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Midterm Game Changer? Supreme Court Limits Voting Rights Act; Musk Says He was a 'Fool' to Back OpenAI as a Startup; Trump Rejects Iran Proposal, Democrats Confront Hegseth. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired April 30, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

BRIAN ABEL, CNN ANCHOR: -- the game winner with 2:28 in the extra period, sending the Penguins packing.

[06:00:07]

If one overtime wasn't enough, how about two? That's when the Vegas Golden knights were finally able to break the deadlock with the Utah Mammoth.

Vegas leads that series, three games to two.

And in Tampa, the Montreal Canadiens are now a game up on the Lightning. Final score: 3 to 2.

Thank you for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm Brian Abel in Washington. CNN THIS MORNING with Audie Cornish starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Today in the group chat, no joke. It's the Voting Rights Act weakened by the Supreme Court just months before the midterms. So, did justices just help Republicans hold onto the House?

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something that every American should take extremely seriously.

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CORNISH: We're going to be asking how this ruling could reshape political power in the U.S..

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have squandered an enormous amount of time away.

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CORNISH: In-fighting has the Republican Congress struggling to do the basics. Can the GOP get out of its own way on Capitol Hill?

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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, the blockade is genius. OK? The blockade has been 100 percent foolproof. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: President Trump believes Iran will, in his words, "cry uncle." Will his strategy win the war?

Plus, big-money bets on the war now raising red flags. Are people with powerful information gambling with America's national security secrets?

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Today's decision by the United States Supreme Court just snapped us back 150 years. Like quickly, Thanos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Supreme Court just gutted the Voting Rights Act and made it harder for black and brown people to vote. No, they didn't.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I need y'all to get pissed off. They're trying to take our voices. They did take our voices, especially with what happened today at the Supreme Court.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: All right, so just months before the midterms, weeks before some primaries, the Supreme Court has both red and blue states scrambling.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish, and we're going to start with that ruling against the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.

So, the ruling was 6 to 3. The court's conservative majority found that a district in Louisiana relied too heavily on race. Chief Justice Roberts called it a snake that stretches 200 miles, linking several large cities.

Louisiana's governor is praising the decision.

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GOV. JEFF LANDRY (R-LA): It is -- what is clear now is that the game, the game of going in and basically undermining legislators, OK, and their will, which represents the will of the people, is over. OK?

And this -- this excuse that, basically, race must be -- must be included based upon certain criteria. I think the Supreme Court put the proper test, which is strict scrutiny.

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CORNISH: This ruling is already opening the door for states to eliminate black and Latino districts.

Hours after it, Republicans in Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia called for their state legislators to get to work, and Democrats say they'll have to follow suit. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC HOLDER, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE: In the short term, we will have to do that which is kind of distasteful to us. We're going to have to maneuver our maps so that we meet this Republican challenge, because if we don't, our democracy could ultimately be compromised forever.

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CORNISH: So, we're talking about whether or not this will be a game changer for these midterms.

Coming up right now, group chat: Sara Fischer, CNN senior media analyst and senior media reporter with Axios; Mike Dubke, former Trump White House communications director; and Meghan Hays, former Biden White House director of message planning.

In looking at this ruling, as I was reading it more closely, it basically says, you can't challenge a district based on its outcome. Just because it dilutes voting power, it doesn't mean that was the intent.

Now, Democrats have to go around proving intent if they want to bring these legal challenges. And Meghan, how does that change things for that -- that world of people, like Holder, who care a lot about redistricting?

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING: So, I think it -- this will become a really big issue for '28. I actually am not sure it's going to impact the midterms that much.

Louisiana starts voting on Saturday. They are going to have to move very quickly if they're going to redraw lines in two days.

Most places have already voted or had primaries. So, it's -- it's not going to have a major impact on these midterms. But it will have an impact in '28, which gives Democrats more time to figure out their legal strategy and their strategy to push back.

But this is a huge decision that is setting back fair representation. We are taking a huge step back here.

CORNISH: One, I just want to follow up on your idea. People were asked in Louisiana, Hey, what is going to happen in the next couple of weeks, given you guys have already started voting?

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I want to play for you guys, the House speaker there and also the governor.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): So, we'll see what effect it has. We have, as you know, a primary coming up in about two weeks. So, we'll see if the -- the state legislature deems it appropriate to go in and draw new maps.

LANDRY: Then the court decides to give it to us on the eve of the election. What are they telling us? Are they telling us we have to draw it? Are they telling us we don't have to draw? Should we draw?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, a lot of question marks you hear in his voice. And it's interesting, Mike. Justice Roberts, in particular, he has for a long time been looking at the Voting Rights Act with question marks in his eyes.

Here he is in 2006: "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race." Later in 2013, "Our country has changed. And while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy the problem speaks to current conditions."

Now, even in this ruling, they didn't go as far as Clarence Thomas would have liked. He wanted to strike down the whole thing.

MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Right.

CORNISH: So, yes, are Republicans, like, dancing in the end zone? Does this feel like, you know, the end of the -- it's at the end of a movement of saying, like, we've got to stop talking about race?

DUBKE: Let's be clear about what we're talking about. This is just another form of gerrymandering.

I mean, we've been talking about Texas and Virginia and California and that midterm gerrymandering. The Voters Rights Act, making race a primary issue of how you draw these districts, is just another form of gerrymandering.

So, Justice -- to Justice Roberts's point, a law that was written over 60 years ago, is it still necessary? We can have that argument. We should have that argument.

But we've also got a broken system in which we are trying to gerrymander ourselves into majorities in the House of Representatives. It is the fox designing the henhouse.

CORNISH: But could I ask you something, though? But one of the things that's interesting about this ruling is they specifically say partisan reasons are OK. Partisans' -- partisan reasons -- to protect incumbency, to protect parties -- is perfectly legal and fine.

So, in a way, it doesn't alleviate what you say. It actually elevates the partisan reasoning.

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: Yes. And I also think when I look at certain laws in the way that the Supreme Court has set precedents, for example, the standard of actual malice when it comes to defamation.

CORNISH: Right.

FISCHER: That's something that I cover a lot. The wording here matters so much.

So, the thought here that you need to prove intent is so, so, so hard for anybody to legally overcome. So, just want to put that out there.

In terms of the political and the partisan thing, I think what they're trying to get at there is that is not going to violate the way that this law is being interpreted.

What will violate the way that this law is being interpreted is if you are to make these decisions that are -- you know, end up being discriminatory against race.

And so, essentially, what they're saying is we're not ruling on whether or not this is a partisan problem. We're only ruling on this narrow thing.

CORNISH: Yes.

FISCHER: Now, if that the outcome means it's more partisan, that's a debate that we all are going to have to have as a society.

CORNISH: Well, I think we're going to have it. If the number of districts and places that are about to be rewritten moves apace. I mean, that's what we're looking at.

DUBKE: Yes. But isn't there, at some point -- we were talking about this earlier. At some point -- I mean, you're assuming that every black person in that district is going to vote Democrat. I mean, that's what I hear when I listen to Eric Holder. And I find that offensive.

HAYS: But this is what they did in Texas, right? Like, they gerrymandered districts, because they think that Latinos are now going to vote Republican --

DUBKE: Which they're going to be --

HAYS: -- which they did in '24, and I mean --

DUBKE: They're going to be proven wrong on that.

HAYS: A hundred percent. And so, it's -- you know --

FISCHER: It's short-term thinking to win political gain.

HAYS: That's right.

DUBKE: Right.

HAYS: And it's not even going to impact these midterms. And I think that's what the miscalculation is. Louisiana starts voting on Saturday for -- So, it's just -- it's a miscalculation. CORNISH: Yes. We're also going to have Marc Morial from the Urban

League here. And I mean, even without him, you saw those TikTokers. Like, there are some black voters out there that are perceiving this as an attack and dilution of their power.

So, it'll be interesting to see how those voting blocs activate as a result.

You guys stay with me, because despite everything we're talking about, Republicans have control of the House, if you can call it that. And they're still struggling.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is complicated. You know, this is adult swim. We have to -- we have to figure out a way to navigate this.

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CORNISH: Adult swim.

Also, Elon Musk returns to the stand. We're going to talk about why he told jurors that he was a fool when it came to OpenAI.

And Liv Golf is about to lose its funding. What's next for the PGA alternative?

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CORNISH: It's now 13 minutes past the hour. I want to give you five things to know to get your day going.

So, days after the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting, the Justice Department is moving to loosen gun regulations. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced 34 new rules yesterday, aimed at narrowing the definition of who must be a licensed firearm seller.

Blanche insists that the overhaul will provide some clarity for owners, but that it won't weaken law enforcement.

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TODD BLANCHE, U.S. ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: We're repealing rules that went beyond what the law allows. We are cutting unnecessary red tape. And we are replacing confusion with clear, straightforward language so that everyday Americans don't need a law degree just to understand their rights.

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CORNISH: Prosecutors say they've determined the motive in the murder case against singer D4VD. He's accused of killing 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez a year ago in L.A.

[06:15:09]

Prosecutors claim that it happened after the pair got in an argument, and Hernandez allegedly threatened to expose their relationship.

The singer has pleaded not guilty on all charges.

And former Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify in the House Oversight Committee's Jeffrey Epstein probe next month. A bipartisan group of lawmakers subpoenaed the former attorney general amid outrage over the Justice Department's failure to release all the files. And that hearing is set for May 29.

And Liv Golf may be on its last legs. "The Wall Street Journal" reports the league's Saudi backers are expected to pull funding at the end of the season.

Liv plans to inform its players and staff today. The league launched in just 2022 as a rival to the PGA tour, with an initial $400 million Saudi investment.

And today, Elon Musk will take the stand for a third straight day in his ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk was an early backer of the startup, but said on the stand Wednesday he was, quote, "a fool to give them funding."

Now, Musk is claiming that OpenAI is betraying a promise to remain a nonprofit, which Sara and I have talked about in the past. Right?

Like, even if you didn't know that Elon Musk and Sam Altman hate each other, which is public knowledge --

FISCHER: Yes.

CORNISH: -- there's been a huge question about how Altman was able to take OpenAI from a research thing --

FISCHER: Yes.

CORNISH: -- doing good in the world to a massive for-profit thing --

FISCHER: Yes.

CORNISH: -- with a big question mark.

FISCHER: Well, one of the reasons he's going to want to make this pivot is because A.I. requires such heavy investment to be able to support the infrastructure, the energy --

CORNISH: Yes.

FISCHER: -- to create it. And when you're a nonprofit, it's a lot harder to get some of that commercial backing in. That's a big part of the reason OpenAI is exploring an IPO.

But what's fascinating about Elon Musk and Sam Altman being -- going head-to-head on this whole situation is that Elon Musk is obviously trying to get in the A.I. game, right? He's rolled xAI up into SpaceX. By the way, another huge IPO that we're anticipating.

CORNISH: Exactly.

FISCHER: And so, it sounds like just two guys who don't like each other and are competitive are taking this stand.

Bottom line, though, Audie: if Elon Musk wasn't rich, no one would advise him to take on this lawsuit.

CORNISH: That's fair. But the benefit to all of us is courts mean documents.

FISCHER: Discovery.

CORNISH: And documents mean discovery. And for reporters, it's Christmas --

FISCHER: Yes.

CORNISH: -- as we're going to learn a lot about how OpenAI works.

I want to turn to this for a second. Oil prices, because they're the highest they have been in four years.

The president plans this blockade extension to force Iran's hand. And does the U.S., in Trump's word, hold all the cards?

And then there's this cleanup underway in Texas after a twister tore through a small town.

And good morning to Raleigh. Beautiful look at the sunrise there.

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PETE HEGSETH, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans, two months in.

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CORNISH: So, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was berating lawmakers and defending the war with Iran during nearly six hours of testimony before the House on Wednesday.

He's going to face the Senate today, and he's likely to be grilled again about the U.S. blockade of Iran's ports and President Trump's decision to reject Iran's proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting that blockade.

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REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): So, do you call Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz winning?

HEGSETH: Well, I would say the blockade that we hold that doesn't allow anything to come in or out of Iranian ports, it's always --

MOULTON: OK. So, we've blockaded their blockade. So, they blockaded us, and then we blockaded their blockade. That's like saying tag, you're it.

Or, you know, if President Madison had said, well, the British just burned down Washington. But don't worry, we're going to burn it down as well.

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CORNISH: Now, according to President Trump, the U.S. holds, quote, "all the cards right now." Those cards are expensive.

The Pentagon confirms that the cost of the war so far is $25 billion. And then sources are telling CNN it's actually closer to 50 billion, because they didn't count the cost of repairing and rebuilding those damaged U.S. bases.

And that's not to mention the cost to the global economy. Right now, Brent crude hits a four-year high, surpassing $126 per barrel overnight.

Now, that's gone down a little, but it's still the highest since the war with Iran began.

So, we're bringing in Neil Atkinson. He's the former head of oil industry and markets for the International Energy Agency.

So, here we are. As he says, two months into this war. And the major thing that's changed is, obviously, Iran's military has been affected. Many strikes, 13,000 strikes.

But the Strait of Hormuz, this global trade point, is effectively shut down. So, does the U.S. hold all the cards?

NEIL ATKINSON, FORMER HEAD OF OIL INDUSTRY AND MARKETS, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY: Well, clearly not, because the strait is closed and has been closed almost completely since the end of February. And --

CORNISH: So, what did you think of his performance? Like, I don't know if you watched some of it, but he was very much like, everyone needs to calm down with the skepticism. We've done a lot here. We're holding out. Like, I want to know from your -- yes.

ATKINSON: He was very bullish, which is his normal position. But the reality is that, yes, there's been a lot of strikes on Iran by the U.S. and by Israel. That's absolutely true.

However, the resilience of the Iranian regime, I think, has taken the United States and many others by surprise. There is no sign whatsoever that the regime in Iran is weakening its

grip on the country. And it's able to play a long game. There's no reason for Iran to -- to accelerate its own attacks on Gulf countries.

It can absorb a lot of punishment from other countries. And at the moment, Iran is sitting there. The strait is closed, which, yes, affects Iran because the U.S. is blockading Iranian ports, but it's inflicting huge damage and growing damage on the global economy.

[06:25:11]

CORNISH: Can I just ask one other question, though, on Iran? I mean, this is hurting their economy, and they are running out of places to put the oil.

ATKINSON: Well, that's true, yes, but the Iranian economy, it's not as if it was humming along beautifully before the war. The Iranian economy's been in a bad state for a long time. And the people of Iran are used to that. They don't like it, but they're used to that.

Iran has the ability to wait things out for a considerable period of time to come. We don't know exactly how long.

The issue is. Will the United States and Israel have the patience to continue to see this thing through?, whatever this thing actually is?

CORNISH: So, you've got Iran's parliament speaker warning that oil barrels going to $140 a barrel is coming. And then you've got the UAE leaving OPEC, the Emiratis basically saying, look, we don't want to deal with quotas anymore. We've got to figure this out, our market, on our own.

How is this reshaping oil markets, even for a generation to come?

ATKINSON: Well, the direction of travel of the oil price is definitely up. It goes down a little bit some days, up again. The direction of travel is up.

And that direction of travel will remain up as long as we have the same disruption to global supply that we've had since February the 28th.

There is no change to the underlying position. That global oil supply has fallen by ten, 12, 13, 14 million barrels a day, something like that. So, the price will continue to rise.

And because oil is priced in a global marketplace, it will have ripple effects on every economy in the world, because everybody uses oil.

Now, the UAE leaving OPEC, there's many layers to this. But it means that when the -- the situation eventually settles down as to what -- quite what settling down will look like.

CORNISH: Yes.

ATKINSON: It REALLY does settle down. It means that the -- the countries, the OPEC countries will seek to rebuild their damaged oil installations, which have been attacked by Iran, and they will try and get as many barrels out as fast as they possibly can.

So, there will probably be a race for market share amongst the producers, with the UAE no longer bound by any agreements that the OPEC group may wish to enforce.

So, medium term, longer term, we could have -- end up with a free-for- all in the oil market. But that's looking a long way ahead.

And I've been looking at oil for over 40 years, and I know full well: forecasting what's going to happen next week is tough enough, let alone 5 or 10 years from now.

CORNISH: One of the things I was hearing -- and I'm not sure if it was you. It might have been. We spoke a few weeks ago. That almost every time there's been a major global recession, it was -- like, the thing that happened before was oil, like, going high.

ATKINSON: Yes. Early '70s, late '70s, Iranian revolution. You can -- you can go on.

And what is happening now before our very eyes, because we're seeing disruption to markets in many poorer countries of Asia and Africa. Because oil is used in every country in the world, and it's becoming more expensive. So, it's having a direct economic impact on those countries.

You know, are we heading into a recession? Well, we don't yet know that.

But what we are certainly heading into is the impact, the deleterious impact on economies around the world of significantly higher oil prices, which show no sign of changing direction.

CORNISH: OK. Neil, I hope you're able to come back. Thank you so much.

ATKINSON: My pleasure.

CORNISH: We obviously are going to have many more questions as we're using words like "eventually" and "perhaps" and "soon."

But what I want to talk about next is the idea of, like, a royal snub. New York's mayor has refused to meet privately with King Charles, although he did have a message for him.

Plus, the Supreme Court limits reach of the Voting Rights Act. We're going to talk about how this cuts against decades of precedent.

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LYNDON B. JOHNSON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right; from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry.

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