here. They are expecting that if a state wants federal dollars, that they will comply and implement the administration's priorities, policy priorities. But I will note they have tried to withhold federal funding for other policy priorities, talking about immigration issues, sanctuary policies, DEI initiatives. A lot of those efforts have been blocked in court.
Again, these have not yet gone out to states, but you can expect once they do, if they do get finalized, they're going to be some challenges.
PHILLIP: Yeah, I'm sure that there will be. And this ruling today might also prompt some changes to that plan that they have in place that you just laid out, Gabe.
Thank you very much for that reporting.
To our panel now, I mean, let's talk about the SAVE System that they want states to use and maybe using federal dollars as a way to force them to it, to use it. The ruling today basically suggests that there are problems with this one. Accuracy is a huge issue, right?
And then the second one is privacy. According to the ruling, it says decades ago, Congress put protections in place to prevent precisely this type of centralized data bank and the records in this case show that the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections.
So, taking Social Security data, trying to marry it to other data, is apparently a violation of the law. But also, the states are basically saying it's not even accurate. You're flagging people who are citizens.
So that's what the Trump administration apparently wants to force states to utilize.
JENNINGS: Well, number one, it's pretty common, by the way, for federal government to attach strings to federal funding and try to get certain behavior out of states. It happens on highways, happens on environmental protection, happens on health care, happens on a lot of issues. So that's number one.
Number two, I don't think it's unreasonable to try to use government information that we have in our possession to just ensure that no non- citizens are on the voting rolls. I think most people, frankly, would agree with that. It should be accurate, and it should be in compliance with the statutes. But if you have a database that could reasonably help you identify populations that have somehow gotten registered to vote that shouldn't be, I don't know why anybody would oppose that.
I know there's one ruling. I'm sure there'll be appeals. But it actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. It's data that's already in our possession.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, people might oppose it. I just want to make the point. One of the reasons they might oppose it is because those two criteria, it's accurate and it complies with the statute, seem to have not been met in this case, which is important.
BENITEZ: Isn't it ironic that the Republican Party that has spent a generation fighting for states' rights and saying that the federal government has no place in those rights from the Constitution to the states is trying now to run elections in every state in the country and telling the states how to run their own elections. This is just laying the groundwork to claim fraud if the midterms results don't go the way the Trump administration wants.
JENNINGS: It's a fair point, by the way, about states' rights. And I agree with you. I don't think the federal government should be fully in charge of our election system. The diffuse nature of it actually is a bit of a protectorate.
However, we already have certain statutes that tie the federal government to states, and we have expectations of states that they will run their elections in certain ways, keep their voter rolls clean already. So there are already some strings between the feds and the states when it comes to how elections are run.
But it's a fair point about the state's responsibilities, and I tend to agree states should run elections.
NAFTALI: I'd like to make a conservative point for protecting privacy. Even though the Framers couldn't have known Bill Pulte, the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect us against the misuse of information by people with power. And we saw Mr. Pulte, soon to be a little while, used mortgage information to help the president go after his adversaries.
[16:35:02]
How do we know that the Social Security information that would be used by the federal government would be used for the purposes that some people are saying it would be used for? It might be used to go after people.
So isn't it better that the federal government not share our private information --
JENNINGS: Go after them for what?
NAFTALI: We have an administration that looks for whatever weakness or opportunity to indict people, the people they don't agree with. They've taken what Richard Nixon did secretly and made it an overt policy of the United States.
JENNINGS: You're saying we could take your Social Security number and somehow --
NAFTALI: You could do all kinds of terrible things.
JENNINGS: Define your political leanings.
NAFTALI: You could -- you could -- well, Social Security-- the idea was Social Security information.
PHILLIP: I think the answer is potentially yes. There's a reason Social Security numbers are one of the most private pieces of information that Americans have.
NAFTALI: Scott -- Scott, Scott -- of ID cards for -- yes.
PHILLIP: You mean like the driver's license?
NAFTALI: No, no, no, no.
The Republican Party has been against national ID cards. No, require it, because of the concern of centralizing private information in a place where it could be misused by the federal government.
And why should we do that now? Why should we allow people to have access for Social Security information for political purposes?
ROSE: I think we're --
PHILLIP: Max, as the former congressman, I have to ask, isn't this Congress's job?
ROSE: Well, Congress's job is to solve problems. It's not clear this is a top problem of the United States of America right now, but it's clearly a top priority of this administration, and we all should be asking why.
And the truth of the matter is, is that the administration is seeking to sow confusion and chaos around the midterm elections, partly because they know they're on the precipice of a massive electoral loss, and also because it is their intent to be able to control this state-based process. We have not yet even started to have the conversation about what they're intending to do with ICE. The potential, with this vastly funded paramilitary force, for us to see ICE raids in and around, high-immigrant communities in contested congressional districts.
These are things that Democratic governors, which have contested congressional races within their state in 2026, have to start thinking about and how they will stand up to the federal government to ensure a free and fair election.
PHILLIP: So, you know, one of the interesting things is that the courts have been weighing in on this, right? And the Trump administration sued, as Gabe said, dozens of states to try to get access to their voter data. And so far they are losing pretty much all of these cases, including one today in the state of Maryland, where a judge ruled they don't have a right to voter data.
And part of it is because, you know, even if they were to get this data, they've gotten some from some red states that have just given it to them. This is from January of earlier this year. They looked at 49 million voter registrations. They sent 10,000 cases for investigation. That's a .02 percent of names. And then of those cases, many turned out to be, if not most in some jurisdictions, turned out to be perfectly valid voter registration.
So virtually no fraud found in their own review of these cases.
BENITEZ: I mean, it's a top issue for this administration. I think it's more of a top talking point of this administration.
There's no issue here. There's no real election fraud in this country. We keep talking about it for two reasons. This is a distraction, a distraction of right now, today, the failure of the Trump administration to end a conflict that started two months ago with Iran.
And then the other thing is that trying to sow confusion in the midterms elections if those results don't go the Republicans' way. Donald Trump now, he's so focused on legacy, on legacy building, on being remembered as a great president. Now he risks having a minority in the House and a minority in the Senate after the November election, becoming a lame duck president with no ability to do anything that will be remembered in the future.
PHILLIP: All right. We'll have to leave that there.
Ahead for us in THE ARENA, maybe the seventh time will be a charm. The United Kingdom now preparing for a new leader after more than a half a dozen prime ministers in just the last decade.
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KEIR STARMER, OUTGOING BRITAIN PRIME MINISTER: The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question.
[16:40:03]
And I accept that answer with good grace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STARMER: Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the labor party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's deja vu in Great Britain. For the sixth time in just seven years, they're going to have a new leader. Keir Starmer announced his resignation this morning after mounting pressure from within his own party. It is a stunning turnaround from his landslide election victory nearly two years ago.
[16:45:03]
Now, as for who will replace him, the frontrunner, Andy Burnham, was only sworn into parliament earlier today.
With us now from London is CNN's Max Foster, and co-host of "The News Agents" podcast, Emily Maitlis.
Max, let's start with you. He's been under pressure for months now. Why is the resignation happening at this moment?
MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's a good question, Abby, because only on Friday he was asked if there was a challenge to his leadership, would he fight on? And he said he would.
But clearly, later on Friday, he lost support of his cabinet. They were clearly in touch with him, saying that they couldn't support him any longer. And over the weekend, he dwelled on that, and it was pretty clear that he wouldn't be able to govern anymore. So that's effectively what happened today. He was forced out.
Now, his allies would describe him as determined. His detractors, there are more of them in Westminster these days, say he was stubborn, but ultimately he just had to go because he couldn't govern a cabinet. He would have lost his entire cabinet and he just had to go. So this was all forced, of course, by Andy Burnham, and it all happened very quickly in the end.
PHILLIP: Wow, I mean, Emily, it's fair to say that the Epstein Files has played a role in Starmer's time as prime minister, perhaps in this resignation as well. He had come under fire for naming Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the U.S. And the question of what he knew and when he knew it is a big deal. How much of a role did that play in what we're seeing here?
EMILY MAITLIS, BRITISH JOURNALIST: I wouldn't say that Epstein or indeed Mandelson the U.K. ambassador in Washington was the reason that Keir Starmer left but I think that whole scandal crystallized why he had to go because essentially he was not in control of events and the appointment of Peter Mandelson was something that he went along with without again really trying to make the decision himself. And After that fell apart, after the Epstein files came out, after we saw the relationship, just how close it had been between Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Mandelson decades ago, we started to get a sense of how the system hadn't worked, the vetting hadn't worked, the security hadn't worked.
And really that went to Keir Starmer's premiership. I think it told us more about Keir Starmer and the way he was governing or the way he wasn't really in control of the narrative, the choices, the decisions. And he'd left a lot of that decision-making to those around him, those close to him.
So I wouldn't say that Keir Starmer is an Epstein scalp in the way that others have been, but I would say that that scandal was instrumental in, I think, allowing people to see where his government was kind of falling out of control.
PHILLIP: Interesting. And just moments ago, we heard from President Trump about Starmer's resignation. No love lost between these two. Let's play with President Trump said.
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TRUMP: And I told him he's a very nice man. I mean, he's sort of a friend of mine. I mean, he was not good to us with NATO, Pete, right? He said we can't use the island to land. That was the first, for a couple of weeks. He said, well, but ultimately, I gave it to you now.
That was a bad move. That hurt him badly. But I mean, I wish him well, but he's got two problems, energy and immigration, and crime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Emily, President Trump is known to sort of dance on the graves of his political opponents. Do you think that there's truth to what he said there about the two problems that Starmer had?
MAITLIS: Keir Starmer is at his most popular with the British people when he's standing up to Trump. So every time Trump comes out with something that critical, you actually see something like a Keir bounce.
Trump is wrong about crime in this country, which has fallen, and he's also ironically wrong about immigration, which is on its way down as well. When it comes to energy, there is a big debate going on. Should we be doing more to allow for the digging of North Sea oil? Should we be not prioritizing net zero climate change policies in the way that this government has done so far?
I think there is a sort of a live debate to be had about energy, but it is -- it is not infrequent for Donald Trump to get his facts plainly wrong. And when he does in a situation like this, I actually think it's probably one of the most useful things for any British prime minister that they can have. PHILLIP: And Max, wow, six prime ministers in seven years and this is not quite as entertaining as that lettuce and Liz Truss situation that we had a few years ago. But with the 10th anniversary of Brexit coming up and all of this, this and Liz Truss situation that we had a few years ago, but with the 10th anniversary of Brexit coming up and all of this political instability, I mean, do you see an end to it?
[16:50:01]
Or is this the new normal for the U.K.?
FOSTER: What's interesting, I was in Italy recently, and they used to be a laughingstock because they went through so many prime ministers. And when I asked them what they thought of the U.K., it completely flipped. They are now laughing at the U.K. because of the number of prime ministers. Giorgia Meloni is now seen as a very stable leader in Italy, and Britain, we couldn't even name the prime minister, if I'm honest.
So what you've got is a situation now where you actually have potentially seven prime ministers over 10 years and Italians would say, well, it was because of Brexit. I mean, there's a debate there because all of this did start 10 years ago. There were economic repercussions of Brexit. Starmer couldn't afford to do many of the things he wanted to do.
But it was really the political chaos that came in with that traditional two-party system in the U.K., shaken up by Nigel Farage's party on the right. And that really broke things down. And that's what they're trying to deal with.
And when Andy Burnham comes into this job, he's not going to have more money. He's got the same issues. And, Abby, I mean, what we've actually got a situation to show how desperate this situation is here in the U.K. Andy Burnham is the only senior Labour politician who has a positive public rating.
So who could they go to apart from him and get him into power? But he was a local politician for 10 years. We don't know anything about his national or, indeed, his international policy. They're about to vote him in, nevertheless, within the Labour Party.
But that's quite an extraordinary situation. When does anyone walk into, you know, the top job in the country without us knowing anything about their national or international policy?
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to have a good approval rating, but if you've only been on the scene for a minute, it may not mean a whole lot.
Max Foster and Emily Maitlis, thank you both very much for all of that.
Coming up for us, what a federal court is saying now about an attempt by the Trump administration to subpoena Minnesota's governor, Tim Waltz. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:56:32]
PHILLIP: Breaking news. A federal judge says that the Justice Department's subpoena of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other Democratic officials in the state are unconstitutional. The judge accusing the Trump administration of using the grand jury process to harass its political opponents.
More on this is coming from CNN's crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz.
So, Katelyn, some very strong language from this judge. in his ruling that kind of takes us back to earlier in the year when there was all this conflict between Minnesota and the federal government.
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Abby, it's sort of been a sleeper case. It was one that was under seal until this judge made this opinion public today. And the reason that the judge wants this out there is that he sees abuse of the grand jury by the Justice Department.
So taking us back to the winter of last year, December of 2025, it was Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of ICE, immigration, Homeland Security agents were sent into the Twin Cities and into Minnesota. At the time, the people on the ground in Minnesota, including the Governor, Tim Walz, the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, and others, they were very vocally opposed to this surge. It was also a sanctuary city, Minneapolis, at very least.
And so the Justice Department and the Trump administration, they were in outright war, vocally, against these local officials. And then at the end of this January, there were subpoenas that were issued to offices of the Democratic officials in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, in St. Paul, subpoenaing them for a wide range of documents saying they were going to be under federal criminal investigation for potentially standing in the way of the law enforcement surge.
That's when things went under the radar in court. It went under seal. These officials challenged those subpoenas. And now the judge has ruled.
This is Judge Patrick Schiltz. He's a Republican appointee from the Bush administration. And he is writing that the public has a strong interest in this because this is learning of the abuse of the grand jury process by the Department of Justice. He says that the subpoenas that went to all of these officials are blatantly and overwhelmingly unlawful, that what they were doing were trying to harass and coerce the officials on the ground there to fall in line with the administration.
He points to Donald Trump, saying that there was a day of reckoning coming, that there would be retribution these people would face, and then they got those grand jury subpoenas in the in January. Now those subpoenas are no longer valid. The judge is throwing them out. PHILLIP: So, Katelyn, what are some of the things that the DOJ did that led to a ruling with such strong words, and as you point out, from a Republican-appointed judge?
POLANTZ: Yeah, Abby, one of the things we're seeing here is that this judge is looking very specifically at what was happening publicly in politics. and even says that this campaign of retaliation that the Justice Department was using these subpoenas as part of, that this was part of the well-established use of criminal investigations to retaliate or hurt Donald Trump's personal or political adversaries. That's language in this opinion.
Some of what specifically happened here was that the attorney general, Pam Bondi, sent a letter to Tim Walz saying that she needed Minnesota to repeal sanctuary city policies and also stand behind the ICE officials there. Those subpoenas had come just days before, and so that all came together here -- Abby.
PHILLIP: All right. Katelyn Polantz, thank you very much for all that reporting.
And thank you very much to my panel for this hour. Thank you for joining us today.
"THE LEAD", anchored by Anderson Cooper, starts right now.
