Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

GOP Senate Leader Rejects Trump Call for End to Bipartisan District Court Nomination Tradition; Senator Booker Accuses Fellow Democrats of Complying With Trump Agenda; Texas Republicans Release New House Maps as They Attempt to Take Five Democratic Seats; NY Democrat Launches Primary Challenging Rep. Jerry Nadler, Citing Age. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired July 30, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: You know, people have said that they deeply objected to something, and then they voted for it because Trump told them to. And so, this is a moment where he doesn't have that lever unless they change the rules. And so, he is doing what he does best, which is going out on social media, making a case. And then sometimes he just lets it drop --

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT AND CO-ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': Yeah.

KEITH: And sometimes he gets what he wants.

RAJU: And this is a rare instance in which the Senate is actually -- GOP seems to be standing up to Trump. John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader said, I don't think there's any strong interest in changing that up here.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yeah. Like, I'll reverse myself. Republicans have sort of challenged the president on Senate procedure and sometimes the president lets it drop. But remember the filibuster fight, when the president was demanding that they remove the filibuster, and Senate Republicans held the line on that for --

RAJU: Yeah.

NICHOLS: -- obviously institutional and self-interested reasons, if and when they're in the minority, and they will be in the minorities sometime in their -- those Senators' long lifetime, they want to preserve their ability to affect outcomes and they do that through Senate procedure, through the filibuster, or as you so eloquently put it, the blue slip. I mean, we're going to cut and paste Manu's take on the blue slip, and we're just going to slide it straight into our copy.

RAJU: I didn't actually say blue slip, but you brought it, you said blue slip.

NICHOLS: Yeah. I think you did blue slip, blue slip in quotes the first time. (LAUGH)

RAJU: Yeah, that's right.

NICHOLS: And then, (inaudible) and explain.

(LAUGH)

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Another person who's being affected by the blue slip is Alina Habba, who was formerly the president's lawyer. He wanted to -- or he appointed her as U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Panel of judges said she's not qualified to be U.S. attorney. With a whole rigmarole going around, that he now wants to like reappoint her for it. And that's because Cory Booker and Andy Kim, the Senators from New Jersey won't give her the blue slip.

RAJU: Yeah. That's one of the people.

DOVERE: But, also included and we can brush by this at some point, but in that tweet or Truth Social post about Chuck Grassley, he says something that's like blatantly not true. Chuck Grassley was never down by a lot. Donald Trump did not get Chuck Grassley reelected.

RAJU: Yeah.

DOVERE: And you know, I do think that it's important still to like linger on when the president says things that have no barrier --

RAJU: And that actually probably really irked Grassley as well.

DOVERE: Yes.

RAJU: Grassley goes around every, he is --

NICHOLS: Grassley got reelected by the number of pushups he can do.

(LAUGH)

RAJU: Exactly. He goes to every single county every year and he's an institution in the state. He served for a very, very long time. OK. You mentioned New Jersey. There's also a flap on the Democratic side of the aisle yesterday, from the New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who was furious at Democrats who were trying to push through a series of policing bills because of his opposition to the way the administration has been handling money to his state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER, (D-NJ): What I am tired of is when the president of the United States of America violates the constitution, trashes our norms and traditions. And what does the Democratic Party do? Comply, allow him, beg for scraps. No, I demand justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, this is a rare public fight. PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right.

RAJU: And it's really a debate over tactics, bipartisanship when you're in the minority or battling. And Cory Booker says, we need to battle.

ALVAREZ: And he was battling with Democratic Senator Cortez Masto, who has a whole different set of political dynamics that she has to navigate in her state, which she raised, I think in an NBC interview after the fact. But, this is also Senator Booker, who earlier this year did his 25-hour speech on the floor against the Trump Administration's policies. The thing is that the needle isn't really moving when it comes to polling with Democrats. There is still a majority of Democrats who don't believe or are -- well, don't really have a lot of belief and faith in the Democratic Party on multiple issues. And this type of inter-party sort of fracturing, I don't know how that helps sort of the bigger issues that they're trying to navigate here.

DOVERE: Yeah. But what it speaks to is that there are a lot of parts of the Democratic base of voters and among Democratic elected officials, Democratic Senators, as all of us know on the table, who feel like the Democratic Party just needs to fight more. And one of the things that Booker said is, it's time for the Democratic Party to have a backbone. Right?

And the interpretation from those folks of what's going on in the polls that Priscilla is talking about is that voters are seeing the Democratic Party roll over and not stand for anything. And so, they don't think that there's any point in supporting the Democratic Party. Now, whether they are right is a question. And there are certainly a lot of other Democratic Senators and officials who look at this and say, what about getting things done? What about figuring out how to appeal to swing voters who don't just want to burn it all down all the time?

RAJU: Yeah.

ALVAREZ: Well --

DOVERE: And that's, that's one of the essential fights that I think was laid bare by what happened yesterday, so --

ALVAREZ: And they also yet haven't defined what it is that they're standing up for.

DOVERE: Right.

ALVAREZ: Right? That's one of the critical issues in all of this. Yeah.

NICHOLS: Like, I wrote this story, like a lot of us did on deadline last night. There were so many good quotes to pull from. Isaac just mentioned one, one of them is a Democrat deserved to lose. Look, Booker is pretty hot. It's also pretty clear that he has an eye towards the next presidential election. He's raised a lot of money. We know Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's also on the floor in that exchange. We don't know if she's going to run against or not. We are going to see a lot of 2028 play out in 2025 and 2026. And I think that just kind of surprised us. Booker certainly surprised his colleagues. They were taken aback by it. And now, we're on notice and we shouldn't be surprised anymore.

[12:35:00]

RAJU: And the big thing coming up is they're going to have to fund the government when they come back from August recess. They'll have a very few days to fund the government. And that will once again put Senate Democrats in a spot, work with the president, fight the president, lead -- potentially lead to a shutdown. And we saw what Chuck Schumer did last time and he got so much blow back from the left for allowing the government to stay open.

KEITH: Yeah, it is a very big test that Senate Democrats face in this case.

RAJU: Yeah, no question. We'll see how that plays out. No one quite knows just yet. All right. A first look at how Texas Republicans want to redraw congressional districts. How many seats it could jeopardize for Democrats, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:40:00]

RAJU: The map is in. Texas Republicans have released their highly anticipated plan for how to tip the balance in their favor in next year's midterms, redrawing the state's congressional map. Let's take a closer look at the numbers. As it stands now, the Texas Congressional Map looks like this, 13 Democratic seats and 25 GOP seats. But under the new proposal from Texas Republicans, the map could shift to look like this, with just eight Democratic seats and 30 Republican seats.

My panel is back to discuss the huge impact that this could have in the House. The risk though, we have to see the details, and I should just remind viewers, the reason why this is significant is that typically these redistricting fights are done at the beginning of every decade. Trump wants this done now to add five more seats in the middle of the decade to help them in next year's midterms, which is why this is so controversial. But you do that, you can make some -- potentially some Republican districts that are very solidly read, a little more swingy, which gives Democrats maybe some hope.

KEITH: Yeah. That is -- that is the risk. That is the potential unintended consequence here. What is amazing about this is just how upfront President Trump and his allies have been about why they are doing this, which is they want to maintain control of the House, and they're not sure that they can do it in this midterm unless they stack the deck this way. And I think as they see it, like why leave these cards on the table? Why not sort of gerrymander to scoop up seats and they look to some Democratic states who also gerrymander mightily.

RAJU: Yeah. KEITH: But there is a risk when -- these maps will be based on demographic data. That's a little bit out of date. And when you try to redraw maps, things can happen. It -- solid seats may be a little less solid.

RAJU: And now, Democrats are talking about how to respond in kind. There's discussion about doing it in other states, California, New Jersey, New York. You're the New York whisperer. What are you hearing about that, likelihood that it happens in some --

(CROSSTALK)

DOVERE: It's complicated in New York because of some of the things that are in the state constitution about this mid-cycle redistricting. Look, this is not the way it's supposed to work. It is supposed to be that after every census, there is a redistricting done. It's also not supposed to be that there's this much gerrymandering going on. This is a classic case of what's going -- as Tamara was saying, of instead of the voters choosing the politicians, the politicians choosing their voters or trying to, that's -- Donald Trump has been very explicit about this. This is what it's about.

He does not want to go into next year's midterms with the voters who voted last year voting in the same way. And because he thinks that they could lose control of the House. And then that leads to Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul, and others. Those are the two states that are very full of a lot of districts that could be changed around, trying to figure out what they can do. But in California, there's an independent redistricting commission.

RAJU: Yeah.

DOVERE: They could supersede that with state law, and it looks like they will if Texas does this.

RAJU: Yeah.

DOVERE: And other states might too.

KEITH: However --

RAJU: If Texas does this, there are -- these are the five Democrats who could potentially be targeted here on your screen there. Some of them are more liberal members, and some of them are more moderate swingy members. Some are from Hispanic, Hispanic leaders in the House Democratic Caucus, and one Congress -- very liberal member Al Green as well. But this is significant.

ALVAREZ: Well, and speaking to the moderates, you have for example, there, Representative Henry Cuellar who, if you remember, was a critical voice in the Biden Administration. He is more moderate. And that part actually of Texas has been the leaning more Republican, the Latinos have been leaning Republicans to the demographics and their voting trends have just been interesting to watch there. But look, the thing that is happening here is that midterms are hard for the president and there is typically a change at parties. So this is a way to tweak that. I think Republican strategists will say this is the only way that they can overcome any type of wave. But it is certainly one that not only could affect Texas, but it's everything that happens thereafter as we're seeing with California and New York.

RAJU: Yes, this is just raw politics at its purest form.

ALVAREZ: Yeah.

NICHOLS: Yeah. I feel like the consensus of this table is that gerrymandering is OK and in the decade, but in the mid cycle, it's somehow like --

(CROSSTALK)

NICHOLS: -- somehow it's like, somehow -- like what's funny to me about the gerrymandering debate is that you can swap quotes from Democrats and Republicans because they both say the same things about each other, which is like the other side's better at it. They're just, they play dirtier. They are just simply more aggressive. Now, in this case, I feel like the Democrats have the facts on their side. Republicans are being pretty aggressive in Texas. But it's a massive bet.

And the bet is that these Latino districts along the Rio Grande Valley, the Latino voters are going to vote Republican the way they voted for Donald Trump. And we don't know yet -- that yet. And that's the risk they're willing to take because you squint one year and you see a bunch of red, light red straits, those get blue or more purple in another year. So, it's the unintended consequence that tomorrow's gotten.

DOVERE: When you try to explain how gerrymandering works to somebody not from the United States or like a student coming out of their eighth grade U.S. history class, civics, it makes no sense.

[12:45:00]

RAJU: Yeah.

DOVERE: And it is the system that has developed. Now, it's gotten so sophisticated with computers (inaudible) voters.

NICHOLS: I agree with you, with like eighth graders, with people out of the United States. I did most of that when I was over the age of 21 and you could drink in Europe at that time. And it was really --

(LAUGH)

NICHOLS: It was actually kind of fun.

(CROSSTALK)

NICHOLS: I enjoyed it, yeah. So that's, I mean --

(LAUGH)

RAJU: That's a segment I want (inaudible) stories in Europe before 21. All right. That was a great discussion guys. A controversial pitch for Democrats, that's up next. Primarying older members of the House, our next guest is doing exactly that. His target, Congressman Jerry Nadler.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:50:00]

RAJU: New York Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, the Dean of the New York Congressional Delegation, former Chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee, a 33-year veteran of Capitol Hill. Well, he's officially facing a primary challenge and it focuses front and center on his age. 26-year-old Liam Elkind launches campaign today asking Congressman Nadler to consider retirement. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIAM ELKIND, (D) PRIMARY CHALLENGER TO REP. JERRY NADLER, (D-NY): The Democratic Party is dying. We're losing votes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The last eight members of Congress who have died, all of them are Democrats.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The suffocating gerontocracy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Older incumbents should step aside.

ELKIND: The same people are using the same old tactics, but they're losing. They're telling us to give them 10 more years in office, even as they say.

REP. JERRY NADLER, (D-NY): I'm not sure there's much we can do about it. We will have to wait -- wait -- wait.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Congressman Nadler's office says in response, he will "Stake his record of accomplishments against anyone." Unfortunately, with this individual, I don't think there's any record to speak of. Well, this individual, Liam Elkind, joins us live now from New York. Mr. Elkind, thank you so much for being with me this afternoon. Really appreciate your time.

ELKIND: Thank you for having me, sir. Appreciate it.

RAJU: Absolutely. So you are making age a top issue in this campaign, but on Capitol Hill where the issues and the debate are complex, doesn't experience matter to voters?

ELKIND: There is no question that experience matters. In fact, it's one of the things I'm running on. Look, when crisis hits, one of the first things I learned as a New Yorker is that we can't wait. We run to help. And so when COVID hit, I put my phone number on a flyer and started delivering food to anyone who needed it -- seniors, people with disabilities, people experiencing food insecurity. And 72 hours later, 1,300 people stepped up to join me.

Over the course of the last five years, more than 15,000 people joined our grassroots efforts. And in fact, if you called your government and asked for help getting food, they would tell you to call my personal phone number. Our social safety net, your life should not rest on one person remembering to pick up his phone. That's a bonkers way to run a society. And now the crisis is coming from the White House. And we need leaders who have the energy and the urgency and the vision, frankly, not just to beat Donald Trump, but to ensure that his merry band of corrupt lunatics is nowhere near power ever again.

RAJU: But you're not so subtly calling out Nadler's age here. Do you think in Congress should there be an age limit?

ELKIND: Look, age limits, I'm not sure is the appropriate solution to tailor. I think the voters deserve to speak. I'm running for office, Congressman Nadler's running for office, and he believes that he's the most energetic and tenacious and visionary candidate to lead the district forward. I'm looking forward to that conversation. My belief is that we need a party that has the fierce urgency of now, that is advocating for a wholesale ban on corporate PAC money, that is going to reject corporate PAC money outright, that launches boycotts and protests and organizes, meets each other's material needs, launches discharge petitions, refuses to confirm any one of Trump's cabinet nominees, refuses to give the Republicans a quorum.

There's a lot we can be doing here, but the bottom line is this, we are not just the minority party, we are the opposition party. And it's about damn time we start acting like it.

RAJU: So, today, the House Oversight Committee is continuing its probe into President Biden's cognitive issues, interviewing two top Biden aides behind closed doors. I want to play an exchange I had with Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Do you think the Democrats, the White House at the time, were straightforward to the American public about Joe Biden's condition?

REP. JARED MOSKOWITZ, (D-FL): No, they weren't. OK? And I think that's one of the reasons why we lost. I think it's one of the reasons why our poll numbers are where they are, because I think debates of the party and American people out there are upset that we let ourselves get into this situation. And so, no, they weren't honest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Do you agree with him that Democrats were not honest about President's Biden condition?

ELKIND: Yeah. Look, I respect President Biden. I admire him. But he should have stepped aside. And now, Donald Trump is back in the White House. I admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg tremendously, but she should have stepped aside. And now, Roe v. Wade has fallen. I respect Gerry Connolly and Sylvester Turner and Raul Grijalva, great leaders in Congress who should have stepped aside. And the three vacancies that they left allowed Trump's billionaire bill gutting healthcare and food stamps for millions of people to pass by one vote.

This is a self-inflicted wound on the side of the Democrats. And we don't do ourselves as a party or ourselves as a country any favors by refusing to acknowledge it, especially when 80 percent of Americans are saying that nothing will change without new leadership.

RAJU: And Mr. Elkind, there's also another big race this fall. Of course, that's the New York mayoral race.

ELKIND: Yeah.

RAJU: Congressman Nadler has endorsed Zohran Mamdani. Are you endorsing him, the Democratic socialist who's the nominee for your party?

ELKIND: Yeah, I voted for Brad Lander in the primary, and I'll be supporting Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee for mayor. Look, if the party has --

RAJU: Are you comfortable? Are you comfortable with Mamdani's politics?

ELKIND: I have some serious concerns about some of the things he said. And look, when I disagree with him, I'll be unafraid to stand up to him. And when I agree with him, I'll be delighted to work with him as I would with any mayor. That's the job.

[12:55:00]

RAJU: All right. Thank you so much, Liam Elkind, for joining me this afternoon, and as he launches primary campaign against the veteran Jerry Nadler, House Democrat from New York. Thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after this very quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)