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Texas Dem Lawmakers Flee State to Fight Trump-backed Redistricting Plan; Texas GOP Pushes Ahead With Redistricting After Dem Lawmakers Flee State; Trump Fires Statistician, Says Without Evidence Jobs Data Rigged; The Rudin Building Reopened After Being Closed for Nearly a Week for Repairs Following the NYC Mass Shooting. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 04, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:29]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Texit, Democratic lawmakers in Texas hit the road and the governor hits the roof threatening to boot them out of the State House. But Dems say they will do everything in their power to block a Republican plan to redraw the state's congressional map.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Plus, a data dump. President Trump insisting the terrible Jobs Report was rigged despite presenting no evidence. Each day, bringing new worries for the economy, in the meantime, including an increasing number of Americans who say the price of groceries is stressing them out. And an Afghan refugee gunned down in Texas as his accused killer is allowed to simply walk away from the crime scene. Now, some of the Green Berets who he helped in Afghanistan are demanding justice. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

KEILAR: Even a redistricting fight is bigger in Texas. And this hour, Democrats appear undeterred by growing threats. Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has said, if they don't show up in the state capital in two hours, he's going to remove them from office. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is calling for their arrest, but still Democrats fleeing overnight with more than just Texas' future at stake. Republicans, essentially want to force through a new redistricting map that could cost Democrats five seats in the U.S. House, which could have nationwide impacts. Earlier on CNN, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES, (D-NY) HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: The Republican governor of Texas is out of his mind. Governor Abbott is making idle threats. He is all hat, no cattle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Dems' fighting words in Texas where CNN's Ed Lavandera is. He's live for us in Austin. And Ed, we are t-minus two hours until Republicans want to hold this vote. I assume you don't see any Democrats there.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Not yet, but the halls just outside of the House chamber remain relatively quiet with this many -- just several more hours to go. But this -- a quorum will not officially be broken until this House session is called into session and they do the roll call, and then we'll know exactly how many Democrats have left the state. We've surely been told so far, Brianna, that more than 51 Democrats have left the state. That's what Democrat 00 Texas Democrats, have been saying. But it will be official here in a little while, when we get to that point.

But as we march up to this three o'clock reconvening of the Texas House, the escalation, the political rhetoric has really intensified as we've heard from the governor, talking about wanting to remove or threatening to remove the Texas Democratic lawmakers who are threatening to break quorum as well as accusing them of potentially committing bribery by accepting donations to pay for the travel out of the Texas as well.

The Attorney General is calling for some of them to -- for them to be arrested as well. The Texas House Speaker could issue a civil arrest warrant for those to compel those lawmakers to come back here to the capital. But as all of this escalates, we spoke with Representative Ramon Romero, a Democrat from Fort Worth, and asked him why they felt compelled to go to these lengths to block to the redistricting bill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RAMON ROMERO JR., (D-TX) TEXAS STATE HOUSE: We know right now, Governor Abbott is paying back the favor to Donald Trump, and that's why we're doing this mid-decade redistricting. We know it's terrible for our state.

LAVANDERA: The governor says you guys could potentially face bribery charges, that you could be vacating your offices, that he would have you guys removed. How do you respond to what the governor is saying now?

ROMERO JR.: Yeah, I think the governor is really good at issuing threats that really don't have any substance because the governor has never known how to put down politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: Brianna, Democrats know that eventually they will not have the votes to block this redistricting bill that could bring as many as five more seats to Republicans here in Texas. But they are hoping that they can use all of the publicity, all of the amount of talk around this issue to ratchet up pressure on the governor to either change the map or to give up on the effort altogether.

[14:05:00]

But clearly, the way you've heard, and we've seen Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans talking about, they don't seem inclined to do that at all. So, this will only continue to intensify in the hours today as well as the days ahead. We are in the middle of this 30-day special legislative session. There's about two weeks left. So for Democrats to fully block it, they would have to stay gone that long. But, we should also point out the governor could simply just turn around and call another special session and keep doing that until they get the bill passed that they want. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. Well, we'll be looking towards this afternoon to see what happens. Ed, thank you for the report. Boris?

SANCHEZ: With us now to discuss is a Republican serving in the Texas State House, Rep. Brian Harrison. Representative, thank you so much for being with us. You've made the argument that this mid-decade redistricting is justified and necessary despite Texas with the same governor and a Republican majority approving a new map only four years ago. So, what's wrong with the map that Republicans put into place just four years ago?

REP. BRIAN HARRISON, (R-TX) TEXAS STATE HOUSE: Well, there's been a lot. First of all, I want to be really clear about something my Democrat colleagues that have fled their constitutional post here, OK, and are hiding up with Governor Pritzker. By the way, probably the biggest gerrymanderer in the country, by the way, is Governor Pritzker. Democrats don't actually have a problem with redistricting and redrawing maps to maximize partisan political advantage. They just have a problem when Republicans do it.

And let's just go back down memory lane here, only nine years ago in 2016, when Republicans won the U.S. Congress, I think we only had about a 1 percent majority in the popular vote. But Republicans had over 45-seat margin in the U.S. House compared to just last year, when Republicans won by more, a greater percentage of the popular vote. I think it was 3 percent, but we only had a two or three seat advantage. Well, why is that? I'll tell you why.

It's because Democrat states across the country for a decade have been engaged in radically aggressive redistricting to maximize their electoral advantage in ways that Republican states, quite frankly, haven't done. But a lot of stuff has happened just in the last four years since those maps were drawn. The laws have changed, the voting trends have changed. The demographics have changed, and the state of Texas absolutely should do this. And I'm going to be really clear, and this might shock some people on CNN to hear me, an elected Republican who used to serve as a senior member of President Trump's first term, say what I'm about to say.

This is not a victory for Democrats if they pull off this quorum break today. This is an abject failure of the elected Republican leadership in the state of Texas because the elected Republican leadership in the state of Texas had every tool available to prevent this quorum break. The Democrats were on the floor just four days ago on Wednesday. We had the maps; we had the Democrats here; we had a quorum. But instead of forcing the quorum to be maintained, which we should have done, we easily could have done it, our Rhino Speaker down here adjourned the whole body after only seven minutes to allow the Democrats to do what? And I'm not making this up, to scheme with Hakeem Jeffries who flew down from D.C. to meet with him last Wednesday night.

So this is an abject failure of Republican leadership in the state of Texas. The state of Texas must get this maps done. And I want not rhetoric --

SANCHEZ: Sure.

HARRISON: -- out of leadership of Republicans in Texas. I want bold actions, for the Democrats to be held accountable for what they did.

SANCHEZ: You've been out -- you've been outspoken in your criticism of Republican leadership in your state. I just want to point out that, as you described, this disparity between the electoral vote, the popular vote, and the House, it's quite possible that a lot of voters split their tickets and that's why you see the result that you see in the House versus presidential election. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem like you're making a full-blown legal justification for doing this now, rather you're fully embracing the idea that this is political. I wonder if this would be happening had President Trump not called for it.

HARRISON: Well, I actually think it's a shame that President Trump had to say anything thing about it. Why did elect -- If Texas had bold elected Republican leadership, we would've gotten this done without being prompted, during the regular session, something that I fully supported. And let's talk about this hypocrisy here. I mean, Illinois and California have been much more aggressive in their approach on redistricting than even the new maps that Texas is contemplating.

I mean, this is a very inconvenient fact. I mean, why is CNN -- why don't you have it under Chiron (ph) right now, every time you play Governor Pritzker, why don't you point out that Illinois under his leadership has a -- 45 percent of the vote goes to Republicans in Illinois, but the Governor Pritzker only gives Republicans 15 percent of the congressional delegation. That is a much more aggressive partisan design redistricting effort that was overseen by the radical liberal Democrat Governor Pritzker than is even being contemplated by the map that we were supposed to vote on here in the state of Texas two hours from now.

SANCHEZ: So, you would support federal legislation, I imagine, to fight gerrymandering across the board?

[14:10:00]

HARRISON: Here's what I want to support. I want to make sure that elected Republicans in the state of Texas are doing everything we can to make sure that Congress, the United States Congress in the upcoming midterm elections does not fall into the hands of the radical extremist Democratic Party.

SANCHEZ: So, this is purely a political move?

(CROSSTALK)

HARRISON: Which is exactly what that party has become. And hey, I got to make this point.

SANCHEZ: This is -- this is purely a political move. This isn't about making sure --

(CROSSTALK)

HARRISON: The U.S. Constitution --

SANCHEZ: Sir, let me ask the question. You are clearly making the argument that this needs to happen for political reasons, that because your argument is Democrats have gerrymandered, therefore Republicans must also gerrymander. Why not get rid of gerrymandering altogether and actually put the power in the hands of voters to make the republic more efficient?

HARRISON: Well, I actually think we are trying to make the maps more representative. And here's the reality, the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the great state of Texas absolutely allows us to undergo this type of redistricting efforts. So we're doing something that's completely legal, it's completely constitutional, and I'm doing everything I can in my power as an elected member of the state of Texas to make sure that the state of Texas does everything in its power to make sure that Republicans hold onto a majority in the United States Congress. It's as simple as that. That's completely legal. It's totally permissible.

The United States Supreme Court has said so on multiple occasions. We should -- quite frankly, we should have done this during the regular session and had this in the rear-view mirror by now.

SANCHEZ: So then, is your objection against Pritzker or Newsom doing the same thing purely that it doesn't advantage your party? That's not -- that's not consistent.

HARRISON: No, I that I've never said something like that. You're putting words in my mouth. My objection --

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: You're pointing the finger at them.

HARRISON: My objection with Pritzker isn't that he's not allowed to do it. My objection is the rank hypocrisy and dishonesty of what he's saying. I'm going to hold this up. Can you see this? Do you see this? I want -- I want Pritzker to -- did CNN, did y'all have him on to explain Illinois 13, this pinky size finger that goes across the entire state that was 100 percent drawn for partisan political purposes, but I haven't seen anybody at CNN or pretty much any of the other major networks bringing him on, or the Democrats and his legislator that drew a map with districts that are far more gerrymandered than anything that the House, that the Texas maps that we're contemplating look like here today. So it's rank hypocrisy. That's my problem. And the dishonesty and the foe outrage, they're not mad that states are redistricting for partisan purposes. They're mad that a Republican state is doing it.

SANCHEZ: I would welcome Governor Pritzker to come on our program and talk about his congressional maps. But I'm asking you about yours and there are some funny looking maps --

HARRISON: Well, why haven't you asked him about it?

SANCHEZ: -- in Texas. Sir, I'm having a conversation with you right now.

HARRISON: Why haven't you asked him about it? These maps were approved two years ago.

SANCHEZ: He's more than welcome to come on CNN. But I'm having a conversation with you about the funny looking districts that you've drawn in Texas, and it doesn't seem like you object to the idea of gerrymandering to begin with. Why not bring in an independent nonpartisan council to help you draw lines that actually are representative of the folks in your state? Because as you know, Texas isn't purely red. There are a lot of Democratic voters there.

HARRISON: You want some nonpartisan bureaucrat, some new government council. And you were asking me just a minute ago about my concerns about circumventing the will of the voters. The voters, 30 million voters of the state of Texas elected me and 149 other colleagues. It's called the elected representatives in the People's House of Representatives. You talk -- what you're talking about would be one of the biggest ways you could possibly circumvent and silence the will of the voters as opposed to what I'm proposing, which is saying let the people's elected representatives roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of legislating (inaudible) on the map.

SANCHEZ: Sure. But elected representatives, if they continue the pattern that you're describing, which is just gerrymander, gerrymander, gerrymander, you're just going to gerrymander to keep power. Isn't that a problem?

HARRISON: Well, right now, it looks like a lot of my Democrat colleagues don't want lots of their representatives or their constituents to even have a voice or depriving them a voice by not even showing up for work today. So I'm the one saying, Hey, I'm here to work. I'm giving voice to my 200,000 Texans. Where are you?

SANCHEZ: Sure.

HARRISON: Show up. And you have a problem with this, voice that on the floor instead of lawlessly abdicating your responsibility and fleeing and hiding under or behind Governor Pritzker in Illinois, who by the way has gerrymandered more than maybe just about any other state in the country.

SANCHEZ: Sure. Texas State Representative Brian Harrison, we appreciate you sharing your point of view with CNN. Thanks for joining us.

HARRISON: Yeah. Always great to be with you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks. Brianna?

KEILAR: The White House is doubling down after the abrupt firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner last week. Today, President Trump called the latest Jobs Report rigged, accusing the downward revisions to May and June as fake political numbers. Trump fired BLS Commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, on Friday after the Jobs Report showed a weaker than expected 73,000 jobs added in July while May and June's jobs numbers were revised down by more than 100,000 each. This morning, the White House's top economists suggested those numbers could be politically motivated.

[14:15:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC COUNCIL: They could be politically manipulated because they're so untransparent. There's a black box system out there making the jobs numbers that needs to be improved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And we're joined now by former Economic Adviser to President Trump, Stephen Moore. All right, Stephen, if you were advising the president right now, would you have advised him to fire the BLS Chief?

STEPHEN MOORE, FORMER TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISER: Boy, that's a tough question because I've been saying for years, and I think most economists would agree that these numbers that are coming out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are just not accurate. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But they're getting worse and worse in each passing month and each passing year. So for example, Brianna, under Biden, the Bureau of Labor Statistics overestimated the number of jobs created in the Biden years by well over a million jobs. That's a big mess.

Now, people can make their own mind up about whether they think there was anything political about that. But the most important thing right now is, I would have fired her not for political reasons, but just because I don't think they're doing a very good job. And these numbers, these job numbers, because I've been doing this for 35 years, these are probably the most closely watched numbers that come out each month as a barometer for how the economy is doing. We need a good picture.

Those numbers are used for things like businesses hire -- what -- how many people they are going to hire, the government uses these numbers all the time for policy making, et cetera, et cetera. So we want accuracy. And right now, we're not getting the accuracy. These revisions are larger than they've ever been before and that means we're just not doing it very right (ph). KEILAR: So, we should note that actually, downward revisions have been on average smaller since 2003. You've noted before that survey responses have decreased, but the initial Jobs Reports have actually been more accurate than 2003. And I just want to note that, what the president is saying --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Stephen, let's just be clear what the president is saying here. It's something different.

MOORE: Hold on, hold on, Brianna. Just one (inaudible).

KEILAR: Stephen, can we just get to the heart of this matter because revisions are not --

(CROSSTALK)

MOORE: Yeah, but you just said something (inaudible).

KEILAR: I'll let you speak. But revisions -- revisions are not unusual.

MOORE: The Bureau of Labor Statistics didn't -- so hold on. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just a few months ago, they did their annual revision and they found it was over 800,000 on top of the mistakes they had already made. Look, I'm not necessarily making the case that was -- that this was political. What I'm saying is there are big errors, and all I want to see, and I think most people want to see is a number that's as precise as possible. We're still collecting this data, Brianna, the same way we did 75 years ago, and they're outdated. So we need a good statistician in there who can really improve the precision. It's almost like right now, we've a blind man throwing darts at a dart board.

KEILAR: There are some new ways that they are collecting some data, I'll note, but you noted on Friday, when you first heard of the July number, you didn't raise that there was a political nefarious going on. You said this disappointing number is a --

MOORE: No, I don't think -- I don't think there is.

KEILAR: You said this disappointing number is a result of all the turmoil over tariffs and the trade wars.

MOORE: That's right. Yes. Yes, I think that's true. I think that one reason those numbers in the months of April, May, June were weaker than we would've hoped for is precisely because of those tariffs and a lot of manufacturing companies and so on, I talked to a lot of the people who run companies like that. They were saying that a lot of their hiring ground to a halt, their supply chains were affected by that. And there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen with those tariffs. So I do think it had a negative effect on hiring. Luckily, Trump in the last couple of months has really put together some very good positive pro-America trade deals. And I think you're going to start to see a big spurt in employment as a result of that.

KEILAR: Is Trump, by having this off with their heads moment in danger of getting people at BLS, who will actually just paint the roses red instead of telling us what the economy is doing?

MOORE: I would -- Hey, look, the timing was not great on this. People are saying Trump didn't like the number, so he fired the referee. I don't think I would've done it quite like this. What I'm saying is, and I think you can talk to Democratic economists too, and they'd agree. These numbers for -- and it's nobody's necessarily fault, but it hasn't been fixed. That's the problem. We need a whole new way. Look, all of these other statistics that the private sector puts out are very accurate and we know, our weather service, all these things. Why is it we can't get good reliable numbers for job creation in this country? It shouldn't be that difficult.

KEILAR: Well, these are actually considered the gold standard and there are private numbers that come out and they're not considered to be as good as what BLS puts out.

[14:20:00]

I do want to ask you though, on the heel of DOGE cuts, because while we're talking about reliability, which is now being raised by Kevin Hassett, it's very important --

MOORE: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- because people look at these numbers, they do really important things with them for the economy. So, on the heel of DOGE cuts, BLS announced that it was suspending CPI data collection entirely in Buffalo. In April. They suspended it in cities in Lincoln, Nebraska and in Provo, Utah. BLS explained this by saying it "makes reductions when no current resources can no longer support or when current resources can no longer support the collection effort." I mean, do you see an effort by this administration to try to increase reliability when it is coming to this kind of data? I mean, is that the objective as you see it when I describe something like that?

MOORE: Yeah, I think that -- I do think that this firing of the BLS Commissioner and hopefully, we don't know who the new person will be, but I don't want it to be a political person. I don't think anyone does. I think we want somebody who's a really, really smart statistician who can completely revise the way we measure jobs each month. Because as you and I both agree, these are really important numbers for the U.S. economy. And by the way, I've been doing this about 35 years, watching these numbers when they come out on that first Friday at 8:30 in the morning, first Friday of every month. And the revisions that we've seen off late have been much, much, much larger than we've seen in the past. So what I'm saying is, the numbers are getting worse. They're not getting better.

KEILAR: Stephen Moore, thank you so much for being with us.

MOORE: Thank you. KEILAR: And still to come, a new investigation into the man who ran two criminal investigations into then candidate Donald Trump. We'll examine the allegations against Jack Smith and far-right activist Laura Loomer calling herself the Trump loyalty enforcer. Find out which cabinet members may lose their jobs because of her. We'll have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

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[14:26:34]

KEILAR: There are new details about the horrifying moments inside a Manhattan office building as a mass shooting unfolded there. Law enforcement officials who reviewed video from the building, tell us that just before 6:30 p.m. last Monday, the gunman walked into the Park Avenue skyscrapers' lobby, turned to his right and shot and killed a uniformed NYPD officer. He then shot three more people inside the lobby area. Two of those victims died, one survived. CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, John Miller, is with us now on this story. John, tell us what more you're learning about the gunman's next moves.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, first, today's development which is the building reopened after being closed for nearly a week for repairs. Bill Rudin, part of the Rudin family that owns and runs that building, was in the lobby, greeting people. The security team was there; police officers were there. Top executives from Blackstone, KPMG, the NFL, greeted their people returning to work for the first time in many days. It had been closed, first, for the work of the Crime Scene Unit to gather the evidence and then for the work of contractors and the building maintenance people to get rid of the bullet holes, the broken glass, the bullet impact marks from fragments that unfolded in that tragic event and that terrible attack from last week.

But, as you said, when the gunman walked in, he opened fire at random at people in the lobby and then headed for the elevator bank. All indicators are he believed he was going to his target location, the NFL, where he had a perceived issue about CTE, brain disease and things that he believed he was suffering from, that he somehow associated with the NFL. But, he ended up in the wrong elevator bank and went to the headquarters of Rudin Management on the 33rd floor. And when he walked in, the doors on both ends of the hallway were locked. Those walls are glass. He fired through the walls, broke through the bullet holes, walked through the hall after smashing it away.

And at this point, there are only three employees on that 33rd floor. One is the cleaning lady, but she's way down a hallway. He takes shots at her, she flees and locks herself in a closet. Two is a male employee who hears the shooting and runs to the men's room. Now here's the thing, Brianna, in this building, the men's room and the ladies room are the safe rooms if there are an -- if there is an emergency in the facility, the doors are made of lead. They bolt shut. There's a dedicated phone line and a video screen that allows you to see a panoramic view of the hallway. And what ended up happening was Julia Hyman, the 27-year-old Rudin employee, was in that lady's room at the time and didn't hear the shooting. When she came out, she was gunned down. The male employee who sat at the desk next to her had gone looking for her as he fled to the men's room, locked himself inside and didn't come out. But there was clearly a lot of practice and preparation within that office for an incident like this and yet, still tragedy.

KEILAR: Yeah, such a shame. John Miller, thank you so much for the update. Still to come, the watchdog agency created to patrol government ethics is now investigating former Special Counsel Jack Smith. We'll have the allegations against him next on "CNN News Central."