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Makeup Artist Testifies Ventura had Injuries Following 2010 Hotel Argument with Combs; DHS Inserts Staffer at FEMA in Shakeup Before Hurricane Season; Judge Blocks Mass Layoffs at Department of Education; House GOP Scores Major Win, Passing Trump's Sweeping Agenda. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 22, 2025 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Happening now. The prosecution's 16th witness on the stand now in Sean Diddy Combs racketeering and sex trafficking trial. This witness is a computer forensics agent.

And earlier, a hotel employee briefly took the stand. Before that, it was a makeup artist. He used to work for Combs as well as Ventura, who was on the stand.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, and that makeup artist described herself as a, quote, sister to Sean Combs' ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. She then testified about injuries that she says she saw on Combs' ex- girlfriend. She says that she understood that she felt fear.

[14:35:00]

CNN Entertainment correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister is live outside the courtroom. So, Elizabeth walk us through that testimony from the makeup artist.

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so the makeup artist, she described herself as a big sister to Cassie Ventura. She said that she had known Cassie long before she even started dating Sean Combs. She went into detail about an alleged incident that she said happened during Grammy's weekend back in 2010.

Now, she said that when her and Cassie left the party, actually thrown by the musician Prince, that they went back to a hotel room and that Sean Combs showed up. He was very angry. He asked, where is she? Referring to Cassie, asking where Cassie was. And then Sean Combs and Cassie were in a private bedroom of that hotel suite.

That's when this makeup artist, Mylah Morales, said that she heard fighting. She heard what sounded like a very scary situation. She did not see it, but she heard it. And during cross-examination, she did respond to the question saying, no, I did not see it.

But after what she did testify that she saw was injuries on Cassie's face. She said that she was swollen, that she had a busted lip, that she had knots on her head. She actually took Cassie Ventura back to her home so that she could be in a safe place. And she called over one of her friends who was a doctor. When the doctor examined Cassie, that she went to the emergency room. And when her friend, this emergency room, used to call the police, Cassie didn't want to.

Why? Well, this makeup artist testified it was because Cassie feared for her life and was fearful of Sean Combs.

Now, that is not the only witness that we heard from today. In fact, the fifth witness right now behind me in this courthouse is on the stand. We also heard from rapper Kid Cudi. Now, Kid Cudi dated Cassie back in 2011 for a very brief time period when Cassie had said that she and Sean Combs were on a break.

Cassie testified to this relationship saying that Sean Combs was very jealous and angry when he found out that she was dating Kid Cudi. He threatened them both. And today on the stand, Kid Cudi testified saying that Sean Combs broke into his house and blew up his car.

You may recall that in the indictment that there was an alleged incidence of arson. That's what this was -- guys.

KEILAR: All right, Elizabeth, thank you so much for that.

And ahead, President Trump's big budget bill moving to the Senate with promises of tax cuts. But is Medicaid also getting slashed? How the bill could end up impacting you personally.

[14:40:00]

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SANCHEZ: CNN has some new reporting that the Department of Homeland Security is inserting more than a half a dozen of its officials into key roles at FEMA. This is according to multiple sources and an internal memo that's been obtained by CNN. The move, apparently, is to help the agency run more effectively.

It also comes just ten days before hurricane season that federal forecasters predicted this morning could be worse than normal.

CNN's Gabe Cohen joins us now live with the latest. So, what is this about, Gabe?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, Boris, this really does feel like an inflection point in the Trump administration's takeover of FEMA. Remember, the president and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have vowed -- remember her department oversees FEMA -- they have vowed that they're going to eliminate the agency altogether. And now we're learning from this memo that they have inserted more than a half dozen of their officials into the front office of FEMA, into these critical advisory roles where my sources are telling me that they are going to be effectively running FEMA along with the new acting administrator, who is also a Homeland Security official, who came from the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office, as did some of these other officials. I've looked through their bios. They were included in this announcement yesterday. There's very limited experience actually managing natural disasters.

And there's a lot of worry over that from some of the people I'm talking to at FEMA because some of the folks they're replacing are longtime FEMA leaders. This announcement yesterday also included a list of at least 16 senior FEMA executives who are leaving the agency altogether right now amid this turmoil and the overhaul at the agency.

One FEMA official told me the key takeaway here is that the front office operation for the nation's disaster management agency has zero people with actual disaster response and recovery experience 10 days out from hurricane season. That is scary.

Another said, I think there's a real question as to what the objective of the administration is. Is it to actually make sure that we have the most competent voices ready to shepherd the agency through a period of turmoil that everyone knows is coming? It sure doesn't seem that way.

And look, part of the reason they're saying that, Boris, is because Noem and DHS have exerted extraordinary control over FEMA in recent months. You may remember just a couple weeks ago she fired the last acting administrator because he broke with other Trump officials and said he doesn't believe FEMA should be eliminated.

And as all that's happening, there's this growing concern that the administration isn't ready for hurricane season, that a final plan is not in place as they're trying to shift responsibility onto the states to handle disasters.

SANCHEZ: You reported that in the last week or so, that there was this memo outlining that FEMA simply wasn't ready even just days out from hurricane season. Gabe Cohen, thank you so much -- Brianna.

[14:45:00]

KEILAR: A major blow to President Trump's efforts to shut down the Department of Education. A federal judge just ordered the agency to reinstate the workers who were fired in mass layoffs.

CNN's Sunlen Serfaty has been following this story for us. What did the judge say here, Sunlen?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, the judge today essentially is saying that President Trump cannot be doing any of this without approval by Congress. Now, you remember back in March, the president signed an executive order to start the process to dismantle the agency. He also at the same time terminated nearly 50 percent of the workforce, 1,300 people at the Department of Education.

That was significant in size and scope. And the judge here today arguing that's really crippled the agency, its ability to meet the function that it needs to meet to get to bear out its responsibility in front of Congress. So arguing here that this should not be going on, the judge saying,

quote, The record abundantly reveals the defendant's true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute. The idea that defendant's actions are merely a reorganization is plainly not true.

And that's something that we saw the administration here argue, that they're doing this for the sake of efficiency and just reorganizing parts of the department. Now, the Trump administration says in a response today that they are going to immediately begin challenging the ruling.

The spokesperson from the department says quote, President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about the agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected judge with a political axe to grind.

And they note again that they are defending their moves. They say they're making the agency more efficient, more functional. But, of course, this is just one more chapter in this legal battle that likely will be ongoing.

KEILAR: Yes, and in so many different agencies, too. Sunlen, thank you so much for that.

Coming up, the president's Big, Beautiful Bill could mean big changes for Americans on Medicaid and food stamps. We'll have more on that ahead.

[14:50:00]

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KEILAR: President Trump and House Republicans are celebrating a major victory today after pushing a sweeping tax and spending bill over the finish line despite deep divisions within the party. The bill now heads to the Senate where it's likely to see some changes. Several Trump campaign promises included in the bill, like no taxes on tips and making the 2017 tax cuts permanent.

The measure also calls for raising the nation's debt ceiling by $4 trillion and cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and food stamps. With us now is former National Economic Council director under President Obama, Gene Sperling. He also served as a senior advisor to President Biden.

All right, Gene, fair to say you oppose this bill. Tell us why.

GENE SPERLING, FORMER NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, you know, they used to say about my basketball that I was slow, but I couldn't jump either. And that's kind of how I would look at this bill. It is brutally unfair to millions and millions of working Americans in hurting their health care, their food security.

And yet at the same time, it also expands the deficit in a way that is hurting confidence in investment in the United States. So it is both mean spirited, and yet it doesn't even help reduce the deficit. And, you know, one thing that people always say which is right is that budgets are a value statement.

So what is the values of President Trump when you understand the following fact? More tax relief will go to people making over $1 million than to the 127 million Americans making under $100,000. How would you possibly do a tax cut that hurts people, that gives more to those over a million than 127 middle class families?

And the bottom 10 percent actually do worse. They not only don't gain as much with the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, they're actually going to be suffering. I don't believe that is the values of the United States, and I don't think this is going to serve the president well politically either because a lot of those hardworking people on Medicaid, a lot of those hardworking people who might get unemployed for a spell and need some help with food security, those are Democrats and Republicans.

They're rural and urban. They are the face of much of working America.

KEILAR: So on the deficit spending, and I hear you on that because that's a reality about what this bill does, but the Nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget looking at the Biden administration policies estimated they added a net $4.7 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, including about $2 trillion from COVID relief, the American Rescue Plan.

I mean, how do you look at that when it seems that there has been little value on reducing the deficit, certainly during periods of emergency, but in general?

SPERLING: Let me say something that really should feel pretty bipartisan.

[14:55:00]

President Trump, in his first term, signed way more funds that increased the deficit and debt, partly to deal with COVID. President Biden actually did less.

You can argue, did they do a little too much or too little? But they were responding to a crisis that had the highest unemployment since the Great Depression. What we see here is, in normal times, the President and the House Republicans deciding that they are going to do spending cuts. They're going to knock 10, 12 million people, take away their healthcare, not to lower the deficit, not as part of some grand compromise, where you're going to ask people who are the most fortunate to pay even more.

You're saying, we're going to reduce, we're going to put this kind of pain on the hardest-pressed working Americans, and at the same time, we're going to keep expanding the deficit, not because you're dealing with a financial crisis, not because you're dealing with COVID, not because you're dealing with a war, but in order to give a huge tax cut averaging $82,000 to people making over $1 million. I mean, these are just the facts of the bill.

And, you know, the Republican who voted against it said, boy, if this is such a great bill, why are we doing it in the dark of night?

Their major provision to hurt Medicaid, people on Medicaid, when does that hit? December 2026. You know, that's all you need to know.

When you're taking your hardest hit on working Americans, taking away their healthcare, and you decide it won't start being implemented to the month after the congressional election, you know that that's actually a valued choice, that people voting for it are at least -- if they're not feeling some shame about it, they certainly don't want voters to know about it before the next congressional elections.

KEILAR: Yes, that it's a political liability. And there are some Republicans on the Hill on the Senate side telling our Manu Raju as he tracks him down in the hallways they have some similar concerns to yours. Gene Sperling, thank you so much for being with us.

SPERLING: Thank you so much.

KEILAR: And still to come, the latest details on that deadly plane crash in the middle of a neighborhood in San Diego. That and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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