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Israel To Allow Airdrops Into Gaza In The Coming Days; GOP Pursues Redrawing Congressional Districts To Keep House Control; Chip And Joanna Gaines Face Backlash For Featuring Same-Sex Couple On Reality TV Show; Trump's Mass Deportation Could Backfire On U.S. Economy, Penn Wharton Analysis Finds; Americans Face Loss Of Vaccine Programs After Federal Funding Cuts. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 25, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think this can help in this way? As short of a ceasefire, these children are still suffering under extreme suffering every day? What can be done to help them right now?

LEON PANETTA, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY & CIA DIRECTOR UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, it is obvious that this has been a chaotic approach. There really has been no system established that can be implemented, that can provide for a rational process of providing this kind of necessary food. The airdrops are kind of a last-minute approach to trying to deal with a terrible situation. The problem is we know when those drops take place that even more chaos occurs in terms of whether or not that food is properly distributed.

You cannot have that kind of humanitarian aid provided without security on the ground. There's got to be better security to make sure that that food is reaching people in need, and very frankly, that would be essential to trying to get this food to those who need it. Now, how are you going to get there? Right now, everybody's operating based on how they've operated in the past. This is a war that's gone on for almost two years. In October, this will be a two-year war.

There's never been a lot of thought given to what is the day after going to look like in Gaza. And for the first time, if you can get a ceasefire in place, you can then give some thought to what kind of Gaza is going to be there in the future, that will provide for the people, for the Palestinians, but also provide better security. That ultimately has to be the principal focus here.

DEAN: All right. Secretary Leon Panetta, thank you very much. We really appreciate your thoughts on this.

PANETTA: Thank you.

DEAN: The balance of power in Congress right now is a game of inches, as Texas Republicans consider redrawing the lines to get more seats in the House. How Democrats could fight back, that's next.

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[13:35:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Redistricting happens every 10 years on the tens after the U.S. census is completed, usually anyway. In Texas, state Republicans are trying to change the lines of their Congressional districts in an off-year to benefit their party ahead of what will be a hotly contested midterm election. In Washington, Democrats need to flip only three seats to take power back from Republicans in the House.

Texas has 38 representatives, currently, most of them, 25 have -- are seats that are held by Republicans. Democrats hold 13. President Trump and others in his party are hoping they can squeeze as many as five more Republican seats by shifting voters from safely Republican districts into ones that are held by Democrats. You've heard of this. It's called gerrymandering, redrawing congressional districts in a way that could give one party more seats in the House of Representatives, but there are risks. They could actually skim enough Republican voters off of solidly red districts that they make some of them politically iffy, or at least iffier, and that is not what they're trying to do.

I'm joined now by Texas State Representative James Talarico. He's a Democrat who represents the Austin area. Representative, thank you for being with us. And as you know, a lot of people are focused on this special session that you're in right now. Will state Democrats walk out of the session to deny Republicans a quorum on redistricting?

REP. JAMES TALARICO (D-TX): Well, Donald Trump is trying to rig the next election, as we speak, in broad daylight, right in front of our eyes. He and his allies in Congress just passed the largest transfer of wealth in American history with their Big, Beautiful Bill, kicking millions of people, including millions of Texans off their healthcare to fund tax breaks for billionaires. And they know it's unpopular, but they don't care because they have this plan. So, Trump just called our Governor Greg Abbott and told him to redraw the political maps in Texas to get them five more seats, so that they can protect their majority regardless of how we all vote.

And they're going to turn our districts into these crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want. And this is the rot at the core of our broken political system. If they succeed with this power grab, they're never going to have to fear the voters ever again. They can enrich themselves and their donors with impunity. And so, my colleagues and I here in Texas are discussing ways that we can respond and stop this from happening. We have tools at our disposal, even in the minority, and we are ready to use every tool in the toolbox to stop this from happening.

KEILAR: Does that include the walkout? Where are you guys on that?

TALARICO: Well, we haven't even seen the maps yet. We just started hearings and so, we're going to play this out and see what happens. But again, all options are on the table and we have to do everything we can to stop this power grab from going through.

DEAN: There were walkouts to try to stop redistricting in 2021 and 2003, I think. They actually didn't work. You're facing some pressure though nationally, you're well aware of this, to use that tool. How do you reconcile those things? You're facing this pressure from people within your own party. This is a tactic that may not work. And this is also a special session that is supposed to deal with the state response to these catastrophic floods recently in Texas.

[13:40:00]

TALARICO: Yeah. We are still mourning the loss of life in the Texas Hill Country from the July 4th floods. And we should be coming together at the state capital to help flood victims, to focus on flood mitigation and emergency management. But instead of actually addressing the real emergency here, Greg Abbott is using the flood victims to play politics. He's using it as cover, and instead of actually figuring out solutions that can prevent a tragedy from happening in the future, Greg Abbott is doing the bidding of Donald Trump and his billionaire donors, who want to insulate themselves from the wills of the voters, and that should be unacceptable to all of us. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, none of us want politicians silencing our voices and rigging the next election.

KEILAR: Some of your Democratic colleagues in Texas are in California today. They're meeting with Governor Newsom. There's also another group in Illinois meeting with Governor Pritzker. Newsom has raised the idea of doing what Texas is doing in California, but to benefit Democrats, they though are hamstrung by a voter-approved independent commission process. Do you think looking to California is a realistic solution here? Do you support it?

TALARICO: Well, I don't know much about California. I've only been a couple times in my life, but I do support standing up to these bullies and matching their energy. We cannot just lie down and allow this to happen in Texas. So if other states, California, Illinois, any other state wants to respond, I think that's appropriate.

But, I do think we have to keep our eyes on the prize. Our goal is not to have a descending spiral of partisanship where we are gerrymandering every state. That is not the goal. The goal is for every state to have an independent citizen-led redistricting commission that takes the power to draw political maps out of the hands of politicians and put it into the hands of the people we seek to represent. That's the long-term goal, and I hope we can keep that in mind even as we stand up to this power grab from Donald Trump.

KEILAR: I want to ask you a question I think you are uniquely poised to answer because in your state of Texas, you have Chip and Joanna Gaines, and stay with me. They're two hugely well-known home improvement reality TV stars who are under fire with Christian conservatives for having a gay couple on their show, which is -- and I want to note this -- it's a joint venture between their Magnolia Network and HBO Max, which has the same parent company as CNN.

So, they're under fire for having a gay couple on their show. You are a seminary student, and you talk often about issues, theological issues. How are you viewing this cultural moment in Texas that has become a big national story, sort of a national flashpoint? TALARICO: Well, my granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, and he told me when I was real little that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments, love God and love neighbor. And so, I think we have to recognize that LGBTQ people in Texas and across the country are made in the image of God, like all of us, and they are entitled to unconditional love. And so, I'm proud of Chip and Joanna for having a same-sex couple on their show. And I hope that more Christians can show that kind of neighbor love to our gay brothers and sisters and be able to create a more inclusive state and a more inclusive country.

KEILAR: Representative James Talarico, thank you so much. All eyes on Texas right now. We appreciate you making time for us.

TALARICO: Thank you for covering this.

KEILAR: Coming up, the Wharton School of Business crunching the numbers on President Trump's immigration crackdown and saying that it could actually shrink the economy. We'll have details ahead.

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[13:48:08]

DEAN: Brand new analysis on how President Trump's immigration crackdown will likely impact the U.S. economy. The president insists he will ignite an economic boom and make America affordable again. But a Penn Wharton budget model analysis finds his ongoing mass deportation policy could do the opposite, by shrinking most worker paychecks and eroding the nation's GDP. Let's go to CNN's Matt Egan, who has exclusive details on this. What are the big takeaways here, Matt?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Jessica, I think the big takeaway here is that if you want to ignite an economic boom, mass deportations are not the way to get there. In fact, this Penn Wharton analysis finds that the immigration crackdown could end up backfiring. So they examined two different scenarios. In the first scenario, you have 10 percent of the unauthorized immigrants in the United States get deported every single year for four years. And under that scenario, you would have smaller GDP, a $350 billion increase to the federal deficit and smaller wages, all of these moving in the opposite direction, all of them undermining key promises from the president.

They also looked at, well, what happens if this is a 10-year policy where essentially, all unauthorized immigrants in the United States are deported? Well, they found the damage would be even greater. 3 percent drop to GDP, almost a $1 trillion increase to the federal deficit, and also smaller wages. Now, that's not to say Penn Wharton found that all workers would be hurt. They did find that authorized lower skilled workers, blue collar workers could benefit from less competition caused by mass deportations.

But what's notable is they found that higher skilled workers, white collar workers, they would be hurt with their annual wages falling by almost $3,000 because of mass deportations.

[13:50:00]

Now, Penn Wharton Professor Kent Smetters, he told me that, look, there's no doubt that if you have mass deportations and you end up losing a significant chunk of the U.S. workforce, you're going to get a smaller U.S. economy. He also said, the problem is that higher skilled workers, they are complemented by lower skilled workers. And that's particularly true in agriculture, where we have the plurality of workers who are in the United States working on farms. They are unauthorized immigrants.

Now, the White House is pushing back on this. They said that this kind of analysis misses the forest for the trees by not accounting for the immense costs that everyday Americans are forced to bear due to illegal immigration, pointing specifically to crime. But Jessica, I would just stress, a lot of the economists I talked to, they share these concerns about how mass deportations could end up hurting the U.S. economy.

DEAN: All right, Matt Egan with the latest. Thanks so much for that. Cuts in funding for vaccine programs across the country have experts worried immunization rates will drop. One even saying it's, in their words, reckless. Stay with us.

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[13:55:25]

KEILAR: Health officials nationwide are increasingly worried about a decline in vaccination rates after the Trump Administration pulled millions of dollars from state and local vaccine programs without an explanation. CNN Medical Correspondent, Meg Tirrell joins us on this story. Meg, what's happening here?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So, these are funds that are appropriated by Congress under the Public Health Services Act, and they enable things like data collection on vaccination, providing shots to underserved kids and adults, also helping monitor the safety of vaccines and fighting misinformation around them. But this year, we've learned that the Department of Health and Human Services undertook a lengthy review of these funds and in some cases, that led to delays in receiving them and beyond delays, sometimes when jurisdictions actually received the money, it was less than they expected to get.

Overall, they were expecting about $418 million in immunization program funding and they actually received about $20 million total less than that. The Department of Health and Human Services saying of the delay that "The Defend the Spend initiative is a department-wide effort to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used effectively, transparently, and in alignment with this administration." They say they are committed to working with grantees to resolve outstanding issues as quickly as possible, but the result, guys, is that some of these cities and states are saying they've had to furlough or even lay off completely workers in these immunization programs.

And this is compounded on top of funds that have been taken back from COVID-era funding. So billions of dollars from these public health departments resulting in immunization workers jobs being cut up to almost 600 in total, associated with that COVID-era funding cutbacks. And what we're hearing from public health experts is real concern about what this is doing to the public health infrastructure. Brian Castrucci, the CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for the public health workforce says, "We're watching the deliberate dismantling of the public health safety net in real time. Guys?

KEILAR: All right, Meg Tirrell, thank you so much for the very latest there. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says, deportation flights are underway from the Immigration Detention Center nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. What we know about those flights just ahead.

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