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Congress Appears Closer To Deal To Fund TSA, Homeland Security; White House Official: "This Deal Seems To Be Acceptable"; Trump Calls Vote-By-Mail Cheating After Voting By Mail; Israeli Official: Deal "Does Not Appear To Be Tangible Right Now"; NYT: Saudi Leader Pushing Trump To Continue War; Gov. Moore: Trump's ICE Deployments Part Of "Larger Plan". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 24, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: I know you do. I'm, yeah -- certainly they're going to have a better season than they did last year. So, I'm hoping my Astros can get better. Hopefully. hey, maybe well meet in the world series again, Astros, Nationals. How about that, Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Let's hope, we could go all the way. I say that about my Buffalo Bills every year as well. And then I always say at the end of the season, there's always next year. All right. Andy Scholes, thank you very, very much.

And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. You can always keep up with us on social media @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, every weekday morning, 10 am Eastern, for two hours. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: To back or to block. Will President Trump sign off on a deal to end the DHS shutdown? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Nightmare security lines at airports across the country may finally be breaking the log jam in Congress to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Now, a deal can't come soon enough for travelers, facing hellish wait times to make their flights. For TSA workers going now on over a month without pay. Plus, Easter weekend and the peak of Spring Break are just around the corner.

Today on Capitol Hill, senators are hopeful, the end is near. But this is Donald Trump's Washington, and we haven't heard officially from the president whether he is going to bless the deal. Still, Republicans are signaling that late night talks at the White House went well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): I talked to Senator Thune last night, and he says the president has reconsidered and may be on board.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): The most important thing you said was that President Trump appears to be on board with this -- with this approach.

SEN. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO (R-WV): Right now, I think we are nearing a deal. Yes, I think several of our members went to the White House, had very deep discussion with the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to get straight to Lauren Fox on the Hill for us, as always. Lauren, OK, the senators, including those in Republican leadership, think that the deal is close. We're waiting for white smoke out of the White House, though.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly, and obviously President Trump is going to be a major factor here. Now, sources I was talking to last night were also under the impression that Donald Trump was welcome and open to this deal, that they were cobbling together, but obviously, until he announces that it does have an impact, and it could have an impact also on House Republicans who want to hear from the president before making clear that they are supportive of this proposal.

But let's break it down. Inside this potential deal, lawmakers would agree to fund every aspect of the Department of Homeland Security except immigration enforcement activities by ICE and that is something that Democrats have been trying to push for over the course of the last several weeks. This bill would also make sure that TSA workers, as well as other DHS workers were paid, and it potentially could include some small reforms that Democrats have been pushing for at least that is what Democrats that we are talking to today in the halls are optimistic about. Here is Senator Tim Kaine about where he thinks Democrats could be on a potential deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): I'm hoping what I hear out of the White House last night was positive. It sounds like the more and more ours are saying that they want to take yes for an answer and we've been trying for weeks to fund the non-ICE agencies and I'm hoping that there may now be some momentum to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Now, of course, the question is, how quickly can this all get wrapped up? Lawmakers are supposed to be leaving for a two-week recess at the end of this week. We expect that this could get through the Senate relatively quickly, assuming that no Republican blocks them moving this expeditiously, of course, Dana, that is always the X Factor.

BASH: Yeah, absolutely. Lauren, thank you so much for that great reporting. I'm joined here at the table by a group of terrific reporters. Seung Min, I want to just show you and our viewers what the White House statement is. Conversations are ongoing, but this deal seems to be acceptable. OK. I mean, that's good news, and it certainly affirms what we've heard from Lauren and from Republican senators there. Sunday, which is two days ago, the president on his social media platform said that this deal, which they're saying is acceptable, is unacceptable to me.

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, AP & CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, we have gone through this exercise before, where the president takes one position and then later takes another position. I think what is potentially making this latest offer acceptable to the president right now, because is -- and again, caution that details are still being worked out is the reason why he was resisted.

One of the reasons why he was resistant was he wanted to add all the voting restrictions legislation that is his top legislative priority in that bill. And now Senate Republicans, again, the details are still being worked out. Think they might have found a way to address pieces of that voter big elections' bill in a later measure.

[12:05:00]

But I think Republicans are really trying to press upon, you know, their colleagues, you know, to the president that the shutdown cannot go any further. I mean, we're seeing -- I mean, look at the footage of all the lines in the airports. Look at the fact that they have deployed -- that the president has deployed ICE agents to airport, something that, you know, not all Republicans are on board with.

So again, what really matters is the legislative text that's expected. Hopefully later today, maybe tomorrow, depending on how fast the lawmakers are working. But it seems like there's reason for optimism right now, in a way that there wasn't before.

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: If I were Trump, I don't know if I would be very Seguin (Ph) about where this deal is headed right now, because his big thing right now, and we saw the post from this Sunday, was he wants this to include the SAVE America Act, these voting restrictions that he wants to be in place. He viewed this as a possible leverage point to make that happen.

You kick that to the reconciliation process, which requires less votes. You don't need the 60-vote threshold. You only need a majority, but it has restrictions on what you can include in that reconciliation package. And there is a very big question about what in that SAVE America Act could actually pass muster in a package like that. So, Trump might be actually giving up his leverage point when it comes to passing that legislation.

BASH: True, except. I don't know if you were just going to say this, the SAVE America Act is so complicated and might not have even enough Republican votes to pass with a simple majority, never mind a super majority. So, you know this -- the struggle among Senate Republican leaders in particular has have been to try to make the White House and the president understand that.

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yeah. And this deal, if it happens, may just essentially postpone the inevitable, the inevitable failure of the Save Act, but it does relieve -- in theory, relief the pressure that is really intense right now on Senate Republican leaders from part of Trump's base. Not all of Trump's base, but there is a very loud and active push coming from people like Scott Presler, who is a voting -- Republican voting activist and some others.

There is a lot of pressure coming from the outside to get this done. The president really wants to get this done, but the votes just aren't there. So, it's like, tying a must pass thing to a thing that isn't going to pass just means that you have something that's not going to pass.

BASH: Aaron, I want you to listen to what Cory Booker said this morning, and we'll talk about the Democrat strategy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Well, the deal is no different than what we've been demanding. We hope that this deal that they're about to do, which is called a deal, really, it's a capitulation to really what we need right now, which is to release our airports, release funding to TSA and to other key agencies like FEMA and like the Coast Guard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK, so, given what the president said on Sunday and what it looks like he is poised to do now. It is a capitulation. However, remember how we got here in the first place? And it is because the Democrats didn't want to fund any of DHS in order to try to get leverage to change policy on ICE. That is not happening. They're not funding ICE as part of this deal, but they didn't get what they wanted. And the reason why it's not a big deal currently to withhold funding from ISIS, because they still have all of this money that Congress passed last year from the big, beautiful bill.

BLAKE: Yeah. In some ways it reminds me of what happened at the end of the fuller government shutdown that we had at the end of last year, where it really seemed like Democrats had some leverage here because they were demanding something that was very popular, the extension of the Obamacare subsidies.

If you look at the immigration enforcement changes that Democrats were asking for here, a lot of them were pretty popular, you know, taking masks away from ICE agents, uniform code of conduct, judicial warrants for these searches of people's homes. But Democrats apparently aren't going to be walking away from the table without getting any of those major things out of this process. And so, you know, I think you can make arguments about how Democrats have at least forced the issue. That's the argument they certainly made last time but they aren't getting those big things, just like you said.

BASH: Yeah. Let's talk about something that's happening in Florida today. Just so happens to be the district, local district where Mar-a- Lago is, which means the president of the United States is voting today and did vote today. He voted by mail, and that is what is the sort of not voting by mail is one of the major things that he has been pressing on prohibiting that with exceptions as part of the SAVE America Act.

Just listen to what he said yesterday about it.

[12:10:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Again, he just voted by mail. I will say the White House called this a non-story because he's at the White House and he couldn't possibly get to Florida. He has an important job, but there are other people who have jobs that are hard to get away from, which is why mail-in ballot, mail-in voting exists.

KIM: Right, right. I mean, I was about to read the White House statement to you that it's a non-story because the president, in his call to ban mail and voting does have these four areas that he says should be carved out for exceptions. And for him, it would be travel in this case, since he's not in Florida at the moment, but --

BASH: And he's the president of the United States, that's the big exception.

KIM: Sure, sure. And he's got things to do in D.C. Obviously, a lot of -- a lot of things to attend for today, but just having that flexibility does, you know, bolster the point why this system exists in the first place? Because if you want to bolster voting overall, you do have to make it flexible and create these conditions where all people who are eligible to vote can participate.

KEITH: And the mail voting provision is one of the aspects that is causing the president to lose Republican support in the Senate, because there are Republicans from rural states whose voters would have a real problem without having standardized mail-in voting.

BASH: This has been one of the frustrations from Republican Party officials since Donald Trump went on the scene, because they have spent years trying to boost Republican mail-in voting because it helps their numbers and he continues to call it fraudulent.

All right, up next. Is the U.S. negotiating with Iran? Well, it depends on who you ask. We will break down the claims. Plus, new exclusive reporting about a string of well time bets on Iran raising serious concerns about the possibility of insider trading.

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: This morning, an Iranian source told CNN's Fred Pleitgen that there's been quote, outreach between the United States and Iran. Initiated, he says, by Washington. But this source says nothing has approached full-on negotiations. That's after President Trump said yesterday that Iran reached out about making a deal and that talks are going well.

On the ground, Iran and Israel traded more attacks, as Israel's defense minister says, strikes will continue with, quote, full force. Iran launched seven waves of strikes on Israel overnight that damaged buildings in Tel Aviv and injured four Bedouin Israelis in the south. Iran also conducted missile and drone strikes in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. While Israel says, it's targeting missile production and intelligence sites across Iran, and hundreds of ships remain stuck in the Gulf. Iran is still making the Strait of Hormuz impossible to pass.

My Smart panel is back now. What do you think is really going on here with the sort of, talks are happening? They're not happening. That whole back and forth.

KEITH: I think that President Trump is looking for an exit ramp and he was buying time, whether there is a clear exit ramp or not, I think we don't really know yet. You know, as President Trump likes to boast, they've killed most of the people that they could have negotiated with, including the key negotiator just last week. So, there are very real challenges about figuring out how to negotiate, much less how to actually get to an end point.

One of our colleagues here, Aaron, Tal Shalev, wrote the following. A deal to end the Iran war does not appear to be tangible right now. That's according to an Israeli official on Monday. The Iranians do not appear to be in any concession mode. We are not there yet.

BLAKE: I think there's been a lot of talk about, you know, since Trump backed off of his 48-hour red line about, you know, what form these talks with Iran might be taking. Were there direct negotiations? Was it through intermediaries? I think the picture that we've gotten since yesterday is pretty clear that regardless of how substantive these talks have been, they haven't actually been pushing things towards some kind of resolution.

There's very little indication that there is the kind of kind of closeness to that resolution that Trump pitched there being yesterday. And the other thing that I think is really important here is, you know, we're all trying to figure out, you know, did Trump taco on this? Is he backing down off of this threat.

You know, we might not know the full answer to that question, but the people who do know are Iran. They know how much they actually came to the table and how much they're willing to give, and if they didn't actually give in much. And Trump went out there and tried to claim that that was the case, they know what, what kind of position he's negotiating from at this point.

BASH: And Seung Min, the politics of the Middle East are always fraught, but they're not -- but -- and they're fascinating. And one of the dynamics here is how Saudi Arabia and MBS the Mohammed bin Salman, that leader of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, how he is involved in all of this.

This is a New York Times story that we're putting up here. Prince Mohammed bin Salman sees a historic opportunity to remake the region, and he is said to be, according to New York Times reporting, pushing the president to continue before the war even started, he, MBS reportedly was one of those encouraging the president to strike Iran.

[12:20:00]

KIM: Right, right. I mean, as you say, the comp -- the politics within the region can be so complicated as to what -- who is pushing, what agenda, who is aligned with who, and that's a really fascinating angle too. Because we know the Trump administration, both in this term and in his end, the Trump producer have had this very close alliance with the Crown Prince, who, as we know is basically the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia.

We know they had close ties with Jared Kushner, the president's son- in-law, and they've continued that relationship through the second term, particularly with the welcome that the president had on his first major foreign trip last year.

So, that revelation that really gives another dimension to just kind of all the different political hurdles and obstacles and influence that the U.S. is getting, just from, you know, all sorts of -- all the various people in the region.

BASH: And then there's this Strait of Hormuz and the effect that it's happening globally, the fact that Iran is using that economic pressure point, as major leverage. Today, we'll just look at the price of gas. It's very, very close to, on average, $4 a gallon. A week ago, it was 3.79, a month ago 2.95.

And our David Goldman is reporting this morning. He's a great piece out, saying that a deal with Iran, let's just say there's a deal tomorrow. It's not going to lower people's gas prices anytime soon.

KEITH: Well, there's this saying, it's up like a rocket and down like a feather when it comes to gas prices. It's a rule of economics, though I think there's probably a fancier term for it. But what it means is gas prices are just not going to come down as quickly as people want them to, certainly, as quickly as our political leaders want them to. It's just extremely frustrating.

And I will say that as I'm talking to voters. People are upset about the gas prices. Now, people who support President Trump are sort of willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. They think, OK, they say it will be over soon. He says it will be over soon. We'll get there. But until that oil is moving, until the market believes that this conflict is over, and then until it works through the system and actually gets to prices are going to be high. And that is -- that is a tax on people. That is a lot --

BASH: Yeah. And sort of the Ron Klain board telling everybody how expensive things are at the actual gas station. But it goes far beyond the gas stations. Look at these numbers. If you think about a $30 increase on a barrel of oil, that's how much we've seen since the war started. Now, if you look at this, every $10 increase on a barrel. So, it's three times that right now. Does the following. A 0.1 percent drag on GDP growth, inflation up 0.2 percent, two tenths of a point. Gas up $0.24 a gallon, $450 annual household cost spike and higher food and, of course, transportation costs. So, it's -- right now, it's three times that.

BLAKE: And the thing we need to remember is, inflation was a problem for Trump before all this began. This was one of his worst issues. You know, he's at about 30 percent approval on issues of inflation. If you look at pre -Iran polling. And so, you know, what he's doing right now is, you know, we saw it during the State of the Union address.

The one thing he cited there where prices were maybe getting a little bit better was gas prices and then immediately launching this war, which makes that no longer an asset for him. And so, I think this is one of those things that's probably pushing him to want this to be resolved sooner than later. But that's not something that you can just do so easily.

KIM: Right, right? I mean, I just have struggle, or I'm just really still trying to grapple with how he could give all of these -- all of these sort of varying timelines to end the war that we for initially expecting four to six weeks. Now he says we're effectively done. And yet, we have, you know, his administration, not only his administration preparing a very large supplemental package to send to Congress, indicating that this war, this conflict, is going to extend much further, and countries in the region anticipating that will go on much longer.

BASH: All right, everybody standby. Coming up. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is warning the president's decision to send ICE to airports could be part of a larger Trump plan. You're going to have part of our exclusive conversation, next.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: As ICE agents patrol America's airports, some Democrats are raising concerns about where they could go next. I spoke to Maryland Governor Wes Moore this morning in Baltimore for a story we'll have for you later this week. Listen to what he said about his fears about the president's use of ICE beyond airports.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. WES MOORE (D-MD): There is no reason nor need for ICE to have any presence there.

BASH: So why do you think they're at airports? What's it all about?

MOORE: Well, I think that this is part of a larger plan that the president has, you know. I continue to see him using ICE, and you know, this variation of their ICE to go and patrol neighborhoods, even though they are sending people in neighborhoods who are untrained and who are unqualified and who are unaccountable. We're seeing how we have TSA agents who are not being paid, but still continue to go to work, and somehow the president feels that we need to put ICE there to reinforce their work. You know, there is a -- there is a much larger plan that is happening.

BASH: What is the plan? What do you mean?

MOORE: Well, you know, I think it's impossible...