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House Lawmakers Scramble to Return to D.C. as Storms Impact Flights; White House Official Says, Trump Working the Phones for Mega Bill; Soon, Combs Jury Resumes Deliberations After Reaching Partial Verdict. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 02, 2025 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Taking it back to the House. President Trump's mega bill has a new hurdle to clear now. The House must vote on the changes made by the Senate with a vote that could happen today, but very few people are sure of what is actually going to happen.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we are standing by for a dramatic conclusion in the trial of Sean Combs, the jury has reached a verdict on four of five counts. The final could come this morning. Which side now feels best about the case?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And multiple explosions out a fireworks warehouse in California, power knocked out to thousands of people because of it. How did this happen?

I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: The breaking news this morning, House lawmakers are scrambling now to get back to the Hill and vote on the now new version of Trump's massive tax cut and spending bill before their self-imposed Friday deadline. The bill is becoming really something of a ping-pong ball. The House voted first. Then the Senate voted and made changes, and so now the House must vote again. And if they make further changes, you get where this is headed.

With this, House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing another major test of his power. Many house Republicans are publicly voicing serious doubts about the Senate changes that includes steeper cuts to Medicaid and a nearly $1 trillion increase in the deficit over the House's version,

Johnson can only afford to lose 3 GOP votes. The speaker says that he's confident a final vote could come today. But back to that scrambling, they're literally also scrambling to physically get back to the Capitol as bad weather canceled a whole bunch of flights for many lawmakers that are trying to make it back in.

Here's the speaker last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Well, we're having weather delays getting everybody back right now. But assuming we have a full House, we'll get it through the Rules Committee in the morning. We'll move that forward to the floor, and, hopefully, we're voting on this by tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: CNN's Arlette Saenz is at the Capitol for us this morning. And, Arlette, it did make it through the rules committee while we were all sleeping. So, set the stage for what is going to happen today.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, it could be another long slot ahead as lawmakers are two days away from that deadline to pass President Trump's domestic agenda bill. As you mentioned, it passed through the rules committee just -- last overnight, clearing a key procedural hurdle. It received two no votes from Republicans, Chip Roy and Ralph Norman, who have expressed reservations about this bill.

But this will be a major test once again for House Speaker Mike Johnson as he is trying to hold his GOP conference together to get this bill across the finish line.

Now, there are various factions that they are trying to appease here. There are those more conservative lawmakers who believe that this does not do enough to cut spending and there are others who are concerned about the steeper cuts to Medicaid that were made in the Senate plan. So, that highlights the various ways they're going to have to try to stitch together support to pass this bill.

Now, any changes that are made to this bill would then require to go back to the Senate, and that is something that house leadership and President Trump are trying to avoid. But here's a sample of some of the concerns about the process, about the bill itself, have been expressed by GOP lawmakers over the last 24 hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): So, this whole thing is -- I don't know what to call it. It's a (BLEEP) show.

REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): My colleagues in the Senate failed us. My colleagues in the Senate failed us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the founders and the 56 Honors of Declaration of Independent would be astounded. They were adding debt to our children who -- and grandchildren who are defenseless.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now House speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose three Republican votes on this measure, a very narrow, razor thin majority that he is operating with. And we've already heard about dozens of lawmakers express concerns about this bill.

Another issue that leadership is facing in this moment is that storms across the East Coast had delayed or canceled many of lawmakers' flights who were trying to return back to Washington.

[07:05:08]

In fact, there are Democrats like Congressman Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and then Republicans, like South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who are physically driving to Washington to make sure that they can be here for this vote.

The House right now is set to open at 9:00 A.M. At some point, there would be a vote on the rule related to the bill before they move to debate and then vote on final passage. Of course, it's not a guarantee that they will get the votes on that rule, so there will be a lot of high-stakes drama to watch over the course of the day as the House GOP leadership is trying to muscle this bill through the House to get it on President Trump's desk by Friday.

BOLDUAN: Arlette, thank you so much for kicking us off. It's going to get very busy there very, very soon. Put on your bingo card, guys, weather delays adding to the fun (ph).

BERMAN: I was going to say road trip, Congressional road trip.

BOLDUAN: We do love a road trip.

BERMAN: Yes. What could be more fun than a drive from Chicago to vote on this bill?

All right, this morning, a senior White House official says that President Trump has already been working the phones trying to get House lawmakers to pass what he calls everyone's bill. The president is urging Republicans to unite and ignore the occasional grandstanders.

Let's get to CNN's Kevin Liptak at the White House this morning. Where does the White House see things right now?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, there continues to be a lot of confidence in this building that this bill will eventually pass. Trump himself just said yesterday that he thought getting it through the house would actually be easier than the Senate. Despite all of this opposition that you see bubbling up, I think the gamble that they're making is that President Trump's arm-twisting, that his pressure tactics will eventually cause these Republicans to get in line.

And it's not as if they don't have history on their side here. There are not a lot of examples in recent memory of House Republicans not giving Trump what he wants, and they see what happened in the Senate as kind of a roadmap. You know, there were a number of Republicans who insisted that they were against this bill only to eventually vote yes when it came up on the floor. And so a lot of confidence in this building.

One point that they're making is that they have been in continuous touch with the House Republicans throughout this process. They're not just starting to whip this bill now. They have been kind of on the hunt for votes over the last several weeks.

Even as the Senate was making changes, White House officials still view that Friday deadline as operable, even though President Trump sounded a little more flexible on it yesterday.

We did hear from Russ Vought, who's the president's budget director, talking about how they're trying to get some Republicans in line. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSS VOUGHT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: If you were to take any part of this bill and just debate one part of it, you would have overwhelming support by all Republicans, generally. It's all put together. And so we're trying to continue to educate on how much is being done and then the extent to which this is a part of a plan to get to a balanced budget over time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: So, you hear the Vought there talking about educating Republicans. President Trump has also been on the phone. He's been educating, but he's also been threatening, talking about primary challenges to Republicans who might oppose this package.

I think the challenge that the president has in front of him is that there are two sort of polar sets of opposition to this bill, whether it's Republicans who think it explodes the deficit, or Republicans who thinks that it cuts the social safety net too much. President Trump, you know, I asked him on the South lawn yesterday about some of the politics of all of this, and he said he didn't want Republicans to go too crazy with cuts. So, they're, I think, still very sensitive to some of the politics that could be in play in all of this.

BERMAN: Yes, he's educating them about how difficult he will make it for them politically if they vote against him.

Kevin Liptak at the White House this morning, keep us posted. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, jurors have already reached a partial verdict, but we're at an impasse on one count. Will the day be today that Sean Combs hears his fate in the racketeering and sex trafficking trial?

Also this morning, the man accused of murdering four Idaho college students in their beds will expect to formally plead guilty. We have new reaction this morning from the victim's families.

And she's a legendary halftime act in WNBA basketball, but this time, the Red Panda gave fans a scare after a big fall. How she's doing this morning.

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[07:10:00] SIDNER: This morning, when the jury and the sex trafficking and racketeering trial of Sean Combs resumes deliberations in less than two hours now, they will try to find a way to reach a verdict on the top charge, RICO Conspiracy. After just 12 hours of deliberations, the 12-member jury did reach a verdict on four of the five counts against Combs, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

We don't know yet what they have decided on those counts. But jurors told the judge they could not agree on count one. He told them, go back and keep deliberating. The RICO charge is notably the most complicated of the charges they are trying to determine.

With me now, Lisa Bonner, attorney and former litigator, thank you so much for being here this morning.

[07:15:00]

What are the chances this jury has concluded Combs? Is not guilty on those four counts pertaining to sex trafficking and prostitution after indicating they are hung at the moment only on the racketeering charge?

LISA BONNER, ATTORNEY AND FORMER LITIGATOR: Well, thank you and good morning, thank you for having me. These other counts that he is being charged with, Sean is being charged with, are individual counts, and that is a lower bar and easier to prove because you are only looking at charging combs as an individual. You also do not have the predicate crimes that you would need for Rico.

So, I'm explaining it a little backwards intentionally, because RICO is notoriously difficult to prove because you need to prove that Combs used his human and commercial resources of the enterprise in furtherance of sex trafficking and then you have to go down the rabbit hole and look at the predicates. And they have to have a unanimous consent on all of them one way or the other. So, that is a higher bar. It's also more confusing because people tend to think of RICO as a mob enterprise, right, where you have a lot of illegal activity going on.

But in this instance, Combs had a legitimate business. He's a well- known man, so they may have had difficulty reaching the RICO count because of all the complications, but actually able to convict unanimously on the other counts that only involve Sean as an individual.

SIDNER: Can the judge accept a split decision here where the jury says, look, we are just simply deadlocked on this last charge of RICO, but we can agree on these other charges?

BONNER: Yes, that is a possibility, Sara. And the issue at this point is it's a little early for the judge to accept that. They have only been deliberating, as you said, for a very short period of time, about 10 to 12 hours. And they had a lot of questions and they asked for clarification. So, in that instance, the judge said, listen, you guys are not unanimous, and you do have, it seems, that you have individual jurors who are not inclined to change their opinion yet. But that's also not a very uncommon situation. So, before the judge would accept a mistrial or a not unanimous verdict with respect to RICO, he would go back and give them what's called an Allen charge. And that is where he asks them to reconsider and reexamine all of the evidence without abandoning your belief. But that's really a last effort decision that the judge would make because that opens up a little bit of issue on appeal. And if he is convicted, this will certainly be an appellate issue.

So, the judge does not want to be overly coercive in the instructions at this point. So, he just said, listen, reread the jury instructions and told them to go back and have another try at it, really give it a try, be open-minded.

SIDNER: Yes, someone is calling you and you can now pick it up because we are done with this segment. Thank you so much, Lisa Bonner. I really appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, CBS's parent company, Paramount, has settled a lawsuit now brought by -- is settling a lawsuit brought by President Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris during the campaign. The company says they will pay $16 million. The details on that, ahead.

Half a million dollars worth of cocaine found washed ashore on a beach in Florida. That's it. That's the tease.

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[07:20:00]

BOLDUAN: A big upset at Wimbledon. Two-time Grand Slam winner Coco Gauff eliminated in the opening round.

CNN's Andy Scholes has much more on this. And there was a lot going on at Wimbledon here.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate. You know, Coco, she just didn't have it yesterday, right? You know, she just won the French Open last month. You know, lots of people thought she was maybe going to make her first deep run at Wimbledon, but her tournament ended up ending in round one on Tuesday. Coco was taken on unseeded Dayana Yastremska from Ukraine, but she just made mistake after mistake, Coco, 29, unforced air. She had nine double fault in the match. She would lose in straight sets, coming just the third woman in the open era to lose in round one at Wimbledon right after winning the French Open. Coco says she was just mentally overwhelmed after winning at Roland-Garros.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COCO GAUFF, TWO-TIME MAJOR CHAMPION: After the match, I definitely was struggling in the locker room. I don't like losing. And, yes, I think, for me, the main thing I'm sure my team and everyone's going to tell me like, you know, you did well all and (INAUDIBLE), and I'm like be so upset and things like that. But I don't really like losing. And I don't know. I just feel a little bit disappointed in how I showed up today. I feel like I could have been a little bit better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: All right. Caitlin Clark meanwhile was still out last night with an injured groin as the Fever took on the links for the Commissioner's Cup and without Clark though the rest of the Fever stepping up. Natasha Howard scored 16 while grabbed 12 rebounds. Sophie Cunningham added 13 off the bench. The Fever take the WNBA's in-season title winning 74-59.

Now, if you have been to a basketball game over the past 30 years, you've probably run into Red Panda performing at halftime at some point. She's been entertaining fans for decades, riding on top of her seven foot tall unicycle, while also somehow managing to get a stack of bowls from her foot to her head.

Well, unfortunately, last night, red panda fell and was injured during halftime of the game. She had to be helped off the court in a wheelchair and was reportedly taken to the hospital for evaluation. Now, during the Fever celebration, well, Caitlin Clark was thinking of Red Panda.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Red Panda, we love you.

[07:25:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Red Panda.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Red Panda got hurt at halftime.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Red Panda, if you're watching, we love you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Yes, I've been fortunate enough to see Red Panda perform when I was a kid, Kate. I've seen her perform when I was in college even a couple times recently. You know, she's so amazing at what she does and we certainly wish her well and hopefully she can have a quick recovery from her injury.

BOLDUAN: Yes, the poor thing. My God, I don't feel -- I don't want to have to like see it again, poor thing.

Andy, thank you so much.

SCHOLES: All right.

BOLDUAN: John?

BERMAN: We certainly hope she does okay.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: All right. This morning the man accused of killing four Idaho College students expected to officially enter his guilty plea as part of a plea deal, what we're hearing about whether he will address the mysteries over a motive.

And we're standing by for new data this morning on jobs, looking for signs about the direction of this economy.

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