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Mediation Talks Resume on Gaza Ceasefire Plan; Whitehouse Weighs Back Pay for Furloughed Workers Amid Shutdown; Senators Grill Attorney General Bondi in Tense Hearing; Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Ban on Conversion Therapy. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 07, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": As the government shutdown drags on, a new worry today for government workers, the possibility they will not be paid for their time while furloughed. What the president just said about it. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Capitol Hill getting pressed on troop deployments in American cities, mass firings at the DOJ and the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. And the families of the remaining Israeli hostages watching the negotiations between Israel and Hamas closely, as we now learn about a key player who could be involved in those talks. We're following these major developing stories and many more coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

President Trump today saying he will soon announce which government programs he plans to permanently cut amid the ongoing government showdown, shutdown rather. Now he has, of course, already threatened to fire thousands of workers and we're learning he's now considering not paying furloughed federal employees for the time that they did not work. Here's the president just a short time ago during his Oval Office meeting with the Canadian prime minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I would say it depends on who we're talking about. I can tell you this, the Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you're talking about. But for the most part, we're going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don't deserve to be taken care of and we'll take care of them in a different way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: CNN's Kristen Holmes is at the White House, joining us now. So of course, Democrats, we've been hearing, looking at this saying the president is using federal workers as bargaining chips during the shutdown. How is the administration responding? And also, Kristen, is there any clarification from the White House about who the president is talking about that wouldn't deserve to be treated fairly at this back pay?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right, so here's what we know. This is all a very confusing situation. And just to give you a little clarity here, Erica, the person who signed this law that federal workers will get back pay no matter what if there's a government shutdown, was President Trump, he signed this law. So what this would be doing is essentially interpreting this law in a different way to say that furloughed employees, so those who are not working during the shutdown, don't get the back pay.

But the way President Trump framed it in this meeting with the prime minister of Canada sounded more like it would be political retribution, saying things like some people don't deserve to get paid. That is not what we're hearing was in a draft document, a White House memo that essentially was laying out how you could interpret the law to say that maybe furloughed employees wouldn't get that back pay. And those who had to still keep working, coming in, essential employees would get back pay.

And that has nothing to do with who deserves it or not. Now when it comes to using these federal workers as political pawns, I mean, this is now, as you mentioned, the second threat that we have from President Trump and the White House on these federal workers. The first was these mass layoffs to talk about what programs, federal programs are going to get cut. President Trump saying he would announce them very soon. That would likely lead to a number of layoffs. Now, we've heard from the Office of Management and Budget that these would be various programs that don't align with Donald Trump.

Now we've moved on, we haven't even gotten to the mass layoffs, and now we're moving on to not paying people who are working or even not working, but by no choice of their own, during this government shutdown. So all of this to say, it's a very bizarre, confusing time, particularly given that we don't have the answers as to who deserves, what in terms of who's getting paid or not, and the difference between what President Trump said and what they're talking about in terms of legal interpretation of the law.

HILL: Yeah, a lot of unanswered questions as you point out, but I know you're going to keep pushing for the answers. Kristen. Appreciate it. Thank you. Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": It's not just federal employees who are worried about not getting paid, so too are our government contractors who usually don't get back pay once the government reopens. Right now, hundreds of thousands of them are wondering how they are going to make ends meet. CNN's Matt Egan joins us now with more on this. And Matt, you've been talking to federal contract workers impacted by the shutdown. What are they telling you?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah, Boris, they're really worried. They're stressing out about how they're going to pay their bills, and they feel like none of this is fair. And it's really those blue collar workers who are federal contractors, who are most exposed to government shutdowns. Right? We're talking about the janitors, the cafeteria workers, the security guards who work at companies that are contracted by the federal government to provide services to government agencies and museums, et cetera. And a lot of them, they are ready and they're willing to work. But during a shutdown, sometimes they can't because the government agency that they're normally based at is dark due to this lapse in funding. And it is a major concern.

Now, as you were just talking to Kristen about, normally it's the federal employees. They are historically eligible for back pay, although the administration is casting some doubt on that right now.

[14:05:00]

But really, historically, federal contractors, they have faced a permanent loss of income. They are not normally eligible for back pay. And then the last shutdown, the 35-day shutdown that ended in early 2019, there's estimates out there that more than half a million federal contract workers were furloughed without pay. Now, this is especially painful for those lower wage, often blue collar workers, sometimes the janitor who might live paycheck to paycheck or the cafeteria cook who might not have a lot of emergency money saved up.

Union officials, they say that it's really women and people of color who are disproportionately impacted here. I talked to several single moms who told me they're worried that they're going to fall behind on their bills. There's one woman, Audrey Murray (ph), she said that she's losing sleep over how she is going to get by because she's worked at the Smithsonian as a contracted cleaning worker for nearly three decades. But the Smithsonian is set to shut down after this weekend if the shutdown continues. She said, I don't know how I'm going to feed my kids or pay my mortgage.

And so Boris, that is why experts say that furloughed contract workers, they should immediately apply for unemployment benefits, so that they're first in line if this shutdown continues.

SANCHEZ: Beyond that suggestion, Matt, is there anything being done right now to help those furloughed contract workers?

EGAN: Well, Boris, there was some legislation that was introduced by Democrats that's really designed to try to get at this issue. They've introduced the bill that would provide back pay for contract workers. It would cover a hundred percent of weekly pay up to $1,442. It would also restored paid leave benefits, wherever that is eligible as well. But I do have to say, after the last shutdown, there was a campaign to try to get federal contractors back pay. That campaign didn't go anywhere.

I asked the White House for comment and they didn't weigh in on whether or not they support the idea of federal contractors getting paid. But they did blame the shutdown on Democrats. And look, Boris, as this blame game between Democrats and Republicans goes on, it's those blue collar workers who are federal contractors, who are hoping that just somehow they end up reaching a deal to reopen this government.

SANCHEZ: Matt Egan, thank you so much for the update there.

Still to come, fiery testimony on Capitol Hill. Attorney General Pam Bondi facing Senators on National Guard deployments, the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and much more. And later, the Supreme Court taking on the controversy over conversion therapy. That and much more coming your way on "CNN News Central."

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[14:12:27]

SANCHEZ: Today, Attorney General Pam Bondi was on the hot seat on Capitol Hill at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that wrapped up just a short time ago. Bondi took heated questions from Democratic lawmakers in their first chance to publicly get answers since her confirmation. The Attorney General has been grilled about her time at DOJ, including mass firings, her role in National Guard deployments, and the Jeffrey Epstein case, which led to this intense moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, (D) JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: There's been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half-naked young women. Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein's safe or premises or otherwise? Have you seen any such thing?

PAM BONDI, (D-RI) UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL: You know, Senator Whitehouse, you sit here and make salacious remarks, once again trying to slander President Trump left and right, when you are the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidants.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Joining us now is the lawmaker who posed that question to the Attorney General, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island is with us now. Senator, thanks so much for being with us. You had asked the Attorney General, how many suspicious activity reports related to accounts of Jeffrey Epstein that AG Bondi or Director Patel investigated? What exactly are you trying to learn?

WHITEHOUSE: Well, they said that they wanted to do a real investigation of the Epstein files, and we know that they had hundreds of suspicious activity reports of activity in Jeffrey Epstein's accounts. So I've been trying to figure out how many of those suspicious activity reports they followed up on with any investigation. It sounds very much like the answer is zero, which would be extremely inconsistent with everything that's said about the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

And since you played the end of that clip, let me point out that this supposed contribution that was made to me by some Epstein person is actually not true. It's false. So, weird when an Attorney General of the United States comes to the Judiciary Committee and makes false allegations about a Senator rather than, I mean, demonstrably false allegations about a Senator, rather than answer a pretty simple fact question. Is there a picture or isn't there?

SANCHEZ: Bondi sort of questioned why Democrats generally had not raised serious concerns about the Epstein investigation itself before her term.

[14:15:00]

She asked you specifically whether you had approached former Attorney General Merrick Garland about it over the last four years, whether in testimony or privately. I wonder if you did and what you say to critics who argue that Democrats are only interested in the case now that Donald Trump is the president.

WHITEHOUSE: Well, yeah, it obviously makes a big difference. When you have a professional Department of Justice and there's no alleged involvement of the president of the United States in a sex trafficking operation, there's reason to trust the Department of Justice to go about its business in its ordinary and responsible way. This is different. This is a MAGA Department of Justice, conducting an investigation into a trafficking operation in which the president of the United States may well be implicated. And so, there's every reason to pursue whether this Department of Justice is doing its investigative job or ducking its investigative work to protect the president who appointed both the FBI Director and the Attorney General.

It matters when an investigation touches on the president of the United States in terms of having confidence in that investigation. So, I had confidence in Merrick Garland and that Department of Justice to do ordinary investigations in the regular fashion. I don't with respect to this investigation, which touches on this president.

SANCHEZ: The AG and other Republicans have sort of flipped the argument that you're making, suggesting that the previous administration had weaponized the justice system. And yesterday, you had the Senate Judiciary Chairman, Chuck Grassley saying that the FBI, as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's January 6th investigation, used court orders to obtain the phone records of nine Republican lawmakers. Right now, there's no indication that the Senators were targets of the probe, and Bondi is accusing the FBI of now secretly investigating Republicans. What do you make of those claims that this is evidence of the Biden administration weaponizing DOJ?

WHITEHOUSE: Well, the first thing we need to do is to find out what the facts are. If the facts are that the Department of Justice was pursuing legitimate subjects of criminal investigation into the effort to overturn the elections and, in doing so, went and got the phone records of legitimate subjects. And when they found the phone records of legitimate subjects, they found that those subjects had called these Senators. So they weren't the target, they were just on the list because the investigative targets had called them. If that's the case, we deal with this issue all the time with respect to FISA investigations and so forth.

There's a big difference between somebody who is swept up because a subject called them and whether the Department of Justice is actually investigating someone. If I did mob investigations, we'd get the call information of the butcher and the baker and the candlelight maker who the mobster was calling and we just dismissed all that. They weren't the targets, but they did turn up. And this may be nothing more than that. We will see.

SANCHEZ: But when you say we will see, do you anticipate that those answers will be put forward by the administration? Are you expecting transparency?

WHITEHOUSE: I expect so.

SANCHEZ: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, we have to leave the conversation there. Appreciate the time.

WHITEHOUSE: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks so much. Still to come, the debate over LGBTQ rights returns to the Supreme Court as justices hear arguments over controversial conversion therapy. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:23:31]

SANCHEZ: At the Supreme Court today, justices heard arguments over a case that considers a discredited therapy for gay and trans youth, and whether it can be legally banned. The case centers on conversion therapy, a controversial practice that promises to convert people from being gay, lesbian, or bisexual to straight.

HILL: Now, advocates for that therapy say that they believe it should be protected by the First Amendment. Its critics note the research (inaudible) research rather has found the practice does not work and in many cases, can actually be dangerous and damaging. CNN's Joan Biskupic joining us now. So, is there a sense yet of which way the justices may be leaning?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Yeah, a sense pretty loud and clear in favor of this woman by the name of Kaley Chiles, who describes herself as a Christian therapist who wants to work with youth who are gay or trans to try to get them to go back to what she believes would be their true selves. And she says it's only talk therapy. She's not trying to do anything that's -- that would be regarded as conduct. But the state says no, this is something they're trying to regulate as conduct because it's trying to change these individuals, these gay and trans youth, and that it is dangerous. As you've said, the medical community overwhelmingly considers it a dangerous practice, conversion therapy.

But the justices just showed so much interest on her side today. We do have a conservative super majority at the court.

[14:25:00]

And here, I'll just mention right from the start something that Chief Justice John Roberts said early on in the arguments. He said just because they're engaged in conduct doesn't mean that their words aren't protected because Ms. Chiles has claimed a First Amendment right to engage in this kind of therapy. And I have to say, in terms of the medical consensus that you just spoke of in the introduction, the justices really weren't buying it. They were very skeptical of the fact that states, more than 20 states think that this conversion therapy is dangerous to young people. That it has serious effects. It can lead to all sorts of depression, I mean, suicidal thoughts, people not wanting to -- young people not wanting to own who they are.

And at one point, Justice Alito said, the medical consensus is usually very reasonable and it's very important. But have there been times when the medical consensus has been politicized, has been taken over by ideology? And I have to say, they seemed very much aware of this is becoming a blue versus red state issue.

And then Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who can be a very pivotal justice on this court, said it's not that the medical community says we just don't know. It's that there are competing strands. And a point she was making, which flies in the face of a lot of the medical consensus, is that some people think, this is a good thing, this kind of therapy, some people think it's bad.

And Justice Jackson, at one point Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, it was just last session where the justices let this red states and the state of Tennessee in particular, ban hormones, puberty blockers and other, what's known as gender affirming care for trans youth. But this time she said, we're going to do the opposite and strike down, eliminate a state rule that would favor LGBTQ rights.

HILL: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: Joan Biskupic, thank you so much for the reporting.

BISKUPIC: Sure.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, President Trump isn't ruling out a pardon for Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. We have a reaction from an attorney for 11 of Epstein's accusers when we come back.

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