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Now: Marathon Senate Voting Session Underway On Trump's Mega Bill; Medicaid Concerns Central To Debate On Trump's Policy Bill; Trump Agenda Bill Could Cause Debt, Deficit To Spike; Robinson Lost NC Governor's Race By Almost 15 Points; Tillis Retirement Sets Up Competitive NC Senate. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 30, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

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KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Today on Inside Politics, Senate so box. Democrats are gearing up for essentially open mic night on Capitol Hill as they rail against the president's massive agenda bill with endless amendments, while Republicans rush to get the legislation to the Oval Office by President Trump's self-imposed July 4 deadline.

Plus, from no vote to no future. Senator Thom Tillis says, he won't seek reelection, just hours after getting berated by the president for saying he won't vote for President Trump's bill. It's all setting up a nail biter of a race in a crucial swing state. And verdict watch. Sean 'Diddy' Combs fate officially in the hands of 12 New Yorkers. CNN is inside and outside the courthouse to bring you all the breaking details from his sex trafficking trial.

I'm Kasie Hunt, in for Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines in Inside Politics.

All right, you're looking at live pictures of the Senate floor where lawmakers are rolling into hour four of what they call vote-a-rama. And of course, there is no shortage of drama. This is the part where senators can offer up as many amendments as they want to, to President Trump's mega MAGA bill, forcing the chamber to cast countless votes.

Potentially, we're going to see them stay up all night long. The sprawling, thousand-page bill is ultimately expected to pass the Senate, despite opposition from at least two Republican lawmakers.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is on Capitol Hill for us. Arlette, you have been following the floor. What have we seen?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kasie, one Republican senator, described this vote-a-rama process as entering the thunder dome. The senators have been voting so far for more than two and a half hours on amendments related to President Trump's agenda bill. It's a really consequential day for the president's agenda going forward. And here is how a leading Democrat and leading Republican up in the Senate described what's at stake with this measure. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Their bill, the so called big, beautiful bill, which is really a big, ugly betrayal, cuts taxes for billionaires by taking away healthcare for millions of people.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If you're for open borders, this bill is your worst nightmare because we control the border. If you want higher taxes, which apparently, they do. This bill is your nightmare because we're going to keep tax cuts low.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now this vote-a-rama process allows senators to introduce amendments to the bill. Democrats have already started to introduce a few amendments. Many of the issues that they're trying to bring up are politically tough issues for Republicans. But there are a number of Republican amendments that also -- will be presented as they're trying to keep GOP senators on board. Some of those amendments to watch are from Senator Rick Scott of Florida and Senator Susan Collins of Maine.

Now, Republicans can only afford to lose three votes on the final passage of this bill. Two had opposed the procedural vote over the weekend. Rand Paul, and Thom Tillis, and Senate Majority Leader, John Thune still has a tough road ahead, making sure he can keep all these GOP senators together. Earlier today, when he was asked whether he had the votes, he says, we'll know soon enough.

HUNT: Indeed, we will. And you're right, a major test for the majority leader. All right, Arlette, thank you very much for that. We're joined now by a terrific group of reporters; CNN's Lauren Fox, Leigh Ann Caldwell of Puck, Seung Min Kim of the Associated Press, and CNN's Phil Mattingly. Welcome to all of you. Wonderful to see you.

Lauren, let me start with you because you are up there day in, day out, chasing everyone around. Obviously, when you tick through the key items on this, it's a massive framework, but it extends the 2017 tax cuts. It adds new work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps. It has provisions around taxes on tips and overtime. It also phases out green energy tax credits. There's more money for security and it lifts the debt ceiling. What in here is causing the most heartburn for John Thune right now?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think certainly the Medicaid issue and the potential cuts to Medicaid are the toughest issue that Thune has to navigate, in part because what his members are asking him to do are diametrically opposed. If you ask the conservatives, they want to really strip down how much states are getting from the federal government when it comes to that Medicaid expansion population under the Affordable Care Act.

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If you talk to more moderate Republicans like Senator Lisa Murkowski, Senator Susan Collins, they're concerned that these cuts have already gone too far. In fact, there was an effort to try to include in this bill a provision that would have given the state of Alaska, a little more benefit on their Medicaid program that was stripped out by the Senate parliamentarian, the official rule keeper, to ensure that this bill complies with budget rules, but that just shows you the lengths they were going to, to try to win over some of those holdouts like Murkowski.

HUNT: Let's take a look at what some of these Republicans, split Murkowski off in a second and have kind of a slightly longer conversation about her. But here are a couple other Republicans, including Josh Hawley, a very conservative senator from Missouri, talking about the issues that they have with the bill as it stands. Take a look.

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SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): If we're going to be working class party, we got to protect working people. And I just -- the Medicaid stuff here, I think is bad and I think we've -- we delayed the worst of it.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): As you know, I've been very concerned the cuts in Medicaid and the impact on my state and other states as well.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): My campaign promise in 2010 and every campaign after that was to stop mortgaging our children's future. It's immoral, it's wrong, and it has to stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, Phil Mattingly, I mean, I think Ron Johnson may be expressing reservations for different reasons than Hawley and Susan Collins there, right? In some ways, it reflects, perhaps, the problems this bill might have when it goes back to the House of Representatives. But to have Josh Hawley say, if we're going to be the working-class party, you know, we can't deal with this Medicaid stuff. Do you think it's actually possible that Hawley votes no?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: No. I believe his concerns are genuine. I believe he's raised them, actually, frequently over the course of the last several months. He has spoken directly to the president about those concerns, and he shares those concerns with some of the more moderate senators as well. And it's also aligned with what President Trump promised on the campaign trail, related to cuts to entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

I think the bigger -- when you talk to White House officials, what they always come back to is the alternative to voting yes here is catastrophic. If you vote no. If this goes down. What happens to the 2017 tax cuts and that cliff that they face at the end of this year is something they simply cannot live with, cannot run on, cannot be a functioning majority in Congress. If that is the eventual outcome here and I think that ends up winning the day.

Lauren knows far -- you all actually know far better than me. Give it -- given your Hill sources and my relative dated nature of covering Congress on a day basis -- HUNT: But you understand the politics.

MATTINGLY: What I think that, as is always the case in these moments, with the exception of Obamacare in 2017 where they failed, they end up winning because the alternative is unthinkable. I think the question now becomes, how do you thread that needle, knowing this also has to go to the House yet again at some point, and that's what John Thune is trying to grapple with right now.

HUNT: All right. So, let's watch what Senator Lisa Murkowski, who you mentioned, Seung Min Kim, had to say about this. This was a couple of weeks ago, this conversation that she had with you about what her constituents are saying. Let's watch.

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FOX: What are you hearing from constituents about the bill?

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): A lot of concern on the Medicaid side, excuse me, a lot of concern on the Medicaid side, the clean energy tax credits.

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HUNT: So, Seung Min, definitely a higher possibility she actually votes no than Mr. Hawley, as Phil kind of points out there. And as Lauren has said, they have really tried to go out of their way to make Murkowski happy. Do you think they're going to be able to get her vote?

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, AP & CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It'd be really interesting to watch, because I feel no other senator, or very few other senators play the parochial game, as well as Lisa Murkowski. When there are these major pieces of legislation where Lisa Murkowski knows that she has quite a bit of leverage here. She knows how to work the leadership to get what she wants for Alaska and to be able to ultimately vote for the bill. This is what happened with the 2017 tax bill.

But Lauren points out something very astute, that the Senate parliamentarian voted to kind of scratch out these Medicaid provisions that were specific to Alaska. So that's why her vote is going to be really interesting. I don't know what else John Thune and Donald Trump can give to Lisa Murkowski, especially as she points out that her constituents are worried about the Medicaid provisions and that -- and that fix that she pushed for is now out of the picture.

HUNT: Well, Leigh Ann, I mean, in so many ways, Murkowski is the way that every senator used to operate, right? I mean, she's got this independent streak. She knows what her state wants. She's able to kind of work with both sides of the aisle because different people want to pull her vote in different ways. What do you think she's going to do?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Yeah, it's a great question. She had a conversation, a phone conversation with Donald Trump, and then the result of that we saw was all these things in the bill to help Alaska. As you said -- and you said, some of it got stripped out, but there was also an opinion piece in The New York Times last week by a top Republican and a top independent in the Alaska state, legislature saying that this bill would be horrible for Alaska.

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So, Lisa Murkowski is one, as you say, Kasie to speak, to do what is best for her constituents. That's why she voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act when Republicans did in '20, try to take it in 2010. She has repeatedly broken from her party because she knows that her party does not understand Alaska. She is a brand there. She is thinking about those -- her constituents.

You know, I think if she is going to tank the bill, if she's going to be that vote that tanks the bill, she will not do that. She will vote against it. If she has the room to vote against it while the bill still has this.

HUNT: And you say -- and the room would look like other people also voting no with her --

CALDWELL: Right, correct.

HUNT: So, let's put up kind of big picture here, a couple of things, and this is part of why so many Republicans are worried about this, right? According to the Congressional Budget Office, 11.8 million people stand to lose their health insurance by 2034. That is more than the 10.9 million that would be projected to be left uninsured by the House passed version of this bill.

And then Lauren, let's take a look at the net favorability of this bill, right? And we've stacked up the polls -- Washington Post, Pew, Fox, Quinnipiac, the Kaiser Family Foundation. This bill is in the red, right? I mean, when we look at presidential elections in our split country, it's like, you know, one to five those numbers.

You're looking at anywhere from, you know, 20 to 30 percent deficit for the popularity of this bill. I take Phil's point, right? It's do or die here. A lot of people will look at this. A lot of these members are going to look at this, and the White House is going to say, you're going to raise taxes if you don't do anything, but that's a that's a big risk.

FOX: Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about why this bill just is not polling well, and I think there are two issues that are fundamental. One is that Republicans are still fighting about the provisions. It's really hard to message as a unified party. If you don't agree on the bill being a good product in this moment, right?

The other issue is that Americans don't necessarily remember what their tax bill was before 2017 and I think that that is a critical, potentially -- potential oversight from the Trump administration, which is that these haven't gone away. And yes, people would be disappointed if they did go away, and they would start to feel the impact. But I think that that's the other issue here, is you're giving people something they already have, right? And I think that that makes it really hard to message this as well right now.

HUNT: Yeah, for sure. Very good points. All right, coming up here on Inside Politics. Who's going to run to replace Senator Thom Tillis? There's some familiar names floating around. We'll dig in next.

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HUNT: Welcome back. One major sticking point for President Trump's so called big, beautiful bill. Throughout this whole process has been, how it's going to impact our national debt. GOP leadership has been downplaying the debt impact from the very beginning, but many in the Republican Party acknowledge that it will, in fact, grow the debt.

We have Phil Mattingly over the Magic Wall. He's going to walk us through just how much this bill could add to the debt. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Yeah. As Lauren and our Capitol Hill team have been laying out in great detail, this is obviously a significant issue, particularly for those fiscal hawks. And we're going to use the Congressional Budget Office numbers. Obviously, the White House and some Republicans disagree with them sharply, but what they show underscores the concerns that exist.

We're going to start with is the Trump agenda bill, the impact on the budget. This is spending over the course of that 10-year period. And what you're going to see right up front is the spike right at the frontend. Over the 10-year period that actually starts to win away. And that's because some of the provisions in the bill are temporary, and some of the spending comes down pretty significantly over the course of 10 years.

Now, what about the actual revenues that come in? We talk about tax cuts, and what the actual impact of that is on the deficit? Again, this is where dynamic scoring versus static scoring actually comes into play, which I won't go down that rabbit hole. But what you do see right here is how dramatic the drop is in terms of revenues coming in tax cuts.

That's the money that's coming into the federal treasury. It drops dramatically because of those tax cuts, not just the extension, but also the additional provisions that President Trump promised on the campaign trail.

When you take the estimated spending over the course of 10 years, these are annual deficits that you see coming through with the estimated revenues over the course of 10 years, that's where you arrive at the $3.2 trillion that the CBO estimates this bill will cost over the course of that decade.

Now, what does that mean overall? Well, the reason why debts and deficits have been such significant concerns over the course of the last 15 to 20 years in particular, well, this is debt to GDP. World War II was really considered the high end. This is part of a government is going to spend in the midst of a crisis. Certainly, a war is a crisis.

What we've seen over the course of the last, really since the 2008 financial crisis, is a pretty steady trajectory up of the debt to GDP ratio to a rather concerning place, especially when you consider at this point in time, there's no 2008 financial crisis. There are no active, large-scale wars that the U.S. is financing and there's no COVID pandemic. They're trying to get out of either yet the trajectory still shooting up and not seem to slow anytime soon, Kasie?

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HUNT: Really interesting. And so, Phil, I mean, some people who feel like this is kind of an abstract thing. How does adding to the debt actually impact people who pay taxes?

MATTINGLY: This is a really important question, because all of us have heard concerns from deficit hawks over the course of the last decade or so. If you've been in Washington, here's why it matters. And it's difficult to understand, sometimes on a day-to-day basis, because of the United States role in the global financial system.

Obviously, the dollar is a reserve currency. The U.S. is the most important and largest economy in the world, and that gives it a lot more space than perhaps other economies have. But what you do know is, when debt to GDP starts to skyrocket, you know, as it has over the course of the last decade or so, that starts to crowd out economic growth, private investment starts to slow down. That can impact economic growth. It can impact jobs and unemployment. It also may cause a spike in interest rates.

Now, why does that matter to you if the government's interest rate starts to go up? Well, most of consumer debt is actually tied in some way, shape or form, to the U.S. Treasury market. So that means your mortgage, your student loan, any of your business credit, that will start to move up as well.

One of the biggest concerns is if there is a financial crisis and the government is in significant debt. It doesn't have as much agility to actually spend like they did in 2008 or in 2020, during the COVID pandemic. And then the biggest issue of all, of course, is the mandatory spending programs that have become so ingrained in the U.S. financial system, Social Security, Medicare, the Highway Trust Fund.

If there is not fiscal space for the government to deal with those and the concerns about solvency end up becoming very, very real all of a sudden across the board cuts -- significant cuts, come into play for all beneficiaries, everybody, even those that President Trump promised to protect.

HUNT: Really interesting. All right, Phil Mattingly, thank you, of course, for that. Even with any and all rabbit holes that you want to go down. We're always, always fascinated to see what we find at the end of that. All right, let's turn out of this. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis is decision really surprising, decision not to run for reelection could cost Republicans in 2026. Tillis holds one of just two Republican Senate seats in competitive states in these upcoming Senate midterms.

And now The Cook Political Report has moved the North Carolina race from leans Republican to be a toss-up. And of course, whether or not, Republicans hold on to this seat could come down to who they choose to run for this seat.

Our panel is back here. And Lauren Fox there, of course, are a couple of names out there already in the mix. One of them is Lara Trump, another one is Mark Robinson, who, of course, ran for governor in 2024. He put a post up on X on Saturday after President Trump called to have Tillis primaried. It was three flushed faced emojis, apparently.

And I think it's worth noting. You know, he ran in this very competitive state in 2024 for governor, and he lost massively to Josh Stein, who is the current governor. 54 percent to 40 percent for Robinson. Republicans were to go down this path. What would that mean in the Senate?

FOX: Well, I think if you're -- the NRSC right now, the campaign arm for the Republican Senate, you're frustrated that Thom Tillis isn't running for reelection because being an incumbent is important. You're also probably frustrated with the fact that the administration typically would understand when someone is up in a tough state that they may have to take a vote that may go up against what the President wants.

They calculate for that. If there's room for that, leadership will often sort of let a vote go. Obviously, Donald Trump requires absolute loyalty at all times. And so, that wasn't the case with Thom Tillis. But you could be in a situation where all of a sudden, a race that you felt very good about, if you're a Republican, is extremely dicey if the wrong person wins in the primary. And I think Robinson is a good example of what happened when that took place.

HUNT: Leigh Ann?

CALDWELL: Well, it also depends on who's going to run on the Democratic side, too. Democrats I'm talking to right now are hoping and praying that the former North Carolina governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, jumps in the race. But this was absolutely an earthquake in Washington yesterday, when Tillis made this decision.

I was told that he was going to decide on if he was going to run, probably end of August, early September, but there are things that became quite clear to him much sooner, the fact that Donald Trump was not going to give him the space to be the Senator that he wanted to be, the independents that he wanted and that he really didn't have the support.

Person close to him said of Senate Republican leadership and helping him craft legislation that would help him in his reelection, especially he was looking more toward a general election than a primary. But all of these people in the House, House Republicans, some of these Senate Republicans, like Susan Collins, have to get through these primaries first, and Donald Trump is unforgiving, if people don't support him 100 percent.

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HUNT: I mean, Phil, doesn't necessarily seem like it's in the president's interest to have pushed Tillis out.

MATTINGLY: Certainly not at this moment, like making him a wild card, where he's kind of ripped his shirt off and said, like, I can do whatever I want right now, and I have serious issues with a number of these provisions. Is not necessarily great when you have a Senate majority.

I would also just say -- and I think all five of us at this table have covered Senator Tillis for many years but also covered policy for many years. And not to sound like a nostalgic old person that I probably am, but like, he was a real legislator --

HUNT: You may be faced last time (Ph).

MATTINGLY: -- a little -- yeah. He was a genuine legislator, and a conservative one at that. And one that I don't think you could question the fact that he was a conservative, but somebody who would actually work and understood the details and took the time to figure things out and try and push forward policy that he thought was effective.

And I understand that that's not necessarily the coin of the realm these days on Capitol Hill. But I think from a republican conference perspective, that has already lost a number of those over the course of the last couple of cycles due to retirement, losing somebody like him, maybe it helps with the loyalty thing, but it doesn't necessarily help with the legislative thing overtime.

HUNT: Well, Seung Min Kim, our reporter saw Mitch McConnell shaking Thom Tillis's hand today outside the chamber. I mean, there -- Tillis is a relatively, you know, newer member in the conference. He's not been around as long as Mitch McConnell or some of those others. But he's still, in many ways, is to Phil's point, in the mold of the old guard.

KIM: Right, right. And Tillis, a huge McConnell lieutenant. I think he's dog is named Mitch, like after the former -- after the former Senate majority leader. But a couple factors about Thom Tillis. I mean, first of all, we all talked about whether he could, you know, face a potential primary challenge. But the thing to point out is, he actually had it drawn a primary challenger at this point, which is unlike, for example, John Cornyn in Texas.

And also, he was getting himself well positioned to a general election challenge like, you know, staking out these positions that would serve him well in North Carolina. But what he's done by, you know, choosing to retire and choosing to kind of go out guns blazing, you know, for the last 18 months, is really hand Democrats a weapon for the general election in that race.

I imagine Democratic candidates, democratic ad makers, are just going to clip that at or clip that, you know, speech that Tillis gave last night of this impact, of this bill on the 667,000 people affected by Medicaid in North Carolina. And you're going to hear that over and over, no matter who the Republican candidate is.

HUNT: Yeah. That's a really great point. All right, more to come. Up next. The jury is now deliberating right now in the Sean 'Diddy' Combs sex trafficking trial. We'll take a look at the monumental task facing those 12 New Yorkers.

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