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All Eyes on Senate Democrats Amid Looming Government Shutdown; Schumer Says Senate Dems Will Block GOP Funding Bill; California Governor Newsom Hosts Steve Bannon on Podcast; DOGE Deadline for Federal Agencies to Submit Plans for Mass Layoffs; U.S. Special Envoy Witkoff is in Moscow. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 13, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps, that's not in the interest of user safety or privacy. Google has made similar comments, and it's not just the app stores. Privacy experts have raised these concerns as well, and legal experts have also said that if teens are required to get parental consent to view protected online speech, that that could also run afoul of the First Amendment.

Now, Google has submitted a veto request to the governor's office, and so we'll see whether he signs this and whether if there are legal challenges after the fact, whether this actually goes into effect. But parents say that something needs to be done to protect kids online.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: That's for sure. All right, let's see what happens. Clare, good to see you. Thank you so much. A new hour of CNN New Central starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're giving you a live look at Capitol Hill this morning, where time's running out to avoid a government shutdown. Tomorrow night's deadline is closing in. Senate Democrats say they're ready for a fight, while Republicans aim to blame Democrats if the government does shut down.

And markets and investors are on edge ahead of key inflation reports due out just minutes from now. Just where are U.S. prices heading?

And a disturbing story out of Connecticut. Police say a man set fire to his own home in a bid to escape a 20-year imprisonment by his stepmother.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan. John Berman is out. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: Unclear path. That is what the Senate and the Congress are on right now, and it is raising the chances of a government shutdown at the end of this week. Here is the latest on this.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, he says he has the votes now to block the Republican funding bill that passed the House earlier this week. In the Senate, Republicans need at least eight Democrats to vote with them to get this through. So Democrats, they want an even shorter stopgap of 30 days to allow, as they say, the normal appropriations process to take place, as it's called, which would also give Democrats more say in what happens in the Republican-controlled Congress.

But Democrats could be playing with fire here. You could be looking at a government shutdown, and federal agencies are already dealing with a loss of more than 100,000 federal workers laid off through the DOGE efforts. And a shutdown means more federal workers, possibly near 900,000, could be furloughed at this very tough time.

CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston joins us now for more on this, which presents, I would even say, an unusually tough decision for Democrats, given this climate. It's not just what we've seen many times before, Mark, which is binary choice, vote for it or shut down for whatever party we're talking about. This comes at a particularly unique time with what we're seeing with the federal workforce being slashed so quickly by DOGE.

Schumer says he's got the votes to block it. What do you think? What do you think how this plays out now?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: All right, so a couple things. What level set where we're at? This is a budget that should have been approved by Congress and signed by the president back in October of 2024, OK?

So this is very late spending. We've seen, and you and I have seen over the last 10 or 15 years, 20 years, we've seen that this has happened again and again. They're unable to balance their own budget.

What has happened in the House of Representatives is that Republicans have enough votes. They were able to force through a bill that is heavily favoring Republican interests, which is defense spending. Democrats are upset about that, couldn't stop it in the House.

To your point, Chuck Schumer in the Senate says that he has enough votes to stop it there. Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate. They have 53 votes, but this is a problem that Chuck Schumer is going to run up against.

Let's just see what John Fetterman has to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): For me, I never vote to shut the government down. And if you are willing to -- if you don't want to vote for that CR because you want to protect the government and some of the things that I don't agree with that are happening, well, then, again, it's like I'm not going to cut the baby in half.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESTON: And that's John Fetterman right there. So he is going to support the bill. We think Rand Paul, Republican, is going to vote against the bill. So basically, Chuck Schumer would need to keep seven more Democrats from supporting this bill for the government to shut down on Friday. We'll see what happens. I don't think he will have the votes.

To your point, this would be a political loser, I believe, for the Democrats to shut down the government at the same time they're trying to save jobs.

BOLDUAN: And that's the thing. I just had a House Democrat out and look, senators never need the advice of House members. That's a fun game that we played from the beginning of time.

[08:05:02]

But this House Democrat, when I said, are you ready for Democrats to face blame if the government shut down, shuts down? He would not even go there. He's saying just what you were what you were suggesting is that Democrats say this is not on us, given X, Y and Z.

But again, at the end of the day, at midnight, come Friday into Saturday, when you're looking at a binary choice, the House has jammed the Senate. So the Republican messaging on this is then what?

PRESTON: Well, this is the Republican messaging right now. Everything is great. Speaker Johnson was very successful. And this is how bullish they are right now. But let's keep in mind what they're saying now. Let's listen what they have to say. And then on the other side, we'll talk about what could happen in a year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Chuck Schumer has a big decision to make. Is he going to cast a vote to keep the government open or is he going to be blamed for shutting it down?

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: Here we are on the brink of a government shutdown, which will be entirely of the Democrats making if it happens. I think the American people are going to be interested to see whether the Democrats are going to filibuster and by filibustering, shut down the federal government. It is on them if this happens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESTON: And there we go is we see the two congressional leaders in Congress talking, putting all the blame on to Democrats. Look, they're sowing their oats right now because there is support specifically within their party for everything they're doing. But a year from now, Kate, a year from now, after the federal government and all the programs or a lot of these programs are gone, you are going to see a lot of upset constituencies.

The question is, can Democrats, can Democrats build upon that to try to win back Congress in the midterm elections? The Senate is probably a loss. Their best hope is in the House of Representatives. BOLDUAN: It's a great question and one, you know, so many Democrats are trying to work their way through right now for sure. Let us see. Good to see you, Mark, Good morning. Thank you -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Joining us now, Democratic strategist and co- founder of Lift Our Voices, Julie Roginsky and Maura Gillespie, founder and principal of Bluestack Strategies and former press advisor to then House Speaker John Boehner. Thank you both for being here.

Julie, because this is what they were talking about, we are going to go straight to this. There are few places that the Democrats have power because they lost the House and the Senate. This is one of them with this bill.

They're trying to do a six month stopgap bill tough. It's already passed in the House. All Republican votes. And now the Dems have a chance to stop it. But will they end up being blamed for shutting down the government? Because Republicans are already pushing that.

JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I'll tell you something. The Republicans passed this bill. The House passed this bill and then went home because they didn't want negotiation. They didn't want Democrats to have any say in this. They presented it to the Senate and said take it or leave it. Even as this president is effectively destroying the federal government in pursuit of whatever agenda he and Elon Musk have.

If the Democratic Senate acquiesces to this and allows Republicans to get away with this, the anger in the Democratic grassroots is going to be so huge that I truly worry for them that they're going to be primaried. So if I were the Democrats right now in the Senate, I would think very carefully about the fact that rather than bailing out the Republicans again because Republicans consistently screw things up and then assume that Democrats are going to bail them out.

They need to have a very serious chat with John Thune and say, look, you're in charge. Your counterpart in the House presented us this you know what sandwich. We're not going along with it. And if you want to have a serious discussion, pass a short term continuing resolution so we could have a serious bipartisan negotiation about what this funding plan looks like.

If they don't do that, I don't know what they're doing governing because they're just basically handmaidens to the Republicans if they go along with this.

SIDNER: More, I do want to ask you about some new CNN polling that shows that concerns about the economy have grown in the past -- the first few months of Trump's return to office and most Americans see his policies of having hurt economic conditions. How is he going to deal with this? About half of the public says that they think Trump's policies have worsened the economy and their own economies.

MAURA GILLESPIE, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL, BLUESTACK STRATEGIES: Donald Trump is mainly concerned with his MAGA supporters. So for him, again, we have to remember that the things that would maybe sway President Trump during his first term, that being the stock market, that being public opinion, polls perhaps like this, that would have maybe caused him to take a not a step back, but a repositioning. He's a lame duck president now, and his focus is on getting his agenda done, his steam rolling through and saying that he knows better how to govern.

It's why the House has largely stepped in line behind him. They are going to do what he says. They're not going to move unless he says move.

So I think that Julie's point is founded in that Democrats, this is their leg to stand on, except for the fact they don't have a leg to stand on. There's no plan. We're at the 11th hour. Shutdown is happening tomorrow.

[08:10:00]

And the hypocrisy of espousing, you know, concerns about federal workers being laid off and then to go turn around and cause a furlough for 900,000, as Keith pointed out earlier in the segment, those are going to be ripe for ads come midterms, also damaging to the country, also damaging to federal workers.

SIDNER: And DOGE's role in all this has been quite unpopular. I do want to ask you, because Maura just brought up that President Trump is a lame duck president. He cannot run again unless, of course, there is a change to the Constitution.

What do you think of someone else who is looking at the presidency and potentially running in 2028, Governor Gavin Newsom? He's made some rather interesting moves that may upset the base, the Democratic base. He has been talking to Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, going on a podcast between the two of them, talking about different things.

Is this something that's going to help him the gain conservative? What's the point of all this?

ROGINSKY: Yes, I don't know who he thinks the Charlie Kirk wing of the Republican primary electorate is, but I can guarantee he doesn't exist. And look, I actually got the transcript of that podcast and read all of it. I could see if he were actually pushing back on Charlie Kirk and showing Democratic voters how he can take the fight to MAGA.

But he wasn't really doing that. He was kind of fanboying over Charlie Kirk, telling Charlie Kirk how much his 13-year-old son loved him, not pushing back on all the things that Charlie Kirk was saying, which was the typical nonsense that Charlie Kirk says every day. And so from that perspective, if that's how he thinks Democrats want to see their prospective presidential candidates behave, I don't think that's accurate.

I think they want to see somebody who can take the fight to MAGA, not somebody who's going to invite MAGA in and have a polite discussion where somebody from MAGA is going to use the same kind of MAGA tactics that they've used all along. And Gavin Newsom, like a good host, sits there and says, oh, OK, all right, I see your point there. It's just I don't think this is where Democratic primary voters are right now.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding among our leaders, most of our leaders, not all of them, about how absolutely enraged and angry Democrats are, not just at what Trump is doing, but how little fight their leaders are showing in standing up for our country and our Constitution.

And so, you know, my advice to the next person who wants to do what Gavin Newsom is doing is fight. Don't have polite discussions with people who want to burn everything down.

SIDNER: Yes, it was chummy with Steve Bannon as well when Steve says, you know, we disagree on the 2020 election. Steve Bannon obviously believing the lie that Trump won the election. And it was just kind of a chatty talk. It was it was interesting to see what he's doing.

And Maura, I just want to get your your thoughts on this. Would conservatives consider Gavin Newsom because he's going on these different podcasts and being chummy with with some of these very far right figures?

GILLESPIE: I highly doubt it. You can just put back to his championing for Biden and Harris throughout the recent election. But I also just think that it's a bad look for him.

I mean, California has got tons of problems going on. And you're sitting around chumming it up with someone who denied the 2020 election, who helped spur what happened on January 6th. So I just think it's really -- if I'm a California voter, I'm embarrassed by what Gavin Newsom is doing, regardless of where you see the political aisle. I'd be embarrassed by what he's doing, using his time to do this podcast with people who are unserious and spread conspiracy theories. That's not helpful to the California people to lower their taxes, to lower their costs. He's not doing his job.

SIDNER: We will wait and see what the American public decides and what he decides when it comes to running potentially for president. Julie Roginsky and Maura Gillespie, thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

Over to you -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Ahead for us, the Trump administration rolling out plans to gut Biden era vehicle emissions rules. The new uncertainty that now injects into the future of EVs. Yes, Elon Musk's industry.

Also this, it is deadline day for Washington, for federal agencies to lay out their plans for restructuring and even more mass layoffs. And now federal workers who already lost their jobs are facing a tough time getting unemployment.

And a pizza delivery takes a very scary turn when a driver comes face to face with an eight foot alligator.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's an alligator right under your car. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get in the house.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where's my pizza?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll take it to the back door.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Holy sh***!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: It is deadline day in Washington. Agencies all across the federal government, ordered by President Trump, to hand in their plans for a new wave of layoffs to Elon Musk's DOGE Department no later than today.

It comes as workers who have already been terminated, more than 100,000 so far, are in limbo. Their careers turned upside down.

Annie Grayer joins us from Washington. Annie, as the president slashes away at the government, which is what he promised, what roadblocks is that creating for ex-employees who are seeking unemployment benefits now?

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, Sara, there are so many roadblocks. And the first and probably biggest one is proving that they qualify for unemployment benefits. Because if you're somebody who has been fired for cause, you're unlikely to qualify for unemployment benefits.

And many of the people who were let go last month were given termination notices that said that they were terminated for poor performance.

[08:20:00]

The problem there, though, is that many of those people hadn't even been on the job long enough to receive a performance review. And one of the people that our colleague Tami Luhby and I talked to for this story said they'd actually received a positive performance review.

So now these workers whose lives are already chaotic enough because they've been thrown into limbo and lost their jobs are now going through a very complicated process with their state unemployment agency and their former federal employer to try and prove that they, in fact, qualify for unemployment benefits. And the biggest thing here is there are a lot of key documents that are part of this process.

And as you can imagine, the federal agencies that are being gutted and already underwater and some of the people that these federal workers might need to contact might also be laid off themselves. These workers are not able to get the documents that they need, especially not in a timely manner. So a lot of people are sitting without a paycheck, their lives completely turned upside down.

You know, these people were not given an offboarding process where they were able to, you know, talk about their benefits or unemployment process. They're now having to do that on the fly. And it's been very, very chaotic.

SIDNER: I'm curious about unemployment agencies and what this is doing for them, creating, I'm assuming, a backlog potentially?

GRAYER: Huge backlog. I mean, look at Washington, D.C., for example, where a lot of federal workers live. There were over 550 claims for unemployment in one week in February, whereas a couple of days before Donald Trump took office, that number was at 17. So you can just see how big of an influx that is.

In Maryland, where there's also a lot of unemployment claims, that state has had to bring over workers from other parts of their state agency, hire more people because they have so much incoming. And the workers that we talked to said that they've been told to expect long wait times here.

And just to remember that federal workers don't just live in the Washington, D.C. area. Eighty percent live across the country. So states across the country are dealing with this. For example, Washington state has over 950 claims that they're trying to work through.

SIDNER: Yes, as one of the fired federal workers told me on the show, you're paying for it as a taxpayer either way because they are going to apply for unemployment. And potentially for her, she said food stamps because she just didn't have the money to pay for food either after being laid off.

This is a big issue that I know you'll be following for quite some time. Appreciate it, Annie.

All right, new this morning. Vladimir Putin appearing on the front lines of critical region that Russia has recaptured. How the takeover could impact peace talks now that Ukraine has lost its last territorial bargaining chip.

And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick set to sit down with the Ontario premier as tensions explode between the U.S. and Canada over President Trump's economic policies and tariffs.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: We have now just learned that U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is on the ground in Moscow to present to Kremlin leaders the American proposed ceasefire deal that Ukraine signed on to earlier this week. This visit, these meetings are pivotal in trying to bring an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. A war that continues and was on full display with Russian President Vladimir Putin showing up and being filmed meeting soldiers in Russia's Kursk region Wednesday.

Russia now claims that they've pushed Ukrainian forces out of the largest town there and say they've recaptured areas key to their war effort. President Trump's take on all of this? The ball is in Russia's court now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have a full ceasefire when it -- if it kicks in, but we have to see. It's up to Russia now. But we've had a good relationship with both parties, actually.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now is Jane Harman, former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. She also just chaired the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. It's great to see you, Congresswoman. Thank you for being here.

Given how this has gone from that Oval Office disaster from just, you know, days ago, really, to now Ukraine and the U.S. are on the same page with this ceasefire. How much do you think the dynamic really has shifted here?

JANE HARMAN, (D) FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Well, it's shifted in several directions. There wasn't a 30-day ceasefire on the table in that White House disaster. What was on the table at the moment was signing a deal on critical minerals, which had been negotiated and which Ukraine was prepared to sign.

And, oh, by the way, if I was listening, I think that Zelenskyy said thank you multiple times. But that's over, so now we're somewhere else. I mean, it seems to me Trump has two objectives.

One is to end the war -- something he campaigned on. And the second is to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And I think at the moment he's not making too much progress in either place.

And just on the Nobel Prize, let's remind, that is given out in Europe. As I recall, in the last month or so, not much positive has been said about Europe. Europe's on its own. That's another Trump doctrine. So I'm not sure that that prize is getting put together too fast --

BOLDUAN: That is an interesting --

HARMAN: -- put together too fast. But on the peace deal, peace in Ukraine would be a good idea, peace on Ukraine's terms. As you just said, Kate, Ukraine was invaded. Russia can claim, and I think the Trump administration has given some support for this, that Ukraine caused the war. That is not factual.

So what are Ukraine's terms? I think they would agree, would agree -- I'm not speaking for them -- to some settlement of borders, provided there is an adequate peacekeeping force to enforce this peace. And NATO would be first choice, but I gather that's off the table. But a European peace force, maybe. But that's not what's being talked about at the moment.