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House to Take Final Vote on Trump's Agenda Bill; Kathleen Sebelius is Interviewed about Medicaid Cuts; Jobs Report for June; Missoula Named Second Best Town to Visit. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 03, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:32:28]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're standing by and watching the House of Representatives right now. The top Democrat in the House giving a lengthy speech, still ongoing, against the president's tax and spending bill that the House will eventually, soon, vote on final passage.

CNN's Annie Grayer is there standing outside.

It looks like a beautiful day, number one. But inside, there's the big, beautiful bill. What's the latest on timing? What's happening, Annie?

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are still standing by, waiting for that final vote. But Republicans are confident that they finally have the votes for this.

And this has been a roller coaster. Up until 3:00 this morning there were five Republicans who were voting against this legislation when Republicans can only lose three. But House Speaker Mike Johnson deployed a strategy that we've seen him use again and again. He went to the floor, not sure if he would have the votes, but deployed a very public and direct pressure campaign on these lawmakers, trying to flip them to yes. If you were to watch the House floor overnight, you would have seen the speaker and his leadership team meeting directly with members on the House floor, trying to assuage their concerns.

Of course, President Donald Trump and his team have also been directly involved, and that is House Speaker Mike Johnson's secret weapon. A group of Republicans met with the president yesterday. The president sent his team to The Hill to answer any further questions that members may have. And part of the reason why this took so long is because Republicans have different concerns here, and that takes a lot of time to work out.

You have one group of moderates who say that the Senate's version of the bill makes too deep of a cut to Medicaid, and they're worried about their constituents back home. You then have a group of more right-wing Republicans who say that the cuts don't go far enough. So, that is the seesaw that Republican lawmakers had to walk. Johnson used his dare to defy strategy. It seems to have worked yet again. But we are just waiting for the top Democrat in the House to finish his speech.

We saw the vice president just tweet that, you know, Republicans are starting to get frustrated with how long this is going to take, but this whole process has taken a very long time.

BOLDUAN: And still they're racing up against this artificial deadline of getting it done. It looks like they're about to do it.

Annie, thank you so much. Please bring us updates as it comes.

Let's focus in on those big Medicaid cuts in this bill. Changes that many lawmakers even said they were concerned and fear is going to hit rural America hardest. We're talking about nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Medicaid program. And a lead reporter with KFF Health News told us just yesterday about the stories that she is hearing firsthand from patients in rural America, even before these cuts set in.

[08:35:04]

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SARAH JANE TRIBBIE, CHIEF RURAL CORRESPONDENT, KFF HEALTH NEWS: I talk to mothers who are worried about having their babies on the side of the road because their local hospital closed. I talk to cancer patients who drive to the local casino to make a phone call to their doctor because they don't have high speed internet or phone access. I visit rural hospitals and walk the hallways after they've closed and then talk to patients in the community who are scared the air ambulance won't get there fast enough when their kid has an asthma attack, a severe asthma attack. So, you know, already across rural America, there are residents who are really scared about their health care.

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BOLDUAN: And in a new piece for "U.S. News," former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined with Republican Bill Frist, a physician and former Senate majority leader, and they sat down with a group of rural hospital CEOs, health providers, and researchers. A diverse group, though, that agreed that the cuts -- and they're -- the way they wrote it is, "would be catastrophic for the people of rural America and their health systems, many of which are already hanging by a thread." Offering this example, "one CEO we encountered runs a 25-bed hospital in the Great Plains with just 30 days of cash on hand. He shared that before opening an X-ray clinic, residents relied on a local veterinarian for imaging."

Joining us right now is former HHS secretary and former Kansas governor, Kathleen Sebelius.

It's good to see you again, Secretary. Thank you for coming in.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, FORMER HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Thanks, Kate. BOLDUAN: Were you surprised by what this group that you brought together, what they told you about what's about to happen?

SEBELIUS: Well, actually, we weren't surprised. Bill and I have chaired the Aspen Health Strategy Group for a number of years, and both of us live in rural states. Bill comes out of Tennessee. I'm here in Kansas. So, we see this every day real time. But the live examples that people gave of what their lives are like day to day was sobering. And the notion that Medicaid will be cut by almost $1 trillion, Medicaid being the lifeblood of the health systems throughout rural America, is really going to be devastating to hospitals and health systems across rural USA.

BOLDUAN: We've heard the president, in trying to push this bill, or get this bill over the finish line, downplaying concerns about the Medicaid cuts, and saying that the goal here, and what -- only -- really only what they're going at is to target waste and fraud. And you wrote in this after your conversations with this group, you wrote that "the rural hospitals and clinics that we examined are not places of supposed waste, fraud and abuse, contrary to the claims some policymakers are using to justify Medicaid cuts. Quite the opposite." What did you learn?

SEBELIUS: Well, we -- we heard from people -- I mean the -- one of the health care providers in a small town in northwestern -- northeastern, I'm sorry, Colorado was talking about the fact that he used to send patients to the veterinary clinic to get X-rays until they could open their own X-ray operation in his 25-bed hospital in Louisiana. They are taking out of their own pocket to make sure kids get vaccines. It is outrageous that this cut is being put under the banner of waste, fraud and abuse because nothing could be further than the truth.

Kate, one of the scariest things that we looked at over and over again is what's called the mortality rural penalty. So, people who live in rural areas live less long than people in urban areas. As contrary as that may seem. Working age men and women are dying younger than they did a decade ago given the disease spread and the comorbidities. So, cuts to hospitals, cuts to rural health, closing a hospital in a community will be really life threatening to lots and lots of people.

And more importantly, as we, you know, look at the Fourth of July and people about to celebrate with their families, if you close a hospital, the younger people will move away because you can't have a baby in a community that doesn't have a hospital. OB clinics are closing all over rural America. And grandparents are not going to have their grandchildren grow up in the same beautiful spaces that they lived in without health care.

BOLDUAN: Clearly, this is a concern, or was a concern, among lawmakers themselves as they were debating this because the Senate added in this $50 billion rural hospital fund at the very last minute, intended, they say, to offset the Medicaid cuts.

Can that -- are you hearing from the folks you're talking to that that can mitigate -- mitigate what they fear is about to happen?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think there's no question that what they've done is a short-term gap, putting some additional money in.

[08:40:06]

But we already had a rural health system that was collapsing. So, $50 billion sounds like a whole lot of money. And it is a whole lot of money. But when you make $1 trillion worth of cuts that are long term, disenroll people from their health insurance, folks will not be able to pay their bills and say we'll replace that with a drop in the bucket of a short-term spending gap, it just -- the math doesn't work.

And part of the problem is that people will be continuing to get sick. They will continue to visit hospitals. They just won't be able to pay their bills. They will continue to get doctor services because doctors aren't going to turn people away. They just won't get paid.

So, you have a system where the -- passing this bill doesn't make anybody better. Medical debt will skyrocket in rural America. People will owe more and more, and hospitals will go under.

Kate, I live in a state where we closed four rural hospitals over the last five years, and it basically starts the demise of an entire community because new employers won't come to a community if they can't offer health care to their workers. It's very difficult for kids to get regular checkups and be as healthy as their peers in other parts of the state. It has a cascading effect that's not just about health, it's about the economy of the entire community.

BOLDUAN: Yes, the cascading effect, the impact on rural America is something that really does need to be a focus, because it does appear this is going to get final passage in the coming hours. And what happens in rural America from here is important.

Secretary Sebelius, thank you for coming in.

John.

BERMAN: All right, a daring rescue caught on (INAUDIBLE). Lifted (INAUDIBLE) a man to safety after he became trapped in rushing floodwaters.

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[08:46:26]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking just moments ago, the June jobs report showing stronger than expected growth. The jobs market is still humming along.

CNN's Matt Egan joining me now to break all of this down.

You expected some of this, but this is better than expected?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, Sara, it is. Look, this jobs market is like the Energizer Bunny. Every single time we expect it to run out of steam, it just keeps going and going. So, these new numbers show that the U.S. economy added 147,000 jobs in

June. That was well ahead of the expectation of about 118,000, well ahead of some whispers that we heard on Wall Street of a sub 100,000 number. So, this is indeed beating expectations.

We were also expecting a slowdown. We did not get that. This is basically in line with May, which was revised higher. It's also good news.

The unemployment rate was expected to go up. It didn't. It went down to 4.1 percent. That is a very healthy number. This is still relatively historically low. And again, it's below the 4.3 percent that we had expected.

When we look at the trend in the jobs market, you can see that things have slowed down from last year, but not in alarming fashion, right? We did expect to have weaker numbers here in the last few months. And so, really, things are holding up a lot better than feared. The unemployment rate, again, it's nowhere near where it was a few years ago. It does remain, look at this, the unemployment rate, it's still hovering at very low levels.

Now, digging into where the jobs are. We did see significant job gains for health care and social assistance, adding 59,000. Leisure and hospitality, that's bars, restaurants, 20,000. But there was job loss in two notable areas, manufacturing. Seven thousand jobs lost last month alone. That's the exact opposite of what the president wants with his high tariff strategy. The federal government losing 7,000. And that is, of course, a result of DOGE really taking an axe to the federal workforce.

But still, big picture when you put it all together, this is a lot better than expected. And it does suggest that this jobs market is holding up better than feared.

SIDNER: Yes, barring the manufacturing --

EGAN: Yes.

SIDNER: President Trump has something to crow about.

EGAN: Yes.

SIDNER: He has something to talk about because it is a lot better than -- we're talking, what, 40,000 -- 30,000 more jobs than expected roughly, plus or minus.

EGAN: Right, and not the slowdown that was predicted.

SIDNER: Yes. All right, Matt Egan, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thanks, Sara.

SIDNER: John.

BERMAN: All right, with us now, CNN global economic analyst Rana Foroohar. She's also the global business columnist and associate editor of "The Financial Times."

All right, Rana, here we go again. I mean, once again, jobs growth beating expectations. Why? What keeps happening here?

RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: You know, the U.S. economy, even before Trump, was just starting in a really, really strong place. We have the best post-Covid recovery. Spirits are high. The market is still high. And part of it is about the fact that, frankly, the rest of the world isn't doing so well. I mean the U.S. really is still the brightest spot in the global economy.

One thing that's interesting to me about all this is the fact that the jobs report is coming in so strong is actually going to take pressure off of Fed Chair Powell, who, you know, President Trump has been asking him to cut rates. Really hard to argue that you should be cutting rates when the economy is still so, so, so very strong. So, I think that that's going to be an interesting dynamic politically going forward. It's also going to mean that interest rates are not coming down anytime soon. That has an effect, of course, on people that are buying homes, you know, have auto loans, et cetera.

[08:50:00]

BERMAN: It's one of those good news may mean bad news things --

FOROOHAR: Yes.

BERMAN: Which is somewhat old fashioned. We used to talk about that five, ten years ago in terms of at least if you were hoping for interest rates there.

Again, since, you know, March and before there were predictions that the tariffs, and granted a lot of them have been pulled back, most of them have been pulled back, but all that tariff policy was going to lead perhaps to inflation, would lead to job losses. Predictions of doom. That doom just hasn't happened yet.

FOROOHAR: It hasn't happened. And, you know, John, I've been doing a lot of reporting on this topic and what I'm hearing is that for the last few years, really since Covid, but even before, companies have realized that their supply chains can be interrupted for lots of reasons. For -- for a virus, for a geopolitical event, for a war, for a climate event. And so they've been using technology to really streamline things. They've been getting their -- their systems in place. And there's just a lot more efficiency in the system now. In some ways I think this is a triumph of -- of business and how business has been optimizing.

Now that said, when we think about who's going to do well in this period, it's going to be big businesses. I am hearing that there's more pressure on small and midsize businesses that will be far less able to cope with whatever tariff inflationary impact we do see. That concerns me because small and midsize businesses are what fuels a lot of communities around the country. If you see them going under because they can't take even a little bit of tariff pressure, that could have a jobs impact. So again, optimistic right now, but it's, you know, there are some

issues on the horizon still.

BERMAN: All right, but a good jobs report. One more good jobs report.

FOROOHAR: Yes.

BERMAN: We've really seen a long run -- we're talking years long run here of this at this point.

FOROOHAR: Yes.

BERMAN: Rana Foroohar, great to see you. Thank you very much.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, just ahead, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, is opening up about her cancer recovery. What we're learning about the journey she calls, quote, "very, very difficult." That story, and much more, ahead.

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[08:56:13]

SIDNER: This morning, Bryan Kohberger sits in prison where he's set to spend the rest of his life after he admitted for the first time to killing four Idaho college students in 2021. For each victim he had to acknowledge his murderous rampage.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?

BRYAN KOHBERGER: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: The plea deal means he will avoid the death penalty. The deal resolves the question of whether he killed the students in their off campus house, but it left one question unanswered, a key question, why he did it.

Also, Princess Kate is opening up about how difficult it really is to deal with cancer and its aftermath. She just made her first public appearance at a hospital after staying home from the royal ascot two weeks ago.

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PRINCESS KATE, DUCHESS OF WALES: The phase afterwards, it's really -- you know, it's a really difficult journey. You know, you're not necessarily in the clinical team any longer, but you're not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to. And actually someone to help talk you through that, show you and guide you through that sort of phase that comes after treatment I think is really valuable.

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SIDNER: Yes, the aftermath is really hard. The royal announced her cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatment last March. She completed chemotherapy and has been slowly returning to her royal duties.

And in China, a daring rescue with a drone. CCTV reports a fisherman was stuck in a river due to rising waters that were caused by heavy rain. Officials say he was clinging to a piece of wood in the water when a group of firefighters decided, hey, we'll use what we have. They sent a drone out with a life vest, and then they were able to lift him out of the water. He is expected to be OK. Pretty incredible rescue, I must say, Kate.

BOLDUAN: I must agree.

Also this today, we are counting down CNN's top towns to visit in America. Number two for you this morning is Missoula, Montana.

Here's CNN's Victor Blackwell.

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VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Are there any myths that you think you need to dispel about Missoula?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We do have electricity here.

BLACKWELL (voice over): Nestled within the Rockies and sitting at the junction of several rivers, Missoula, Montana, combines world class wilderness with big city food and culture.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You don't have to go too far if you want to have that chuckwagon experience or you want to have that solitude out in the wilderness. But I think what's so great about Missoula is, yes, you get to, you know, see a show. You can have visited an art gallery. And in the same day.

BLACKWELL: How much of the culture of the city is connected to the rivers?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Missoula is the river. The river is -- is Missoula.

BLACKWELL (voice over): Indeed. You can surf and paddle year round right in the heart of downtown.

BLACKWELL: Is this typical for an afternoon in the middle of the week?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.

BLACKWELL (voice over): Around the corner, classic menu items are elevated with local specialty ingredients, like pizza topped with sweet flathead cherries grown along local lakeshores.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Ten out of ten.

BLACKWELL (voice over): And ice cream made from wild Montana huckleberries.

BLACKWELL: It's just the slightest bit tart, but not too tart.

This is good.

Do you ship the ice cream? Oh.

Now, when I go home to Atlanta, I'm going to be trying to ship in huckleberry ice cream.

BLACKWELL (voice over): And, of course, when in Montana, you got to try Montana beef. Finn offers great river views as you enjoy your steak.

BLACKWELL: Honestly, this is fantastic.

BLACKWELL (voice over): After dinner, if you're in the mood for some live music, the Kettlehouse Amphitheater is a must see. Stunning natural views surround you while you groove to your favorite band.

[09:00:01]

And if outdoor adventure is what you're after, Missoula has a bit of everything. Notably, fly fishing, popularized by the 1992 film.