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Inside Politics

Gen Z Flocks To Rome For Pope & Youth Jubilee; Texas Democrats Flee State To Block GOP Redistricting Plan; Gov. Abbott Threatens To Expel Absent Democratics From Office; Blue States Pressured To Redo Their Maps If Texas Plan Passes; Trump Fires A Senior Official Over Jobs Numbers. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 04, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Many camping out under the stars at the sites, they can catch another glimpse of the Pope in the morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV, SOVEREIGN OF VATICAN CITY STATE: Good morning, buenos dias.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: With more than a million turning out for Sunday mass with Leo. This was the largest event of his nearly three-month papacy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV: God bless you all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: And his authenticity and quiet charisma helped him connect with the crowd. As they prepared to go home, Leo urged them to remember those suffering, stressing that the young pilgrims are a sign a different world is possible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV: We are with the young people of Gaza. We are with the young people of Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Leo chosen as pontiff at a turbulent time in history, and while still adjusting to the limelight, seems to enjoy being pope. Christopher Lamb, CNN, Rome.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And our thanks to Christopher Lamb for that report, and to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us. You can always keep up with us on social media @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, 10 am Eastern.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Inside Politics with Manu Raju is next.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, Texas can't hold him. Lone Star state Democrats have fled the state in a last-ditch effort to block a Republican gerrymander. But is this a strategy or a stunt?

Plus, bad news gets the boot. The White House is trying to justify President Trump's decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he did not like Friday's jobs report, but contrary to what they say, numbers don't lie.

And hunting for disloyal lists. We have brand new CNN reporting on far-right activist Laura Loomer, role she's playing is the administration's quote, royalty enforcer, and who she wants to get fired, next.

I'm Manu Raju. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We start in Austin, Texas, where a massive political throwdown is getting into full swing. A special state session of the state legislature will gavel in this afternoon. The GOP majority's goal pass a new Trump backed map for the 2026 midterms that could net the Republicans five seats in the U.S. House, but dozens of Democrats will not be there.

They've been flying to blue states across the country to deprive Republicans of the quorum they need to vote on their gerrymandered map. Now, Governor Greg Abbott is warning be at the capitol this afternoon or lose your seat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Our fellow Texans are being let down and not getting the flood relief they need because these Democrats have absconded from the responsibility, and I believe they have forfeited their seats in the state legislature because they're not doing the job they were elected to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Of course, it's unclear to say the least that the governor actually has the power to remove legislators from office. But CNN's Ed Lavandera is at the State Capitol to break this all down for us. So, Ed, with these legislators, they cannot stay away from Texas forever. So, is this really a strategy that Democrats can win?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, ultimately, when it comes to the legislative part of this, they probably know that the writing is on the wall eventually, whenever they decide to come back. But what they want to do here -- especially here in the initial days of this quorum break, will be to ratchet up pressure on Republicans here in Texas, bring attention to the issue of gerrymandering for people across the country. That is what they're hoping to do. So, part of this is a public relations battle that is unfolding in a very serious way right now. Manu, we're about four hours away from the House reconvening here in Austin, and it will be at that point when more than 50 Democrats don't show up that there will not be a quorum to do business.

The governor is essentially saying that, as you heard him say there, that they can be stripped of their position, although Democrats wholeheartedly disagree with that. But the governor is also talking about any kind of donations that are being accepted to either pay for travel costs or as well as the fines that the lawmakers will face for not being here during this session, that that would amount to bribery as well.

Democrats are pushing back on all of this. They feel they have the moral high road here on this issue, here in Texas, and the chairman of the Democratic caucus Gene Wu spoke with CNN just a short while ago, and was asked just how long the Democrats plan on staying away?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: But how long was my question? How long will you stay out of state?

GENE WU, (D) CHAIR, TEXAS STATE HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS: Again, our commitment to this is one day at a time, and we're going to deal with this special session. And what happens in the next special session if the governor calls it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:05:00]

LAVANDERA: Manu, there are about two weeks left in this 30-day special session. The way it works here in Texas, the governor can just call another, you know, special session. After a special session, the Republicans have the vote to pass this redistricting bill and the way it stands now, the map has been drawn. As you mentioned too, create five new Republican seats here in the state of Texas.

And Democrats are going fanning out to places like Illinois, New York and Massachusetts as well, trying to spread the word, in their view, fight fire with fire, maybe considering and pushing other state legislatures to do the same in their own states with Democratic majorities. Manu?

RAJU: Ed Lavandera from the State Capitol on the unfolding drama in Austin, Texas. Thank you so much for that reporting. Here in the room, I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters, CNN's David Chalian, Shelby Talcott for Semafor, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs of The New York Times. Nice to see you all.

OK, so a lot of theatrics, which we can expect when we see these things kind of happen, but also hugely significant in not just the fight for the midterms, how this ultimately plays out, but just really on the nature of politics. As we see these redistricting fights play out in state after state after state, and we're going to potentially see a lot more very gerrymandered districts. This has huge consequence about what happens here in Washington.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, there's no doubt about that. It certainly does. And the most immediate consequence is the battle for which party controls the Congress after these 2026 midterms, which is exactly the point. I mean, Donald Trump is not hiding the ball here, right? He and his team are pretty clear.

They're concerned about how narrow the margins are. Democrats only right now on today's facts, need a net gain of three seats to become the majority party in the House of Representatives. Well, they're going to look for a way to add more pad to their majority, even before we get to the elections next November.

One way to do that is draw friendlier districts. So, if you are Donald Trump and his strategists and his allies, you say, OK, we could squeeze five seats out of Texas. Now, Democrats will need eight seats to be in the majority. We could squeeze some out of Ohio, maybe out of Missouri.

And so, this now is putting the Democrats in a place where they've got to figure out a strategy on how to fight back against that because Republicans are potentially building a much tougher path to the majority for Democrats.

RAJU: Yeah. And again, this typically happens at the beginning of a decade to reflect a new census, which is why they tend to do this the beginning of the decade, not the middle of the decade to choose your own voters to help you in an election, but Democrats are now threatening to respond in kind.

But just here in Texas, how does this end for the Democrats? Because we've seen them do this before. They did it in 2021 and this voting legislation they opposed, they left town, and they ultimately came back. They were gone for 38 days there, back in 2003 there was a fight over redistricting. They left town, they came back. Republicans got what they wanted.

SHELBY TALCOTT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, SEMAFOR: Right. And we've seen this show before, and as Ed sort of alluded to, it does seem like at some point they're going to have to come back and what's next, right? And so, I think the key question for Democrats is not necessarily what they're doing when they're out of the state, but sort of how they handle this when they inevitably have to return, when inevitably these -- the Republicans likely are going to get what they want. How do they handle it state by state?

Are they going to start doing the same thing as Republicans and try to have their own redistricting? I think that's ultimately what Democrats are going to have to grapple with. Do they want to sort of take the high road and continue to push back and argue that this is not how things should be done? Or are they going to say, OK, Republicans are doing it. It's time for us to do it as well.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST & WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK TIMES: In the short-term year, it also presents an opportunity for these different governors, state leaders on the Democratic side to come out and maybe emerge as or try to position themselves as a leader of the party too. You're already seeing that happen in Illinois a bit with Governor Pritzker saying that he's standing with these Texas Democrats who come out. You're probably going to see other Democrats do that as well.

But I mean, to Shelby's point, just to zoom out if Democrats do what they're already indicating, which is respond to this with a similar redistricting of their own. I mean, we're just moving so far away with both parties here from really what is intended when it comes to the redrawing of maps, which is, as you said, is every 10 years when the census comes out to do this.

Now you just have politicians being very candid that they're trying to gain a political edge here as well, even having folks like Eric Holder, who was once, you know, had a firm position of keeping politics out of this process. Now saying that, in a way, you need to fight fire with fire when it comes to Republicans.

RAJU: Yeah. It is just going to intensify in Texas. You have the threats of felony charges from the -- from the governor. You have the $500 daily fine that these members will and crew based on the law, and you have the threat of removing them from office. We'll see if that has any legal muster. But that's something a threat that the governor is not throwing out there.

[12:10:00]

And you mentioned this happening in other states as well. Kathy Hochul, the New York Governor, was out there today, making very clear that Democrats in New York are going to engage in this power play of their own.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): I'm exploring with our leaders every option to redraw our state congressional lines as soon as possible. Republicans take over the legislature. They can have at it. But until then, we're in charge, and we're sick and tired of being pushed around when other states don't have the same aspirations that we always have had.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Yeah. She's got -- she has her own issues with her own party. Primary politics could be involved there, but there's the significant there too. 19 Democratic seats in New York and seven Republican seats. So presumably, they could try to add a few more, but the Democrats face hurdles in their -- on these democratic states, not just in New York, but in California, which gives Republicans an advantage here.

CHALIAN: Well, or at least complicates Democrats' path to accomplishing what they want to do here. Because those hurdles that you speak of is because in a lot of these blue states run by Democratic governors or even super majority Democratic legislatures, there are commissions in place that do the redistricting, unlike in Texas, which, like the legislature just handles.

And so, as Gavin Newsom is floated in California, he's now proposing the idea of going to the voters of California this November in a special election and say, change the constitution. We're going to pause on the independent commission for this short term, so we can respond to this, have their Democratic super majorities draw the districts and then go back and revert to norm.

I would just say one thing to Zolan's point that I think is so important, how both parties are now at this place where they are seeking maximum political advantage in this, that is because the Supreme Court told them they can do so. I mean, the Supreme Court said gerrymandering, political gerrymandering, purely for political power is totally green light. Go ahead and do it. And so that's why you see this happening in blue states and red states.

RAJU: And speaking of the blue state, you had mentioned J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, of course, a potential 2028 candidate trying to feel his way on this issue and position himself as a leader on the Democratic side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): All bets are off when the cult leader, and you know, would be dictator of the United States, tells Texas to midstream change the game. When they know that they're going to lose in 2026, all bets are off. Everything's got to be on the table.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: You got Newsom and Pritzker. I'm sure others will try to seize this moment.

TALCOTT: Yeah. This is beyond -- this is more than just Texas. It's more than just California or New York. It is really about the fight for the White House in 2028. And you're seeing -- we saw after the presidential election how Democrats really struggled to have a leader and also have a core message.

And clearly, you're seeing all of these top Democratic lawmakers come out and see these are their opportunities to sort of show the American people that they're going to fight for them, right? Because that was a big thing on the campaign trail that I heard from Democratic voters who didn't vote for Kamala Harris was, well, I didn't feel like the party represented me. I didn't feel like they were willing to fight against Donald Trump. And that's clearly what these Democratic leaders are trying to do and position themselves as the one to watch in 2028.

RAJU: And how will their voters feel if they don't end up succeeding in that fight? That's, of course, a question for the weeks ahead. All right, coming up. The numbers don't lie, but the president doesn't like that. The latest on why the government's top economic data cruncher was fired and the White House plan to replace her.

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[12:15:00]

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RAJU: Three days after President Trump fired the government's top economic number cruncher because he did not like the numbers. His top economic advisers calling the data collectors political opponents, and says, their debt are rigged.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: They could be politically manipulated because they're so untransparent. There's a black box system out there, making the jobs numbers that needs to be improved. It looks to get to partisans like they were jacking up the jobs numbers until Joe Biden was out of the picture. So, I think it's a massive failure of our data agencies to be making willy nilly changes that are difficult to understand and often have apparently partisan patterns.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: But the last head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a Trump appointee, told CNN that political manipulation like this just is not possible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BEACH, FORMER BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS COMMISSIONER: There's no way for that to happen. The commissioner doesn't do anything to collect the numbers. BLS is the finest statistical agency in the entire world. Its numbers are trusted all over the world. So, I will trust those numbers. I do believe, though, that the president's attack on the commissioner and on the bureau is undermining that infrastructure could undermine that trust over the long term.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: All right, my panel is back. Again, every month there's a jobs report. Numbers are revised. Every single month there are oftentimes revisions, downward revisions, and here we have Trump repeatedly, even this morning, still saying, this is rigged. He put that on Truth Social. And then you have Kevin Hassett, the top economic adviser for this administration, offering no evidence whatsoever, but still asserting what Donald Trump is asserting that there's something nefarious going on here.

[12:20:00]

KANNO-YOUNGS: The Hassett comments really are just another example of how much loyalty has been prioritized and how much this administration has been almost molded and built to be filled with loyalists that will follow through and say yes to whatever Donald Trump says.

You know, the concern here, and I've been talking to folks about this all weekend, is now the chilling effect of something like this, right? Do you now have a situation where now people that are in charge of stats, government stats, which one economist said that -- we spoke to said is holding a mirror to society. Do you now have these government workers feel as if they need to produce data that actually backs up the alternative reality that Donald Trump projects at times as well.

And also. even the justification that the president has used in accusing without evidence, this official of producing rigged data, saying that there was a jobs report that was better for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. The August jobs report from last year actually showed a weaker economy, so that actually would have hurt the political momentum for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and even that basis and explanation just doesn't hold up here.

RAJU: What are you hearing from inside the White House on this?

TALCOTT: I mean, they are maintaining, first of all, that Donald Trump's messaging, which is the allegation that these were partisan numbers. They are maintaining that through and through. But I also think that this came as a surprise to a lot of officials inside the administration. That seemed, in my conversations with folks that this was a very quick decision made by Donald Trump and everyone else, as is often the case, when Donald Trump makes decisions, sort of reacts to it.

Now, I think it's notable that we have heard from a few Republicans who are concerned about this, a minority of Republicans. I think the question is, does that result in anything? Or are they going to sort of quietly grumble and then move on as they have with most of what --

RAJU: I think I have an answer for that one.

TALCOTT: Donald Trump had. But I think at the end of the day, you know, when I talk to officials about everything that Donald Trump is doing, whether it is firing people, whether it is pushing through, his agenda, is their argument is, this is what we said we do on the campaign trail, right? We said that we had an agenda, and that essentially, anybody who isn't going to agree with our agenda, we're not going to have them in the administration. That's their argument. They say that they have made that clear from day one.

RAJU: Yeah, but it's the cold hard data. If that doesn't agree with the administration, suddenly they're out of the administration. But this is also part of a trend here. This is the Trump administration's handling of inconvenient data, if you will. They dismissed as experts who compiled the National Climate Assessment, dismissed experts who evaluated vaccine data for recommendations, fired intelligence officials who concluded the Venezuelan government was not connected to gangs. And this is the latest example of that.

CHALIAN: You might say it's an administration in search of alternative facts.

RAJU: That's right.

CHALIAN: It is, you know, this is Donald Trump trying to shape reality. I also think it's Donald Trump revealing that he has a concern about the economy and where it's going. I mean, I, you don't, it's one thing, you fire the person because you don't like the information. But let's get it. What don't you like about the information?

It shows we're in a moment of a potentially weakening economy, not a growing economy. And that is a real political threat to Donald Trump if that's the case, because it potentially blows a hole in his argument of tariffs and deregulation and tax cuts and the whole three- legged stool that they're putting together.

I think time will still play that out, but that to me shows, there's a concern on the president's part, and he wants to make sure to sort of obfuscate that that potential of people to say, hey, this economy is not on its strongest footing.

RAJU: And just taking a step back. This is what our colleague Stephen Collinson writes on CNN this morning. He says, Trump's actions are adding to growing evidence that he is engineering the degradation of democratic and pluralistic institutions. Comparisons between the president and populist authoritarian strongman leaders such as the Hungarian president -- Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban or Turkish President Erdogan look increasingly apt. Fair analysis.

KANNO-YOUNGS: While we've seen actions like this that have taken place in other autocratic societies, right? Turkey, I mean, when Greeks economy complete -- when Greece's economy completely imploded, it also you had an economist there that was facing pressure from that government too.

It's one example that we've seen throughout this six months of overall crackdown of dissent in this administration. And the president has shown time and time again that if you are going to present facts that are politically inconvenient, do not back up his false assertions to really any assertions. Then he won't have tolerance for it, and he has shown to disproportionately lash out, you know, at it too, even if you are a federal bureaucrat.

[12:25:00]

SHELBY: Yeah. I think -- I think also, the important thing to remember is that this Trump 2.0 administration, the president feels emboldened and that's for a few reasons. One, he has learned from his first time in office. He is surrounded by people he trusts, by people who will, maybe privately push back but ultimately implement his agenda. He has shaped the Republican Party so that, by and large, they do what he wants.

And so -- and also, over the last four years, when President Joe Biden was in office, his allies were preparing for, you know, maybe not this very specific moment of firing the commissioner, but by and large, preparing of, how can we implement his agenda? How can we take this sort of as far as we can go compared to the first administration?

RAJU: Yeah. We've seen a lot further in a lot of ways in the second term. All right. Far from far-right activist to gatekeeper and loyalty enforcer. CNN spoke with Laura Loomer about her growing influence in the Trump White House. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:30:00]