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Early Start with Rahel Solomon
Trump Expected To Sign Domestic Agenda Bill Today; Trump: Hamas To Respond To Ceasefire Plan In 24 Hours; Stocks Finish On Upnote Amidst Surprisingly-Good Jobs Report; U.S. Archbishop Slams Immigration Crackdown. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired July 04, 2025 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:13]
MIN JUNG LEE, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to our viewers, joining us from the United States and all around the world. I'm MJ Lee. Rahel Solomon is off.
It's Friday, July 4th, 5:00 a.m. here in Washington, D.C.
And straight ahead on EARLY START:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: President Trump celebrated the passage of his landmark policy bill.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory.
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): It's a crime scene going after the health of the American people.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump told reporters he's expecting Hamas to respond within 24 hours to the latest ceasefire proposal.
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That day will come too late for more than 80 killed in just one day.
KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: The archbishop of Washington is slamming President Trump's immigration crackdown.
CARDINAL ROBERT MCELROY, ARCHBISHOP OF WASHINGTON, DC: It's morally repugnant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: We begin here in Washington, where President Donald Trump is getting his Independence Day wish. He'll sign his massive tax and spending bill into law today at the White House. The president took a victory lap at a rally in Iowa on Thursday, calling the bill a phenomenal victory for the American people.
He also railed against Democrats, none of whom voted for the bill, saying he hates them because they hate their country. And he promised to help Republicans campaign on his expected success of the bill in next year's midterm elections.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved. Just hours ago, when Congress passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill to make America great again. With this bill, every major promise I made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: The bill extends the 2017 Trump tax cuts, overhauls, Medicaid and food assistance eligibility, and puts caps in place for taxes on tips and overtime. It also phases out green energy tax credits, increases spending for defense and border security, and lifts the debt ceiling.
More now from CNN's Michael Yoshida.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL YOSHIDA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A deeply divided House passing the Senate's version of President Trump's mega bill.
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA), U.S. HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: Nobody said it would be easy. But you know what? We didn't come here to do easy things. We came here to do big things.
YOSHIDA: A group of hardline GOP members who had threatened to block the sweeping tax and spending cuts legislation eventually falling in line for following an intense campaign from the White House and Republican Party leaders.
The president reportedly promising fiscal hardliners concerned about trillions being added to the national deficit that certain provisions for green energy tax credits would be phased out.
REP. LISA MCCLAIN, U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICAN: What those holdouts were doing was exactly what we were all doing. We are advocating for our district.
YOSHIDA: Democrats denouncing the bill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaking for hours, delaying a final vote.
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY), U.S. HOUSE DEMOCRAT LEADER: I'm going to take my time and ensure that the American people fully understand how damaging this bill will be to their quality of life.
YOSHIDA: The multi-trillion dollar legislation would unlock tax cuts and funding boosts for national security, partly paid for by the largest cut to the federal safety net in decades. Tax breaks and changes to the tax code could benefit corporate America, manufacturers and high income Americans, while low income Americans could be worse off due to the bill's historic cuts to Medicaid and food stamps.
A ripple effect could also hit the health care system, especially rural hospitals. And roughly $3.4 trillion is also projected to be added to the deficit over the next decade.
In Washington, Michael Yoshida reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEE: Mark Shanahan is an associate professor of politics at the University of Surrey. He joins me live from Oxford, England.
Mark, great to have you.
You know, earlier in the week, there were moments when getting this bill through by Donald Trump's deadline of July 4th, today, seemed maybe overly ambitious. So how big of a win was this for the president?
MARK SHANAHAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF SURREY: This is a huge win. This really cements his domestic legacy, and it shows how much the Republican Party is now under his thumb. There were holdouts on both sides. Conservatives who are economically hawkish, looking at the rise in the deficit, the overall rise in the debt.
And then there were moderates. There were centrists who didn't want to see Medicaid cut, for instance, and to be able to get all of these groups together to lose just a couple of votes in the Senate, to have only two holdouts in the House, just shows the central controlling power that Trump now has.
[05:05:05]
Compared to the first Trump administration, this second administration just looks very, very much more professional and very much more in control.
LEE: Yeah. You know, I specifically asked how big of a win this was for Trump, not the Republican Party writ large, because it was a bill, as you noted, that so many GOP lawmakers had a tough time getting behind. In fact, Democrats are already previewing next year's midterm elections.
Here was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries yesterday. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFFRIES: So, I know that there are people concerned with what's happening in America. But understand what our journey teaches us is that after Project 2025 comes Project 2026. And you will have an opportunity to end this national nightmare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: So how does this bill change the political landscape heading into next year?
SHANAHAN: Well, that was quite some magic minute from Hakeem Jeffries there. I think what it shows actually is Democrats still on the back foot.
They now have a big, as they would call it, a big ugly bill to pick apart to show the deficiencies in it, to show perhaps how it's going to polarize the United States. And they have ammunition to throw at their Republican opponents.
Particularly in the House, some of those opponents will be quite worried about the provisions of this bill. Youve got in Kentucky, in Washington, even in New York state. In really quite a lot of states across America, districts where there are very high sign to Medicaid.
Now, these people are likely not to benefit from the bill, that they could lose benefits considerably. And they are hardly likely now to ally with Republicans. They're going to make it a lot harder for some of those House members to be reelected next year. Now, Trump has said he will come out and campaign with them, but he's going to have a hard fight there. And it might become harder if Elon Musk fulfills his promise to primary against some of Trump's supporters and to back some of the opposition to his candidates.
LEE: Yeah, that relationship certainly seems shattered, at least for now. So, President Trump had a very good week in terms of getting through something that was a major domestic priority for him. There was a lot of arm twisting, a lot of wrangling behind the scenes to get this bill through.
Do you think ultimately the party will stay unified on other legislative priorities for the president?
SHANAHAN: It's going to be difficult. We begin to move now into the very early stages of midterms, and people start thinking much more about their district. They think much more about their state. What is going to get them reelected next time?
There is a lot of pork barrel politics at play in this bill that while Trump says that no deals have been made behind the scenes, quite a few local deals have been cut. We'll see where some of that spending on defense goes. We'll see where the money goes for boosting some of his preferred industries, how it affects areas where perhaps there has been a large amounts of money put into clean energy in the past, where they're going to lose subsidies.
People are going to face some very hard fights next year. They will hope that there are some headwinds, some momentum on the economy that supports them. The tax cuts will be a short-term win, but this bill has the ability to bite as well, and it won't bite evenly across the country. It won't bite evenly across demographics, and you will have a lot of Republicans are having to defend some fairly hard and stark choices.
And that might be the point where they break from this unanimity or near unanimity support for the president.
LEE: Yeah, politics really looming large over this bill.
Mark Shanahan, thank you so much. President Trump reveals a possible time frame about a U.S. ceasefire
proposal for Gaza. But the plan is too little, too late for some victims of the latest Israeli strikes.
And Russia launches a record number of attack drones at Ukraine, prompting many people in Kyiv to take shelter underground. What we know about the latest assault after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:14:21]
LEE: President Trump says we should know within the next 24 hours if Hamas will accept the latest ceasefire plan for Gaza. He made the statement after hours ago as he headed back to the White House from a rally in Iowa. We're also learning more details about the U.S. proposal, which Israel has already accepted.
A source familiar with the plan says it includes five hostage releases over 60 days. It also calls for a surge of desperately needed aid into Gaza, and Israeli troops would withdraw from most of the territory, but would remain in the Philadelphia corridor along Gaza's border with Egypt.
For more, Paula Hancocks joins us from Abu Dhabi.
[05:15:00]
Paula, the ball has been in Hamas's court for a little bit now. So, does a response from Hamas now seem imminent?
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, MJ, we have had a statement from Hamas, and they have said that they will announce their decision once they have held consultations with other factions within Gaza. Now, they don't specify how long that may take. They don't specify which factions they will be talking to.
But we do know that the militant group Palestinian Islamic jihad, for example, has been holding hostages as well. So, it's an acknowledgment that the process is moving forward, but clearly it is not an acceptance or a denial of the current proposal on the table at this point.
Now, we did hear from the U.S. president. He believed there would be a decision within 24 hours. That's what he said on Thursday. We're now Friday afternoon local time. So, there are expectations that this could come shortly.
Israel, we understand, has already accepted the proposal. There will be a cabinet meeting on Saturday night with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he will then be discussing the deal with the whole cabinet. Now, on Sunday, Netanyahu flies to Washington, and then on Monday, he's expected to meet with the U.S. president.
So, it certainly does feel as though things are moving forward. And we have been hearing more vocal pressure from President Trump saying that he wants to see a ceasefire in Gaza. He has been saying he wants to see it soon. Let's listen to part of what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I want the people of Gaza to be safe, more importantly. I want -- I want to see safety for the people of Gaza. They've gone through hell.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANCOCKS: So, he's referring there to the fact that that that people in Gaza have gone through hell, they're still going through hell. In fact, on Thursday we saw more than 80 people being killed in a number of different strikes, in a number of different events across the Gaza Strip, some waiting for aid, some sleeping in tents.
And it just shows how crucial it is for this ceasefire to go ahead. Humanitarian aid groups saying it is the absolute basic that is needed. The basic requirement to stop the guns and the airstrikes so that they can try and get humanitarian aid to a population that is starving. And that is one we understand from a source. One of the proposals or parts of the proposal that there will be a flood of aid that goes into Gaza -- MJ.
LEE: Paula Hancocks, thank you so much.
Ukraine's air force says Russia launched a record number of attack drones and missiles at the country overnight.
Thousands of residents spent the night in shelters, including in subway stations or underground parking lots, as explosions and the sound of drones echoed through the city. During the attack, which lasted 13 hours. Ukraine's military says Russia launched nearly 540 drones, plus 11 ballistic and cruise missiles in the early hours of Friday. The mayor of Kyiv says at least 23 people were wounded.
The massive attack came just hours after Ukraine's president said a U.S. company will produce hundreds of thousands of drones this year for the country. This comes as the Trump administration pauses some weapons shipments to Ukraine.
President Trump earlier gave this update on his efforts to get a ceasefire in Ukraine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there. I don't think he's there. And I'm very disappointed. Well, it's not -- I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop. And that's too bad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: Those comments came after the president said earlier in the day that he did not make any progress towards a ceasefire during his lengthy talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Russian state media, President Trump talked about ending the war in Ukraine as early as possible. The Kremlin quoted President Putin saying he would continue to try to solve what he called the root causes of Russia's so-called special military operation in Ukraine.
A senior Catholic leader is speaking out against the Trump administration, calling its immigration agenda morally repugnant. We'll have that CNN exclusive next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:24:14]
HANCOCKS: Time is running out for the U.S. to reach trade deals with dozens of countries before President Trump's self-imposed deadline on July 9th. He says he'll likely start sending out letters today telling trade partners, quote, what they're going to pay to do business with the U.S. The president has only made deals with three nations since hitting pause on his reciprocal tariffs in April. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said about 100 countries could continue to face 10 percent minimum tariff rates after the deadline.
The latest economic data shows the U.S. added more jobs than expected last month. It's good financial news that's helping to shape the nationwide perception of the economy, and it's sending stocks soaring.
Matt Egan reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: U.S. stocks zooming into record territory on this holiday shortened session.
[05:25:05]
Both the benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gaining about 1 percent to close at record highs. The Dow is less than 200 points away from an all time high of its own. And fear and greed, the CNN gauge of market sentiment flipping into extreme greed mode for the first time in more than a year. It's been quite a turnaround from extreme fear just a few months ago.
Investors are clearly relieved at the better than expected June jobs report showed that the economy added 147,000 jobs during the month of June. That easily beat expectations.
The unemployment rate was supposed to go up. It didn't. It went down to 4.1 percent. All of this paints the picture of a surprisingly resilient job market, despite all that uncertainty caused by the trade war.
Every time forecasters expect a real slowdown, it doesn't happen in this job market just continues to chug along.
Now, we should note, though, that beneath those positive headlines, there were some other trends that bear watching, notably the fact that job growth was not widespread. It was really concentrated in three areas -- leisure and hospitality, health care, and state and local government jobs, in particular, education jobs.
Some sectors did lose jobs, including manufacturing, which lost 7,000 jobs for the second month in a row. That's, of course, the exact opposite of what the administration wants with its high tariffs. Also, the federal government lost jobs as well.
The Black unemployment rate surged to nearly 7 percent. That's the highest level in three years.
And lastly, we've got to keep an eye on the supply of workers, because we did see that the number of people who are looking for work, that fell in June and that did help drive the unemployment rate lower. Morgan Stanley says that this is early evidence that the immigration crackdown from the administration is, quote, having a chilling effect on the workforce.
The bottom line here is, yes, this job market continues to defy expectations. And it does look resilient. But there are some concerning trends just beneath the surface that bear watching.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEE: President Trump is once again hinting that he may give undocumented farmworkers a pass when it comes to his immigration crackdown.
He told a rally in Iowa he still plans to deport criminals, murderers and drug dealers, but he doesn't want to take workers away from American farms.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to do something that were going to sort of put the farmers in charge. And if somebody if a -- if a farmer has been with one of these people that works so hard, they bend over all day, we don't have too many people can do that, but they work very hard and they know them very well.
And some of the farmers are literally, you know, they cry when they see this happen. If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way, Kristi, I think we're going to have to just say, that's going to be good, right? You know, we're going to be -- we're going to be good with it, because we don't want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms. We want the farms to do great like they're doing right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: The U.S. Supreme Court is now allowing the Trump administration to deport a group of migrants to South Sudan. The group is from Cuba, Vietnam and Laos and has been held for weeks on a military base in Djibouti. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the move illegal, writing in her dissent that they will likely face torture or death. The Trump administration is trying to speed up deportations by sending migrants to other countries if their homeland will not accept them.
The archbishop of Washington is slamming President Trump's immigration crackdown. In an exclusive interview with CNN, Cardinal Robert McElroy says the way the Trump administration is rounding up and deporting immigrants is inhumane.
Here's a part of his conversation with our Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARDINAL ROBERT MCELROY, ARCHBISHOP OF WASHINGTON, DC: It's right to be able to control our borders. However, what's going on now is something far beyond that. It is a mass, indiscriminate deportation of men and women and children of families, which literally rips families apart and is intended to do so.
And the mechanism by which it's doing it is the creation of fear -- deep, profound fear within the community of about 10 million undocumented men and women and children and family, the great majority of whom have lived in this country, contributed, worked very hard, lived by the laws, and have contributed enormously to our society.
And so, this is simply -- not only incompatible with Catholic teaching, it's inhumane, and it's morally, morally repugnant.
CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: I mean, some people say that those being deported have got criminal convictions and therefore it's legitimate to do this.
