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CNN This Morning
Senate 'Vote-a-Rama' on Trump's Agenda Bill Stretches into Morning; Crypto's Big Play in Washington Could Reshape America's Finances. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired July 01, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CLARE DUFFY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: -- something they're going to need to continue working towards as we approach the September 17 deadline.
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Clare Duffy, CNN, New York.
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M.J. LEE, CNN ANCHOR/CORRESPONDENT: Thank you for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm M.J. Lee in Washington, D.C. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: It's Tuesday, July 1. And here's what's happening right now on CNN THIS MORNING.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will put 51 votes on the floor.
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CORNISH: Vote-a-rama drama, another all-nighter for senators as they move forward on the president's spending and tax mega bill.
Plus, this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is anything but justice. This is the opposite of our will.
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CORNISH: Families in Idaho, furious after a plea deal is offered to the man accused of killing four college students. Why? They say prosecutors failed them.
And today, President Trump heads to the Everglades for the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. Is this remote facility the new blueprint for immigration's crackdown?
Then later, it's the confusing world of cryptocurrency. How you can protect yourself if you're crypto-curious.
It is 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Capitol Hill, where it was another busy night for senators.
Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me.
And we're going to start with the fate of Medicaid for presumed nearly 12 million Americans. It still hangs in the balance this morning.
For more than 21 hours now, senators have been locked into a so-called vote-a-rama on that Big, Beautiful Bill. That means they get to debate all kinds of amendments with no clear end in sight.
Senate Republicans are moving quickly to try and ram President Trump's agenda through Congress. The clock is ticking if they want to meet their deadline of July 4th.
Now, most of the amendments were proposed overnight by Democrats, which ultimately failed on party line votes.
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SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): It's been a long debate. I know people are weary, but at the end of the day, we want to get this done so that this country is safer and stronger and more prosperous, not only for today, but for future generations of Americans.
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CORNISH: At this point, we're watching closely two Republicans who have shown wavering support for the bill: Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They're both showing concerns over how the cuts to Medicaid would impact rural hospitals, specifically in their states.
Senators Thom Tillis and Rand Paul are already signaling that they will vote no, leaving Republicans with a razor-thin margin of error.
Joining me now in the group chat: Jerusalem Demsas, a contributing writer at "The Atlantic"; Maria Cardona, CNN political commentator and Democratic political strategist; and Ashley Davis, former White House official under George W Bush.
OK, so I want to start with the kind of two schools of reluctance. There's the Rand Paul kind of -- and other people who are like, the math ain't mathing. This thing is expensive, and it's not showing any signs of being less expensive.
And then the people who are trying to protect, in particular, this kind of safety net program.
Ashley, how does the party hold it together? Or do you see this as a performative obstruction before basically just passing it?
ASHLEY DAVIS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH: All of the above.
CORNISH: Yes.
DAVIS: This is the ugly part of passing some of these bills. We were talking before we went on air that, when you do have one party in control of everything, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, it's just everyone starts getting mad at each other. And this is where we are right now.
I think that you obviously -- as you said, we've lost Rand Paul because of the debt ceiling. He'll vote with nothing that raises the debt ceiling. And then we -- we lost Senator Tillis over the weekend.
So, we have one more. And is it Lisa Murkowski? They've been trying most of the night into this morning to try to get her on board, especially in regards to some of the rural hospital funding that she wants.
Susan Collins has been a little bit quiet.
But I think at the end of the day, you'll see in the next couple hours. They've -- they've -- they have over 600 amendments that have been filed. It may be more than that now. Thirty-seven have been voted on, as you said. Most of them failed.
CORNISH: Did you just say 37 out of 600 something?
DAVIS: Yes.
CORNISH: OK, great.
DAVIS: No, they're not going to do them all. This is --
CORNISH: Yes. Yes. I know.
DAVIS: They'll probably get to, like, over 1200.
CORNISH: Because we're talking about Medicaid, let me play one thing before I come to you, Maria, which is the president has said over and over and over again that he doesn't want them meddling in ways of Medicare and Medicaid that are going to annoy the voters.
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Let me see. I think we have an example.
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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it.
We're going to love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We're not going to do anything with that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security will not be touched? TRUMP: Yes. I mean, I have said it so many times. You shouldn't be
asking me that question.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What happens if it comes to your desk, Has the tax cuts, But also cuts to Medicaid? Would you veto that?
TRUMP: Well, we're not doing that. No, we --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you veto that?
TRUMP: I would if they were cutting it, but they're not cutting it.
We're not cutting Medicaid. We're not cutting Medicare.
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CORNISH: The argument is they're going after waste, fraud and abuse.
MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There is not enough waste, fraud and abuse to make the cuts that they're talking about. That's the problem.
And so, the president's advisors are either lying to him, or he's gaslighting the American people. I don't know which is worse.
At the end of the day, though, Audie, the -- the massive cuts that are in this bill are going to hurt so many Americans in so many states across the country that the political ads are already just writing themselves for Democrats.
CORNISH: Right. Going in with so many quotes from Republican senators.
CARDONA: Absolutely. And including the president in terms of this being not just the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to billionaires, but also a massive betrayal of the American people of what Trump promised them and Republicans promised them they would do during the election.
CORNISH: You know, there was Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri was saying, Look, I think Democrats are going to try and score a lot of cheap points off this. But the rhetoric is really tired.
What do you find in, like, the polling, how people are thinking about it? Irrespective of Democrats, how are people perceiving this?
JERUSALEM DEMSAS, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": Yes, I mean, the interesting thing is -- is how few people seem to know about what's in the bill, despite the fact that there's been near constant messaging about this.
I mean, you see the front page of papers. You see it in Democratic messaging all over the country.
But at the same time, you see very small numbers of people who are able to even identify in polls that Medicaid cuts are a part of this program. And it feels very different than in 2017, when the entire fight was
billed as repealing the ACA. So, I'm not sure how this ends up playing out in the long term.
But in the short run right now, the fact that there's nothing in the bill that says we are cutting Medicaid. Instead, it points to we're making these procedural changes to how Medicaid works, seems to be working in Republicans favor. But I don't think it's going to last that long.
CORNISH: Yes, the longer they talk --
DEMSAS: I mean, the rural hospitals --
CARDONA: The polling is horrible.
DEMSAS: The rural hospitals --
CARDONA: The polling on this is horrible, awful.
And so, I think from -- from the standpoint of what do the voters want and what do they know about? That's one of the reasons why Democrats had this vote-a-rama: to open their eyes in terms of what actually is in this.
And I think that is what has given a lot of Republicans -- not a lot, but some Republicans -- some pause, including one who just completely exploded his political career, because he was not ready to make the kinds of cuts that are in this bill --
CORNISH: You're talking about Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
CARDONA: -- for his constituents. Thom Tillis, exactly.
CORNISH: OK, let me ask you --
DEMSAS: About the rural hospitals here. Like they -- the fact they had to put in a rural hospital stabilization fund indicates that they know they're cutting Medicaid.
CARDONA: Exactly.
CORNISH: Yes. OK. Let me hold there, because Thom Tillis, who you just mentioned, I think was like, we're going for a few more hours, folks. Just so -- so we've got time to talk about this. You guys, stick with us.
As we look ahead, coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to have a congresswoman who has a plan to, quote, "expose every part of the Republican budget bill."
I'll sit down with Democratic Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari.
Plus, new details we're learning about the man police say ambushed fire crews in Idaho. And it's been dubbed Alligator Alcatraz. A new immigration detention
facility surrounded by miles and miles of Mother Nature, something the White House calls a design feature.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Look, when you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that's a deterrent for them to try to escape.
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CORNISH: It is now 12 minutes past the hour, and here is your morning roundup.
The suspect in the Idaho firefighter killings is identified as 20- year-old Wess Roley. While the motive is still unclear, his family tells CNN he wanted to be a firefighter.
The man started a brush fire, then fatally shot two responding firefighters and injured another. He was later found dead. Officials say it appears he shot himself.
The fallen firefighters are Chief John Morrison and Chief Frank Harwood.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free, free!
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CORNISH: British punk rap duo Bob Vylan's U.S. visas are now revoked. They led a crowd to chant, quote, "death to Israel's military" at a U.K. music festival.
The group was scheduled to start their U.S. tour in October. Deadline reports they've also been dropped by their agents.
And scary moments on a Disney cruise. Video shows the moment a rescue team from the Disney Wish pulled a young girl and her father into a small boat after they went overboard.
Witnesses say the father jumped in the water to save his daughter after she fell from the ship.
And coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, Elon Musk is warning Congress about Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill. How he -- how he plans to react if Trump's agenda gets the green light.
Plus, we go off script to discover the growing power of crypto. What it means for your wallet.
As we go into the break, another look inside the Senate chamber, where we're now hearing it could be a few more hours before the final vote on the president's spending and tax bill.
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[06:19:17]
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TRUMP: So, I became a fan of crypto, and to me it's an industry. I view it as an industry, and I'm president. And if we didn't have it, China would or somebody else would, but most likely China. China would love to.
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CORNISH: Going off script for a second, because we are going to talk about the growing power of crypto in American politics and the impact on your wallet.
So, you've got crypto companies and their top executives. They shelled out nearly 240 million in political campaign contributions during the last election. That's actually more than any other corporate sector.
Then you've got Donald Trump's presidential campaign receiving more than 18 million in the last campaign cycle. That's according to the FEC.
So, that's like a lot of money, a lot of influence at a time when Washington is actually making some really critical decisions about the future of digital money.
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Now, one of those decisions is the Genius Act. It's a bill recently passed in the Senate with bipartisan support, and it basically lets banks and financial tech firms, even big stores and retailers, issue what are called stablecoins. Essentially, digital dollars that are backed by cash assets.
Now, to help me sort through all of this, we're joined now by actor Ben McKenzie. He's a longtime crypto critic, and he's also the filmmaker behind the recent doc, "Everyone is Lying to You for Money."
Ben, good morning.
BEN MCKENZIE, FILMMAKER/ACTOR: Good morning.
CORNISH: So, based on the title of the film, I think I have some sense of your point of view. But I want to ask you about the Genius Act, because this is supposed to be doing something that will make us all more confident in cryptocurrency, right?
You have stablecoin, which is backed by the dollar. You have a regulator now that's supposed to oversee how all this works.
I mean, for an example, there are now rules so that, if a bank is holding a bunch of this digital currency and it goes under, government officials get to step in. What are your concerns?
MCKENZIE: Well, we're giving corporations more power over our currencies. What this bill would do, what the Genius Act would do, would allow companies such as banks, such as large corporations like Walmart or Meta, to issue their own currencies, cryptocurrencies, which are backed one-to-one with U.S. dollars.
But the problem, of course, is that Americans already don't like the power that large corporations have over us. A recent poll found 68 percent of Americans have a negative view of large corporations. And now we want to give them more power.
And of course, the corporations would benefit. Of course, the corporations would make money on this enterprise. They would be able to collect interest on the real dollars that you give them in exchange for, say, Walmart coin or something like that.
But how would the regular people benefit? I don't think they would at all.
CORNISH: At the same time, you've been doing this for so long. I've been kind of watching you in this space speak out. And you have a presidency, and you have an administration that is very deeply kind of intertwined with crypto.
I think I was reading that Paul Atkins, the SEC chair, someone with close ties to the industry. Obviously, Scott Bessent and the president himself, who has a meme coin.
And in the meantime, we've seen the Justice Department drop their cryptocurrency crime unit. The direction that this is taking seems opposite of what you've been talking about in terms of more skepticism.
MCKENZIE: Well, I mean, it's opened the floodgates to what I experienced in 2021 and 2022, and I documented it for this film. There's a lot of deception going on. There's a lot of people who are
-- are being disingenuous with what their true motivations are.
I mean, Donald Trump's embrace of crypto is pretty ironic. As recently as, I think, 2021 or 2022, he called it a scam. But now he's found a way to benefit from it, to profit himself personally from it. So, all of a sudden, he's in favor of it.
I think what we're seeing is just an enormous amount of self-dealing and self-enrichment, and unfortunately, it happens with both of the parties.
As you mentioned, the cryptocurrency industry has donated some $240 million to political parties and candidates in the 2024 cycle alone. They're the largest corporate donors of any sector.
And so, what they're doing is they're both buying influence in terms of getting people, all of a sudden, to embrace this old 30-year-old technology called blockchain that doesn't really do anything, or they're intimidating them into silence.
The crypto industry spent $40 million defeating Sherrod Brown, Senator Sherrod Brown, who was the head of the Senate Banking Committee, to which I testified in 2022. They're intimidating people, and it's working.
And unfortunately, I believe the Genius Act may pass the House. It's already passed the Senate, and it will do so with Republican support, but also with some Democrats being either bought off or intimidated.
CORNISH: Basically, in your film, you talk a lot about how crypto jargon can mislead people. And I'm also struck by the fact that it now feels sort of inevitable that we are moving into an age where cryptocurrency is going to be with us. And as the president said, getting to it first before other nations do.
So, for everyday investors, how do we start to think about this as it may appear, as you say, as a retailer, special coin or whatever? I'd be very, very skeptical.
As you point out, the words in crypto don't really mean what they mean in normal English. These stablecoins are not stable. In my film, we see when one stablecoin went down, it nearly took down the entire crypto ecosystem.
It was a coin called Terra Luna. These stablecoins are, at best, money market mutual funds. That's what they really are.
[06:25:04]
But the -- we're creating a whole new regulatory structure for them, a whole new piece of legislation in order to -- to regulate them.
This is deeply problematic, because I don't think the American people really understand the systemic risk that we have here. This crypto legislation and the -- sort of the factors around it bear striking resemblance to the factors that precipitated the subprime crisis.
I'm deeply worried that, as crypto embeds itself into our regulated system and into our banking system in particular, at some point it will break, as crypto always does, as it always collapses at some point. And at that point, we will all be bailing them out. And we will be bailing out the largest corporations in America and the largest banks. Again.
CORNISH: That's Ben McKenzie. He's director of the new film, "Everyone is Lying to You for Your Money," which is a doc about cryptocurrency. Thank you so much.
MCKENZIE: Thank you so much for having me.
CORNISH: Ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, we're continuing to monitor the Senate floor, where the majority leader says they're close to wrapping up that marathon voting session. You can watch it right there in real time, where it is inching towards a final vote on the president's agenda.
Plus, how the victims' families are reacting to a plea deal in the case of four murdered University of Idaho students.
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