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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Senate Passes Trump's DOGE Cuts Package, Sends It To House; Growing Push For Further Action On DOJ Epstein Case Findings; Deadly Crush At Gaza Aid Site. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired July 17, 2025 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:22]

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 Thursday, July 17th, 5:00 a.m. here in Washington.

And straight ahead on EARLY START.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. Senate has just voted to approve its version of the government efficiency, or DOGE bill.

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D-NY): They just cut, cut, cut. They have no idea what the consequences will be. And they don't give a hoot.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump has continued to say that he's done talking about the so-called Epstein files.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: The crowd crush at an aid distribution point in Gaza has left at least 20 people dead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are seeing that desperation mounting as there continues to be that dire need for food.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: We begin this hour on Capitol Hill, where the U.S. Senate voted earlier to approve its version of President Trump's government efficiency, or DOGE bill. The rescissions package would cancel $9 billion in federal funding that was already approved by Congress for U.S. aid and public broadcasting programs.

The package now returns to the house for final approval before going to the president for his signature. So, the pressure is on the house to pass it by Friday. The deadline is mandated by the budget rules that Republicans are using to move it through Congress without Democratic votes.

The midterm elections in the U.S. are still 16 months away, and a new CNN poll has some revealing results for both political parties. 72 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning voters say they're extremely motivated to vote in the midterms. That's up 10 points since October, and a 12-point lead over Republicans and Republican leaning voters.

But the Democrats continue to have an image problem. Only 28 percent of those polled have a favorable opinion of the party, 54 percent unfavorable. Republicans don't fare much better, either, at 33 percent favorable, 51 percent unfavorable. And when asked about the Republican Partys current control of Congress and the White House, 42 percent say it's good for the country, 57 percent say it's bad for the country.

Meanwhile, Washington lawmakers are calling for more transparency on the Epstein investigation. Fallout from a Justice Department memo on the issue continues among Republicans, including some of the presidents most vocal supporters.

But in a lengthy post on Truth Social, President Trump called them weaklings falling prey to Democratic BS he now claims the conspiracy theories are a product of the, quote, lunatic left. Here's what he said on Wednesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: House Speaker Mike Johnson is calling for all credible information from the Epstein files to be released. He's just one of several Republicans who don't think the subject is ready to be dropped.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: I think the president, Attorney General Pam Bondi, they will make the right decisions. But I'm always a believer in transparency. I think more is always better.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: You need to have all of the credible information released for the American people to make their decision.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): The idea that that DOJ and the FBI, who prosecuted cases relating to this, don't have any idea who Epstein's clients were and that he had no record of it, of the clients, I don't -- I find that kind of hard to believe.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I have to disagree with the president. I don't think human trafficking of young teenaged girls being exploited by billionaires on a private island is boring. (END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: CNN's Kristen Holmes has more details on the president's attempts to distance himself from the Epstein case.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump has continued to say that he's done talking about the so-called Epstein files, but he himself is the one that continues to bring it up. He sent out a tweet on social media in which he essentially assailed his supporters, calling them former supporters over the fact that they still had questions about the release of these Epstein files.

He wrote, "My past supporters have brought into this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) hook, line and sinker. They haven't learned their lesson and probably never will. Even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats' work. Don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don't want their support anymore.

[05:05:03]

Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Well, it didn't end there. President Trump, while sitting down next to the leader of Bahrain, then fielded questions about Epstein in these questions. He went after so many of his supporters. Take a listen.

REPORTER: One big prosecutor look at it all. Would that make you feel good, do you think?

TRUMP: Well, I think it's in the case of Epstein. They've already looked at it and they are looking at it. And I think all they have to do is put out anything credible. But, you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years. I can imagine what they put into files, just like they did with the others.

HOLMES: Now, you heard him there saying Republicans got duped. Just a reminder that some of these Republicans, he says, got duped by these -- what he's now calling the Epstein hoax, where people he put into the higher highest echelons of his administration, and that includes the attorney general, Pam Bondi, the head of the FBI, Kash Patel even his own vice president, J.D. Vance, called at times to release these so-called Epstein files.

President Trump is now doubling down on this idea that this is a hoax, that this was perpetuated by Democrats. Of course, that is not true. This was a real occurrence, a real thing that happened. And it's also something that a number of people went to the ballot box in November and cast their ballot for president Trump in order to get these files released, in order to hold the so-called elite accountable, in which there have been long rumors that Jeffrey Epstein was covering for.

So, this is now becoming a real divide between President Trump and his MAGA base. And I'm talking to a number of these people, some of them, sure, they've started publicly pivoting away from this issue. They don't want to be in the crosshairs of President Trump.

But others are confused. They're angry. They don't understand why he is lashing out. And it's just unclear right now where this goes from here.

Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: And joining me now to discuss all of this and more is Mariana Alfaro, politics reporter for "The Washington Post".

Mariana, thank you so much for getting up early with us.

Let's start on the Hill. You know, just in the last few hours, overnight, the Senate sent a bill over to the House that would claw back some $9 billion in federal funds that were already approved by Congress. This is known as a rescission. President Trump really wants to get this done. He's even dangled threats of withholding his endorsement to anyone who might be on the fence about supporting this.

Talk to us about the impact of this bill. For starters.

MARIANA ALFARO, POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes. I mean, we're looking at, you know, $1 billion in cuts to PBS and NPR, which is something that the president has really railed against. He says that he and other Republicans say that these public stations should not be receiving they're already receiving, you know, funds from, you know, private sector donations, fundraisers, obviously, as we know, NPR and PBS cannot just live off other private donations.

They, you know, are -- have been historically funded by the federal government. So, this is probably going to impact, you know, rural stations all over the country. There was a little carve-out made in the Senate version of the bill for Senator Rounds from South Dakota that would allow for stations that serve native communities and reservations to be spared from the cuts.

But that's one of the biggest impacts we're seeing coming from the rescissions bill once it moves on to the House. If it passes there, another big cut in it is just it basically takes away a lot of the money that was being sent internationally, and that was mainly managed by USAID, you know, as we know, U.S. aid has been gutted by the Trump administration, but a lot of the programs there, the money was still allocated for these different things across the world that, you know, were winning the U.S. a lot of soft power. They're being cut to.

There was a last-minute change to in the Senate version for PEPFAR, which is a program that's estimated to have saved millions of lives in the fight against AIDS, so that a lot of that money is going to remain, but otherwise, a lot of the money that the U.S. is spending abroad for aid missions is going to be cut.

LEE: Okay. So, let's move on to the issue that has completely erupted inside the MAGA world, the Epstein files.

President Trump is clearly getting more and more frustrated. Yesterday, he lashed out at his supporters, who say they want more transparency on these files, calling them weaklings who are falling prey to Democratic BS and then the president had this exchange with our colleague DJ Judd yesterday. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DJ JUDD, CNN WHITE HOUSE PRODUCER: President Trump, would you consider appointing a special counsel to investigate the Jeffrey Epstein investigation?

TRUMP: I have nothing to do with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: So that was definitely a dodge.

Mariana, where is this story going?

ALFARO: Yeah, I mean, honestly, yesterday's message was one of the strongest messages I've seen of the president going out against his own base.

And this is a base again, that rally after rally would support him whenever he said that he wanted to release the files, that he wanted transparency on the case. You know, it's a big, big rallying cry in the MAGA world.

And, you know, seeing the president turn it over to Democrats has been interested in giving that Democrats have tried in Congress to pass a motion to call for the release of most of these tapes or records.

[05:10:11]

And Republicans have been the ones who blocked it.

That being said, there's a few MAGA Republicans in the House that are, you know, trying -- they're already upset about this, about the president dodging on this, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy mace, Thomas Massie, and they -- and Massie himself was the one to introduce -- he's trying to introduce a measure that would, you know, go through -- the way it would work is that if they get enough support from Republicans and Democrats, they could get through leadership to bring it to the floor. That would release it would call for the release or more transparency in this case.

So, we'll see if more Republicans join Massie in that effort. Democrats themselves have said in the house that they want more transparency, too, so they would be willing to support a measure that would advance the push out of these documents.

But again, it'll be interesting who in the House is willing to cross Trump on this, given that he's already come out so strongly against his own supporters. But again, I have not seen something that divided the MAGA world so much between them and the president as this release that he is now trying to move on from.

LEE: Yeah, definitely seems like a first of its kind. Before I let you go, let me quickly ask you about this new CNN poll that just came out, 72 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning voters say they're extremely motivated to vote in the midterms, but only 28 percent of them said that they have a favorable opinion of the party, definitely a mix of good news and bad news for Democrats in this poll.

Do you think Democrats have a clear sort of political strategy right now heading into next year?

ALFARO: It definitely feels like the leadership is starting to come to its senses in terms of listening to what people want. I think that, again, you know, we keep using the New York mayoral race as an example. And I don't, you know, obviously New York is not the country that the city there is very different electoral-wise.

But I do think that there's been a lot of conversations on the Hill about what strategies, what campaign items they're worked on that they could incorporate and kind of turn over to their own constituency. And I think that were going to see Democrats trying to reach more to the public and beyond grassroots, but more directly into that economic message, which works so much for Trump, and it works so much for Mamdani over in New York.

So, I think that that's perhaps the biggest sign. I see that they are waking up to the reality that they can't just focus on, you know, a lot of the issues of social issues that they carried on in previous campaigns. I think that the economic messaging doubling down on how much the recent cuts enacted by congress through the Trump administration are going to hit people's pockets.

LEE: Yeah, definitely a really fascinating moment for the Democratic Party right now. Mariana Alfaro, thank you so much for joining us.

ALFARO: Thanks so much.

LEE: The U.S. president is once again trying to undermine the chairman of the Federal Reserve, saying on Wednesday that he would love for Jerome Powell to resign. But he also said it's highly unlikely he'd be fired. And yet, Donald Trump hasn't ruled that out and hinted it could be possible to remove Powell for fraud.

The president has suggested the $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve Buildings could be grounds for dismissal, even though the structures are almost a century old and in need of extensive repairs for safety upgrades.

President Trump has long railed against Powell for refusing to cut interest rates, and claimed to be surprised that he's still around.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He's a terrible Fed chair. I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him. But they did. (END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Keep in mind, it was Trump who initially appointed Powell in 2017. During his first stint in the White House.

President Trump did acknowledge that removing Powell could disrupt the market. Wall street posted gains on Wednesday. So, let's take a look at the U.S. futures a few hours ahead of the opening bell. You can see there a little bit of a mixed bag across the board. The Dow futures slightly down 0.05 percent, S&P 500 futures, and NASDAQ futures are both in the green.

Coming up, a fragile ceasefire is in effect in southern Syria. What the country's new president is saying about Israel's role in the sectarian violence.

And plus, grief and mourning in Gaza, after nearly two dozen people are killed at an aid distribution site. We'll have the latest in a live report.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:19:07]

LEE: We are watching to see if a ceasefire holds between government forces and Druze militias in southern Syria, where tensions dating back centuries are rising to the surface once again in a spate of deadly clashes. Video from late Wednesday shows Syrian military vehicles leaving the area. But this conflict involves another major player, Israel.

The Israeli military struck a number of targets in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Wednesday in support of the Druze. Syrian authorities condemned the attacks as a dangerous escalation. They say at least three people were killed and dozens more were injured.

The Druze are a minority Arab sect of more than a million people, who live mostly in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. They've come under attack from Arabic Bedouin groups and militias loyal to Syria's new Islamist government.

[05:20:06]

And at least 20 people in Gaza were killed in a crowd crush at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and a warning some of the images you're about to see are disturbing.

This is the first time the controversial Israeli and U.S. backed organization has acknowledged deaths at one of its sites. The GHF said 19 people were trampled and one person was stabbed in a surge driven by agitators in the crowd. The Palestinian health ministry said. 21 people were killed, 15 of whom died from suffocation after tear gas was fired, and six others were shot by Israeli forces.

The Israeli military referred CNN to a GHF statement on the incident.

And CNN correspondent Nada Bashir joins me now live from London.

Nada, these details are just horrific. What more do we know?

NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They are horrific. And this is, as you mentioned, yet another deadly incident that we have seen reported by Palestinians around these aid distribution sites managed by the Gaza humanitarian foundation, that controversial aid organization backed by both the United States and Israel.

And while in previous instances the CHF has not acknowledged any sort of deadly incidents, actually at its sites, although there have been acknowledgments of deadly incidents nearby its distribution sites. It has acknowledged what it has described as a chaotic surge at this distribution point, where Palestinians were desperately waiting to try to attempt to get what little aid is being made available to Palestinians in Gaza by this aid organization.

Now, again, we have heard conflicting reports of what actually took place on the ground. The GHF, as you mentioned, has accused outside agitators of being in the crowd, causing the chaos leading to the surge. They say that at least 19 people were killed as a result of the crushing, and at least one person stabbed in the crowd.

But this stands in contrast to what we have been hearing from the Hamas government media office. It has accused the GHF of telling people to come to this distribution point to receive aid and then locking them into these sort of metal cage structures that we have seen that that led to the chaos in the crowd.

The Palestinian health ministry has said that more than a dozen people admitted into hospital, those killed actually suffered from suffocation as a result of tear gas being thrown into the crowd. So, clearly, on all sides, while we are seeing that conflicting account of what actually took place on the ground, deadly chaos, as we have seen in several other instances around these distribution points, and this really underscores the desperate situation that Palestinian civilians in Gaza are facing, trying to acquire aid.

Again, this is just a trickle of aid coming in in comparison to what is actually needed, in comparison to the amount of humanitarian supplies that would have been entering the Gaza strip in pre-conflict times. And what we've been hearing repeatedly now from humanitarian organizations, from U.N. agencies, is that more needs to be allowed in. And crucially, the U.N. has been pushing for aid to be allowed into Gaza through U.N. mechanisms, as would have been the case prior to the establishment of this GHF mechanism.

We have seen some amount of aid being allowed in via UNICEF, but again, this is very limited. The U.N. says hundreds of people have been killed just since May trying to get aid. So, a hugely desperate situation -- MJ.

LEE: Yeah. Really vivid image of the desperation, as you say.

Nada Bashir in London, thank you so much.

A U.S.-based -- U.S.-based professor was gunned down in Greece in what could be the work of a professional hit man. Now five people are under arrest and about to face a prosecutor. We'll have a live report.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:28:33]

LEE: Five people who were arrested after the murder of a U.S. based professor in Greece are in court in Athens at this hour. The victim's ex-wife and four others were brought to the courthouse a short while ago, where they're expected to testify before a prosecutor.

Professor Przemyslaw Jeziorski was gunned down in Athens on July 4th in what a police source described as a likely hit job. He was highly an acclaimed economist who taught marketing at the University of California, Berkeley.

And journalist Elinda Labropoulou is keeping an eye on this story. She joins us from Parga, Greece.

Elinda, tell us more about this story and where this is headed in terms of the proceedings in the courthouse today.

ELINDA LABROPOULOU, JOURNALIST: Well, at the moment, five people have been arrested. They are testifying. They're appearing in front of a prosecutor as we speak. They were detained last night.

We've been hearing from lawyers from both sides that they are likely to be charged today. And we understand that one of them has confessed to the murder.

The person in question is the boyfriend of the ex-wife of the professor. And with him, another three people appear to have been arrested, and the three have also testified to being accomplices.

The wife of the professor denies any connection to this. But of course, it's early days. We'll have to wait for the charges to be handed out to see where things are going.