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Senate Could Vote on a Deal to End Shutdown Today, Senate Dems Are Guaranteed Future Vote on Obamacare Subsidies; Mother of Missing California Girl Arrested on Unrelated Charges; ByHeart Baby Formula Recalled Amid Infant Botulism Outbreak; U.S. Military Strikes Two More Alleged Drug Boats, Killing Six; Second Typhoon in a Week Slams Into the Philippines; FDA to Remove Black Box Warning Label on Menopause Hormone Therapy. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired November 10, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:33:42]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": So, we're now waiting for the full Senate to vote on a proposed deal to reopen the government, which represents a major step toward ending the longest government shutdown in history. As part of that deal, Senate Republicans are guaranteeing a future vote on the main sticking point for Democrats, extending enhanced subsidies for Obamacare, subsidies that were created back in 2021 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, designed to make healthcare more affordable.

They're part of the reason that a record 24 million people signed up for ACA policies this year, up from 11 million before the enhanced subsidies were enacted. Of those 24 million current enrollees, 90 percent are receiving these tax credits, more than three in four, 78 percent notably live in states that voted for President Trump in the last election. In fact, more than half live in Republican congressional districts, meaning that if these subsidies expire, the majority of Obamacare enrollees, the majority of whom live in red states and red districts will see the cost of their healthcare skyrocket.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that on average, subsidize enrollees are going to see their annual premiums more than double with the average increase in price 114 percent. Here are a few hypotheticals of what that looks like in effect.

[13:35:00]

A 27-year-old who's aged out of their parents' policy, making roughly $17 an hour, will go from paying about $50 a month to $168 a month. Another example, a single 35-year-old parent with one child making $50,000 annually will see their monthly premium go from $144 to $331. And finally, a 60-year-old couple nearing retirement that are not yet eligible for Medicare, making a combined $85,000 a year, would see their monthly premium skyrocket from $602 a month to more than $2,000. The increases on affordable for many are expected to force people to drop coverage altogether. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next decade, some four million Americans will likely lose health insurance if the enhanced subsidies go away. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And here are the specifics of the deal the Democratic Senators took to reopen the government. It would extend the government funding through January 30th, fund SNAP benefits through fiscal year 2026 and reverse the president's federal worker layoffs. But as we mentioned, it would not extend healthcare subsidies for millions of Obamacare users. Senate Majority Leader, John Thune guaranteeing Democrats a future vote on the subsidies very soon however, something though that he did offer 25 days ago, on Day 16 of the shutdown.

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SEN. JOHN THUNE, (R) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: I think yeah, well, I've told him. I've said -- and I've said we are willing to have the conversation. I've said if you need a vote, we can guarantee you get a vote by a date certain. At some point, Democrats have to take yes for an answer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's talk now with one of the Democrats who voted on this deal to end the shutdown. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia is with us now. Senator, thank you for being with us. It's certainly hard at this point to see how the subsidy extension would ultimately become law. Source telling CNN that on today's House Republican conference call, Speaker Johnson would not commit to holding a vote on the subsidies. What did Democrats ultimately get that they wouldn't have gotten without a government shutdown?

SEN. TIM KAINE, (D-VA) VOTES YES ON GOVERNMENT REOPENING DEAL: We got full-year funding for the SNAP program that the Republicans gutted in the reconciliation bill last summer and that President Trump has been withholding from the 45 million Americans, our poorest and most vulnerable people who rely on SNAP, one in eight Americans. We got a guarantee of a vote, high stakes, main stage with the spotlight on it, in the Senate on extending the ACA tax credits. You showed the statistics about how damaging these have been to Americans and the fact that they're in red states means we have a strong, strong belief that we're going to be able to get the Senate to vote for this extension in a bipartisan way.

And then you're right, Speaker Johnson hasn't committed to bringing it up, but he's got Republicans who are telling him, you need to fix this. All Democrats need to fix it. If he were not to bring up a bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support, their midterm election next year would look a lot worse even than the shellacking they got last week in Virginia and elsewhere. And then the final thing we got in this,

I got into the negotiations late and ensured that all furloughed and recently RIF-ed federal employees are returned to work with back pay and very importantly, got a guarantee of no RIFs, massive layoffs going forward, so that the federal employees have been waking up every morning not knowing if they would get a RIF notice in the mail or something from the DOGE brothers telling them they're now locked out of their office. They don't have to live under that anxiety. They can focus on doing their job instead of worrying about their job. And that's two million federal workers.

KEILAR: Yeah. And that's a big deal in your state, in Virginia, which has so many federal workers in it. Your fellow Virginian Senator, Mark Warner, did not vote a as you did for this though, while he appreciated those protections for federal workers. He said, "We owe the American people more than a short-term fix that leaves working families staring down a healthcare crisis and simply kicking the can down the road is not good enough." But you decided this was good enough.

KAINE: Yeah.

KEILAR: So, can you talk to us a little bit about that discrepancy between two Senators who are normally pretty aligned on things?

KAINE: We vote together quite often. So, I was the one negotiating the federal worker protections. And when I got a yes from the White House at 4:45 yesterday on the key component of guaranteeing no future RIFs, that was very persuasive to me. But I think the issue that a lot of Democrats were grappling with is on the healthcare side, what's going to get us to a deal? The Republicans said when this started, we will not negotiate about healthcare as long as the government is shutdown.

[13:40:00]

Now, I was with the Democrats until this last vote, but the Republicans kept true to their principle. We want to negotiate. We think we have to fix this, but we will not negotiate with the government shutdown. So, would that have changed in a week? Would that have changed in a month? After 40 days, I did not believe it was going to change, but what I knew would happen in a week or a month is more families would lose SNAP benefits, more chaos in the air traffic control system, more federal workers missing paychecks, more American citizens calling the IRS to get a tax question answered, but not having the phone answered.

So, I did not see waiting as improving the likelihood that we would get the fix. Now, we have a path to a vote, no guarantee. There are no guarantees up here. But the whole American public will see that debate in live time, who's for them on healthcare, who's against them. And there won't be the background noise of shutdown, of air traffic control, of SNAP drowning out the very real and important debate on healthcare that we're going to have within the next month.

KEILAR: Huge active-duty military population in your state. The Trump administration did make sure that they received their paychecks. A lot of times though it was -- or all the times, it was this kind of last minute respite they got and their collective anxiety --

KAINE: Yes. KEILAR: -- from that uncertainty, and also the financial impact of other knock-on effects of the shutdown that were quite costly to them was very real. What is your message to those families?

KAINE: Very real.

KEILAR: -- about why this was worth it, a shutdown this long?

KAINE: Well, I don't think shutdowns are ever a good idea, so I'm never going to say a shutdown is a good idea. Donald Trump told the Republicans to come up with a bill and not deal with Democrats. We put an alternative on the table 12 days before the shutdown and we asked President Trump to engage and he refused to. You know when he finally engaged? This is what it takes to avoid a shutdown or get out of one. He finally engaged Wednesday morning after he got shellacked in elections last week.

He called the Senate Republicans to the White House and he said, "Hey guys, we lost badly last night. They're blaming the shutdown on us." It was like Rip Van Winkle suddenly woke up. At that moment, the president engaged. And what I predicted is when the president engages, we will solve this in a matter of days. That's what we did. If he'd engaged in September, there wouldn't have been a shutdown to begin with.

KEILAR: So, this is setting up a new funding deadline for January 30th. That's really not --

KAINE: Yes.

KEILAR: -- that far ahead of us here. How should the Democratic Party approach that new deadline?

KAINE: Well, we need to take advantage of -- the first thing we did is, the funding deadline is for the sort of full-year funding bill and we just got a big chunk of it done in the short-term CR. We put full- year funding in for three of the big functional areas of government, the legislative branch, the VA and military construction, and the Ag program, which includes SNAP and WIC and other safety. So we've got that done.

So the remaining bills are important, but we've got some of the work done already. And so what we need to do is, have the appropriators continue to do what they did on those first three bills and get us there. In that meantime, we will have the debate and we'll have the vote in the Senate on healthcare, and we'll do it in sufficient time that if we pass it in a bipartisan way, it can go to the House as well. And you're right, the Speaker doesn't have to bring it up, but he's got more than a majority over there who say we have to fix this. And a majority of House members can use a discharge petition to free up a vote on the floor on anything they want.

So our goal is, in the time when we're working on the remaining appropriations bills, we'll queue up the healthcare vote. We'll try to put together a proposal that helps Americans afford healthcare that is as attractive to get Republican crossover support as we can. And we'll put everybody on the record on that.

KEILAR: Congressman Ro Khanna says that Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. A couple weeks ago, I was talking with Congressman Seth Moulton on the program. He's now running for Senate and he said that we are in this shutdown "because of how ineffective Schumer was during the first funding battle." What do you think? Do Senate Democrats need to have -- are they having a serious discussion about whether your caucus might be better led at this moment by someone else?

KAINE: No. Chuck is our leader. We elected him leader. He's going to stay our leader. I know House members have a lot of free time to speculate on stuff because they haven't been up here for seven weeks while we've been here every week trying to get the job done. So I don't -- I don't freelance opinions about House leadership. If House guys want to freelance opinions about Senate leadership, feel free.

KEILAR: All right, Senator Tim Kaine, thank you so much for being with us today. Appreciate it.

KAINE: Absolutely. Brianna, glad to.

KEILAR: A new twist in the case of a missing nine-year-old girl, her mother has just been arrested, but police say it's not related to her daughter's disappearance. We'll have that next.

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[13:49:33]

SANCHEZ: There is a new twist in the case of missing California nine- year-old Melodee Buzzard. Her mother, Ashlee Buzzard is now in custody, not for the girl's disappearance, but on unrelated charges. Melody was last seen more than a month ago with her mom and officials are focused on a span of three days that involves a long road trip, a switched license plate, and the mother and daughter wearing disguises. CNN's Jean Casarez is on this story. Jean, what's the latest?

[13:50:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the latest is law enforcement is hoping she is still alive, that maybe her mother dropped her off with a family member or friends or someone. And they're looking at this timeline, just as you said, Boris. It begins on October 7th and that is when Melody and her mother were seen at a rental car agency in Lompoc, California, that's not too far from Santa Barbara, renting a car. And in the surveillance video footage, you see that there are disguises. Law enforcement is saying that the little girl is wearing a wig, that she has a hoodie, that the top of the hoodie -- the hood is up.

And then from the seventh to the ninth, those three days, they say that that Melody and her mother Ashlee drove about a thousand miles and not in any particular order, but they went through Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska, Kansas. Why did they drive through all those states? Because on the 9th of October, important day right here, this is where law enforcement says it's the last time that Melody was ever seen. It was near the Colorado-Utah border. But they also say that that day on October 9th, they went through Green River, Utah; Panguitch, Utah; Northwest Arizona; Primm, Nevada; Rancho Cucamonga, California.

But on the 10th of October, that is when her mother took back the rental car and Melody wasn't with her at all. She was alone. So really, what happened on the ninth right there. Now Boris, one other thing. October 14th, so that's after all of this, that's when the school asked for a welfare check because she hadn't been attending her remote school. In August, her mother abruptly asked for her to be placed in remote school where she had to -- where she just studied from home. She didn't go with her classmates anymore.

And the last thing is, this arrest, arrest for kidnapping. They say it's nothing to do with the missing person's case, but it's California charges of kidnapping. That means California is the jurisdiction. We know the FBI executed a search warrant at the home, at a storage unit, and a car. What did they see that gave them the probable cause that there was a victim of kidnapping and Ashlee, the mother, is responsible? Boris?

SANCHEZ: Really important question. Jean Casarez, thank you so much for that update. Brianna?

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour, a botulism outbreak has been linked to infant formula. Officials say 13 babies in 10 states were hospitalized after drinking whole nutrition infant formula from the company ByHeart. The CDC says anyone with the recalled lot numbers should immediately throw them out. Symptoms of infant botulism include choking, constipation, and paralysis.

Also, the U.S. Military attacks more alleged drug boats in the Eastern Pacific. Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth releasing footage of the strikes on social media, saying six people were killed in the attacks on two separate vessels on Sunday. Hegseth says U.S. intelligence connected the boats to drug smugglers, but offered no evidence to support that. At least 76 people have been killed in 18 strikes since the Trump administration launched its crackdown.

And the Philippines is devastated by a second typhoon in less than a week. Look at that bridge there. Typhoon Fang-wong slamming into the country on Sunday, triggering floods and landslides. At least four people killed in all of this. Ahead of the storm, 1.4 million people had to evacuate. This follows the destruction from an earlier typhoon that killed nearly 200 people. Taiwan is now bracing for this storm.

And ahead, President Trump says he's going to use tariff revenue to send a $2,000-check to every American but don't check your mailbox just yet. We'll tell you why, next.

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[13:58:23] KEILAR: Big changes are coming to women's healthcare. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to remove the black box warning on many hormone treatments for women with menopause symptoms. It's a shift that FDA Commissioner Marty Makary says, is a long time coming.

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MARTIN MAKARY, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF FOOD AND DRUGS: A male- dominated medical profession, let's be honest, has minimized the symptoms of menopause and as a result, women's health issues have not received the attention that they deserve.

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KEILAR: CNN Medical Correspondent Meg Tirrell is with us now on how this change affects treatment options.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the FDA is taking steps to remove the black box warning at the top of the drug prescribing information for menopause hormone therapies, drugs like estrogen. And this had warned about things like cardiovascular disease, stroke, breast cancer, and dementia. This is the highest-level warning that the agency has and it was put in place across all of these products after a major government study around the year 2002 found that hormone therapy could raise the risk of some of these things.

And since then, subsequent analyses have suggested that the study findings were overstated, that some of these risks really aren't as bad as they may have seemed. And the FDA Commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary calls this one of the greatest mistakes in modern medicine. And really we saw the number of women taking hormone therapy for menopause decline significantly after these study results came out.

Now, one of the issues that they found in the study is that the average age of women was 63. And subsequently, it's been found that it's typically thought to be safe and beneficial for many women to start hormone therapy within 10 years of menopause onset. So typically, the cutoff you hear is --