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Trump Demands ABC Fire Jimmy Kimmel as Disney Stands Firm; House Votes to Reopen DHS, Bill Now Goes to Trump's Desk; Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine Testify on Capitol Hill; Source Says Pentagon to Brief Trump on Military Options for Iran; Sources Say Louisiana Governor May Delay Some Primaries After Supreme Court Ruling; Speaker Johnson Calls on Certain States to Redraw District Maps. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired April 30, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: He insists that the probe into Disney is all about DEI practices and has nothing to do with Kimmel. But I don't really know anybody who covers this beat or studies this industry who actually believes that. So it is a very real pressure coming from the government on to ABC, onto Disney. Trump again, repeating this pressure today, wanting this to stay out there and stay in the news.

But so far, Disney not backing down and Disney believing that it has the law on its side. It believes the First Amendment is on its side and it says it will go through all the appropriate legal channels to defend its stations from this government pressure.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Brian Stelter, thank you so much for that reporting.

Let's go straight to Capitol Hill now because Speaker Mike Johnson is talking to reporters after finally approving the Senate passed measure to refund DHS. Let's listen.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R-LA) HOUSE SPEAKER: -- major achievement, delivering real relief and certainty for our rural America and for all Americans. This is the first time Congress has done that since 2018. Been quite a while, but we got it done.

We've also made certain that the House is going to be able to have an up or down vote on a date certain on the E15 issue, which is, you know, is a big priority for a lot of our members here in the chamber. And most importantly of all, of all the things we got done this week, we got the budget resolution passed. This is very, very important because that will ensure that Border Security and Immigration Enforcement will continue today and well into the future, despite Democrat attempts to reopen our borders and protect criminal illegal aliens from removal.

The net result to passing our reconciliation bill is that ICE and CBP are funded for three years and Democrats got absolutely nothing for their political charade and shenanigans out of that. We repeatedly offered in good faith, I want to point out, remind everybody to negotiate on funding these agencies, but ultimately the sad and actually shocking truth is, there's not a Democrat in the House or the Senate that believes Border Security and Immigration Enforcement should exist at all.

By word and deed, Democrats have made clear their desire to defund both of those critical functions of our government. We also passed the FISA Reauthorization to ensure that the administration is armed with the best possible intelligence to continue eliminating terrorists and defending our homeland. We pray that the Senate can now pass our FISA Bill as quickly as possible and you know they're deliberating over that right now.

Now, I just want to say this, sometimes the process around here is cumbersome. That's the way this works. But in spite of our razor-thin, historically small majority, House Republicans continue to deliver for the American people. We'll continue to do that for the remainder of the year and that is a large reason why we are going to win the midterms so that the grown-ups can stay in charge here.

I'll take a few questions.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Speaker, isn't this a solution on DHS that could have been passed days or weeks ago? Why did it take this long?

JOHNSON: It couldn't and here's why. You heard me trash the bill when it came over the first time because it literally was drafted in the middle of the night. It was about two o'clock in the morning when they came up with the final language and it was haphazardly drafted. And what it would do is, of course, orphan and leave out Immigration Enforcement and Border Patrol.

If you might remember, in 2024, the number one issue in the election was securing that border. House Republicans did it. The Trump administration, the president did that. And Democrats are upset about it. So they wanted to leave that out. They wanted to orphan these two critical agencies that are under the umbrella of Homeland Security.

I remind everybody on the Hill all the time, the Department of Homeland Security is the third largest department of the federal government. It has critical responsibilities -- FEMA and the Secret Service and TSA and all these other agencies. But the Democrats said, we'll do some of that, but we're not going to fund Border Security and we're not going to fund Immigration Enforcement.

That's absurd. And we threw a fit and we had to. We held the Homeland Bill, the underlying funding bill, because we had to ensure that they could not isolate and eliminate those two critical agencies. We are getting those done now. We passed the resolution first. That was critically important for us to do to ensure that we're going to protect the homeland, even though Democrats are unwilling to do it.

So now that that box is checked, we're allowed then to proceed and go through with the rest of it. This will relieve pressure from the Department of Homeland Security. Secretary Mullin, who I've spoken to in the last couple of hours, will be greatly relieved. The President will. The administration will. We are not going to have lines at TSA. Everybody will get their paychecks now.

We'll get moving forward. And then we will finish the work and finally get, again, for three years with no crazy Democrat reforms, we will fund Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement as soon as we return for the work session when that bill is finalized.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On FISA, Mr. Speaker, what do you anticipate from the Senate? And are you concerned that whatever the Senate sends over might be a problem over here?

JOHNSON: I'm not concerned. I hope that they're going to do the right thing. Look, we sent over a reauthorization that was minor reforms and with the anti-CBDC measure on it. These are very simple things that the vast majority of Congress agrees with, and they should get it done. They're running out of time. As you know, it will expire tonight, the end of today.

And so we're calling on them to do the job, pass the House's bill, and get this done. Check the last box of the week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're not going to take the House bill, though.

JOHNSON: Well, we're going to see. They don't seem to have another alternative. We'll find out how that works. [13:35:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Speaker, (inaudible). Can you kind of explain what that was about?

JOHNSON: I don't know who you're quoting. OK, so look, this is -- they often analogize legislating to making sausage, you don't want to see it made, and sometimes it's an ugly process, sometimes it's a long process. I've never broken my word to a single person in this building, nobody can tell you they can.

There was a lot of emotion and frustration yesterday because sometimes when you have a small margin, as we do, we're currently working on a one-vote, razor-thin margin because of absences and the rest, and people have, you know, different ideas, different priorities about very contentious pieces of legislation.

The equations that we solved on legislation this week were virtually impossible. Many of you said it couldn't be done, but we got it done because ultimately we just used patience and frankly prayer, and we get a lot of people together and we listen to their concerns and we try to get the disparate priorities handled.

I've never asked a colleague in the Republican Party, ever, to violate a core principle, but sometimes we have to give up on our preferences because we are in a large body. On some of these bills, some of the ones that I just named for you, they're so complicated and so complex that you literally had irreconcilable demands on either side of the House Republican conference.

And so it takes a long time to work through that and get people to consensus, but we do that patiently, we do as we must, and we ultimately deliver. Don't doubt the House Republican majority. We always deliver for the American people. We did it again in spite of the challenges, and we'll continue to do that.

Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the third shutdown in six months. What will you do to prevent this from happening again?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right. There will still be a lot of people wondering why Congress didn't do this sooner.

And you hear the Speaker there trying to answer that question, that they passed this resolution that the Senate sent over ensuring that ICE and CBP are funded. But the bottom line is that the House is conceding, Republicans in the House are conceding. They're reopening DHS, but it doesn't include funding for ICE and CBP. However, they are still funded because they have a whole lot of money from that Big, Beautiful Bill of Trump's.

SANCHEZ: Just 35 days ago, Speaker Johnson was saying of the exact bill that the House just passed by voice vote, quote, "This is a joke. It can't be that every Republican Senator read the language of this bill." He is suggesting that something has changed since then. But effectively, this is the same thing that the Senate passed 35 days ago.

And while our reporting indicates that he did move to try to get some of the language tweaked, that didn't happen. And so for at least to the end of September now, most of DHS is funded, except for, as you noted, immigration enforcement which already has money. They haven't actually endured the negative aspects of the shutdown because of the Big, Beautiful Bill.

We're going to stay on top of this story and bring you the latest as we get it. Stay with CNN. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:42:03]

KEILAR: We have Breaking News on Capitol Hill. Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth is facing lawmakers for a second straight day over the Iran War. He's on the Senate side today. And Hegseth pushed back against the idea that the White House needed to seek congressional authorization for the war soon.

Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a presidential administration has 60 days from initially notifying Congress of the use of military force to either end a military campaign or seek permission to keep fighting. Here was that exchange. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM KAINE, (D-VA): The War Powers Resolution specifies that a war initiated by a president without congressional approval must be concluded within 60 days. We're right at the 60-day deadline. Is the president intending to either seek congressional authorization for the war in Iran or send us the legally required certification that he needs an additional 30 days to remove U.S. forces from the war?

PETE HEGSETH, UNITED STATED SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Ultimately, I would defer to the White House and White House Counsel on that. However, we are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire. So they are not in -- it's our understanding, just so you know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I want to bring in former Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta. Secretary, was that your understanding when you were in this role? Is that your understanding now that the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire?

LEON PANETTA, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, the 60 days is going to expire. And the Congress has the right to move forward with a resolution on war powers. And there are a lot of people that support that. There's a bipartisan group that just sent a letter to the Congress to try to initiate the Congress being a check here with regards to the war.

My understanding is that if the president then comes back and says they're winding down the war, then there could be an additional 30 days provided in order to take action on the war powers provision itself that would bring the war to an end.

KEILAR: OK. So he's not too far off? Is that right?

PANETTA: That's correct.

KEILAR: So, we also learned from a Pentagon official in yesterday's hearing about the price tag here. So far, the cost is $25 billion. We now understand it's a low-ball figure. It doesn't actually include the cost of repairing extensive damage suffered by American bases in the region. That's according to three people familiar with the matter.

Obviously, those are costs that are going to have to be shouldered. What do you expect the true costs to be?

PANETTA: Well, there's no question that based on experience, the cost is going to go up.

[13:45:00]

It may be $25 billion now, but I think that the real estimate is probably, as indicated, somewhere between $40 billion to 50 billion by the time we finally arrive at some kind of closure to this war. We are, you know, there's a lot of money here that needs to be spent because we have used up a lot of our weapons, we've used up Tomahawks, we've used up missiles.

We've got a tremendous gap here in terms of replenishing our weapons. In addition to that, when you've got, you know, close to almost 30 percent of our navy is located in the Middle East, that all costs money. And so, we're going to see that bill continue to rise as we delay some kind of resolution to this war.

KEILAR: The president is expected to hear about updated military options for Iran today from top Pentagon officials. That's not unusual, right, to routinely get updated military plans. But since we do know about this, do you see this as him keeping options open? Do you see it as sending a message to Iran?

PANETTA: Look, right now, we're stuck. Look, both the United States and Iran are stuck. They're both trying to make the other side blink. We're engaged in a blockade of the Straits of Hormuz that is obviously hurting both countries, hurting Iran, but also hurting our country because the price of oil continues to go up, inflation continues to go up.

And so although they're trying to pressure one another, the reality is they are hurting the people of both Iran and the United States. And so somehow this logjam has to break. It's in a stalemate right now. Both are waiting for the other side to blink, when in reality, neither side is going to blink. Ultimately, this is going to come down to negotiations. And very frankly, that's what the president ought to be doing, is sending people to Abbottabad in order to negotiate an end to the war.

That's what needs to happen.

KEILAR: So then really quickly, when you heard him say yesterday, you know, we're just going to kind of get the back and forth, you know, I'm just going to kind of get it in writing instead of having people fly 18 hours to have a meeting. What did you make of that?

PANETTA: You know, it's just not being realistic. I mean, you know, based on experience, in the end, it requires negotiations. You can't just wait for something to drop out of the sky and hope that that's going to end the war. You got to work at it.

What needs to happen now is that representatives have to go and meet with Iranian representatives and negotiate, negotiate on opening the Straits of Hormuz, negotiate on some kind of limitation with regards to nuclear enrichment, negotiate on sanctions, and negotiate on an end to this war. That's what needs to happen.

Right now, they're both playing a game of chicken, and nothing's happening. The war continues and the cost of that war continues, not only on the American people, but on the world in terms of impacting the world's economy. This cannot just be allowed to drag on the way it is right now.

KEILAR: Secretary Leon Panetta, thanks so much for your insights. We appreciate them. And it's a decision with significant immediate consequences for this year's election. We're going to talk about the fallout from the Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act. Our next guest says it has weakened our democracy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:51:33]

SANCHEZ: Just 24 hours after the Supreme Court tossed out a Louisiana congressional map that included a contested second-majority black district, CNN has learned the Governor Jeff Landry is already talking about changing the upcoming primary election.

KEILAR: Sources tell us that Landry is planning to suspend some primary contests. The primary is currently scheduled for May 16th. Early voting is set to begin here in just two days. It's so close overseas ballots have already gone out. Terry Moran is a former Co- Anchor of ABC News "Nightline" and a former Senior National Correspondent who spent years covering the Supreme Court. He is the Host of the YouTube Podcast and Publisher of the Substack "Real Patriotism with Terry Moran."

This is, I mean, this timeline is pretty crazy what we're seeing here already complicating Louisiana's primary. How messy could this get?

TERRY MORAN, FORMER CO-ANCHOR, ABC NEWS, "NIGHTLINE": Well, that's how eager they are to redraw these lines that were drawn under the old and traditional, for more than 50 years understanding of the Voting Rights Act. They are risking disenfranchising people who are casting their votes now, those overseas ballots.

And so, well, they're going to cancel that election, maybe they'll send them again, maybe they won't, because they really want to redraw the lines in a way that will favor the Republican Party and we have to admit, for the most part, our parties are racially divided as well.

SANCHEZ: This opens up a new chapter in the battle over redistricting not just in Louisiana, but across the country as well. You had Speaker Mike Johnson saying that states who have "unconstitutional maps" should look at that very carefully and I think they should do it before the midterms. Where else do you see this effort expanding?

MORAN: Well, I think it empowers, the Supreme Court decision really empowers incumbent politicians and party bosses because, right now, we have this war to the death over redistricting and that -- what is that going to do is that going to put a lot of people in districts that they will never have a representative of their choice because they will be the minority in these districts, not just racial minority, but Democrats versus Republicans, and that ends up increasing polarization and empowering party bosses and people who are incumbents that can essentially choose their own districts.

KEILAR: So before this decision by the court and Florida's move to approve a new map, Democrats were actually on track to win this redistricting mid-decade battle by a seat. Are you expecting -- do we know if that's really changed?

MORAN: Well, not at this point, it hasn't really changed. It will, it looks like, and I think the real problem is that the court is hands- off of redistricting, partisan gerrymandering, except when it comes to black voters and minority voters. And the notion that this isn't a problem anymore, which is essentially what Justice Alito said, is belied by the fact that, you know, you have members of Congress attending the Political Action Conference of Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist, the president dining with Nick Fuentes and the notion of a great invasion or a great replacement theory, essentially, at the heart of the Republican Party shows that those days are not gone yet.

SANCHEZ: The Virginia Supreme Court held oral arguments Monday on Virginia's new map, which helped engineer that one-seat Democratic advantage in the redistricting battle. Do you think that they are going to overturn that? Does that case now wind up before the Supreme Court?

MORAN: Yeah, there's no question any of these cases that rested on the traditional interpretation of Voting Rights Act, which it was reaffirmed by Congress and by Republican presidents five times.

[13:55:00]

So this is an act of judicial activism, judicial supremacy by the Supreme Court, that now everybody is going to have to live with, and there's no question it advantages Republicans right through the South. But there are also other groups. There are Latinos in states controlled by Republicans that, you know, where are they in the political equation right now is a question.

Native Americans benefited from this. From Alaska to Florida, from Maine to Southern California, the Voting Rights Act made sure that everybody had at least a shot not to be disenfranchised by redistricting.

SANCHEZ: Terry Moran, thanks so much for sharing your expertise. Appreciate it.

Meanwhile (ph) "CNN News Central" starts after a quick break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)