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Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) is Interviewed about the CR; Military Options for Panama Canal; John Sandweg is Interviewed about Birthright Citizenship; Dylan Mulvaney is Interviewed about Backlash. Aired 8:30- 9a ET

Aired March 14, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:32:02]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's head back now to Capitol Hill. A live look at Capitol Hill where Democrats in the Senate are facing a tough political reality. Essentially, vote for a bill they hate, or see the government begin to shut down. And for the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, he says he's now choosing the least worst option he has.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): It's not that the CR is good. It's horrible. And all things being equal, we should have opposed it. But the alternative being a shutdown makes things worse.

I knew I'd get criticized.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

SCHUMER: But I felt obligated, for the country, for my Democratic caucus, to the people, to explain how bad a shutdown would be. And if we had it - if we went into a shutdown and everything bad happened, I had to give people this warning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now is one of the Democratic senators facing this very same decision this morning, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

It's good to see you, Senator. Thank you for being here.

SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Good to be here, Kate.

BOLDUAN: You said that you were, to quote you, a hell no yesterday on voting for the GOP bill. Chuck Schumer, he's now going to vote for it. Where are you on this today?

MERKLEY: I am even more hell no. You don't stop a bully by handing over your lunch money. And you don't stop a tyrant by giving them more power. And that is exactly what this House Republican spending bill does.

BOLDUAN: But here's a quote from Schumer. "While the CR is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse."

You say he's wrong then.

MERKLEY: Well, I - we come with a very different point of view. And some of the concerns that have been expressed are, one, that the Democrats will be blamed if there is a shutdown. I think that's absolutely wrong. Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the Oval Office. They'd be voting against our proposal to keep the government open. So, I think that the American would understand that this is a Republican shutdown if there's a shutdown.

And the second concern is Trump's power in a shutdown. And there are some legitimate concerns about what would happen there. But let's turn back the clock to 2019. And what we saw with that 35-day shutdown. Well, it created a lot of leverage and power for the Democrats to take on Trump then. And I can tell you right now, if we stand up to him at this moment, it gives us a lot of leverage going forward from this point to get the objectives that we have. The Republican plan is about families lose and billionaires win. And I think Trump absolutely understands that a shutdown would hurt him and it would hurt that strategy, which means it would help our strategy of helping families win and billionaires lose.

BOLDUAN: But this is a very different moment than 2019, though, Senator. I mean, you already have the president now showing how aggressively they are willing to shut things down and cut staff. And also saying that you'll gain leverage as the government begins to shut down, isn't that a wild, risky field of landmines to say you're going to gain leverage when people are starting to be furloughed and the - and Donald - and the president and the administration get to decide what is essential and non-essential?

[08:35:10]

MERKLEY: Well, let's take a look at history and how you lose your republics. And what you see is acquiescence from Congress. That means an authoritarian can concentrate all power in the executive. And right now we have acquiescence from the House Republicans, from the Senate Republicans. The House Democrats don't have leverage. We are the ones, the Senate Democrats, who have leverage to say no. And we have leverage every single day to put up a bill and say, lets reopen the government. We have leverage every single day to point out the damage being done and realize that by basically saying, we are helping this current bill put in - be put in place, we are, in essence, saying that everything that happens now, as Trump goes forward with a slush fund bill where he can use it as a tool against blue states and for red states, a bill that cuts research -

BOLDUAN: Right. But, Senator, the argument that Chuck Schumer has - but the argument that Chuck Schumer has is, he can actually go faster, farther, and do from his - Chuck Schumer's view, worse, as the government shuts down. So, when you say that that - you know, this really is a binary choice, live on to fight another day in circumstances that you don't like, but welcome to the political reality of what Democrats face right now, or do you not think that the danger of what a shutdown would bring in terms of the power it would - Chuck Schumer says it would unleash to Donald Trump, you don't believe that's true.

MERKLEY: No, no, I disagree. And you'll see a lot of us disagreeing with that analysis.

But let's understand this, the real villain here is the Republicans. The real villain is Trump. His plan of hurting families and helping billionaires is not the vision he ran on. It is the great betrayal. It is the betrayal that we are opposed to. We have different analyzes of this moment, but actually this is critical that we show that there is a force in America, it may be the lower courts, it may not be the upper courts, it may not be the ability in the House because of a simple majority, but we have power in the Senate. People want to see us use it, and we need to push back, and we need to have all of these bad things that he's doing right now, not give our stamp of approval to it, but be able to say, we will do everything we can to fight it.

BOLDUAN: And in doing so, you are getting ready to see the government begin to shut down.

Senator, thank you very much for your time. We'll see what happens today.

MERKLEY: Only if the Republicans shut it down, because we will be voting on a 30-day extension in order to do the bipartisan bills that passed out unanimously in most cases and overwhelmingly bipartisan in others out of the Senate committees. We already have a bipartisan spending plan. If Republicans reject that, it's a Republican shutdown.

BOLDUAN: But as you're also - but, Senator, as you're also looking back at the past - but if you're also looking back at the past, Republicans have been - have been blamed, and I would think you would say rightfully, when they did not go along in somewhat of a similar circumstance as what we're facing now. Who's going to face the blame. That goes into one of these time will tell things. But it's a risk you seem to be ready to take.

Senator, thank you very much for your time.

MERKLEY: Actually, the parallel in 2019, Trump - Trump was in office and Republicans controlled the Senate.

BOLDUAN: OK.

MERKLEY: And so it is a much more parallel situation. And its Republicans who were blamed because they were in charge.

BOLDUAN: We'll see what happens today. Senator, thank you very much for coming on.

The White House now asking the Pentagon to provide military options to make sure the U.S. has access to the Panama Canal.

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[08:42:56]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Brand new for you this morning, the Trump administration is asking Pentagon officials to provide, quote, "credible military options" to ensure unfettered U.S. access to the Panama Canal, which by most accounts they already have. That is according to a memo sent to senior Pentagon officials and obtained by CNN.

CNN's Zachary Cohen joins us now to share his new reporting.

First of all, what else is in this new memo? And to be clear, at this point there's no indication that the U.S. is having trouble getting through the Panama Canal, right?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, that's right. This memo amounts really to a major overhaul of the Pentagon's priorities. And it's a shift that is really intended to align more closely the military's focus with Donald Trump's stated goals. And that includes something he's talked about publicly on various occasions, including recently, the need to reclaim access to the Panama Canal.

And this memo really does spell out pretty clearly that he's ordering and formally directing the Pentagon and military leaders to draw up military options. It says, quote, "provide - immediately provide credible military options to ensure fair and unfettered U.S. military and commercial access to the Panama Canal." As you mentioned, there is no indication that American ships, military or otherwise, are having difficulty getting through the Panama Canal. This is already causing confusion with the Panamanian government, which has said this topic has not even come up in their conversations with Trump officials. So, obviously, Trump directing the military to come up with options, but it remains to be seen how those options might be implemented, if at all.

SIDNER: Yes, I mean, we remember this sort of attack by Donald Trump on the Panamanian government. We will see how this all plays out over time.

Zachary Cohen, have a great weekend. Thank you so much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: So, the Trump administration is now asking the Supreme Court to step in and enforce President Trump's day one executive order that he signed to try to move to end birthright citizenship. Now, so far, every court that's considered the issue has blocked it. Trump's move to make birthright citizenship unconstitutional, it's widely considered a fringe view because the Supreme Court already ruled on the issue 127 years ago.

[08:45:01]

Joining me right now is John Sandweg. He's a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It's good to see you again, John.

What do you think of this as part of the immigration agenda that Donald Trump is pushing forward?

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT: You know, Kate, this one doesn't really fit in neatly into the larger issues of, you know, mass deportations.

I think from the Trump administration, what they're - I guess they're thinking here is that birthright citizenship is a magnet, right, that draws people to come to the United States because if they have a child, that child will become a United States citizen. You know, the - what they call the anchor baby theory, right?

But what's going on here is the - the - Trump's order goes beyond that. And I think we have to remember that it includes individuals who are lawfully here. So, under the scope of the order, if you have two people on an H-1b visa working at a tech company in San Francisco, they marry, they have a baby, that baby, under this order, would not be a U.S. citizen. And, of course, that flies, you know, contrary to over 120 years of U.S. history.

BOLDUAN: So then, you know, if we're in the wayback machine, it seems to be where the administration is looking for authority. The Trump administration is also expected to invoke soon a sweeping wartime authority to speed up the president's mass deportation pledge. According to sources, CNN is reporting, that they're looking at the - an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, giving the president tremendous authority to target and remove undocumented immigrants.

What do you make of this? I mean, how much faster could the administration be moving with this?

SANDWEG: Well, Kate, this goes to the heart of the issue that you and I have discussed quite a bit, which are those backlogs in the immigration courts. The biggest impediment Trump faces in order to execute his mass deportation plan are those backlogs. The vast majority of migrants living in the United States unlawfully cannot be deported unless and until an immigration judge orders their removal. Of course, those courts are incredibly, you know, facing about 3 million cases with only about 800 to 900 judges. The Trump administration has chosen not to beef up those courts. Instead, they've actually been firing some of the immigration judges. And what they're looking at to do is ways to bypass the need, the requirement, the right that people have to go to the immigration courts. So, this began with the - the removal authority where they said, anyone who's entered the United States within two years, we're going to expand that authority. We can now administratively deport you without going to a judge. And now they're turning to the Alien Enemies Act.

I think in the - during the campaign, the president talked about this a lot. I think what he envisioned was a real broad invocation where basically any unlawful migrant would be subject to this. From what we're hearing, and we don't know entirely though, the scoping is going to be much more narrow as a result of these legal concerns, focused really on suspected gang members.

Now, this raises, Kate, a lot of questions about who gets to decide who the gang member is. The way I imagine this is going to be done is that the individual officers will make that decision. And because the person is no longer entitled to go to a court, they're not going to be able to dispute that with any sort of neutral, you know, adjudicator. But - but scope wise, you know, because it's going to be narrowed to the gang members, it's really not going to solve Trump's problem. ICE deports about 5,000 to 6,000 suspected gang members annually. And that's despite the fact that they have a real focus on that population. So, you just can look at the bigger picture. It's just not going to move the needle and get them anywhere near those millions of deportations that I think he's hoping to achieve.

BOLDUAN: And the numbers that have come out so far in the first couple months is, they are definitely not on pace to hit that million - million deportation mark, as you said, would be such a challenge going in. But we'll - let us see together.

It's great to see you, John. Thank you.

Coming up for us, the body cam video of police officers rushing into a burning home to rescue people trapped inside.

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[08:52:33]

BOLDUAN: Vice President J.D. Vance, he was met with a chorus of boos from a packed concert hall at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Thursday night.

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BOLDUAN: Yikes. Well, Vance was attending a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra with the second lady you see there. In response, you also saw the vice president waving and appeared to smile in the face of it all.

Last month, President Trump purged the Kennedy Center's once bipartisan board of its Biden appointees and made himself the new chairman, which has led to cancellations of performances and clearly now this.

Tonight, SpaceX will try, once again, to launch a new crew to the International Space Station. It's the first step in bringing astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back home as well. The Falcon 9 rocket was set to launch Wednesday, but it was scrubbed due to a problem with the launch pad. Now, once the new crew arrives to the ISS, the rocket will bring Williams and Wilmore home after their weeks long journey turned into a more than nine month stay in space.

And we also have dramatic bodycam video to bring to you showing the moment Atlanta police went into a burning home to save all the people inside. Several officers are seen. They go in. They get everyone out. But then after clearing the house, they discover that one person was still inside. That person was eventually rescued. Just look at how dramatic this is as they're going in. Amazing. Eventually, that person was rescued as well, but one officer who responded that day did need treatment for smoke inhalation. Thank God for them.

Sara.

SIDNER: That was wild. All right, thank you, Kate.

At a time when transgender rights are being rolled back at lightning speed, we speak to the influencer who exposed 365 days of her transition. But her story brought huge controversy, leading to a massive boycott by conservatives and protests that led her to fear for her life. Now she's back on the public stage, hoping to bring more understanding about a personal issue that has Americans so divided.

Dylan Mulvaney is our "Game Changer" this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DYLAN MULVANEY: I love beer.

SIDNER: So, you know, snap open a beer.

MULVANEY: I love beer.

SIDNER (voice over): You've probably heard her name or seen her face because of one of the worst possible times in her life, beer-gate.

MULVANEY: And I thought we were all just having a hectic month.

SIDNER: Tell me about beer-gate, as you call it.

[08:55:02]

MULVANEY: Oh, yes.

SIDNER: And what that moment was like seeing Kid Rock using a gun and -

MULVANEY: Shooting.

SIDNER: Right.

MULVANEY: Like, crazy, right?

SIDNER: At beer cans because your face was on one of them.

MULVANEY: And they say that I'm theatrical.

KID ROCK, MUSICIAN: Let me say something to all you would be as clear and concise as possible.

SIDNER (voice over): All hell broke loose after Bud Light paid Dylan Mulvaney to do a social media post for them. Even making a beer can with her face on it. Conservative media, pounced.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So until they come out and they actually acknowledge it head on, conservatives are still going to be upset. And we will not be drinking Bud Light.

SIDNER (voice over): There was a Bud Light boycott. Even a bomb threat was called in to a factory. All because Dylan Mulvaney is openly and unabashedly transgender.

SIDNER: Were you ever afraid?

MULVANEY: So much. I didn't know what it meant to feel safe anymore. I didn't know how to speak on it. If I was allowed to speak on certain things. And I didn't want to make anything worse for the rest of the trans community, because I - I really saw the trickle down of what was happening based on me having this large platform and speaking on things. People were taking it and using it against them in violent ways as well. Over one Instagram video.

SIDNER (voice over): The trans influencer spiraled. She explained in her new book, "Paper Doll" just how bad it got.

SIDNER: How did you pull yourself out of the fear and the depression and the - just the - the attack that came down on you?

MULVANEY: Have you heard of ayahuasca (ph)?

SIDNER: I know you wrote about that in the book. I have.

MULVANEY: So that is - that is part of - I'm a quick fixer, you know.

SIDNER: I have.

MULVANEY: I looked at that situation, I said, honey, I got places to be, people to see, what's going to - what's going to get me together. And I - I was some - actually, Chelsea Handler is who I - I first watched her do a Netflix special where she went to Peru. And - and so I sent her a Marco Polo video and I'm like, girl, where did you go?

But - so, I ended up going down there by myself. I didn't want to throw up in front of, you know, strangers. But I - I really found parts of myself and reconnected with - with myself in ways that were really special. Would you ever do ayahuasca?

SIDNER: I can't say this on TV. My mother will kill me.

MULVANEY: Well, my mom's going to kill me for that book, so. But -

SIDNER: I - I don't know.

MULVANEY: Yes.

SIDNER: It - it terrifies me a little.

MULVANEY: You'll know when - if you're - and I think that's the other - like, there was no part of me that was trying to influence people to go do that.

SIDNER: Yes.

MULVANEY: But it - it is - I think it's something that, like, finds you when you're supposed to find it.

SIDNER (voice over): She found her place in the world again and decided to take readers on an in-depth journey through 365 days of becoming a girl, as she puts it. A girl that began her journey in a conservative catholic household.

SIDNER: You said that you came out at four. What did you say to your mom?

MULVANEY: I came to her and I said, I think God made a mistake. He put a girl into a boy's body. And she said, God doesn't make mistakes. And in many ways I still believe that to be true. I don't think I'm a mistake. And - and I'm still finding a version of a higher power for - for, you know, my life now. I think a lot of the times queer and trans people feel alienated because they're - we're having religion and - and faith used against us.

SIDNER: There is a whole government that actually has been very much focused on transgender people in the most negative ways. They are changing passports to people's assigned gender at birth. They are saying there's only two genders. There is only one bathroom that you're allowed to go into. What do you do with all this?

MULVANEY: Well, I just have to remember that no matter what my passport says or, you know, what government official is misgendering me, that doesn't change who I am and who I see every day and - and who my fellow trans folks are. Like, I think, you know, bring - not to bring it back to "Wicked," but they talk about finding a common enemy to kind of distract from what else is going on in the world. We're less than 1 percent. And - and we're really not harming anyone. We're not monsters. So, I hope that when we look back on this period of time, we'll - we'll be quite ashamed of - of - of what this looked like.

SIDNER (voice over): Dylan is betting on better days going back to her theater and comedian roots. She's debuting a podcast, and soon a one woman show in the city that never sleeps. It aims to generate joy and understanding, like the icons she has on her walls at home.

[09:00:00]

MULVANEY: I've got Dolly Parton, Miss Piggy, the cast of "Sex in the City." Oh, my gosh, Frida Kahlo, Marsha P. Johnson.