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A.I. and Bioweapons?; Mixed Messages on U.S.-Iran Talks; Trump to Nominate Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney General; GOP Revolt Over Anti-Weaponization Fund?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired June 04, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A force for change.

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: As you can see, the museum's exterior is wrapped in a quotation. It's from President Obama's 2015 Selma address, beginning with the words "You are America."

Inside, exhibits trace the Obamas' rise, as well as the civil rights and women's suffrage movements that helped shape them. The project didn't come without controversy. Its cost, location, and concerns about gentrification on Chicago's South Side fueled years of debate and court battles. The Obama Center officially opens in two weeks.

Thank you so much for joining INSIDE POLITICS.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Hitting a roadblock on Capitol Hill, President Trump's agenda stalling, as a $70 billion immigration bill runs into a wall, lawmakers furious over the anti-weaponization fund that the president apparently refuses to abandon.

And mixed messages. The president insisting a deal with Iran could come this weekend, but Tehran says there has been no progress, as the House tries to box in the president with a vote on his war powers.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And sneaking a peek. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly wants to see your medical records. It's part of his quest to find a link between vaccines and autism, which most scientists have dismissed.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

We are following breaking news on Capitol Hill, President Trump's agenda facing another Republican revolt. Not long after a marathon voting session kicked off in the Senate to pass $70 billion in funding for ICE and Border Patrol, the effort hit a major roadblock. Democrats put forward an amendment aimed at killing the Trump

administration's so-called anti-weaponization fund that could benefit January 6 rioters, but, as of now, a few Republican holdouts are refusing to vote the amendment down.

SANCHEZ: And following Republican pushback, the administration has sought to convince lawmakers that the fund is dead. But President Trump's comments about the fund have raised serious doubts on whether he's actually let it go. Here's what he said yesterday.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's -- I'd have to ask the lawyers. I don't know. I know one thing. The weaponization -- are you talking about the weaponization fund?

QUESTION: Yes. What's...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: The weaponization fund, as far as I'm concerned, was a beautiful thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's go live to Capitol Hill with CNN's Lauren Fox.

Lauren, where do things stand?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are still on this very first vote, Boris, and this was an amendment vote that was put forward by Democrats that would essentially send this entire immigration funding bill back to the committee, where they could then draft language to bar this weaponization fund from ever going into action.

Now, a lot of Republicans have been frustrated with this exact fund, but many of them have also argued with the fact that, now that it has been dropped, now that Blanche says that it is dropped, that that was enough.

Meanwhile, on the floor, you have a number of Republicans who either haven't voted yet or one of them, Senator Susan Collins, who is voting with Democrats. Now, Senator Susan Collins is obviously locked in a very tough reelection battle in the state of Maine.

You have two other Republican senators, Dan Sullivan and Jon Husted, who are also facing reelection in the fall. And Senator Bill Cassidy also hasn't voted. Now, Bill Cassidy lost his primary just a couple of weeks ago in the state of Louisiana.

And right now what I'm told from two sources familiar with what's happening on the floor is that leadership is frantically trying to convince Cassidy to get in line with other Republicans so that they can kill this Democratic amendment. But this has been going on now for two hours, and clearly Bill Cassidy

has had issues with this fund. He wants more language codifying it. Here's what he and Senator Thom Tillis said earlier today.

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SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): Even the A.G. Has said that it's done, so I don't know why we just don't qualify it so Democrats are not raising the speculation that it can come back at some point. Instead, we should be able to codify that and be done with it.

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): I want to make sure it's not mostly dead. I want to make sure it's completely dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Now, we are going to be watching to see whether or not Cassidy falls in line, but, obviously, this vote is still open.

And this kicked off at 10:00 a.m. Typically, you would move through these vote-a-ramas much more quickly. You would vote on an amendment and then swiftly move on to the next one. That's clearly not happening here because Republicans have an issue.

And I would just point out that this isn't happening in a vacuum. It is happening at a moment where a lot of Republicans are frustrated with the fact that Donald Trump is getting involved in these Republican primaries in the Senate. And, obviously, you can see what the blowback is here for the president's agenda now that is all being taken care of.

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SANCHEZ: Lauren Fox live for us on the Hill, thank you so much.

We turn now to the official who originally signed off on this anti- weaponization fund, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche. President Trump says he is going to soon nominate him to serve as A.G. on a permanent basis.

KEILAR: That's right.

Ever since Pam Bondi was fired in early April, Blanche, who was the president's personal lawyer for years, has aggressively pursued Trump's legal priorities, including new prosecutions of Trump's perceived enemies.

CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez is with us now.

Evan, once he's nominated, there's this potentially heated confirmation fight that obviously would follow. Tell us about this.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. No, absolutely.

Look, and since Pam Bondi was fired, we have had almost weekly press conferences of the Justice Department, a lot more we have seen Todd Blanche in action because he's been openly campaigning for this job. He wants this job permanently.

And so, finally, it appears the president is ready to nominate him. We can go through just a list of a number of things that we have seen from Todd Blanche, obviously, the weaponization fund and the addendum in that whole settlement with the IRS, which basically gives immunity to the president, his family, and his organization even for conduct that the government does not know of yet, which is incredible and extraordinary.

Obviously, the fact that he has now announced an indictment of James Comey yet again and a number of other measures that the Justice Department has taken as a result of this, we expect that this is going to be a tough fight for him to get confirmation, simply because of the number of things that he's had to do to try to get this job.

We heard from Todd Blanche talking to journalists in Ohio earlier today. Listen to his reaction to the president planning to nominate him.

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TODD BLANCHE, ACTING U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Obviously, I'm honored and humbled that the president indicated he was going to nominate me today. I'm looking forward to working with the senators and getting them the information they need through the confirmation process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And, look, one of the things that we can keep an eye on is the fact that if this fight that is going on that Lauren just told us about on the Hill over the immigration fight, if that is not the venue where they fight out the permanent blocking of this weaponization fund, you can bet it will come up in Todd Blanche's nomination fight, because it is something that obviously a lot of Republicans are very upset about and they want done.

And so keep an eye on that for the next coming -- for the coming weeks, because the votes are very narrowly there, I'm told, for Todd Blanche, but that could change as time goes on.

KEILAR: Yes, very important to note.

Evan Perez, thank you so much.

Still to come: some new strikes in Lebanon just one day after Israel and the Lebanese government reached a cease-fire deal, Hezbollah flatly rejecting the pact, further complicating negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on a broader peace deal.

Plus: A.I. executives are calling for urgent action from Congress. They want laws to prevent bad actors from using their technology to create deadly biological weapons.

SANCHEZ: And, later, a mystery that is bewildering New York City cops, why people are climbing down manholes into the city's underground sewer system.

We will discuss in just moments. Stay with us.

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KEILAR: The fragile cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon could be over before it ever really began, Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy that operates inside Lebanon, launching new strikes this morning, and Hezbollah's leader rejecting the cease-fire agreement reached by Israeli and Lebanese diplomats.

Iran has made a full cease-fire one of its central demands in negotiations with the U.S. Today, though, the U.S. and Iran have conflicting accounts of how their talks are going. President Trump says a deal could come as soon as this weekend, but Iran's foreign minister says there was no significant progress and no formal negotiation process under way.

We're joined now by former Defense Secretary and former CIA Director during the Obama administration Leon Panetta.

OK, first, these mixed messages, these differing accounts of how these talks are going, they are so different. How are you seeing that?

LEON PANETTA, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think the bottom line, Brianna, is, you don't know who to trust right now with regards to these negotiations.

There's a hard-line regime on the other side. I don't think you can trust what a hard-line regime says. But, at the same time, I'm not sure that the president is very credible either. He's been saying for a long time that, within a few days, we were going to have an agreement. Now he's saying it's going to happen on the weekend.

But the problem is, these negotiations, so-called negotiations, are occurring in the dark. We don't know who we're negotiating with in Iran. We're not quite sure who's doing the negotiating for the United States. Is it Pakistan? Is it Qatar? Is it other countries, Egypt? Who exactly is negotiating on this? You can't resolve this war with one- page memos.

They're going to have to be able to resolve some very complicated issues. And so I think the bottom line right now is that these discussions are stuck. Cease-fires are not holding. I do not see this going very well at all.

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KEILAR: Yes, that is certainly the sense that we're getting.

And when you do look at this Israel-Hezbollah front of this war, because, obviously, Israel and the U.S. are aligned in some ways, but, in some ways, they're not, and I just wonder how you're seeing that front impacting President Trump's ability to negotiate an end to the larger war.

PANETTA: Well, again, the problem is, nothing sticks right now.

It's -- the president tries to get Israel to agree to a cease-fire. They have managed to work out a cease-fire, but Hezbollah is not part of that agreement. So, within a few hours, that cease-fire falls away. The cease-fire in Iran -- right now, there isn't really a cease-fire. Iran is firing missiles at Kuwait and our bases in Kuwait, as well as other targets.

Even though the president says, oh, no, no, we have a cease-fire, we don't have a cease-fire. And so, as a result of that, it's no wonder that the American people are not supportive of this war. Congress now is beginning to take action with regards to the war powers to try to assert some control.

I think what you're seeing is that this war is very much turning into Trump's Vietnam. In Vietnam, we negotiated, but, in the end, the North Vietnamese basically took total control. We were lucky to get our forces out. I think we're heading in the same direction with this war.

KEILAR: You are describing a grave mistake that ends in a quagmire then. Is that right?

PANETTA: Exactly. Exactly.

I think, in the end, as long as we have a hard-line regime in Iran that cannot be trusted, whatever you work out, for example, on the Straits of Hormuz, is going to be temporary, at best, because Iran remains in control of the Straits of Hormuz.

And if you're trying to work out some kind of nuclear agreement based on the word of the hard-line regime, they cannot be trusted. You're going to have to develop a verification process to really make sure that they're abiding by limits on enrichment. And that process hasn't even begun yet.

So, I don't see any progress being made on trying to ultimately end this war, and that's what's of concern.

KEILAR: Can you point to the specific time or series of events that has you thinking this is turning in to, as you put it, Trump's Vietnam?

PANETTA: Yes.

No, in Vietnam, first of all, we never got a straight story from the administration as to what was happening in Vietnam, and I'm not sure we're getting a straight story right now from this administration as to what's happening in negotiations with Iran.

Secondly, there was a series of negotiations. We were able to kind of resolve some issues. We were able to get our forces out, but, in the end, North Vietnam won that war. And what I sense here is that, no matter what we try to negotiate with a hard-line regime in Iran, they're going to be in control of the Straits of Hormuz, and they are going to do everything they can to try to continue enrichment so that ultimately they can develop a nuclear weapon.

That's my concern, is that everything we said we're trying to get our arms around is basically going to fall away, because, in the end, it is a hard-line regime that controls Iran. And we haven't changed that.

KEILAR: And was that, in your opinion, written from the very beginning when the U.S. chose to strike Iran, but did not topple the government?

PANETTA: That was a fundamental mistake at the very beginning of this war, because the president said, based on Israeli assurances, that, once the leadership was killed, that, within a few days, the regime would collapse. That did not happen.

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Our intelligence made very clear that was never going to happen. And so it was a terrible miscalculation. The hard-line regime remains in power. And as long as they -- they're in power, whatever we try to negotiate, very frankly, is only going to be temporary.

I think where we're headed is some kind of flimsy agreement here. But, in four or five years, I think the United States and Israel may very well have to go back to war with Iran.

KEILAR: Secretary Leon Panetta, a quite alarming analysis there. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

PANETTA: Good to be with you.

KEILAR: And still ahead: a collective warning from some of the top leaders in A.I. Why they're calling for laws to prevent their technology from potentially being used to develop bioweapons.

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SANCHEZ: Another day, another new fear about the risks posed by A.I. And this isn't just about job cuts. It's about the potential to create biological weapons.

KEILAR: Yes, the CEOs of several top artificial intelligence companies are calling on Congress to act now. What they want is restrictions on who can obtain synthetic DNA and RNA.

These are the building blocks of medicines like vaccines, but in the wrong hands and combined with A.I. technology, they can be used to create devastating bio weapons.

Jacob Ward is a CNN contributor and the host and technology journalist for "The Rip Current" podcast.

All right, first off, Jacob, just tell us what a bad actor can do with synthetic nucleic acids and how readily available these are. JACOB WARD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you guys, synthetic nucleic acids

are something you can essentially order by mail these days, such that you can do in some cases really amazing work.

Vaccine development depends on that, for instance. But what the danger is here is that, in the past, you needed to be a Ph.D.-level, laboratory-trained expert in order to use this stuff. Now, with the advent of A.I., you don't have to be that. Any schmoe can in theory get online, order this stuff, and could use A.I. to make something scary.

That's the worry that everybody is talking about here. Whether that's truly a threat today, even the letter says there's mixed evidence of that. But what we do know is that it is theoretically possible. And what all of these folks are saying from the top companies here is, our technology will make it far easier for somebody to do something scary with this stuff.

And that's the threat they seem to be wanting to get out in front of here.

SANCHEZ: Does this tell us something about what these companies have discovered their advanced models are capable of?

WARD: I think, day after day, you're seeing these companies essentially bump into threats they probably didn't even know existed a few years ago, and certainly hadn't considered when they started rolling on making this stuff available to the public.

We're seeing, right, the advent of the Mythos model. This was a product from Anthropic that turns out to blow open all cybersecurity, basically. It can crack into almost any account, is what they were discovering. And so that's one thing they have backed into. This is another one.

This one, we have known about for a long time. For more than 20 years, scientists have been warning that we needed to basically be screening the people who order DNA by mail, the way we screen passengers. We need to check that they are who they say they are, what they're going to use this for, be able to trace back the use to the customer.

That kind of stuff has been argued by the Ph.D.-level people for a long time. It's the fact that the A.I. companies are getting involved. And there's an interesting thing here, because these are folks that do not want to cooperate for the most part, right?

If you -- you have got people like Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Those guys don't even speak to each other. And the fact that their names are on the same letter here does -- I think does say something.

It says at the end of the letter -- quote -- "This is a rare moment of agreement across stakeholders that are often at odds. We hope policymakers will make it with -- meet it with decisive action."

That's really a sign that these guys are taking this threat seriously. But, you guys, it's also important to point out there's always a business upside as well. And, in this case, as both of those companies are planning to go public, there's definitely some reputational and regulatory benefits being seen as being out in front of some of these dangers.

And the weird thing about the A.I. industry is that they're often far more willing to talk about these kinds of dangers than they are to talk about job loss or the threat to kids. You know, that kind of stuff...

KEILAR: Yes.

WARD: ... you're not seeing people sign up quite as easily on.

But I think the fact that this is both advantageous to them doesn't mean that it isn't also a real risk that I think they are genuinely trying to get out in front of.

KEILAR: So, if you were trying to stop a bad actor from coming up with a bioweapon, and they need this RNA, DNA synthetic stuff, plus A.I. to make something bad, it's just interesting that the A.I. chiefs are saying, you should regulate the RNA and the DNA, right?

WARD: Right.

KEILAR: Because there's also the A.I. element of it.

I mean, is it just that you can't regulate that? Is it that they don't want to regulate that? Is it an acknowledgement that it's so global and it's a Pandora's box and you're not putting it back in when it comes to the A.I., but maybe you can with this other stuff?

WARD: Yes, right. I mean...

KEILAR: Because it seems like this is applicable not just to this, but maybe to other unforeseen scenarios.

WARD: So many things, right? Exactly, Brianna.

I mean, I think you're seeing this in so many areas of life, that people with no expertise could, in theory, do something quite scary with -- with A.I.

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