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Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is Interviewed About Equality Act; Republicans Advance Voter Suppression Bills Across U.S. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 26, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

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JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As for Officer Craig, he says much of this has been a group effort.

OFFICER RON CRAIG, HAS HELPED NEARLY 200 SENIORS GET VACCINATED: It's everybody just working together that is making this a successful project.

CARROLL: Working together in an effort, he says, will continue as long as there is need.

Jason Carroll, CNN, Lake Township, Ohio.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. And major developments overnight in the coronavirus relief bill and in the realm of U.S. foreign policy. So it appears an increase in the minimum wage is dead for now. The Senate parliamentarian ruled it cannot be included in the $1.9 trillion package because of procedural reasons. The Biden administration says it's disappointed with the decision, but ironically, this ruling may actually make it easier to get the overall bill through Congress. It is expected to pass in the House today.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Also developing overnight, the Biden administration launching airstrikes targeting a location in Syria used by two Iran-backed militias. The move is retaliation for recent rocket attacks on American forces in the region. The Pentagon says, quote, a handful of militants were killed. So we will have more on those airstrikes in a moment.

But let's begin with CNN's Lauren Fox. She is live for us on Capitol Hill with the developments on the relief bill. So now what?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, not even halfway through Biden's first 100 days, the House of Representatives expected to pass that COVID relief bill, $1.9 trillion by this evening. Now, the expectation, of course, is that this bill includes $1,400 direct checks for Americans making $75,000 or less. It also includes funding, of course, for schools and to get kids back to school. That includes money to help small businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic.

But, look, last night there was a major shift in what the Democrats had planned to do with this bill. That's because the Senate parliamentarian ruled that they could not include the $15 minimum wage in the Senate piece of the bill. The House is still going to include it when they vote today. But then once it comes over to the Senate, it will be stripped out of that piece of legislation so that it can pass the U.S. Senate. Then the House will have to vote again.

In many ways this makes Chuck Schumer, the Majority Leader's job much easier, and that is because he had two moderate Democrats, Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who had expressed concerns about including the minimum wage hike at all in this COVID relief bill. Manchin specifically thought that $15 was just too much money. He wanted that number to be smaller. That, of course, was going to be an interparty fight that was going to get messy, and it was going to be difficult for Schumer to figure out what to do. By the parliamentarian ruling it has to be out of the bill, that gives Schumer more control over his caucus. Of course, he'll still have to make sure he has the votes because he does not have room to lose even one Democrat. John?

CAMEROTA: I'll take it, Lauren. Thank you very much for all of that reporting.

Joining us now is CNN White House correspondent John Harwood and CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser. She's a staff writer for "The New Yorker."

John, President Biden says this is disappointing that the parliamentarian took that minimum wage out of the bill, but is it? Doesn't this just remove the impediments that the Biden administration was going to be facing with getting this passed?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it removes an impediment, although, Alisyn, I think either way, the bill was going to pass. This was an effort that -- for Joe Biden and for progressives, it was probably worth making for this reason. Had the parliamentarian ruled it would stay in the bill, then Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would have been faced with the question of, do you really want to take down this massive package, the first big legislative initiative of the new Democratic president down, over this provision? Maybe there would have been some back-and-forthing on exactly how high the minimum wage would have gone. I think it would have passed anyway.

On the other hand, this was an expected ruling. Biden has said so out loud. The House Budget Committee chair predicted out loud that it wasn't going to make it. And now this will go without any further discussion of the minimum wage, although you have some progressives in the House saying, well, the vice president as president of the Senate, Kamala Harris should overrule the parliamentarian. That is simply not going to happen because the votes aren't there to sustain that kind of a ruling.

But this is going to -- this bill is going to pass the House today. Likely to pass the Senate. We'll see if there are any other issues that arise. And keep in mind, this has very large provisions benefiting low-income Americans that have nothing to do with the minimum wage. Not just those checks, but big child care tax credits, child tax credits, earned income tax credits, things that progressives value quite a bit.

CAMEROTA: Look, people are desperate, as we've been talking about for months now in terms of the economy and their own personal finances.

[08:05:04]

But Susan, about the minimum wage, something does have to be done. It's falling woefully behind the cost of living. And Christine Romans was on yesterday, and she just educated me, at least, about the minimum wage. I think that some of us had this misconception. Teenagers make minimum wages like I did when I made $2 at Friendly's when I was a teenager by the hour. No. It's mostly women. Women make the minimum wage. Six in 10 minimum wage workers are women, 43 percent of them have some college education, 28 percent of them have children. And so the idea that this is being tabled, are they going to take this up again in some other incarnation soon?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, it's a very important question. The bottom line is that it's almost hard. It's not impossible, but it's very hard to see the Senate getting 60 votes to raise the minimum wage all the way to $15 an hour. Even though, as you point out, that's an incredibly low number.

One important fact is that many states and localities around the country have simply gone ahead and raised their minimum wages. At this point the federal minimum wage is lagging far behind where the minimum wage is in large parts of the country. Even Republican Florida at the same time it was voting to reelect Donald Trump in November voted to pass a $15 minimum wage.

And so you have this not only rising inequality in the United States, but a patchwork of inequality when it comes to the minimum wage itself. But can you get 60 votes? That's the reality of the Senate right now. And it's why you hear so many progressives saying we should consider getting rid of the filibuster. It's something that Joe Biden has resisted. It's something that Joe Manchin and the other Democratic centrists have resisted. They are the ones who have the power in effect in a 50-50 Senate. But the reason is exactly something like this minimum wage bill, which it's hard to imagine it can proceed. They're talking about, well, maybe there could be a deal with Republicans and have something like a lower minimum wage to start but phased in over a number of years. I am skeptical, frankly.

BERMAN: So John, a significant day for President Biden --

HARWOOD: Can I just add something to the point Susan just made? Yes, it will increase pressure to get rid of the filibuster, which would eliminate the need to try to shove this into a reconciliation bill. But the last time the minimum wage was raised in 2007, Democrats made a deal that a Republican president, Democratic Congress, Democrats made a deal with Republicans and offered some business tax cuts to be paired with an increase in the minimum wage. That remains a possibility. Don't know when that might come up, but you can't rule out that idea.

BERMAN: So John, President Biden heads to Texas today. This is his first trip outside Washington. He's going down to deal with the storm and the electricity problem relief that they're going through right now. First trip outside of Washington for a non-COVID related thing. And I think it's significant that it was on the ground there, he's going to meet with Republican Senator John Cornyn. And there's talk about he's not getting the bipartisanship that he promised or unity on votes. And that may be too hard to come by. But I do think it is significant that every step of the way, he is meeting with and working with, or willing to, with Republicans in different ways.

HARWOOD: That's right. And this is the kind of event that is tailor made for Joe Biden's personal qualities. This is somebody who has been through a lot of pain and suffering himself. He projects empathy. He quite obviously is sincere in his religious faith. And by meeting with John Cornyn, he can say, yes, this is a red state. I didn't carry this red state, but I'm here to get on the ground, try to help Texans get past this. He's already, of course, approved that major disaster declaration, and his administration through FEMA and other agencies have been working to get supplies and other bits of support to Texans. But, no, this is the comforting role of a president, the soothing role of a president. That's something that Joe Biden has the characteristics to perform very well.

CAMEROTA: John, Susan, thank you both very much.

So President Biden takes military action for the first time, retaliating for rocket attacks on American forces. More on what comes next.

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[08:13:6]

BERMAN: Developing overnight, the U.S. carrying out airstrikes, targeting a site in Syria linked to Iranian-backed militias. The air strikes are in response to recent attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.

Joining me is Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. She is on the Armed Services Committee and is a former CIA analyst who covered the region. You know it so well, Congresswoman. Thank you so much for being with us. How do you assess this airstrike overnight? What message does it send to Iran?

REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D-MI): Well, I think it sends a pretty clear message that they attacked us. They hit and killed an American contractor, wounded American soldiers on one of our bases, and we're going to take a proportionate response, that we're going to respond. And we hit back at them. And I think it's just sort of resetting expectations that if you hit at us, we're going to punch back.

BERMAN: We'll talk about expectations here. What expectations should there be, then, about reopening or reworking the nuclear deal if there is an armed back and forth in some way between the U.S. and Iranian puppets?

SLOTKIN: Well, this has always been the conundrum of working on nuclear issues with Iran, because that's obviously the preeminent threat. That's the biggest threat to the world, to the region, is their nuclear capability or potential nuclear capability. But we've always had a problem with the way they threaten with ballistic missiles, the way that they use terrorism around the region. And the nuclear deal was aiming at that preeminent threat. I think there's a lot of us who feel strongly that when we go and hopefully get back to some sort of conversation with the Iranians, that we expand the aperture, that we look not just at the nuclear file, but at ballistic missiles, at their use of terrorism, because it's very, very difficult to explain to the American public how we can move ahead just on nuclear issues and not include some of their terrorism activities.

[08:15:08]

BERMAN: You're also on the House Homeland Security Committee.

And yesterday, Congress heard from the Capitol police chief who really issued a pretty stark warning saying there are explicit threats against future meetings of Congress. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOGANANDA PITTMAN, ACTING U.S. CAPITOL POLICE CHIEF: Members of the militia groups that were present on January 6th have stated their desires that they want to blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible with a direct nexus to the State of the Union.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: She's talking about the president's first address to the joint session of Congress, that these groups who attacked the Capitol on the 6th want to attack that and maybe blow it up.

How serious of a threat do you see that?

SLOTKIN: Well, I think there are a number of threat streams that go from sort of the serious like that, something that would need to be deeply coordinated and orchestrated, and then other things like threats to lawmakers as they come and go from the airlines or from the train stations. I mean, we've been briefed on some of these, right in the aftermath of January 6th.

I think we have to take them seriously. I think that's the entire point is that we see that somewhere along the line there, wasn't an inclination to take threats seriously. We had January 6th.

I'm from Michigan. Anyone who was from Michigan and saw that organization that was going on ahead of January 6th knew there was going to be violence. I told my staff to stay home. They were not allowed to come to the Capitol. I just thought the violence would be on the outside of the Capitol, not the inside.

So we're just done with the days where we can pooh-pooh these threats and say, well, that's just chatter, just bluster. Well, that's what we thought before January 6th, obviously, in law enforcement channels, and we just can't do that again.

BERMAN: You know, you're being careful not to address it. You sort of are obliquely. I don't know people know this, there have been threats on you and your office, threatening calls, arrests made for people making threats to you. Now you've been careful not to talk about them specifically because there are legal actions under way.

But broadly speaking, what do you think is the engine driving these threats?

SLOTKIN: I think, unfortunately, it's just been normalized. It's been normalized to just go on social media and threaten violence. It's been normalized to say inflammatory things, particularly against elected officials, and in Michigan, particularly against female elected officials.

And when it becomes normalized, then people just start throwing it around, and I think -- you know, separate from the specifics of the case now ongoing and the threats related to me, I think it's important that we reset the deterrence here. I mean, it can't be okay that you threaten violence or use violence. And that's where free speech ends. There's no ambiguity about that.

So, I think, unfortunately, in certain places it's been normalized. Part of that is leadership culture, right? Leadership for many, many years has been sort of participating in some of that threat and sending that signal that it's okay. And I think we just have to show law enforcement is not going to accept that and that's what's going on right now.

BERMAN: So you posted on social media something yesterday that caught my eye. And this was as the House was passing the Equality Act. This is what you wrote: As I vote on the Equality Act today, I'll be thinking about my mom who passed away in 2011 and who came out in 1986 in suburban Detroit, certainly not an easy thing to do.

So, first of all, it was a lovely picture you posted there. So what was it like for you --

SLOTKIN: Thank you.

BERMAN: -- to take that vote yesterday thinking about your late mother?

SLOTKIN: Well, I mean, I think she would have been excited to see it. You know, she passed away before gay marriage was legal. So she never got to marry her partner.

And a lot of the things that were in the Equality Act would have enshrined in law that discrimination that she was always, you know, potential victim of. You know, when she was laying in a hospital bed and sick and wasn't married to her life partner because there was no gay marriage, it was just by the graces of the nurses and the doctors in that hospital that they allowed her partner to stay with her, to sleep overnight, to be treated as a spouse.

And it can't be up to the good graces of a nurse or a doctor. It has to be in law.

So, the Equality Act would enshrine these protections in law. And, you know, I think I was proud to do it. She would have been thrilled.

And I've gotten a lot of great feedback. You know, people -- people don't realize that it's about our families. This is not some far off distant policy issue for a lot of us.

BERMAN: Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, thanks for being with us this morning. Please come back soon.

SLOTKIN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Across the country, state lawmakers working to change rules on voting. And not necessarily make it easier. More on what's being pushed and why, next.

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[08:23:52]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: In the aftermath of former President Trump's defeat, Republicans decided to change election laws. All over the country, GOP lawmakers are introducing bills making it harder to vote.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher has more.

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DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 2020 election is over, but Republicans in dozens of states are still using the baseless claims surrounding it, spread by former President Trump and his allies, to push new restrictive election bills.

Experts say the link is clear.

JESSICA HUSEMAN, REPORTER, PROPUBLICA: It's just as much about keeping people who will not vote for them away from the polls as it is energizing their own base and getting them to be angry about election security, which is exactly the playbook that Trump used in the last year.

GALLAGHER: The Brennan Center for Justice says it's tracking at least 253 restrictive voting bills in 43 states. That's roughly six times the number from this time last year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The bill received constitutional majority and passed the House.

GALLAGHER: In Iowa, vote Republican controlled chambers passed a bill that would reduce early voting days, election day poll hours and make it harder to absentee vote. That now awaits the governor's signature.

[08:25:02]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The bill carries and is on its way to rule.

GALLAGHER: In Georgia, the House and Senate are advancing bills that would change election laws and restrict access to mail-in voting, even eliminating early voting on Sundays.

In Arizona, voting rights activists are sounding alarms.

ALEX GULOTTA, ALL VOTING IS LOCAL ARIZONA: There are bills that would really harm access to voting, particularly for people of color, for low-income families, for Native Americans, and they are rushing through because we have to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

GALLAGHER: Most of the voting related bills proposed in the Grand Canyon State focus on the mail-in voting process. Popular for decades in the sprawling scenic state, more than 80 percent of Arizonans voted by mail in 2020. One bill would require mail-in ballots to be notarized. Another lets voters request a ballot by mail but you'd have to make the journey to turn it in, in person.

A bill that zeros in on the state's permanent early voter list advanced out of committee just this week.

MICHELLE UGENTI-RITA (R), ARIZONA STATE SENATOR: If you are not voting, then you are not going to notice being removed.

GULOTTA: It's not just one bill. It's 50 or more bills, right? And so it's the cumulative effect of all of them. Will they all get through? Probably not. Will a coalition of scrappy advocates be able to stop all of them? Probably not.

GALLAGHER: Now some Republicans are skeptical of the more extreme proposals.

SPEAKER RUSTY BOWERS (R), ARIZONA STATE HOUSE: Some of them I think are valid. We need clean voter rolls and make sure people are here to vote. That's pretty standard stuff. But other things are not as acceptable to me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER (on camera): Now, look, Republicans for the most part maintain this is about election security as well as restoring voter confidence. And the sheer number of bills that are being introduced at the state level is seemingly overwhelming. Democrats and advocates who are increasingly pinning their hopes on Congress, hoping that slim Democratic majority may be able to pass federal legislation to counter what's happening at the state level.

CAMEROTA: Dianne, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

GALLAGHER: Uh-huh.

CAMEROTA: So former President Trump is set to speak at a key conservative conference this weekend. A source confirms to CNN that in his speech, Trump will repeat one of his favorite lies. That he didn't really lose the presidency, even though Joe Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump.

Joining us are CNN political commentators, Alice Stewart and S.E. Cupp.

Ladies, great to see you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good morning, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: So, CPAC sounds like it's going to be a doozy, S.E., this year. Trump is going to, you know, re-emerge. It sounds like it's going to be quite the Trumpapalooza. He may announce his future political plans.

You've talked about how CPAC has gotten weirder over the years. What do you expect this year?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, frankly, it feels like they should just rename it TPAC. It's the Trump conservative political action, you know, conference. It's not really -- it's not really about conservatism anymore.

I looked at the agenda, I looked at the speakers. And, you know, gone are a lot of the old traditional, you know, panels on fiscal responsibility and lowering the debt and deficit. N Now, that's not surprising. Trump didn't really care about those things, so it would be really weird and awkward to have those on the agenda with him coming.

But in the years that I went to CPAC and going back to its founding in the '70s, it was really this big tent, you know, event. You had your Ron Pauls in one spot, the deficit hawks, the movement conservatives, the Ralph Reed sort of, you know, religious right, and we all didn't agree on everything and you'd have the straw polls and people would be voting for their disparate candidates, but you were sort of loosely united around some founding principles.

And now, the founding principle around which the people at CPAC are united is just Trump. In fact, to the exclusion of other conservatives who might not be defending and supporting him. So it's become a very small tent where really the fringiest elements, the Trump cult, the conspiracy theorists, the white nationalists, those are the people inside and everyone else is outside.

CAMEROTA: Alice, you were Ted Cruz's communications director. Doesn't a weekend like this, isn't it frustrating for Ted Cruz in waiting for what President Trump is going to decide about his political future and how it colors his own presidential run if Ted Cruz is still considering that for next time or Tom Cotton or Nikki Haley? I mean, they -- their futures are now so tied to the whims of President Trump.

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: A lot of people I'm sure are feeling that way, Alisyn. And this will be dangled out there as red meat for the base. I would imagine for the next two to three years.