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Senate Advances Deal to End Government Shutdown After 41 Days; Key Group Votes with Republicans to Advance Funding Deal, End Shutdown; Trump Pardons Allies Accused of Trying to Overturn 2020 Election; Lake-Effect Snow Hammers Chicago, Puts Freeze on Travel Plans. Aired 8:00-8:30a ET

Aired November 10, 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]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This happened as a super typhoon made landfall today, hammering the Philippines. As of this morning, at least two people have already been reported killed. The dangerous winds and waves forced more than a million residents across the region to evacuate.

Baby formula made by the company Byheart has now been linked to an outbreak of botulism across 10 states. The FDA says at least 13 infants have been hospitalized since August after being fed this formula. No deaths have been reported, but the FDA is urging very clearly parents to stop using the product altogether.

And Chicago, that wonderful city, getting hit by a leg effect snow band, which means dangerous near zero visibility conditions. And it's expected to cause many more issues at the city's airports than they're already suffering. I mean, they're getting hammered.

The National Weather Service warns that it could create, quote, nearly impossible travel conditions. They're looking at snowfall rates of more than three inches per hour.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, a major breakthrough with the caveat in the Senate to end the longest government shutdown in history, but the funding compromise creating a major divide among Democrats.

Also, another big breaking story this morning, President Trump pardoning Rudy Giuliani and a long list of other political allies accused of trying to help his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

And a much needed moment of levity to start your week. Just a man riding his bull outside the local tractor supply. And the words of the police officers themselves. We have so many questions.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan. John, it's out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: All right, let's get to the breaking news this morning to top this hour. The Senate is set to get back at it today after a bipartisan breakthrough on Capitol Hill last night that could finally end the 41-day government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. The deal is a bipartisan agreement, but it is creating a new fracture among Democrats.

Eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans on a key test vote of this agreement last night. The deal would extend government funding through January 30th. It would also fund SNAP food stamp benefits through fiscal year 2026. So it gets that out of the way.

And it reverses President Trump's layoff of federal workers that happened during the shutdown. But not included in the deal is the thing Democrats were fighting for for months now, a concrete extension of Obamacare insurance subsidies.

Instead, Republicans are committing, the Republican majority leader, committing to holding a vote on that very issue, extending Obamacare subsidies next month. The subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year.

But Democratic leaders they're not on board with the compromise. Many other Democrats are rather furious about the move -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, joining me now to discuss Christine Quinn, the executive committee chair for the New York Democratic Committee, and Melik Abdul, a Republican strategist for us. Thank you so much for being here this morning. All right, first to you, Christine.

How do you, how do Democrats address constituents who say, if Democrats capitulate and do not get anything when it comes to this health care subsidy, why'd they do it? What was it all for?

CHRISTINE QUINN, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CHAIR, NEW YORK DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE: That's going to be a very hard question to answer if the vote in December is basically a vote to raise people's premiums or to have people lose their health care. I understand the vice that Democrats felt they were in, health care, food on the table, people not getting paid, but this deal is the equivalent of ice in winter. We haven't gotten anything.

From the very same people who said we're going to repeal and replace years ago, we say we've got to vote. Not what are we voting on, not are we extending, not are we keeping. I don't think this was a good deal, and I stand with people like Chuck Schumer who said, no, we're not going to vote for this.

SIDNER: You are, in this sense, there's sort of a rock and a hard place because there are people that need food assistance. There are people who are not being paid who are working like the air traffic controllers and the TSA and on and on and on. But then on the other side, you have people like this woman I want to introduce you and Melik too.

Melik, I want you to listen to one of the recipients of Obamacare who says that if the subsidies are not passed, her health insurance is going to triple and she has cancer. Listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUNNI MONTGOMERY, ACA ENROLLEE: I have to face the reality that I am probably going to become a late stage cancer patient who's uninsured.

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you don't have insurance, what will that mean for your scans and your treatments and your oxygen?

[08:05:00]

MONTGOMERY: I won't have any of those. Life's going to get a lot harder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Life is going to get a lot harder. Her life literally in danger there. Our Gabe Cohen bringing that to us.

The latest bill attaches $153 billion to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs and Pentagon infrastructure. It's bipartisan. Both sides, both groups want that.

Why not just go ahead and fund the health care subsidies along with everything else?

MELIK ABDUL, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes, if you go back and look at the health care subsidies, the reason that we are here is because Democrats, they actually proposed -- well, this was part of the plan -- that it was supposed to sunset this year when they passed it in 2021. I believe probably the expectation was that Kamala Harris would be president of the United States. That did not happen.

Democrats could have gotten -- they could have had the government open, they could have had the SNAP benefits funded, and we could have been having the conversation about health care. Democrats decided to not play ball over and over again, so I'm glad that we seem to now be moving towards the government reopening. But it really does seem like at this point that the Democratic Party, they were intent on being very political in this and exacting as much pain from the American people as possible.

I'm glad we're now at a point that the government is -- seems like it's going to be reopened. It should have never been closed in the first place.

SIDNER: Melik, what do you say to Democrats who look over and go, but Republicans are in control of the House, they're in control of the Senate, they're in control of the presidency, and the pain is largely on their heads as well.

ABDUL: Yes, well, look, I hold both sides accountable. At the end of the day, as you mentioned, the Republicans are in control of the White House and in control of Congress. But you don't have 60 votes.

That's the whole purpose of the filibuster, and Democrats have said over and over again that they didn't care about Donald Trump's threatening to, you know, withhold SNAP benefits or firing government workers. They were willing to exact as much pain as possible to really get to the same place that we were at the beginning, which is that we're going to debate the health care portion of this at a later date. That's what Republicans wanted all along.

I'm glad Democrats are now joining them.

QUINN: The president could have kept SNAP going. In President Trump's first term, when there was a shutdown, he kept SNAP going. The decision to exact pain, to make people choose between food and lifesaving health care was a Republican choice, and I wish more Democrats had stood and said, no, Americans can't choose between literally two things that keep you alive.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you, Melik, about Trump, something else that he's done. While all this is going on, you have such just pain and frustration by the American people. Donald Trump has decided to pardon a long list of political allies for their support over these sort of alleged plans to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Why is this OK for him to say, OK, I'm going to pardon anyone who was on my side, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows?

ABDUL: Because he has the power as president of the United States to do it. I don't think that anyone should be surprised that Donald Trump issued these pardons. In January, Donald Trump pardoned over probably, I think, maybe 1,200 people that were connected to what happened on January 6th at the Capitol.

So I'm not surprised here. I expected him to do it. I --

SIDNER: But this isn't about the --

(CROSSTALK)

ABDUL: -- wouldn't be surprised.

SIDNER: Why is it OK? Why is it OK to pardon people who were responsible for injuring 140 police officers? Why is it OK to pardon these folks who have charges in state courts as well? He cannot pardon them from those.

Why is it OK? That he can do it is not disputed.

ABDUL: Yes, well, I'm one of those Republicans who said at the time that I didn't agree with all of the pardons for people who actually committed violent acts on January 6th, but he can do it because he did. There have been, even going back to the Clinton years and before, conversations about pardons where people have been critical of presidents irrespective of party who've made pardons that have been controversial. So this is Donald Trump being consistent with that.

But no, whether or not he should do it, no. You could say, no, he shouldn't have pardoned them, but he can. But this is only an issue for people who are really in opposition to Donald Trump, not those of us -- and I'll probably say many of the people who even voted for him. We don't care.

We care about putting food on the table, not Donald Trump's pardons.

SIDNER: How do you respond to that, Christine?

QUINN: Just because you can doesn't mean you should. There's lots of things we all can do, but we don't do them because they're not the right thing. And going back and now saying Donald Trump just followed the incorrect pardons that Bill Clinton did is kind of ridiculous.

It's history and far in the rearview mirror. He pardons cronies.

[08:10:00]

He pardons people who support him, who say nice things about him, and he pardons people in this case and in the case of January 6th, people who are attempting to erode the foundations of our democracy.

SIDNER: Christine Quinn, Melik Abdul, always a good conversation with the two of you. Thank you both. Appreciate it.

And now over to you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Winter weather hitting Chicago this morning in a very big way, threatening to make an already bad travel situation potentially much, much worse.

And right now, cruise ships are on the move, and crews are trying to rescue a worker trapped deep inside a flooded coal mine. We've got an update on this coming up.

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[08:15:05]

BOLDUAN: So this morning, an arctic blast is slamming the eastern half of the country, putting a chill on travel that's already reeling from a government shutdown. We're going to show you video. Oh, look at that, Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Chicago, in particular, also seeing really intense lake effect snow. This record cold snap that they're looking at could bring snow -- snowfall rates of three or more inches per hour, which is also apparently potentially bringing what is lovingly and not lovingly known as thundersnow and near zero visibility. All of this, adding up at a moment when air travel is already a mess, major airlines already canceling thousands of flights to comply with the FAA's mandate to reduce air traffic.

Between Friday and Saturday, cancellations topped 5,500 nationwide, many of them out of Chicago. Seen as Whitney Wild is at O'Hare with more on this. So we begin the day anew.

How are things looking there?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They look OK. I think all things considered, things are going pretty well here. I've probably spoken with 10 people today who said they had no cancellations.

They have a very minimal delay. So for the most part, the feeling here is cautious optimism. There is some security lines here.

This is not totally out of the norm for a Monday, especially when, as you said, we had these cancellations over the weekend. What we know about Chicago is that it is the number one for cancellations by origin airport. There are 141 flights leaving O'Hare that have been canceled today. That's about 10 percent of their air traffic coming out of the airport.

Coming into airports in the United States, Atlanta has the highest number of cancellations coming into the airport in total. The total cancellations coming into or out of the United States, Kate, is almost 16, almost 1,600, 1,585 flights across the country.

There are delays, as you mentioned. I mean, there are thousands of delays, you know, all across the country. Here in Chicago, we've been tracking the delays all morning.

What we've seen is they've actually gone down. So earlier today, the average delay for an arrival was about twenty five minutes leaving. It was around 15.

Now we're starting to see that arrival number delay go down to around 23 minutes. So, again, it is cautious optimism here, Kate. This all comes, as you said, as flights across the country are being contracted because of the shutdown.

The hope certainly is that as this shutdown, you know, as the end appears to be in sight, that is going to lift the pressure on travelers. It could not come at a better time, Kate, because the big concern based on people I've spoken with and based on what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said is that if the shutdown were to continue into that Thanksgiving weekend, that would have been absolutely chaotic.

We recently spoke with the TSA union. They were very concerned about their officers continuing to not be paid. They were concerned you were going to see more sick outs or people simply quit the job because they couldn't afford to be paid. So the end game here, the fact that it's in sight is is a very welcome piece of news for travelers here, especially as we get into this very busy travel season -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. All right, Whitney, thank you so much for being there. And we will be checking back in continuously as this is not over yet, for sure. Thank you so much.

All right. Coming up for us. Well, let us start this moment by taking a look at stock futures right now. Up slightly this morning, just over an hour to the to the opening bell.

Coming up here, Harry Enten is going to run the numbers on how Americans are feeling right now about the economy.

And a shakeup at the BBC. What led to the resignations of two top leaders at Britain's public broadcaster.

[08:20:00]

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SIDNER: Breaking this morning. They were accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election results in President Trump's favor. And now he is rewarding them. Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mark Meadows, among the Trump allies, receiving pardons overnight.

The Justice Department says a total of 77 people received, quote, full, complete and unconditional pardons. Notably, the proclamation does not apply to the president himself. CNN's Kevin Lipkak is at the White House for us.

Kevin, what are you hearing about these pardons?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, and it's quite a lengthy list. A lot of the names are going to be familiar to anyone who's been following this saga over the last five years or so. I think it's important to note that none of the names on the list have actually been charged with a federal crime.

And so in a lot of ways that this is sort of symbolic, but it does underscore President Trump's work to try and rewrite the history of the 2020 election. Now, I did just get a statement from Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, who says that --"These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy. She goes on to say getting prosecuted for challenging results is something that happens in communist Venezuela, not the United States of America. And President Trump is putting an end to the Biden regime's communist tactics once and for all."

So quite a wordy statement there. Just to tick through some of the names that are included on the list.

Rudy Giuliani, of course, the former New York City mayor who helped lead the effort to pressure states to reject Biden's victories. You also have Sidney Powell, a conservative attorney who worked closely with Giuliani. Mark Meadows, who is President Trump's chief of staff at the time.

Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who worked with Giuliani. Boris Epstein, who's a longtime Trump adviser. You have the names John Eastman and Ken Chesebrough, who were attorneys who helped devise the strategy to pressure Mike Pence to overturn the election.

[08:25:00]

And you also have Burt Jones, who's the lieutenant governor of Georgia and who was a fake elector after the 2020 election.

And so while none of these names have been charged with federal crimes, many of them have been charged in individual states. And it doesn't appear as if this pardon is going to do anything, for example, with Rudy Giuliani and the pretty significant legal and financial challenges that he faces, including from those two Georgia election workers who received $148 million defamation judgment against Giuliani.

And it does include also this sweeping reference to all U.S. citizens who conducted advice creation organization for a proposed slate of presidential electors, as well as saying that this will pardon any citizen for, quote, conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Kevin Liptak, thank you so much. Making the point there that this does not impact those who are facing charges in state courts at this point in time. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Ahead, President Donald Trump is proposing the idea of giving Americans $2,000 checks from tariff revenues as the Supreme Court looks at whether those revenues are legal.

But is that actually possible? And who would actually qualify?

Plus, two Major League Baseball players charged with sharing inside information with gamblers. They're facing potential years in prison if they get convicted.

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