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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Fed Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump's Tariffs; Sources Say, White House Planning ICE Crackdown In Chicago In Days; Florida May Lose $218 Million On Empty Alligator Alcatraz; Missouri's Governor Mike Kehoe Announces He Is Calling A Special Session To Redraw State's House Districts; The Pentagon Reinstalls Portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to the Academy's Library. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired August 29, 2025 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, two tests of Trump's presidential power in court. A federal appeals court judge just ruled against Trump's sweeping tariffs. And the president versus the Fed, the Lisa Cook firing case goes before a judge. The key question, what's the meaning of for cause?
Plus, $218 million, Alligator Alcatraz is a bust. And now Florida taxpayers are left footing the bill. The White House deportation plane is headed for destination anywhere.
STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: It's not our job to say to illegal alien terrorists. Pick your favorite destination in the world, and we'll send you a charter jet there.
PHILLIP: Also, Governor Abbott makes the new Texas voting maps official.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): I'm about to sign the law that creates the one big beautiful map.
PHILLIP: And in Iowa, a key Republican senator is bowing out. A look at how the midterms are shaking up.
And the latest move in the White House's war on woke, a portrait of Robert E. Lee returning to the West Point Library.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.
PHILLIP: Why is Trump so determined to put Confederates back in places of honor?
Live at the table, Joe Borelli, Pete Seat, Jennifer Welch and Van Jones.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do. (END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York for a special edition of NewsNight. We are back at the test kitchen at the Food Network, our sister company. And we, of course, have a fabulous chef serving our friends of the show, and we will, of course, catch up with her later.
But, first, let's get right to what America's talking about, Donald Trump's presidential power put to the test. Tonight, a federal appeals court delivered a significant blow to the President's trade policy, ruling that Trump illegally leaned on emergency powers to impose his sweeping tariffs.
Now, the judges found that Trump does not have the power under federal law to impose the import taxes because Congress didn't give it to him. It didn't give him wide-ranging authority to do that. But the court did not block the tariffs all together. So, as of right now, there's still in effect, at least until October. That gives the Trump administration some time to get to the Supreme Court and get them to weigh in on this.
Now, of course, the president responded earlier, warning that if the tariffs ever went away, it would be a disaster and that it could destroy the company.
Joining us in our fifth seat is Natasha Sarin. She's the president of The Budget Lab at Yale University and a former Treasury official in the Biden administration.
Natasha, just as a first level setting part of this, the main reason that the courts have ruled that this is unconstitutional is because, fundamentally, a tariff is a tax. And the president has a different view of it, but that has really run right into the core constitutional framework for who gets to tax and who doesn't.
NATASHA SARIN, PRESIDENT, THE BUDGET LAB AT YALE: Yes. It's sort of at the core of the founding of this country that the executive doesn't get to unilaterally levy taxes. In fact, only Congress has the power to tax and spend. And so what you have here is you have a $3 trillion tariff package virtually on every import on anything that is brought into this country that, unilaterally, with a swipe of a pen, was put into law by this administration and by this president.
And what the court said today it was kind of very clearly on tenuous legal ground from the get-go because the president has powers in certain very unusual and emergency situations to take actions with regards to economic policy. But we're not talking about an unusual or emergency situation or a narrow one. We're talking about broad-based, across the board, tariffs on allies and adversaries alike. And the power to do that just does not sit with the executive.
PHILLIP: That's sort of basic constitutional stuff. But what's so interesting, I mean, here's a bit of the court ruling, they said, not once before has a president asserted his authority under the IEEPA, that's the law that the president's using, to impose tariffs on imports or adjust tariff rates thereof. Rather, presidents have typically invoked this law to restrict financial transactions with specific countries or entities that pose an acute threat to the country's interests, basically sanctions.
[22:05:05]
So, I don't know. I mean, Pete, how do you see them defending this?
PETE SEAT, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN, PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: So, this was a 7-4 decision. There were four judges that dissented and they believe that the president does, in fact, have authority and was exercising his authority properly under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
I understand the majority decision, 7-4. That's the ruling that was made, but this is -- we're acting like this is a cut and dried argument. And dating back to at least 1892 in a court case that was brought forward by Marshall Field and Company, this has been debated and can Congress delegate tariff authority to the president and under what circumstances and how often can they do that?
PHILLIP: I guess they can.
SEAT: We've been having this debate for a hundred and some years.
PHILLIP: Yes. No, I mean, look I think they can. I think the court's just saying they did not.
VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: In this case, they didn't. And I think the thing that I always want to remind my conservative friends, tomorrow always comes. At some point you're going to have a Democratic president, and if you have a Democratic president who says, guess what you guys say, if I just say it's an emergency, I see no emergency, there's no terrorist threat, there's not a war, not a great depression, I just say it's emergency, and then I can do whatever I want to in the economic realm, that's called socialism. So, I don't understand why you guys are so excited about the president doing stuff like this.
JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: Van, we had a Democratic president, Joe Biden, and he kept in place many of the tariffs Trump put on in Trump 0.1. Now, the president does have the authority to implement tariffs under other laws, and those are still into effect. But big picture item, this put the president in the position to renegotiate favorable deals, more favorable than the past, with the E.U., with the U.K., we're on the precipice of a deal with China. These are all things that I would hope Democrats are rooting for and not against. And yet you see with this decision, all the familiar faces come out of the woodwork to cheer on the court in stripping back powers of the presidency that he is using to make better deals for Americans today.
JENNIFER WELCH, PODCAST CO-HOST, I'VE HAD IT: You know who's not rooting for it?
BORELLI: You? WELCH: American businessmen. You see the farmers that are small businesses in America that are going under because of these tariffs. The very people that elected Donald Trump are the people that he's punishing the most with this stuff. And you guys, if a Democratic president was doing this, the fiscal conservatives would be going bananas. You guys would go lose your minds. I don't think there's enough hospitals in Manhattan that could treat you.
PHILLIP: Let me play what Scott Bessent said just a couple days ago. I mean, look, maybe this is about deals, but maybe it's just about filling the United States treasury coffers. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: the Treasury Department is in, is taking in record tariff revenues that I had been saying was running at a rate of $300 billion a year. You chastise me for saying that it's not that number's too low. And as usual you are right, that we had a substantial jump from July to August, and I think we're going to see a bigger jump from August to September. So, you know, I think we could be on our way well over half a trillion, maybe towards the trillion dollar number.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It strikes me that that could become a problem for them, as they're trying to argue that this is an emergency, that this is about maybe making deals, that this is about fentanyl. But here they are saying, actually, it's just about raising revenue to do a lot of other things. And then on top of that, Natasha, I mean your take on Trump keeps saying foreign companies, foreign countries are paying these tariffs. Even if American households are not individually paying every single tariff, somebody in America is paying them.
SARIN: That's exactly right. So, again, we have $3 trillion of tariffs before this court ruling that strikes down about 70 percent of the tariffs so far, though, it doesn't take into effect until October. But you have about $3 trillion of tariffs. This is the largest tax increase on American families in modern history. My work with my colleagues at The Budget Lab at Yale estimates, it means thousands of dollars of increased prices for American consumers as a result of seeing higher prices on virtually everything that they buy.
But a point that's really important with respect to the nature of how the president chose to enact these tariffs, in the first Trump administration, what President Trump did is he went to Congress and he said, I would like to see tariffs, or he used his other authorities with respect to national security concerns and a long process with which to set tariff rates on particular countries, in particular cases.
What he chose to do here was avoid all of that in a way that is very clearly illegal, and in doing that, introduced a ton of uncertainty into this system.
[22:10:03] PHILLIP: But why won't Trump just go to the Congress that he controls and just ask them to raise tariffs? I mean, actually, that would be completely legal, totally and completely legal. He could go to Congress and say, hey, Speaker Johnson -- yes, hey, Speaker Johnson, give us a 10 percent across the board tariff on the whole world. He can do that. Why won't he do it?
SEAT: So, two points. One, the Congressional Research Service did a study right around the time of liberation day and they wrote, quote that the president or the Congress has given the president broad latitude to exercise his tariff authorities. Again, a president can do this, maybe not under every circumstance, and that is continuing to be adjudicated, but this is a debate --
(CROSSTALKS)
SEAT: The second point is, I want to go back to what you said --
PHILLIP: No. I want you to answer my question. Why won't Trump --
SEAT: No, I don't want things to sit on the table that are inaccurate, Abby.
PHILLIP: Hold on a second. I mean, I asked you a question. You decided to talk about something else. Why won't Trump go to the Congress that he controls --
SEAT: Because he believes he has the authority. And I just gave you an example of why.
PHILLIP: Listen --
SEAT: The Congressional Research Service itself says that.
PHILLIP: Hold on. I don't want you to take the Congressional Research Service out of context. The president does have some tariff authorities. It's just not under this particular law.
Now, this is the issue here. He has used tariff authorities. You mentioned this.
BORELLI: Four judges disagree with you, just so you're aware. Four judges disagree with you.
PHILLIP: Wait a second. There are panels of judges all across the country. Some judges dissent. Other judges agree. It doesn't mean that they are not accurate. But you said it earlier, in his first administration, he levied tariffs on China and on other parts of the world that were under a different authority. And nobody questioned the legality of those tariffs. But what he's doing now is different. It's fundamentally different. And he could go around it by just going to the Congress he controls and he won't do it.
BORELLI: You have the right to disagree what he's doing, but he, if he believes he has the authority under IEEPA to implement these tariffs, and he's doing it, I think we're going to have a pleasant surprise before October 14th when the Supreme Court weighs in. In fact, I hope I'm here on October 14th.
PHILLIP: So, look, I don't know what the Supreme Court's going to do but my only point is that I think you have to take into consideration, first of all, a 7-4 ruling is not a close -- particularly close one. But second of all they've made it very clear, no other president has attempted to do this before for a very clear reason. Because the act never says in its plain text, which I thought conservatives cared about, the plain text never says that tariffs are among the things that they can do.
SARIN: The word tariff is not in IEEPA. Since 1974, since IEEPA was legislated, not one president, including Trump and his first term, has ever tried to use IEEPA in this type of way. It was used after September 11th in the narrow circumstance of trying to figure out how to make sure that money wasn't going to terrorist organizations in the face of a national security threat. That was exigent.
The idea that you can use that type of authority in this Broadway on literally every import into this country, it is incredibly difficult to argue that legally.
BORELLI: So, do you think four judges who dissented have no idea what they're talking about?
JONES: I just want to say a couple things. Like often people like where Trump is going, you like it. You love it. You love it. And you pretend that the way he's doing it doesn't matter. That is an argument for lawlessness.
BORELLI: Going to court is not lawless. Going to court, getting a split decision is not indicative of a lawyer indicative to disagree.
JONES: Can I finish it? I think you got a chance to talk. I want to finish talking.
Over and over again, I see my conservative friends making arguments that, at the end of the day, would open the door to a lawless president that is literally abusing authorities. He doesn't have to do it this way. He's doing it this way because he believes he can run over precedent. He believes he can -- he has a Supreme Court in his back pocket and he's reshaping the power of the executive in a way that you're not going to like when we have President AOC.
And so I think we should actually be agreeing with each other that we like process. That's not just you get what you want, but you do it the right way in America, that's what makes us not a banana republic, and we're throwing that away.
PHILLIP: The final point from my conservative friends at the table, since when are conservatives cheerleading for tax increases? I just -- that is confusing to me. Because, fundamentally, the reason that Congress, the Constitution puts the power of the purse, taxation and spending in the hands of Congress is so that the people control when they are taxed.
JONES: Not the king. PHILLIP: Since when is it okay for one man to decide that every person in the United States of America has to pay a higher tax and he never has to go through Congress to do it?
SEAT: Tariffs are utilized for a lot of different purposes. As Joe mentioned earlier, yes, Joe Biden kept a lot of Donald Trump's tariffs in place.
PHILLIP: As we've discussed.
SEAT: So, obviously they're not blanket --
PHILLIP: And as we have discussed, those were under a different authority for national security purposes.
[22:15:02]
SEAT: Everything Trump does is different.
PHILLIP: No, Trump did it. Trump did it.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: It may or not have been a policy that everybody agreed with, but nobody said, oh, he can't do it under that authority.
But the other thing is that the other tariffs that exist, Congress passes those trade deals, right? You come up with a deal with another country, you take it to Congress, they ratify it, it's the law of the land. Why won't Trump do it that way? And why are conservatives okay with the people never being a part of the process, the people being the citizens of this country?
SEAT: Congress has time and time again delegated their authority on tariffs and the president of the United States is utilizing that authority that has been delegated to him.
PHILLIP: But according to this court and the lower court that looked at it before, not in this case.
SEAT: And if the Supreme Court rules in his favor, will you agree?
PHILLIP: That is what -- listen, if the Supreme Court rules in his favor, that's the law of the land. And I think it's good for us to agree that when the courts rule, and we don't like it, we still abide by it. That's how this country works.
We'll wait for the process to play out. It'll play out, trust me. But this is an interesting one and especially in the way that it kind of turns politics upside down for conservatives and for liberals here in this country.
But next for us, Illinois Democrats are condemning an expected immigration crackdown in Chicago next week. The White House has a message for them, get out of the way. Plus, as Texas signs its new Congressional map into law, another red state is jumping into the redistricting wars. We'll tell you what it is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the windy city is bracing for the impact of Trump's immigration raids. Sources are telling CNN that the administration is planning to conduct a major immigration operation in Chicago as soon as next week. Preparations are already underway, including sending armored vehicles into the city along with surging federal agents, according to two sources.
Now, Illinois's Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson made it clear the crackdown and the federal agents aren't welcome, but the White House says, tough luck.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: when you get pushback as you head into Chicago from people like Mayor Johnson, what's your message to the mayor?
TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: Get out of the way because we're going to do it.
If he had one ounce of integrity, he would thank President Trump for making Chicago safer every day, I would think he'd be shoulder to shoulder with us, but it's disgusting that he is not. But we're going to be there anyway. So, if you don't want to help, get out of the way, we'll do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, this is following a pattern, immigration comes first. It's used as the vehicle by which they can do this. But I actually want to play for you something that J.B. Pritzker said to CBS News tonight that I think takes this to a whole other level. This is what he says the administration's really trying to do. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): It's an attack on the American people by the president of the United States. Now, he may disagree with a state that didn't vote for him, but should he be sending troops in, no.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said he has other aims. What are the other aims?
PRITZKER: The other aims are that he'd like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections. He'll just claim that there's some problem with an election and then he's got troops on the ground that can take control.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: Joe?
BORELLI: I mean, J.B. Pritzker was saying, you know, Chicago doesn't have a crime problem just a couple of days ago, so I wouldn't take anything he says too seriously. However, when he says this is targeting American citizens, it's specifically not. When Tom Homan says, we don't need the governor or the mayor's permission to have federal law enforcement enforce duly constituted federal laws in cities in America, we don't need their permission.
And, unfortunately, I just checked Morning Consult poll this week had Trump plus ten, 52 percent of Americans support him on immigration still this week. The Associated Press poll had President Trump's numbers the highest they ever were in that poll Trump 1.0 and 2.0.
So, whatever he's doing right now, is he targeting American cities? Yes, and I think they're not hiding that. They're targeting American citizens on immigration and crime, and he's seeing his best numbers at all.
JONES: You know, I live in L.A. and this is how people are getting tricked. And I think, again, I'm always concerned about my conservative friends getting tricked. Homan said he's going in there, he is going to make Chicago safer. That tricks in your mind. Oh, the feds are going in there. They're getting the gang members, they're getting the dangerous people who are here unlawfully out of the country.
Most people, myself included, would applaud to get those people. But what's happening on the ground in L.A. is literally the opposite. They're grabbing nannies. They're grabbing day laborers. They're not making L.A. safer. In fact, I have family members who have left the country because it's a bait and switch.
Now, whether it's a bait and switch to stop an election, that's something else, but there is this bait and switch thing that's happening. And I think that what you're now seeing in the Latino community that went strong for Trump, the numbers you just talked about are moving in the opposite direction in that community because they're actually seeing that they've been tricked, they've been hoodwinked, they thought something good was going to happen. Instead, it's the law-abiding, churchgoing, hardworking folks that are getting in trouble.
BORELLI: Sienna Poll/New York State, 71 percent of Latinos supported President Trump using ICE to enforce -- in fairness, enforce criminals, illegal criminals.
JONES: Against the bad ones. But that's always happened.
BORELLI: In the (INAUDIBLE) Washington, D.C., there was Tren de Aragua and MS-13 in the raid D.C.
[22:25:01]
PHILLIP: There's also universal agreement on getting criminals, but you also have to acknowledge that's not been what the immigration enforcement --
(CROSSTALKS)
WELCH: But I think we need to talk about what Pritzker was saying about the elections.
PHILLIP: I mean, my question is and this goes to that to a degree is, what is the purpose of bringing the military into all of these immigration enforcement activities? Because it's a choice that they're making to stage this at a military base, to bring in the armored vehicles to use the military when they just got a massive budget increase to have -- to give ICE the largest budget they have ever had, and they have plenty of people to do this. What's the purpose of that part of it?
WELCH: They are priming the public to get ready for this. This is an authoritarian play, and you can ask any historian that has studied this. This is what they do. And I believe a hundred percent with what J.B. Pritzker is doing. The reason he can't take the tariffs to Congress and legislate is because a lot of those legislatures will have problems in their home district. That's why he doesn't do it.
So, Trump does what he always does. He cheats. And I think he wants to cheat in this election. He knows that if he goes and runs right now, he will not -- I mean, the midterms, he will not get a Republican Congress and Senate back, so he is putting the military in these blue cities first.
This is a man who uses language that we are going to get the enemy from within. This is a man that is Merry Christmas to everybody except for the liberal scum. An American president talks to other American citizens like that and propagandists come on T.V. and normalize this behavior. And nothing about this is normal, nothing.
PHILLIP: So, in the meantime down in Florida, they built Alligator Alcatraz, and a judge has ordered it to be closed. That whole thing will cost $218 million on Florida taxpayers.
JONES: Oops.
PHILLIP: For what exactly? I mean, this is one of those things where I guess they did it just to make a show of it and they sent the president down there. The threat was, I guess, maybe if you try to escape, you get fed to alligators. Now, taxpayers are footing the.
SEAT: Yes. Well the decision that this judge reached and the reason why this facility is being shut down has nothing to do with immigration policy. It's all about environmental policy and the fact that it is cited on sensitive wetlands.
JONES: Yes.
SEAT: I agree that the governor and the state should have known that. They should have realized that. And if there were any regulatory procedures or hurdles that they should have gone through, that should have taken place. But I want to just make clear that people don't jump to a conclusion that this was a decision on immigration policy. This is a technicality.
PHILLIP: Yes.
JONES: But even better, this is the point. We have a system of checks and balances and laws to make sure that one person doesn't get a nutty idea and run over sensitive wetlands, run over the treaty rights of Native Americans, and also, by the way, hurt a whole bunch of people because facility was run like a sewer. So, this is the point.
It's weird for me, a new point in my life where I'm fighting for process and procedure. I'm usually just out here crying for people who are sick and poor and getting missed over. But at this point, the system itself that your parents and my parents set up to make sure that there are checks and balances and a smooth functioning of government keep getting run over by conservatives.
And I love the fact that our courts are saying, I'm sorry, we're a nation of laws, not crazy --
SEAT: But if you opposed the president, they're working.
PHILLIP: But to put it more simply, I mean, this just seems like a failed attempt to own the libs that now taxpayers are paying for.
JONES: Stepped on a rake.
PHILLIP: And I do think that there's a real pocket book component to this, which is that, yes, I mean, they say they don't want our money being wasted, but it's being wasted.
WELCH: Totally. It's totally being wasted.
BORELLI: Well, that's why Ron DeSantis has a backup, deportation depot, which is on the site of a former prison, which then will reopen soon, and that's where folks will be house. So, now they're going to go put people in an already approved facility, approved for these purposes. It was built for this purpose. And that's what's going to happen. Because I think the American public still -- as evidenced by the polls I cited earlier, the American public still stands behind President Trump in enforcing our immigration laws.
It is, by the way, not authoritarian to enforce immigration laws that were enacted by a duly elected Congress and signed by previous Congress.
WELCH: 71 percent of people they detained don't have a criminal record, 71 percent.
BORELLI: And 100 percent of people deported have valid deportation orders from judges. So, that's part of the process. That's the process they go through.
WELCH: No, they don't.
BORELLI: You don't have to have a criminal conviction to be deported. You need only prove that you are not here lawfully. WELCH: You're sitting here defending people being denied due process.
BORELLI: No.
WELCH: You're saying that's not authoritarian. And this is the gaslighting that propagandists state, Joe.
BORELLI: You just told us that the military's coming in, Trump's going to steal the election.
WELCH: They're doing it.
BORELLI: Do you know how delusional sound?
[22:30:00]
WELCH: I saw it with my own eyes.
BORELLI: Do you not see how the people of America are sick of hearing these delusional head movies by liberals that Trump is going to -
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: -- with armored vehicles.
(CROSSTALK)
SEAT: -- responded in 2024 where Donald Trump was an existential threat to democracy.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I feel like there's an obligation in a conversation like this. Look, I don't know what Trump is or isn't going to do. But you cannot pretend as if he did not try to stay in power the last time he lost an election. That actually happened. And then what also happened was that he encouraged his supporters to ransack the Capitol and attempt an insurrection.
UNKNOWN: Pardon them.
PHILLIP: So, all of those things, I mean, I take what you're saying. We don't know what's going to happen in the future. We don't know if J.B. Pritzker's prediction is accurate. But I do think we know about his behavior in the past. And there are many people who say --
BORELLI: J.B.'s premise --
PHILLIP: That's reason enough to say you can't just discount it.
BORELLI: Pritzker's premise was that he was going to remove people who are non-citizens and somehow that would be protecting the election. PHILLIP: That's not --
BORELLI: That implies that people --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: No, no. I just --
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: -- who are non-citizens, to be clear -- that's not what he was saying. What he was saying was that the use of the military in this operation, for whatever purpose it is right now, is a predicate for getting the population used to the military in their communities.
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: But that wasn't the case when Kathy Hochul had the National Guard here, right?
(CROSSTALK)
WELCH: But also -- and another thing that's interesting is conservatives is fighting for capitalization and not states' rights. That's an interesting component.
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: That wasn't the case then.
PHILLIP: Kathy Hochul is a governor and she has control over the National Guard in the state. And can --and governors, Republican or Democrat, can deploy the National Guard as they see fit to deal with specific instances. So, Kathy Hochul can do it. You know, Republican governors can do it.
(CROSSTALK)
WELCH: Isn't that the conservative point states' rights?
BORELLI: Yeah. Yeah.
PHILLIP: Last word, Van.
JONES: Well, I just, I do think that it is disturbing, I mean, seeing American troops used in American cities. That's weird. That's not normal. Usually, there's something right or something like that, but just for that to become a normalized thing.
And also, he seems to only be picking on blue cities. There's crime happening in in red parts of America. He's not sending troops there. So, that's why I think people are getting nervous. You're sending troops on American soil, which is weird. You're only doing it in blue cities, which is weird. That's the concern.
PHILLIP: All right, I got to leave it there. Coming up, both parties turning up the heat ahead of the midterms redrawing their congressional maps and flipping seats. We'll break down what it all means for the midterms and who stands to gain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, just hours after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a controversial new voting map, the GOP-controlled state of Missouri has become the latest to answer Donald Trump's call. Missouri's Governor Mike Kehoe announced that he is calling a special session to redraw the state's House districts with the goal of adding a Republican seat from only two blue seats in the state.
Also, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst is expected to announce that she's not going to run for reelection in 2026. After a shocking special election result saw the Democrat breaking her state's supermajority. Now, across 34 special elections this year, Democrats are outperforming last year's presidential results by an average of 16 points.
Not all of this is surprising, A, B, due to Trump, but it does suggest that Republicans are preparing for a midterm year that's going to be tough, as they often are. And they're doing so by prioritizing just getting more seats, squeezing more seats out of already very gerrymandered states. That is an interesting strategy. Voters will never have a say in how it goes but it'll be interesting to know what they think.
BORELLI: Abby, you used the word controversial to say what Texas is doing and fine, maybe it is. But was it controversial when New York did it two years ago?
PHILLIP: It absolutely was. It went all the way to the courts.
BORELLI: Ultimately, Kathy Hochul was struck down because our state's constitution doesn't allow her to do that. Texas' does. But picture --
PHILLIP: Yes, it is-- to answer your own question, it was controversial when New York did it.
JONES: So controversial, the courts struck it down.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
BORELLI: They struck it down because of our state constitution, right? Not the same as Texas'.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But yes.
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: But here's the picture, 2.1 million Americans left the Democratic Party. They said, sayonara, we're done with you -- 2.4 million Americans joined the Republican Party. So, I would love to see that play out in more Republican seats, whether it's Texas, Missouri, New York, wherever. I would love to see it.
JONES: Of course.
BORELLI: And I don't think this is going to be as difficult of a year for Republicans, people say. Senate leadership fund just raised $85 million, double what they had at this point last election cycle. Congressional leadership fund just raised 60, double what they had last election cycle, palling into Paris into the poultry numbers.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Why are they doing this, Van?
JONES: Let me just say something. That's not how it works. If people change their voter registration, wonderful. But you don't then in the middle of a 10-year cycle start redistricting everything. You do that every six months if you wanted to based on voter registration. What happens is you go vote. You go vote.
BORELLI: But you can if the state constitution allows.
JONES: Well, sure, but -- or you could, I don't know, do what we've done as a country for the past hundred years and you only redistrict after a census. The fact that the Republicans are doing something that is so unconcerned, in other words, you're not preserving and protecting our normal way of doing things.
[22:40:00]
You're doing something radical and new. Why? Why are you so afraid? If Trump is so popular, why are you so afraid? If you have so many more Republicans, why are you so afraid? Why are you now rushing to do some things that have been done? You're not as confident because these are not popular positions that he's taking and you're terrified you're going to have a House with Hakeem Jeffries able to subpoena all these people doing all this stuff. That's what's going on.
SEAT: So, if a lot of my Republican friends were sitting here, Van --
JONES: What would they say?
SEAT: They would say that this is a response and it's a chicken and the egg depending on what size of the aisle you're on. California says that they're responding to Texas. A lot of Republicans say Texas is responding to California and how they drew their maps to start off with.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: But --
(CROSSTALK)
SEAT: Fifty-two congressional districts and only nine are held by Republicans.
JONES: Yeah, that's --
SEAT: You can't look at that and tell me that wasn't gerrymandering.
(CROSSTALK)
WELCH: I just want to say something.
(CROSSTALK)
SEAT: Look at Massachusetts and tell me that wasn't gerrymandering.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Just as a point of fact --
JONES: Actually.
PHILLIP: California's redistricting is done by a non-partisan and not an independent commission.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Listen, you can argue with me about it, but --
JONES: It's true. I live there.
PHILLIP: -- and on top of that, maybe there is -- there's probably still a bias toward Democrats, but it is fundamentally different from the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, saying what he's saying here in this clip. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R) TEXAS: I'm about to sign the law that creates the one big beautiful map that ensures fairer representation in the United States Congress for Texans. Texas is now more red in the United States Congress.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Something about those two sentences don't really jibe.
WELCH: As somebody who lives in a red state, let me just tell you what MAGA supermajorities get you. We're 50th in education. We are 50th. Worst -- the worst in the whole country for women to live. We're poorer. Worst healthcare. And if you look at the bottom 10 states in the United States of America, they are all MAGA supermajorities. These policies hurt people.
They use people's faith to lure them in and say, oh we're family values, but then they don't vote to help women have children. They don't vote for health care. They don't vote for child care. They demean the poor. I live in a red state where --
JONES: What state?
WELCH: -- these policies -- Oklahoma -- and these policies have horrifically impacted people in rural America that vote for this very party because they weaponize their faith and lure them in.
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: That's odd. Red states are growing tremendously.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: So, we are -- we are currently in, we're not about to be, but we are in the race to the bottom, right, when it comes to redistricting. Because Democrats -- Democratic states are doing it, Republican states are doing it, and nobody's going to disarm themselves before these midterms. So, there are going to be a lot of states that are getting in on this game.
We'll be covering this as it goes along but coming up next for us, as President Trump says, museums focus too much on, how bad slavery was. The Pentagon is now reinstalling a portrait of a Confederate general at West Point. We'll discuss, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:41]
PHILLIP: Tonight, the White House's so-called War on Woke goes to West Point. The Pentagon is reinstalling a portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to the academy's library. The 20-foot painting shows Lee in his Confederate uniform with an enslaved person holding his horse in the background. A congressionally mandated commission ordered it taken down three years ago as part of an effort to remove Confederate tributes from the military.
This isn't just about a painting. It's about a painting that was meant to lionize the part of Robert E. Lee that we don't like, where he was the Confederate general, where he defended slavery. Not everything about Robert E. Lee was removed from West Point, but this one was.
JONES: Yeah, I mean, I don't have much to say here. It's very - it's heartbreaking to me. There are a lot of great Americans. None of them fought against our own government, period. None of them fought to uphold the enslavement of my ancestors, period. So, I don't understand why Donald Trump, who by the way has, you know, shocked a lot of people and his ability to appeal to black voters, is spitting in those black voters' faces by putting some of the most painful imagery that you could in the middle of our military which we all respect and revere,
So, I just don't like this topic. I don't like him doing this. I know we have to talk about it but I just want to say, it's hard for me to respect people, and I respect everybody. It's hard for me to respect people who would make the argument that this is the man we should be upholding, that somebody who led military forces against our own government to keep my ancestors enslaved is worthy of this type of treatment and respect.
There are other people in America's military whose names have been taken down. Tuskegee Airmen and other people who were taken down. And this is being put up and it's very, very, it's inexcusably bad from my point of view.
PHILLIP: Anybody who want to comment?
WELCH: I agree with him completely. They removed Harvey Milk who was gay and he was a veteran that served, and a gay rights activist, and they removed him.
[22:50:01]
And this is a party of cruelty and a party that props up white supremacy. It just truly is. And you can -- they can say one thing, but you look at their actions and they remove military people of color. They remove LGBTQ plus people. And then they prop up a guy that was a traitor to his own country, a Confederate with a slave in the painting. That's just disrespectful and cruel. Cruel.
PHILLIP: This has been a very specific campaign on the part of this administration. Not just to say, let's leave what's there. They want to restore honors to Confederate figures. I still have a hard time understanding what the real logic of that is.
BORELLI: This particular painting would not be my hills to fight over, it wouldn't be my hill to die on. But to put things maybe in context, to perhaps, you know, broaden the conversation a little bit, there are a lot of Americans out there who trace their ancestry back to the Confederacy as white people. And I think they have to wrestle with their own ancestors, and to some degree they have to be proud of who their ancestors were.
Not everyone in the South was a slave owner. I'm not trying to diminish that. But these people are the descendants of a group of people who decided to act a certain way, and they have to digest that. And it's important to remember that when we solved the Civil War, when the war ended, the government chose not to execute these Confederate leaders. They chose not to jail them, not to execute them, but they went in a period of reconstruction.
And so, you know, if there was some balance perhaps in the 1860s and '70s and ' 80s, perhaps there deserves to be some balance now where we have to wrestle with the fact that some white Americans do trace their ancestry back to this period of history.
WELCH: No, no. That is not an excuse for doing this. It just isn't. This is so incredibly cruel. This is regressive and I think we all know for a certain group part of the electorate when they say make America great again they are sending us the messaging of what that is and we need to talk about it and call it out directly and spot on.
There is no excuse for that. I don't know if my ancestors had slaves or not but if they did, F them. Truly, I don't need to go reconcile that. I don't need a piece of art to see a black person degraded and not considered a full human being.
PHILLIP: Can I add one piece of context before you come in here? This is according to military.com and this is -- this is true. "The portrait that was removed and is now being reinstalled was first hung in 1952," -- so, good long ways after the Civil War, "-- during a high point for the Lost Cause movement that seeks to recast the Confederacy's fight as a heroic struggle unrelated to slavery." So, if this is about what is history and are we remembering it the right way, this is historical revisionism, this painting.
JONES: Well, I mean, I think that there are people, to your point, who feel that there's some movement to make white people feel ashamed and that they should be shamed and blamed and that they have to hold their heads down or whatever and people resist that. I think that is a big misunderstanding on the part of people who feel that way.
First of all, there are a lot of white Americans who should be celebrated. Some of them, frankly, were slave owners. You know who those people are? Thomas Jefferson, George Washington. The idea that somebody, because they were a slave owner, can't have honor in this country is defied by, just go to Washington, D.C., and look at all the memorials to those people.
But when you take up arms and you start killing people to make sure that other people don't have freedom in a country that's about freedom, you remove yourself from the conversation of people who should be celebrated. And that is not the same as saying white people should be ashamed. It's saying this is a shameful part of the American story that we should not try to sugarcoat.
PHILLIP: All right, I got to leave it there. Next for us, what's on tonight's menu? We'll tell you soon. Chef Nikki and our Food Network friends, they've been working hard in the back there for our last taste of the summer. I can't believe I'm saying that. You don't want to miss it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:48]
PHILLIP: We are back and we're here with Chef Nikki Scott, the supervising culinary producer here at the Food Network. So, Chef Nikki, tell us what we've got. It is quite the spread, I have to say.
NIKKI SCOTT, SUPERVISING CULINARY PRODUCER, FOOD NETWORK: I know. I went all out. That wasn't my intention. But it's the end of the summer. I figured it would be great to have a Connecticut-style Cajun- Spiced Shrimp Roll. And then we have a summer pasta salad. It's got a bunch of radishes, tomatoes, Dijon vinaigrette. And then, there's a hefty banana pudding.
(CROSSTALK)
UNKNOWN: But delicious.
(CROSSTALK) PHILLIP: Listen, the banana pudding is serious business here.
SCOTT: You can save some for later.
UNKNOWN: I'm eating it now.
PHILLIP: I've asked this before, but what is the secret? If there's one thing that if you're going to prepare these dishes -- the Q.R. code's right on your screen. If you want to try this one out, what's the secret that people should remember for any part of this meal?
SCOTT: Plan ahead. I feel like when you want to eat, you want to eat. So, a lot of this was great because you can make it ahead. The pasta salad, I made, I prepped yesterday.
PHILLIP: Stick it the fridge.
SCOTT: Throw it in the fridge, let it marinate, get all those flavors. The shrimp also, I let it -- I cooked it yesterday, let it chill and then tossed it in seasoned butter sauce.
[23:00:04]
PHILLIP: Oh, you cooked it yesterday.
SCOTT: Yeah, so I did it like cocktail shrimp style.
PHILLIP: That is a good pro tip. Chef Nikki, thank you so much.
JONES: Thank you.
SCOTT: No problem.
JONES: I'll eat all this.
PHILLIP: And everyone -- yeah, I know, we're about to dig in. Everyone, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for watching "NewsNight". Don't forget that we've got our weekend conversation show tomorrow morning, that's "Table for Five", it's at 10 A.M. Eastern right here on CNN. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
