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Interview with Sen Jeff Markley (D-OR): Government Shutdown Hits Day 15 as GOP, Democrats Remain Deadlocked; Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Pivotal Voting Rights Act Case; Average Cost of New Car Tops $50k for First Time. Aired 8:00-8:30a ET

Aired October 15, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... people, as other people close to me have gotten cancer recently, is you've got to get the testing done. The support system is there, everything will happen, the hair will grow back, you look phenomenal, you look amazing, and it's great to see you and be here with you. But it's worth it, it's worth it, and that -- I'm getting emotional -- but that's the part that I think we can't forget, and that's what matters to everyone that loves you, is getting tested.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, you can save your own life.

ELAM: Yes.

SIDNER: By paying attention to your body and taking care of yourself. I know women tend to try to take care of everyone else first, but if you're not there, as you put it, you can't do any of that.

ELAM: You can't do any of it.

SIDNER: Stephanie Elam, it's always a pleasure.

ELAM: I love you.

SIDNER: Love you, too.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are standing by for arguments in a Supreme Court case that could completely redraw congressional maps, shifting almost 60 years of established law. Some estimates are the Democrats could lose as many as 19 seats.

If you are in the market for a new car, condolences. The price tags on new vehicles breaking records.

And a stunning CNN investigation, Americans being tricked into feeding millions of dollars into crypto ATMs. How the scammers catch their prey.

I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Showing you a live look at Capitol Hill this morning. The government shutdown enters day 15, and still there's really no end in sight. Today we're expecting to hear from both Republican and Democratic leaders, both doing a lot of talking, but so far very clearly not talking to each other and not negotiating.

And now President Trump says that he will release a list on Friday of what he calls, quote unquote, Democratic programs that he wants to eliminate permanently as the shutdown drags on.

Today is the day that military service members were going to stop receiving pay, but they are now expected to continue to see money coming in after they repurposed Pentagon research funds to fill that gap, at least in that one area. But more than a million other federal employees have been furloughed or are now working without a paycheck.

That will be one major topic this evening at a live CNN town hall with progressive lawmakers, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. That begins at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Ahead of that and joining me now about where things stand or aren't, is Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon joining me right now. Senator, thanks for being here.

Right away, I want to play for you what the Republican House speaker said just yesterday about the state of things. Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: I don't have anything to negotiate. I'll say this again to everyone here. We did not load up the temporary funding bill with any Republican priorities or partisan priorities at all.

I don't have anything that I can take off of that document to make it more palatable for them. So all I am able to do is come to this microphone every day, look right into the camera and plead with the American people, as as Chairwoman McClain said, to call your Senate Democrats and ask them to do the right thing. We're not playing games.

They're playing a game. We're not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Senator, what do you say to that?

SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Well, the House hasn't even been here for 26 days. I don't know if they're vacationing around the world or playing hooky on a beach somewhere, but they should be here. That's what you do in a in a democratic nation like our own.

BOLDUAN: But what would that change? But what would that change? They are not moving. What would that change? Their physical presence, I would argue, would change nothing.

MERKLEY: Well, absolutely. It takes more than physical presence for sure. But the whole point of having a Congress is you are here.

You talk to each other. You lay out the issues you're concerned about. The other side lays out their issues and you wrestle with them.

And the issue that we're laying out is the fact that the Republicans shut down the government in order to savage health care for millions of Americans. Those Americans are getting notices, 20 million this month, saying that their cost of insurance is going to go up enormously, an average of across the country, 114 percent. That means more than doubling.

And what that means for families is many families won't be able to afford it. And some who do pay it and can't afford it won't be able to have other fundamental necessities. And if this isn't an item to discuss, one of the one of the fundamental foundations for this quality of life of millions of Americans, what is?

I think the speaker is if he doesn't understand that health care is important to families, then he is really lost.

BOLDUAN: The Republicans say they'll negotiate, but they'll negotiate after you fund the government. That has been -- I mean, these decisions have been known for not just 15 days now, but for weeks and months. The question then becomes more and more relevant is this.

At what point do you believe you need to change strategy to get out of this? Do you see a point at all?

[08:05:00]

MERKLEY: Well, this is the right strategy. The Republicans have had a theory this year of the future, which is a families lose, billionaires win. They gutted health care to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

They gutted child nutrition to fund tax breaks for billionaires. But we have a different vision that we're fighting for, and that is that families thrive and the affluent pay their fair share. And the health care issue is so fundamental.

And it isn't just the 20 million folks who are getting notices that their insurance is going to roughly double on average. It's also all the folks who realize that because of the next stage in the Republican attack on health care, the Medicaid programs across the country will be dramatically affected.

Between these two strategies, some 15 million people will lose insurance. Our clinics will lose revenue. Families will wait until a health care problem is much higher.

We just had a session on your show about breast cancer and urging people to go to the doctor. Well, they don't go to the doctor if they don't have health insurance. They wait.

And then a manageable problem can often become a, well, something that kills people. Or diabetes can be much worse and you lose your eyesight or your foot. I mean, this is -- health care is fundamental. Republicans are savaging it. We're saying no. So they need to come in and talk about it.

BOLDUAN: As an observer of many a government shutdown and many a funding negotiation, I will say, if 30 plus 35 days was the longest government shutdown, I see zero, zero sign that this is going to end anywhere short of that at this moment.

One pain point has become airports, with air traffic control issues and more. And now there are airports, including in Oregon, that are refusing to play a public service announcement from the DHS secretary at security checkpoints in which she blames Democrats for the government shutdown.

You've applauded the move, but I'm wondering, and it's been started to be asked, just given the retaliatory nature that we have seen in picking and choosing from the Trump administration, what happens if there is retaliation against those airports in Oregon after this move?

MERKLEY: Well, listen, it's our understanding that this is an exact violation of the Hatch Act and the Anti-Lobbying Act. For the government to use its vehicles, its websites, its public announcements for a partisan campaign strategy, that is just new territory for America, and it's territory that occurs in authoritarian societies, where the government puts out propaganda that's very partisan, rather than executing the laws of the United States of America. So this is another sign of this authoritarian strategy of the president.

He's attacked due process, freedom of press, freedom of speech, and now he's using the government as a propaganda machine. This should concern every red-blooded patriot in the United States of America who cares about our Constitution.

BOLDUAN: Senator Jeff Merkley, thank you for coming in this morning. Let's see what happens today.

MERKLEY: You're welcome.

BOLDUAN: Sara.

SIDNER: Thank you, Kate.

Coming up, new this morning, the Israeli military now says one of the bodies returned by Hamas overnight is not the body of an Israeli hostage. How Israel is responding now in Gaza.

And the new details we're learning about the DOJ's investigation into former National Security Advisor John Bolton as a potential indictment looms. Why diary-like notes he took in an AOL e-mail account are coming into focus.

Plus, one man has now etched his place into the Guinness Book of World Records for his name. How his place in history takes up more than a thousand words.

[08:10:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: All right, happening today, the Supreme Court is set to begin hearing arguments in a Louisiana redistricting case that could further gut the Voting Rights Act. The case began with a 2022 state map that showed just one majority Black district out of six, despite census data which revealed Black residents make up roughly a third of Louisiana's population. When the map was redrawn to add a second Black district, white residents sued, arguing racial gerrymandering.

CNN's Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic is in Washington for us. This I know is your favorite time of the year, not because of the fall leaves, but because the Supreme Court is back at work. Joan, give us some sense of just the national implications that this decision could have.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: That's right, Sara. It's great to see you. And this is the greatest challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act in more than a decade.

This is one of the more serious cases that justices will be hearing, and more seriously in terms of the consequences out there. This has to do with remedies for when state legislatures draw congressional maps or legislative maps that end up diluting the voting power of Blacks and Hispanics. There's a common practice known as cracking and -- packing and cracking, where state legislatures drawing maps will pack all the Blacks into one district and then maybe spread out the few remaining so it minimizes their ability to elect their preferred candidates. And that happened in Louisiana in 2022.

As you noted, you know, the population is one-third Black, and only one of the six districts had a Black majority that would allow for the election of a candidate of choice of the Blacks.

[08:15:00]

So lower court judges said, you know, this is wrong. This violates the Voting Rights Act. And the remedy is to then look at race to try to create a second Black district. The state did it. The state did it reluctantly.

And when they drew the second Black district, they did it like almost like a snake-like figure in the middle of the state because they wanted to protect powerful Louisiana incumbents, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise. So they -- that second district became the subject of a second round of litigation brought by white voters who said, you know, that's a racial gerrymander and that violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

So now that case played right into where this Supreme Court, this conservative Supreme Court has been in recent years against racial remedies for historic discrimination. As you know, Sara, they got rid of racial remedies for school integration -- in school integration plans, in college affirmative action. And right now, this case is so teed up for where this majority has been going. Two years in a similar Alabama case involving a race-based redistricting map to remedy a district that had diluted the power of Blacks. The justices by a single vote allowed that to stand and allowed the remedies of the Voting Rights Act to stand. But Justice Kavanaugh, who was the swing vote there, has since expressed a doubt about that.

So we'll see today where he is and where the court is. And one last thing. The Trump administration is on the side of getting rid of these, and that could also affect where this case goes.

SIDNER: Yes, this is big, Joan Biskupic. I will let you get back to your Supreme Court digging that you love to do. Thank you -- John.

BERMAN: Get back to your courting. Get back to your Supreme Courting.

SIDNER: Yes.

BERMAN: All right, record prices for new cars. What is driving them up? And what, if anything, might bring them down?

And then dangerous storms batter the coast, leading to dramatic rescues and homes swept away. We've got new reporting that spending cuts might have hindered weather forecasts before this all hit.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, new this morning. If you are in the market for a new car, get ready for some sticker shock. A new report shows the average price hit a record high last month. CNN's Matt Egan here for this wonderful news.

Matt, what are you learning here?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, John, you're right. If you're shopping for a new car, you've got to mentally prepare yourself because it's literally never been more expensive to buy a new car. In fact, Kelly Blue Book says that the average transaction price in September topped $50,000 for the first time ever.

That's 4 percent more expensive than the same month last year. Now, 4 percent, that's kind of in line with long term inflation average for new cars. But this is the biggest increase year over year since 2023.

So it's also important to remember that these are average transaction prices. So this is before the incentives kick in. But still, $50,000 is obviously a lot of money.

And that's just the average price, right? Say you're in the market for a full size car. You've got to be spending an average of almost $60,000.

Full size pickup, $66,000, and SUVs averaging $76,000. So what's behind these record high prices? Well, Kelly Blue Book says that one factor here is tariffs, right?

Tariffs are adding to the cost of building a car. It's not just the auto tariffs. It's the tariffs on car parts and the tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper as well.

You know, another factor is the EV sales. They really skyrocketed in September because people are trying to beat the clock on the expiration of those federal EV tax credits. And so Kelly Blue Book found that a record 12 percent of all vehicles sold in the United States in September were EVs.

And EVs tend to be more expensive. But you know what, John? Maybe the biggest factor here is who is buying cars right now and which cars are being made.

Because those $20,000 cars, they've basically gone extinct. Car makers, they're focusing on the higher margin, more expensive cars. Kelly Blue Book says that a lot of the cost-conscious consumers, they're not able to buy cars right now, right?

A lot of them are focusing on used cars. They've been kind of priced out of the market. More affluent buyers are in the market, and they're buying more expensive cars. So that's pushing up the average.

Bottom line, this does look like another reminder of that K-shaped economy, right? Where people who have money in the market, money in housing, they're doing OK. They're buying cars. But a lot of lower- income families are not buying cars right now because they're struggling to get by.

BERMAN: I got to say, you know, car buying can be so stressful as it is. This is just one more thing that's going to stare you in the face when you get there. Matt Egan, thanks for that report.

EGAN: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Really interesting -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, who still uses AOL? John?

BERMAN: I know the answer to this. It's the guy behind you, apparently.

SIDNER: Yes, it is. It is another John. John Bolton does.

And now his diary-like notes to self are now being probed by the DOJ. That is the worst sound in the history of sound, by the way.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: This morning, President Trump has a new warning for Hamas. Disarm, or we will do it for you. It comes as anger is growing in Israel over Hamas's slow release of hostage remains. So far, the group has only turned over eight bodies. And the Israeli military says that one of them, identified overnight, doesn't match any of the hostages. And there's new violence erupting in Gaza as well, as Hamas is trying to reassert control over rival groups there.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz is tracking all of this for us. And she joins us right now from London. Salma, what are you learning about this new round of violence that we're seeing from Hamas in Gaza?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Kate. So as this ceasefire has taken hold and there's been this security and political vacuum in Gaza, Hamas has stepped in to reassert its control. There's been many reports of violent clashes that have taken place in the enclave, but I want to point out one incident which was shared on a Hamas-affiliated ...

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