Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Georgia's Secretary of State Called to Resign; Vote Counting Continues in Battleground States; Supreme Court Hears Obamacare Arguments; El Paso Adding More Mobile Morgues. Aired 9:30-10a
Aired November 10, 2020 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:33:04]
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, if you haven't heard, there is a fierce battle in Georgia, not only for those two Senate seats, but about the Republican secretary of state.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.
HARLOW: He is not stepping down this morning. This is after the state's two Republican senators looking to be reelected called on him to resign.
SCIUTTO: Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue calling the election an embarrassment for the state. But why? The loss? They have not failed to offer a single example of fraud or illegal voting, which the secretary of state, again a Republican, has said very publicly there is no evidence of.
Joining us now is CNN's Sunlen Serfaty.
Sunlen, so you've got fierce races coming up in January, which -- in which the balance of power in the Senate hangs. So you have that dynamic here.
Are they targeting the Republican secretary of state for political benefit or do they actually want him removed?
SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, so many fascinating dynamics on display here in Georgia and certainly highlights just how fierce Georgia will be over the next few months, the fact that you have these Republican senators calling for the Republican secretary of state to resign.
Now, those senators are claiming allegations of fraud. They really have been blasting the election process in Georgia. But notably, as you said, they are not offering a single shred of evidence of fraud.
Now, the secretary of state, he said, look, I'm not going anywhere. In a statement yesterday, he said, quote, earlier today Senators Loeffler and Perdue called for my resignation. Let me start by saying that this is not going to happen. The voters of Georgia hired me and the voters will be the one to fire me. As secretary of state, I'll continue to fight every day to ensure fair elections in Georgia, that every legal vote counts and that illegal votes do not count.
And, of course, these runoff races are on track to be January 5th of next year. And, of course, the stakes could not be higher. You have -- if Democrats win both of these seats, you have a potential for Democrats to retake control of the Senate.
[09:35:04]
Of course, 50/50 split, that's assuming that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote here in the Senate. So, again, enormous stakes. A lot of fascinating political dynamics.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
SERFATY: And these two Republican senators, of course, Jim, really taking a page from President Trump's playbook here, really blasting the election -- the results and election process in a state where, of course, they did not get the results right now that they'd like.
SCIUTTO: Yes. That line from the statement, that is not going to happen, from the secretary of state, notable.
SERFATY: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Sunlen Serfaty on The Hill, thanks very much.
Well, the presidential race in Georgia is one of several contests that we are watching. Still too close to be called formally.
Let's bring in CNN's senior political analyst John Avlon.
OK, so, John, in a few of these battleground states race still too close to call but the margins have been widening in some, not in others. Tell us where we stand.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right.
Well, let's start -- because we've all got Georgia on our mind, let's take a look at the latest numbers out of Georgia. This race is really tight. We're talking 0.2 percent separating them, around 12,000 total votes, but 99 percent reporting, and that means yesterday Joe Biden added to his vote total just 745 votes. So this thing is narrowing down but Biden definitely seems in a solid lead.
Now, let's pivot over to Arizona where all eyes have been on Maricopa County. Now this is an area point -- you see 0.4 percent separating them, 14,000 votes, but Donald Trump has been making gains. Biden was down, i.e. Donald Trump was up 2,385 votes just since yesterday afternoon. And we're at 98 percent reporting there. And we've got 62,000 votes still outstanding in Arizona.
So, all right, now let's go down to Pennsylvania, because that's been the big kahuna in this race. Republicans making legal challenges. But right now you see we've got 0.7 percent separating and Joe Biden leading by 45,000 votes. Why does that matter? Because Trump won the state by 44,000 last time around. So he has exceeded that total.
So you see, we've got 98 percent reporting. We've got around 53,000 ballots still out. And that is very significant. But, again, this race has been called, even though Republicans are trying to stop the counting or stop the certification, as it were.
HARLOW: John Avlon, thank you. Count every vote.
AVLON: That's right.
HARLOW: That's what they're doing. We appreciate it.
AVLON: Thanks, guys.
HARLOW: OK, the future of Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, and health care for millions of Americans, well, it hangs in the balance today because today's the day that the Supreme Court hears arguments and that happens in just a few minutes. We're going to tell you why it matters to you, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:42:00]
SCIUTTO: OK, moments from now, the Supreme Court hears arguments on the future of Obamacare. And here is exactly what's at stake.
HARLOW: Right. Why does it matter to you? Politics aside, this is analysis from the slightly left of center Urban Institute. If the ACA is overturned, here's what they say will happen, an additional 21 million people would not have health insurance, 15.5 million more people would not have health coverage through Medicaid or through the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. That helps low income Americans and disabled people get children health care. And all of this is happening in the middle of a pandemic, when access to health care is more important than ever.
On the economic front, this study also found that overturning the ACA could have a huge impact on the economy. They project the demand for uncompensated care would rise by $58 billion.
With us now is our Supreme Court analyst and biographer Joan Biskupic.
So, Joan, the justices are hearing the arguments today over the phone, which is just so unique to this time, on such a pivotal case. What is the central question here?
JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Sure. Good morning, Poppy.
And those stakes couldn't be higher, as you've just laid them out. The question is whether this law that was passed in 2010 is now invalid because of an amendment that Congress adopted in 2017 that zeroed out the tax penalty for the individual insurance mandate. And that mandate is not even enforced anymore because of the zero penalty.
So the really crucial question, Poppy, is whether if one part of this law is flawed, does it sink the entire, you know, thousand plus page law that, you know, involved Medicaid, keeping children on their parents insurance policies until they're 26, all sorts of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions like cancer and epilepsy, should one potentially flawed provision bring down the whole law? That's what's at stake now in round three of this challenge to Obamacare.
SCIUTTO: OK. So famously the chief justice, John Roberts, provided the swing vote, upholding Obamacare the last time this went to the highest court. Of course the court's composition has changed now, 6-3 conservative majority.
BISKUPIC: Yes.
SCIUTTO: We often ask you, with difficulty to read the tea leaves here about where the justices may or may not stand, do we have -- do you, oh, great wise one, have a sense?
BISKUPIC: Well, let me just say that four justices who upheld the law in 2012 and 2015 are still there. So they need at least one of the new Trump appointees, Justice Barrett, Kavanaugh or Justice Gorsuch. And both Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett, to an extent, have suggested that they might think that you don't have to sink this entire law if you -- if this one part is invalid.
[09:45:02]
And, again, they could -- John Roberts, at this very tumultuous time in America, is going to try not just to get a majority this time, but I suspect he'll try to pick off at least two other votes so that it's 6-3 or 7-2 to uphold it.
So, Jim, I really do think that the court is going to try to figure out a way to uphold it because this challenge is actually very weak.
SCIUTTO: Wow.
HARLOW: Yes.
BISKUPIC: Very weak in terms of --.
HARLOW: Well --
BISKUPIC: Go ahead, Poppy.
SCIUTTO: That's interesting.
HARLOW: I was just going to say, on that issue, it is interesting and aren't there two key questions, is there even standing by these attorneys general who have brought it, can they even show harm, right, because there's been no tax implication since that's gone --
BISKUPIC: Yes. HARLOW: And, b, severability, right, haven't there been conservative justices who have recently said yes you can sever off part of a law but keep intact the rest?
BISKUPIC: Right. And it sounds like a stodgy principle, but it's the key to this case. And Justice -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh both wrote last session, last summer, that if -- if there's a part of a law that is flawed constitutionally, what you do is you use, in the chief justice's words, a scalpel, not a bulldozer, to remove that part.
SCIUTTO: Right.
BISKUPIC: And Justice Kavanaugh, who has yet to rule on the merits of Obamacare, remember, he just came on in 2018, he said that the severability question, as I said, a stodgy word but an important word here, it shouldn't mean a game of gotcha against Congress. If Congress messes up in one way or another, and that's yet to be shown whether that 2017 amendment really does -- really is unconstitutional --
SCIUTTO: Right.
BISKUPIC: Whether that should bring down this entire law that has managed to survive two other challenges and ten years so far in America.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
Just very briefly, because we have to go, Joan --
BISKUPIC: Yes.
SCIUTTO: But how quickly do we expect a decision or do we know?
BISKUPIC: Both times before when these cases have been heard, we didn't hear until June, I expect sometime early in 2021 we'll know the results of this third big challenge, Jim.
SCIUTTO: Gotcha. OK. So, patience.
Joan Biskupic, thanks very much.
HARLOW: Yes, thank you.
BISKUPIC: Thank you. Thanks.
SCIUTTO: El Paso's two-week shutdown is set to end tomorrow, but as Texas moves closer to one million coronavirus infections and the death rate sadly spikes there, there is a good chance the shutdown will be extended. We're going to have a live report from El Paso, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:51:59]
HARLOW: So the state of Texas is on the verge of becoming the first state to surpass a million coronavirus cases in that state alone.
SCIUTTO: El Paso County, along the Mexico border, has already added six mobile morgue unites. I mean just a sad measure of this when we see these pop up. It means hospitals, morgues being overwhelmed. Four more trailers, sadly, on the way there.
CNN's Omar Jimenez is there in El Paso.
And tell us what the trajectory is and do they have the resources now to handle that.
OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim and Poppy, the trajectory right now isn't good. And it's been trending in an awful direction in recent weeks, setting records for all the wrong reasons.
When you look at deaths, for example, there's a reason those mobile morgues have had to be requested. Six of them already here, four more on the way, just to try and keep up with the deaths that we are seeing here in El Paso.
Another critical measure, of course, is hospitalizations, which we have seen at record -- at record levels in recent days, close to 50 more people added to the hospital, currently there from yesterday into today as well, battling COVID-19. And at this hospital, where we are in particular, more than 240 people are inside battling, again, as they try to get a handle on -- on the outbreak here in El Paso, one of the hardest hit places in the entire state of Texas, a state already hit harder than many places around the country.
Now, as part of the mitigation plan for officials here, we had a county judge who put in place a two-week shutdown for non-essential businesses here, again, to try and help stem the rapid growth of cases that we have seen come and he's saying that he may have to extend that order.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICARDO A. SAMANIEGO, EL PASO COUNTY JUDGE: The hospitals are still not manageable. We're having, you know -- you know an inability to handle fatalities. It leaves me no choice but to lean towards an extension of the -- of the order.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JIMENEZ: Now, the state of Texas is fighting that order, fighting to block that order, I should say, along with a few local businesses here as well, saying that there are other ways to go about slowing down the spread.
But to put it in perspective to show how significantly impacted El Paso is, they've got a little bit more than 27,000 active cases of coronavirus here. When you compare that with the population, that's one in every 30 people here has COVID-19 currently.
Jim. Poppy.
HARLOW: One in every 30. That is a number that's hard to wrap your head around.
Omar, we appreciate you being on the ground reporting there. Thank you very much.
Ahead for us, Attorney General William Barr is joining a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers who are not only buying but amplifying the president's efforts to delegitimize the outcome of the election. Let's talk about the impact.
[09:54:51]
That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:00:03]
HARLOW: Top of the hour. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.
SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto.
Think there's a lot of news out there?
