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Inside Politics

Trump Agenda Clears Key Hurdle In Dramatic Late-Night Vote; Democrats Divided After Mamdani's NYC Mayoral Primary Upset. Democrats Lean Into Trump Backlash to Win Back Senate; Interview with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); Inside RFK's Sweeping Overhaul of U.S. Health Policy; Trump Launches Extreme Makeover: White House Edition. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired June 29, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(MUSIC)

[08:00:18]

MANU RAJU, CNN HOST (voice-over): Make or break. After a late night of arm twisting, the Trump agenda clears a key hurdle.

SEN. DAVE MCCORMICK (R-PA): The ayes are 51. The nays are 49. The motion is agreed to.

RAJU: But with the July 4th deadline just days away.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a great bill. It's a popular bill.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The House will not be jammed by anything.

RAJU: Can badly divided Republicans seal the deal?

My panel joins me with the very latest from Capitol Hill.

Plus, identity crisis. Political shockwaves after a Big Apple bombshell.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NYC MAYORAL CANDIDATE: We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford.

RAJU: But as Democrats divide over a new messenger --

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): We have a choice to listen to that message or not.

REP. JARED MOSKOWITZ (D-FL): I'm not a socialist and I don't believe in socialism.

RAJU: Is this the Democrats' future or downfall? And extreme makeover, White House edition. And RFK Jr. shifts vaccine

policy.

INSIDE POLITICS, the best reporting from inside the corridors of power, starts now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU (on camera): Good morning. Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Manu Raju.

It was a dramatic Saturday night on Capitol Hill. And it's not over yet. Senate Republicans threatened to defy President Trump and his furious push to get his massive policy bill onto his desk by self- imposed July 4th deadline.

But Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and senate GOP leaders furiously lobbied holdouts one by one and got them to fall in line on the first hurdle, starting floor debate on the bill with many roadblocks still left to clear.

Now, leaders held that vote open for more than 3-1/2 hours to finish the job. That's just about longer than any Senate vote this year. And moderate holdouts like Lisa Murkowski voted yes to begin the debate, as did conservatives like Mike Lee, Rick Scott and Cynthia Lummis, as well as Senator Ron Johnson, who flipped from a no to a yes. And in the end, Thom Tillis and Rand Paul were the only Republicans voting against starting debate, although some are still demanding more changes before deciding whether to ultimately vote yes on the sweeping bill.

It was yet another example of Trump's dominance over his party and his ability to get other institutions of government to bend to his whims, as he did this past week in a sweeping victory with a Supreme Court that expands the power of the presidency to enact his policies unilaterally.

Now, overnight, Democrats protested and forced Senate clerks to read the 940 page bill aloud, pushing back debate in the senate until later today and final votes into Monday and likely setting up a bitterly divided and narrow House GOP majority to decide how to proceed.

Let's break this all down with my excellent panel this morning, "Semafor's" David Weigel. "Punchbowl News'" Anna Palmer, "Bloomberg's" Mario Parker and our very own Lauren Fox, who was burning the midnight oil last night on Capitol Hill and is up bright and early for us this morning. Thanks to you all for being here.

I mean, so before we get into just so much of everything that happened over the last day and weeks, just to remind everyone about how complex, how significant this piece of legislation is, and it would affect so many people, millions of people, because it includes a multitrillion dollar overhaul of the United States tax code, deep spending cuts, changes to social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps, hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for defense programs to help also Trump carry out his deportation policies. Phasing out green energy tax credits a $5 trillion increase in the national debt limit. And there are so many other details.

But underneath all the details is why there's been so much Republican infighting, which led to all the scenes we saw play out late into the night last night, Trump, Vance pressing these holdouts to get in line.

You were there, Lauren. What are your big takeaways from last night? And the big question we have today is, are they ultimately going to get the votes to pass this bill?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean, it was really interesting because we were watching Lisa Murkowski so closely last night. We did not know how she was going to vote. And then when she voted yes, it felt like, okay, the momentum is starting to move.

RAJU: And she was about -- 90 minutes, she was sitting there not saying how she was going to vote.

FOX: Exactly. And that was sort of my focus. Then all of a sudden after she votes yes, then there's this mad scramble with the conservatives and Thune's office for more than an hour at that point. And that became then the focus for so many of us.

Okay, that shows you how leadership has such a fine line to walk here, because on the one hand, they got to give Lisa Murkowski what she needs to be happy.

[08:05:04]

She's more of a moderate Republican. She has concerns about her state of Alaska getting Medicaid funding slashed, as well as potential cuts to food stamps in her state.

Meanwhile, you have conservatives who are asking for a totally opposite bucket of items to get their votes, and that just shows you how difficult this is for John Thune and how difficult it's going to be once again for Mike Johnson, once it gets to the house.

RAJU: Do you think it will pass the Senate?

FOX: I think it's going to take more arm twisting. I still think we have to watch Susan Collins really closely. I think the conservatives are in a good spot right now. But again, this amendment process is going to have to play out in that vote-a-rama. And that can be unpredictable. It's really a little bit unruly.

RAJU: And that's why it's for those who don't speak senate speak. It basically allows any senator to offer any amendment for as long as he or she wants, until really until they tire themselves out so they can make a whole host of changes on this bill through the course of the day, which is why this is such an unpredictable, unwieldy process.

And they're following this route so they can pass this bill along straight party lines without any Democratic support. Which is why, of course, this is also partly why this is so controversial.

But we also saw yesterday was something so rare in the Trump era, which is a Republican defying Donald Trump. Senator Thom Tillis, who is up for reelection this year, voted -- next year, voted no, as did Senator Rand Paul.

We've seen -- we knew Rand Paul was going to vote no. He's been -- no. He's opposed to the increase in the debt limit in this plan. Trump railed against both of them on truth social. This is what -- this is what Thom Tillis said about the bill. He said it would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals in rural communities. Trump went after Tillis on two posts on Truth Social last night and said that he would support a primary against Senator Thom Tillis.

He said, I'll be meeting with these people over these candidates, potential candidates over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the great people of North Carolina. And so importantly, the United States of America. And of course, thank you for your attention to this matter.

But it's all really scared -- Trump's effort to intimidate other members, other Republicans who may be thinking about buckling to ultimately get them to fall in line.

DAVID WEIGEL, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Right. And one thing you can do with the majority of this size is let someone like Thom Tillis in theory, vote, vote against the party. He is probably -- if Roy Cooper runs, which he has a timeline for doing, the former governor probably the most endangered Senate Republican.

And the arguments Democrats made about Medicaid really, 90 percent of the arguments about this bill were about how to draw people from Medicaid, even with after assurances from North Carolina Republicans that they would -- they would comport themselves with this in the state. That was -- that was his reluctance. But Trump's feeling really good. And he has won North Carolina three times. So, you can see his confidence that somebody with his mindset would have -- would have no trouble with that.

And also, this screws up some of their messaging, talking to conservatives and how they'll message this bill. They don't talk as much about Medicaid. They talk about the border funding that's going to be in the bill. They talk about the ways they're going to run against Democrats having voted against school choice and border security. And Tillis screws that up.

So, if Trump does it make sense, any other Republican could sell that message better. Sure.

ANNA PALMER, FOUNDER & CEO, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: But don't you think -- I mean, Tillis had put himself into a corner, right?

WEIGEL: Right.

PALMER: I mean, publicly for the last week. He'd been handing out handouts at meetings. He'd been saying he wasn't going to vote for it. He said this was Republicans, Obamacare. I mean, if he had switched course on this, I think it would be

really, really difficult for him. I mean, he basically the attack ads write themselves.

WEIGEL: Yeah.

RAJU: I mean, you know, we don't have to get so deep into the North Carolina primary here. But like, look, Tillis is probably the best chance they have to hold that seat. And but Trump only cares about loyalty.

MARIO PARKER, MANAGING EDITOR OF ECONOMY AND GOVERNMENT, BLOOMBERG: No, absolutely. And you saw the statement that the White House sent to senators, right, saying that this would be the ultimate betrayal should they not follow through and --

RAJU: Ultimate betrayal, you know, even past presidents would say, okay, if you got to vote no, vote no, because it may help you in your reelection, but not this president.

PARKER: No, this is the ultimate betrayal for Trump. Right. And the opening salvo for all of this was last weekend when it came out that he was ready to primary Tom Mass -- Thomas Massie, right, as well.

So, you saw him starting to wind up for all of this, for anyone that got out of line, even as he had been relatively quiet for Trump, right. So, he had the soft power with golfing, with Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham and others yesterday. Right. We hear about him at the White House making calls as well. We've had the visits to the White House also.

But then you come out with this cudgel that he's been using to rule the party for the last decade, right? Which is the fact that even if you survive a primary from your right, it's costly. It's expensive, it's not going to be fun. You're going to get beat up.

RAJU: Yeah. And so, let's talk a little bit about just the horse trading, because the substance really does matter. As I mentioned here at the top, because there were actually a ton of changes that they made to slip into this bill that was released about midnight almost Saturday morning in this 940-page bill that includes an additional $25 billion of relief fund for rural hospitals.

[08:10:02]

It would delay the so-called provider tax, which is a huge factor. One reason why that Thom Tillis voted no because of his concerns about that, how that would cut Medicaid, it would new requirements for wind and solar projects.

And then there were some very parochial issues for Lisa Murkowski, adding food stamp requirements. Alaska suddenly is not going to be subjected to them, and tax cuts to Alaskan whalers.

I remember the cornhusker kickback for those who may be remembering that Obamacare, that's what one Ben Nelson for to support that back in 2009 and 2010. She voted yes, perhaps, because of this.

FOX: Yeah. I mean, these were snuck in the bill into Saturday morning and it was still really tough to get her vote on the senate floor. But I think that the food stamp waiver is the most significant piece of this, because right now the federal government covers the cost of that program for states. They were essentially arguing that what was going to happen is if your state had a high error rate, you were going to be on the hook for covering some of those costs. Alaska has an extremely high error rate. So, this was going to really impact her state.

That waiver is so interesting. And they don't name Alaska by name. They just say countries or excuse me, states that are not connected to the United States of America, not part of the contiguous United States of America will qualify. So Hawaii also gets to ride on that train.

RAJU: Yeah, it was so, so interesting. And now what happens now? Okay. So, let's just say this bill passes the Senate. I think there's probably a greater than 50 percent chance that ultimately passes the Senate.

As Lauren said, we'll see what Susan Collins does if she votes no. She has not said how shell vote on the final passage, but J.D. Vance will be there to break the tie, so well have to lose two more Republicans for this to sink in the senate.

That seems at the moment unlikely. But what about the House? The House is really complicated right now because they passed their bill by a single vote before Memorial Day. And there are conservatives upset about the changes in the Senate. There are moderates concerned about the changes as well. Just a couple of them put out tweets just yesterday, one of the most swing district Republicans, David Valadao of California, said, I will vote no, he said in a tweet yesterday, citing the Medicaid changes.

And then you have the hardliners. The hardliners, like Chip Roy of Texas, who says I will -- he said he didn't. It's important to know that jamming us with this bill before he has a chance to review it is, quote, bad. How are the -- how do you expect the conservatives to play this in the house?

WEIGEL: They have caved at every important step of this process. And that's how Democrats now view it, too. They have heard Chip Roy being incredibly passionate about things that he cannot vote for until he votes for them. So, the Democratic math in this is still a lot of looking back and being bitter that three members ran for reelection or reelection when they were old and had dying of cancer, and they're down three votes in order to block this. That's complicated,

It -- they take -- Don Bacon announcing his -- well, not announcing the rumors that Don Bacon will retire in Omaha. Thats he's one of three Republicans in a Harris seat, the Harris win in November. That changes the math, too. There are not that many Republicans that are in danger beyond Valadao and Bacon if he's not running, not technically in danger.

PALMER: Yeah, I mean, I would also say, listen, they got the SALT cap, right? That's the biggest thing to me.

RAJU: State and local tax deduction.

PALMER: State and local tax deduction -- go ahead.

RAJU: Yeah. This is a -- New York Republicans were demanding that for their vote. They ultimately got it. They raised the amount people can deduct in their local and state taxes to $40,000. It's now at $10,000. Thats enough for several of those Republicans. One of those says he's still a no.

PALMER: Right, right. I mean, we'll see. But I think but the fact that they raised it back up to 40,000, even though it's only five years, it is a huge win for the moderates here when it comes to that, I do think I agree with you. I feel like some of the conservative Republicans here, the Chip Roys of the world, feel a lot like Senator Ron Johnson. There are no until they're yes.

Are any of these House Republicans really going to stand in the way of Trump's signature piece of legislation? I have a hard time thinking that, you know, it's going to be tough. It's going to be difficult. The speaker and probably J.D. Vance and probably the president are going to have to get involved, but it feels like the momentum here is they are going to get this bill done.

RAJU: Yeah. And the house speaker and the House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, said yesterday they would call the house back within 48 hours, potentially after the Senate votes. We'll see if that actually happens before July 4th. That's a big question, but let's talk about the politics of this.

You know, this is a bill that if you look at public opinion polls, not particularly popular among the American public right now, this is among a Fox News poll from this past week. It says that total number of independents who support this bill not good, 22 percent favorites, 73 of independents oppose the bill. Ouch!

I asked Republican senators about this over the last day or so, just about the politics, the impacts on the midterms and about why they believe -- why this bill is so popular, or unpopular, according to the polls.

[08:15:09]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I think that's a result, probably, of doing one big bill. If we'd have broken this thing up and done, border and military early on, we'd have got Democrat votes for that, made the tax cuts permanent.

RAJU: The polls don't look particularly favorable to the bill.

SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): I've heard you say that. I've heard people say that. And I was like, what poll?

RAJU: There are lots of polls.

MULLIN: Because in every red state I know of, they love it. It's President Trump's agenda. The bill is popular because the president is popular and we're moving forward with it.

SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): I think that that's when you pass it and prove the public wrong and let them live with lower taxes and the permanency of tax cuts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PARKER: I mean, I think Lindsey Graham summed it up in your interview, right? The fact is that these tax, the tax cuts that Trump passed in 2017 are set to expire. They're being essentially held hostage by this bill with everything else. Right?

So, they have nothing really new to tout about the bill. Maybe no tax on tips, overtime, et cetera, but the ask that this White House is putting forth to Republicans, right, where you got a fourth of your Republican voters who use Medicaid, who are in the marketplace, a third of which are identify as MAGA as well.

The fact that you're essentially throwing Democrats who are wayward in the lake, essentially a log for which to latch on to themselves as well. I mean, when you look toward 2026, the Republicans that I speak to, they're nervous about the political backlash of this.

RAJU: It's the messaging failure so far by the Republicans to sell what this is. We've seen this happen to other majorities where they fight over the process without selling it to the public.

FOX: Well, and they're not unified on what the best parts of this bill kind of are, right? I think --

RAJU: They just call it beautiful but what --

FOX: Exactly. And I think everybody believes that the tax cuts are important. But if you're an American sitting at home and you've enjoyed these tax cuts for a period of time, are you really going to notice that they didn't go away and then come back, right? I think the fact that they're going to fix this problem before it's a real problem might actually hurt them in their reelections as well, because people don't necessarily remember what their tax rates were, before 2017. Most people don't.

RAJU: Yeah. And if they don't see it, then we'll see how they impact and react in the midterms. It just will define them in terms, no doubt about it.

Up next, a stunner in America's biggest city leaves Democrats divided on the path forward. New reporting on that next.

And later, RFK Jr. had a busy week. His new vaccine policies and what they mean for you, that's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:22:01]

RAJU: The Democratic establishment is still regaining its balance after shock waves in New York City this past week. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who went viral for his videos focused on affordability, prevailing over New York's former governor, Andrew Cuomo.

But many Democrats are uneasy about Mamdani and what his message could mean for them. This morning, we have brand new reporting from our very own Isaac Dovere on Cuomo's collapse and how Mamdani's apparent victory is shaking up the Democratic Party.

My panel is back, including Isaac with his excellent reporting.

So, Isaac, take us through what you learned in about what happened inside the Cuomo operation, which really imploded.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah. And look, it should be started by saying that this was a historic expansion of the electorate by Mamdani. So many new voters showed up beyond what any polls were showing, private or public, and all the other campaigns, except for Mamdani and Cuomo's, collapsed. And that had a lot to do with what was going on here.

But what I get into in the story is how much was going on that went wrong behind the scenes for the Cuomo campaign. I've got details from internal conference calls and debate prep things.

The story starts with Melissa Derosa, who is Cuomo's most loyal aide, who was saying to people she wasn't really working on the campaign, but was really actually running the campaign, being pressed by other people on the campaign. Why? Why isn't he campaigning more? And her saying to them he's doing as much as he can, which is really capturing, I think for a lot of people, what this campaign was, it seemed lackadaisical.

It seemed like they had an understanding of they thought they had an understanding of city politics, that others thought it didn't seem like they had at all. And they struggled throughout to keep up with how this race was changing. They thought it was a public safety campaign beginning. They thought it was a campaign where Cuomo could talk about Israel and antisemitism, and have that be overriding in people's minds.

But Mamdani, with the way that he was breaking through with his force on the ground, was surprising, not just progressives, but the Cuomo campaign. Everybody just taken aback by this. And just speaking right toward affordability is one of the people that I talked to on the campaign said to me, we were talking about Israel all the time, and that's an important issue. But even if people care about that, they also care about their rent. And if they're making a decision, they're going to go with the guy who's talking about the rent.

RAJU: Was it more about the issues for Mamdani, or was it about the actual candidate? DOVERE: It is -- it was both, really. I mean, there was a progressive

operative that I talked to about a month ago who said to me, Mamdani's people think that they can door knock their way to the revolution, sort of dismissing it a little bit, but they did. They knocked on millions of doors or a million doors with 40,000 to 50,000 volunteers, and they broke through with this connection to him that Cuomo could never get through.

One of the things I talked with Cuomo campaign about is what did he ever think about apologizing, or at least trying to mitigate the really negative feelings people had about him and Cuomo himself felt he would tell people like the people who were against him were a lost cause.

[08:25:04]

There was no point to it.

After the campaign is over, and I talked to some of the people on it. Some of the staffers said that they made a mistake by not pushing him more. Some said, hey, that's the way it goes. Now, we'll see what happens.

RAJU: Yeah, and you mentioned about people they should reach out to, the -- is interesting. The demographics and how this broke down in New York City. Mamdani won with higher income residents, with more college graduates, with more white residents, and also he won narrowly, more narrowly with Hispanic residents and more significantly, with Asians.

But he lost significantly to lower income precincts and with Hispanics. Sorry. I'm sorry with Black precincts as well. Mostly Black precincts.

You covered this as well, David. What's your takeaway from that?

WEIGEL: Well, even that number with Black voters, it's better than Bernie Sanders did when he ran in New York, when he ran for president in New York and lost to Hillary Clinton.

Isaac set it up. Well, the Mamdani campaign knew where the puck was going six months ago. Didn't know, but had an idea this was not if it was going to be a public safety election, he tweeted, queer liberation means defund the police. So that was going to be out there. It was -- it was about policing he would have a disadvantage.

They thought, this is going to be about affordability right after the Kamala Harris loses, Mamdani is doing videos, stand up videos in parts of New York that swung towards Trump and asking people why they voted for him, and they say affordability.

So, he was relentless, saying freeze the rent, free childcare. I'm going to tax the rich to do it. It's possible. And he had answers like, we're just going to raise some of these taxes as high as New Jersey. I -- don't be scared of me. That was really -- that was where the electorate was. And because there was so much support locked up in a very lazy Cuomo candidacy, he was losing ground in every poll you could see throughout the race.

They just didn't -- they believed in the way that a lot of people believed Trump could never, could never win in 2015. Republicans, they believed, well, as long as it's one on one with Mamdani, he can't break through. And they didn't realize he already had broken through.

RAJU: Yeah. And meantime, there's this -- all this churn within the Democratic Party about what it means to nominate a democratic socialist and America's biggest city. And the party is divided.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OCASIO-CORTEZ: This isn't just about Mr. Mamdani as an individual. This is about the message that the people of New York City are trying to send to our party.

REP. RITCHIE TORRES (D-NY): I think my concerns are well known, but obviously there are many in the Jewish community who are worried about his positions.

MOSKOWITZ: I'm not a socialist and I don't believe in socialism.

RAJU: What's your reaction to what happened in New York this week with Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist winning the nomination for mayor? Does that concern you at all?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Well, their election is still in process, but congratulations to the nominee of the Democratic Party. I -- my focus politically is strictly winning the house. So, that's where my focus is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Noncommittal Nancy Pelosi on that one.

PALMER: But what's interesting is, you know, we had an item earlier this week about house Democrats in New York being very concerned about what this means for them in the midterm election, right? And the fact that Republicans are going to go after them and say, hey, look at what this party wants. They want to have, you know, kind of policies that are not in line with what the Democratic Party wants. And if you talk to establishment Democrats who run these races, who live in these big races, this kind of momentum for a socialist Democrat is the exact opposite of what they want.

DOVERE: I'll tell you. I talked to Paige Cognetti as the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden's hometown, after Mamdani one, she said to me, a lot of what Mamdani is talking about, she doesn't agree with, doesn't think could work, at least in her city. But she said the way that he's talking clearly about affordability and breaking through, talking about what voters want in a way that connects with them, is something that all Democrats need to talk about.

RAJU: It's so -- it's such a fascinating race and a snapshot of where the Democratic Party is right now. We'll see if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries decide to endorse. So, yeah, they're from New York, of course.

All right. Coming up, the race is on to define Donald Trump's mega bill. And how will it play in the midterms? I asked the Democrat in charge of flipping the Senate. Her answer is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:33:39]

MANU RAJU, CNN HOST: If Donald Trump gets his way and signs his mega bill into law, what would it mean for the 2026 midterms? And would it give Senate Democrats, who have an incredibly difficult map, a chance to regain power?

Democrats have to pick up four seats to win the majority, but their best pickup opportunities are in Maine and North Carolina, as they have to defend an incumbent in Georgia and open seats in Michigan and New Hampshire.

Now, I recently spoke with the Senate Democrats campaign chairwoman, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and that interview was before this past week's mayoral results in New York City. And I asked her about her party's path back to power. And it centers on campaigning against Trump's big bill.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: Senator Gillibrand, thanks for sitting down with me.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY): My pleasure.

RAJU: You've got your work cut out for you to get back into the majority, you have to pick up three seats. You have to defend swing states like Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia.

There's just one incumbent Republican senator who's running in a state that Kamala Harris won. That's Susan Collins, who's never an easy target. So how are you going to do that? How are you going to get back into the majority?

[08:34:41]

GILLIBRAND: Well, there's three things in our favor right now. The fact that President Trump has really created a toxic agenda that is creating a backlash against him and his policies, the cuts to Medicaid, not dealing with the cost of groceries and the cost of housing and the cost of medicine.

Those types of policies are harming Americans. So that's point one.

Point two, we have the winds in our favor in a midterm normally. And then we're going to have formidable candidates in lots of red states.

And I would just say Republicans have double the number of seats up that we do. And so they have a lot more seats at risk than Democrats.

RAJU: How do you fix the brand problem for Democrats, particularly in those red states?

GILLIBRAND: So Democrats ran in the Senate well, last cycle in red and purple states. You saw Ruben Gallego win in Arizona. Jacky Rosen win in Nevada, Elissa Slotkin win in Michigan, Tammy Baldwin win in Wisconsin.

So despite the fact that President Trump won those states, we've had strong Democratic Senate candidates not only we'll have them this cycle, but we had them last cycle.

And so I think Democrats will run on making sure the economy is strong for working families, that we should get the cost of groceries and the cost of housing and medicine down.

We will run on the fact that health care should be a right, not a privilege. And these cuts to Medicaid, cutting over 14 million people off of Medicaid is disgraceful.

RAJU: But there's no path also to win back the Senate without Maine, without what's -- and we've seen some of your candidates consider who are considering it and deciding not to run.

One person you're looking at is Governor Janet Mills. And she doesn't seem to -- she seems to be hesitant about running. How big of a blow would it be if she decided not to run against Susan Collins?

GILLIBRAND: I'm confident we will have a formidable candidate for Maine.

RAJU: Even if Governor Mills does not run.

GILLIBRAND: I'm certain of it.

RAJU: There's a primary that's building in Texas there. Talk about Texas, how you view your ability to compete. Texas has always been a complicated state for Democrats. And do you anticipate getting involved in the Republican primary, helping Ken Paxton, who would be viewed as possibly a weaker candidate in a general election?

GILLIBRAND: Yes. So one of the failures of the Republican Party has been the recruiting failures. The fact that Cornyn has a tough primary. Paxton, the fact that polling shows Paxton is ahead, that puts Texas in play.

Paxton is extreme. He has a lot of problems and issues.

RAJU: Will you try to help the -- Ken Paxton in the primary? Will you try to meddle in that?

GILLIBRAND: I -- no. I haven't even considered that because I'm confident we're going to have a formidable Democrat. We have a lot of candidates considering the race right now. And I'm very hopeful that this candidate will prevail because the Republican Party continues to make mistakes on their recruiting.

It's not -- it's not just Texas. It's also in states like Louisiana where primaries are being laid. I think it's putting a lot of red states in play that in in other years would be harder to win.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: And my panel is back right -- with me right now.

So her view is be anti-Trump and that the overreach by the Trump administration will be enough for them to get back into power, even in red states. Is that the right theory of the case?

DAVID WEIGEL, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Well, the affordability part that she mentioned -- Gillibrand is going to be the last Democrat who references Zohran Mamdani and whether that's a model.

However, he proved that Democrats out of power don't own the inflation issue anymore. There's some backlash against Biden, but he's off the map. He's not going to be campaigning anywhere.

And the way that he talked about it, I think beyond ideology, you're going to see more Democrats say how in a way that seems normal to me as a candidate can I talk about affordability? Can I be a real person and introduce myself to people before the ads come in? Because Mamdani was -- he had money, but he was outspent by super PACs.

Every Democrat knows that McConnell PACs are -- I guess, the Thune PACs now are going to come in and air bomb you with -- in October. How do you make yourself a separate from the brand likable candidate who doesn't seem like a leftist before that? That's the challenge.

RAJU: It's the brand issue that they have not been able to fix. And I didn't really hear an answer. And I said, what about the brand? She's like, well, what about Trump?

ANNA PALMER, FOUNDER AND CEO, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Right. I mean, I agree with you. I think what really struck me -- struck me about her interview was how much she talked about affordability and not trying to say it's just about Trump.

I think Democrats in the last election focused a lot of their firepower on Trump, Trump, Trump, all of the super PAC ads. She's kind of laid out to say, hey, it's candidate quality. It's going to be about affordability, and it's also going to be around this Medicaid stuff, which is really I think Democrats believe the gift to them is the Medicaid provisions in the Big, Beautiful Bill.

RAJU: Yes, no question about it.

I do want to -- I'm eager to get your thoughts about Texas, Lauren, because you deal with John Cornyn a lot. He mentioned that Texas is in play, in her view, because of this vicious primary that's going on on the Republican side.

I asked Cornyn about Gillibrand's comments.

[08:39:45]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I just talked to Kirsten Gillibrand. She thinks Texas is in play because the primary. Do you think that the primary puts Texas in play?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Well, (INAUDIBLE). Well, there's no doubt but that if the attorney general is Republican nominee, there will be hundreds of millions of dollars spent in a futile effort to try to keep that seat in Republican hands.

So I think to that extent, I would agree with her sentiment, the risk of the wrong person winning the primary would be catastrophic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: There's real fear in GOP circles about this Texas primary.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I think it works to Cornyn's favor, right? That he's the guy that they can trust. He's run reelection before. He's clean in the sense that he doesn't have some of the baggage that Ken Paxton has.

And that argument is so interesting because it's not very often that John Cornyn and Kirsten Gillibrand agree on Capitol Hill about something.

But that's certainly the argument. Now, I still think it's a really tough climb for Democrats, even if Ken Paxton is the nominee because of the politics of Texas. This has been like the one that got away for so many cycles now.

But it is just this fascinating moment for John Cornyn where he can kind of use that argument and has been using that argument, right, that he is the most trustworthy candidate to just get them through, so this isn't a problem that they have to worry about down the line.

RAJU: Yes. And very quickly. Do you think Trump was going to get involved here?

MARIO PARKER, MANAGING EDITOR FOR GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMY, BLOOMBERG: Oh, yes. Absolutely. You see him already trying to seize on Mamdani.

RAJU: He has -- but no, no. In the Texas race specifically.

PARKER: Oh, oh yes.

RAJU: He has not endorsed anybody yet.

PARKER: Yes, he's staying on the sidelines. We know that he's quite fond of Ken Paxton, right? Ken Paxton kind of embodies the MAGA doctrine.

But Trump was burned by that 2022 midterm cycle, right. Part of his political rise over the last four years or so is the fact that he took a he took the blame for Republicans' bad showing in 2022 with those primary candidates that were a bit too extreme.

And one has to think that he's learned his lesson there.

RAJU: Yes, that's why he's taking this very carefully at the moment. But John Thune, the majority leader, wants him to get behind John Cornyn. We'll see if that happens.

All right. Up next, Health Secretary RFK Jr. and his new hand-picked vaccine advisers have had a very busy week. What they've been up to and what experts are saying about all of that, that's next.

[08:42:09]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: Some major new developments this week on how Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wasting no time flexing his muscle and reshaping American health standards. And this week's brand-new changes come with some sweeping implications for millions of Americans.

CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell has been all over the news this past week. So, Meg, what's the latest?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We're seeing an increasing influence of RFK Jr. on U.S. Vaccine policy. Last week we saw the first meeting of his handpicked new group of vaccine advisers to the CDC, who said they were going to do things like reexamine the childhood immunization schedule which is something that pediatricians and other experts emphasize is safe and protects kids against a number of different diseases.

The group also took a vote on an old target of anti-vaccine groups. A preservative found in about 4 percent of flu shots called thimerosal. Groups had suggested there could be a link to things like autism. But decades of study have shown there is no link there and no other safety concerns have emerged.

Nonetheless, the group voted to recommend that Americans not receive flu shots with this preservative, something that critics of this decision suggested was a way to sow doubt about the safety of vaccines.

Meanwhile, as this meeting was kicking off, Kennedy posted a video address at a meeting of vaccine alliance called Gavi saying that the U.S. was going to withhold future funding to this group until it changes its approach to scientific evidence.

Now, a lot of folks in the public health world were taken aback by this decision. This is a group that, since 2001, is estimated to have saved the lives of 17 million children through vaccination. And Dr. Atul Gawande, the former leader of Global Health at USAID, posting that this quote "will cost hundreds of thousands of children's lives a year", Manu.

RAJU: All right. Meg Tirrell, thank you so much.

Anna and Dave Weigel are back with me. So is this what Trump wants from RFK Jr.? WEIGEL: There's no indication that it isn't. And the effect this is

going to have on vaccinations around the world, it's a knock-on effect from cutting U.S. Aid funding. Trump has had no problem with one, vaccine skepticism and two, pulling back resources that as Gawande was saying, were helping people who benefited from American charities. So I see no disagreement from Trump on that.

RAJU: And he made all these -- he made all these commitments, RFK Jr. did, to get confirmed to the Senate to Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, saying he would not institute some of these changes to vaccine, including this vaccine advisory board. And lo and behold, he did.

PALMER: Moving full steam ahead. I mean, I think this is Robert Kennedy Jr. -- full stop. This is what he has long time believed. He's moving forward with it.

Trump is focused elsewhere and is letting him do it. Plus, I think the idea of pulling back anything that's foreign aid is positive in Trump world.

RAJU: Yes, no question about it. And we'll see ultimately how the senators may react. The ones who voted to confirm him begrudgingly, he got the job and now he's making a lot of changes.

All right. Up next, the Rose Garden is getting a makeover. We'll show you the moves Trump is making to remodel the White House. That's next.

[08:49:49]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: President Trump is making some new strides in his push for a makeover at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue. Brand-new images this week, as the historic White House Rose Garden turns into a construction zone.

It's long been known to be a place of presidential business, with bill signings, speeches and events. First created in 1903 by first lady Edith Roosevelt, earning the name Rose Garden by first lady Ellen Wilson in 1913 and later modernized by the Kennedys.

But now the plan for Trump's overhaul, the White House will keep the roses but paved over the grass and turn it into a patio.

[08:54:49]

RAJU: Meanwhile, inside the White House, Trump added a portrait of himself to the east wing earlier this year in between former first ladies, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. However, Clinton's portrait has since been removed and replaced with one of Patty Nixon.

Just one of the many recent changes last week, Trump stepped outside to oversee the installation of two 100-foot flagpoles on the north and south lawns, a personal project that the White House said the president paid for. So what's next on the list? As Trump plans to build a ballroom near

the White House east wing, he told reporters that construction on that will, quote, "start pretty soon".

That's it for INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY.

You can follow me on X @mkraju. Follow the show @INSIDE POLITICS and follow me on Instagram @manu_raju.

If you ever miss an episode, you can catch up wherever you get your podcasts and just search for INSIDE POLITICS.

Up next, "STATE OF THE UNION WITH JAKE TAPPER AND DANA BASH". Jake's guests include Republican Senator Katie Britt and Democratic Senator Mark Warner.

Thanks again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. We'll see you next time.

[08:55:52]

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