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Longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler Won't Seek Re-election; Democrats Look To Iowa For Rural Revival In 2006; Justice Amy Coney Barrett Defends Overturning Roe V. Wade; Today Marks 80 Years Since Japan Officially Surrendered In WWII; Remembering Former CNN Correspondent Charles Bierbauer; Remembering Former CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 02, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": -- younger Democrats who step up will have to show what they can do, right? Like, this is a point where the Democrats are trying to define themselves. Now, I don't know how many are going to really follow Nadler's lead, but there is a definite push. And at some point, the party is going to have to figure out who they are.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: OK. So you were born in the 80s?

RASCOE: Yes.

BASH: OK, you need to be quiet. I mean, on that. I want you to bring all of your reporting and your expertise, but on the age thing, you can zip it now.

RASCOE: I got to be quiet. Oh, man.

BASH: Just on the age thing.

Jerry Nadler, speaking of.

RASCOE: Yes.

BASH: Let's just look at some -- just to give some examples of the kind of thing that he argues, like, look at all the things I've done. He introduced the first articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, codified same-sex marriage. He was responsible for at least for co- sponsoring that.

Voting Rights Act after his late colleague, Representative John Lewis, which is not yet law. Spearheaded the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and of course, led the district through the 9/11 attacks and rebuilding there.

Let's listen to what the person who was his main challenger for the Democratic nomination, who is probably the lead candidate now, Liam Elkind, said to Manu Raju a couple of weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

LIAM ELKIND (D), NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg tremendously, but she should have stepped aside. And now Roe v. Wade has fallen. I respect Gerry Connolly and Sylvester Turner and Raul Grijalva, great leaders in Congress, who should have stepped aside.

And the three vacancies that they left allowed Trump's billionaire bill, gutting health care and food stamps for millions of people to pass by one vote. This is a self-inflicted wound on the side of the Democrats. And we don't do ourselves as a party or ourselves as a country any favors by refusing to acknowledge it.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: I should just add, Jerry Nadler is likely to endorse one of his aides. So he might not be the leading candidate, but he's a candidate and they're a lot younger.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Certainly. And look, Congressman Nadler is seeing what is happening in New York City right around him. I mean, there is a very competitive New York mayoral race going on. I mean, he, of course, has seen some of his colleagues lose to AOC, for example, a few years ago.

So I think the writing is on the wall. But the argument there about the Ruth Bader Ginsburg one is something that Democrats don't make a lot, but it is a real one. That is her legacy, staying perhaps too long in the eyes of some.

So I think that this perhaps shouldn't necessarily be a surprise that Mr. Nadler is stepping aside. I think it might have been more of one if he would have decided to stay.

BASH: And he's not alone. Lloyd Doggett, Democrat in Texas, because of the redistricting that we've covered a lot, is -- he would have had to run against a fellow Democrat in Texas. I talked to him on August 20th. Listen to what he said when I asked about the generational thing then.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

REP. LLOYD DOGGETT (D), TEXAS: The decision would be made by people here in Austin, and I'm confident that they will support my re- election, but I submit a job application every two years.

BASH: What would you say to members of your party who say we want to keep Greg Casar in and he's the next generation? You've had such a wonderful run, 30 years in Congress. Thank you for your service?

DOGGETT: Well, I would say I want to keep him in, too. And I want to keep him in by defeating Donald Trump in a district that he created to try to perpetuate his one-man rule.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Phil, the next day, Lloyd Doggett said he wasn't going to run again and left it to the younger -- his younger colleague.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that polling came back fast, didn't it? No, and I think the interesting thing is Doggett decided to retire. Similar, has a lot of things on his resume that he could point to, particularly within that caucus, for why he should stay.

The experience argument is one that we've heard repeatedly. And we heard a lot from President Biden's team. But Doggett didn't see a path, I think when you talk to Democrats, and he also understood that he was running against somebody that has certainly become kind of a star in progressive circles over the course of the last couple of years.

Now there isn't the top Democrat on judiciary anymore. And he has at least one primary opponent, who I think was very telegenic, was very good in terms of getting a message out. I think people were starting to gravitate to in an area where --

BASH: Yes.

MATTINGLY: -- those types of candidates have done very well. So like the idea of, you know, if he was still the top Democrat on judiciary, would he have stepped down? Would he have done the same exact thing? And I don't know the answer to that. Until Democrats get that, I don't know that we're moving forward.

BASH: So it's -- there's a generational discussion. And then there's very much a geographical discussion.

Our team put together a map that it's like, it wasn't that long ago, but it still blows my mind. Check this out. This is the Senate map in 2014. Look at how many red states were held by Democratic senators -- Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Those are all in yellow.

[12:35:05]

You see the highlights around those states. None of those states, none of them right now, 11 years later is represented by a Democrat.

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: It shows you just how much Democrats have to actually listen to voters in those states and also in the House and those districts to be able to regain any sizable majority, whether in the House or the Senate. And that's really what they have ahead of them.

You know, I know that House Democrats are actually working on an agenda and trying to release that sooner rather than later. In the past, when it's come to, you know, the Contract for America --

BASH: Yes.

SOTOMAYOR: -- that Newt Gingrich, Speaker Newt Gingrich released several many, many decades ago, that came out in August, just two months before the midterm elections. Democrats are now realizing, OK, people don't know what we stand for.

The polling shows that we are in a deep, deep hole. We need to go out there and start talking about, again, reinforcing affordability is what I'm hearing, health care, and also not being so much about standing up for the institution. So many voters think that government is crumbling.

They're not listening to them. They have to lean into those messages. So Democrats are starting to try and map out what their message is just going to be and start to reiterate that way sooner than before.

BASH: And you and our colleague Eric Bradner have a terrific story on CNN.com, I really encourage people to check it out, about how Democrats are looking at Iowa as a place for a rural revival in the midterms.

MATTINGLY: Right. Senator Joni Ernst is going to officially announce this week that she is not seeking a third term. So Democrats there see the potential of an opening. There's also a very competitive, potentially governor's race, as well as three House races.

So Iowa has long been a laboratory for the rise of many Democratic candidates. It's an uphill battle. There's no doubt about it. And some Democrats believe that Joni Ernst would have been easier to beat actually than another Republican, perhaps Congresswoman Ashley Hinson or others, because of some of the baggage that Senator Ernst had.

But, look, Iowa is one of the places where Democrats are looking to rebuild. But that map you showed is so, so fascinating. That really encapsulates the Democratic brand, how weak it is in some of a red state America.

And if you go back just a couple more years, Nebraska would also be on there because Ben Nelson was on the front end of losing as well after 2010. So that is a very remarkable map that shows the sign of the times.

BASH: And just real quick, as we go to break, you mentioned how much Iowa Democrats have lost when it comes to, you know, the seats that they have in the United States Senate. But it's also voter registration, which you all looked at. I mean, Republicans have such an advantage there. And you --

ZELENY: 180,000 advantage Republicans.

BASH: Exactly. The reality check is what we -- is we need more voters, that's according to Jessica Vanden Berg, a longtime Democratic strategist in Iowa. "We do not have enough voters to win statewide right now. We need to do the work to create the atmosphere to be able to win."

Again, check out that piece. It's really good.

Up next, a CNN exclusive. You'll hear what arguably the most powerful Supreme Court justice has to say about her history shifting vote on abortion rights. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:42:54]

BASH: Now to a CNN exclusive, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is defending her pivotal vote that unraveled five decades of national abortion rights. In a new memoir titled, "Listening to the Law," Barrett writes in part, "The court's role is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to."

CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic joins me now. She got early access to this highly anticipated book. Joan, first, what is the message that Justice Barrett is trying to get across?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Well, you know, she spends a lot of time defending her vote to reverse Roe v. Wade. And that was the Dobbs case that came out in June of 2022. Justice Barrett didn't write separately in that case. She just signed on to Sam Alito's decision, striking it down.

But here she steps back and sort of makes her case. And one of the key things, Dana, you probably remember, is that that decision reversed nearly 50 years of precedent. And the Supreme Court is just so loyal to precedent. That's like a key principle of the court.

And what she says is that that case should have never been decided that way. That Roe was wrong from the start because it found implicit in the Constitution the right to privacy protecting a woman's choice to end a pregnancy. And she said that was not justified. It was not deeply rooted in U.S. history.

And here's one of the things she says right from the start. "The evidence does not show that the American people have traditionally considered the right to obtain an abortion so fundamental to liberty that it goes without saying in the Constitution."

Essentially, what she was saying is that this decision flouted the democratic process, that the American people were not ready for it. The court got ahead of the American people. But, you know, that's -- that takes a sort of a different approach to the Constitution than progressive.

The liberal side of the court would be -- would take, saying the Constitution is there to protect the individual's minority rights, not the will of the majority.

BASH: She certainly didn't go that far in her confirmation hearings, which is interesting.

BISKUPIC: No. Yes.

BASH: Like, not even close. She, of course, was a Trump appointee from Trump 1.

[12:45:03] And the President himself was reported to be frustrated with some of her decisions or where she has sat on some of the decisions so far on Trump 2.

BISKUPIC: Well, the first thing I did was to look up, you know, Donald Trump in the index to see what she takes on. She mentions him only in passing. You know, it essentially, he interviewed me, he appointed me.

She doesn't give any kind of color for what that exchange was like. It's just -- he's not really on stage here at all. And, in fact, the tone of everything, except for, you know, what I related on the Dobbs abortion ruling, is pretty dispassionate.

And at one point, she even addresses the idea that, you know, the court is always going to be handling many challenges. And she says -- she writes essentially that, you know, this is a fact of life for the court. "While the intensity of the challenges faced by the court ebbs and flows, the challenges themselves will never disappear."

And then she says, throughout year after year, a justice has to do his or her best job. In fact, Dana, that's kind of the underlying message from her. We're only doing our best job. At one point, she says, you know, when she was not on the court, she would look in and think, why can't they write clearer? Why can't they give, you know, not write such cryptic opinions?

And then she says, now that I'm inside the court, I see why they do, because often you have to gloss over issues to get a majority.

BASH: So fascinating. What a great scoop.

BISKUPIC: Thanks.

BASH: Thank you so much for bringing it to us, Joan.

BISKUPIC: Thank you.

BASH: Appreciate it.

And it was the official end to the world's deadliest war. Next, we hear from one of the only eight living Navy veterans who served on board the ship where the Japanese officially surrendered, ending World War II.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:09]

BASH: 80 years ago today, Army General Douglas MacArthur officially accepted the Japanese surrender during a ceremony on board the USS Missouri, bringing World War II officially to an end after six years and an estimated total of at least 70 million lives lost.

Today, the United States marks what is known as VJ, or Victory Over Japan Day, with ceremonies at the World War II Monument here in Washington and Pearl Harbor at the Battleship Missouri Memorial in Hawaii.

That's where Stephanie Elam traveled to speak to five of the eight still-living Navy veterans who served on the USS Missouri during World War II. Here is one of their stories.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

ROBERT SOMRAK, SERVED ON USS MISSOURI DURING WWII: Robert Somrak.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When's your birthday?

SOMRAK: October 7th, 1924, 100 years ago.

ELAM: How long has it been since you looked out at the Pacific?

SOMRAK: This is the first time I've looked at it since 1946, probably. When I was in the Navy, I was fire controlman second class. You handle the firing of the guns.

I had the opportunity, instead of going into the Army, of joining the Navy. I know in the Navy, you always have a clean bed.

ELAM: So where did you first get on USS Missouri? Was it in Brooklyn?

SOMRAK: Brooklyn Navy Yard, yes.

ELAM: So you were on from the very beginning.

SOMRAK: Right.

ELAM: Were you at any point anxious as you started to churn your way across the ocean to Japan?

SOMRAK: Not really. I enjoyed every moment of it.

ELAM: I believe you were on the ship when the Kamikaze attack hit Mighty Mo. Did you see it?

SOMRAK: I was in gun turret three. So I was behind a lot of steel armor. So even though the plane crashed into our ship, and was -- and when I got out of the gun turret, it was like from here to there. I picked up a piece of the plane. I made a letter opener out of it.

ELAM: It strikes me that's a very mundane thing to make out of something that was a very pivotal moment.

SOMRAK: I still have it at home. And then I became an eyewitness to the -- at the surrender ceremony.

ELAM: You didn't think about the fact that you had a front row seat to a pivotal moment in history?

SOMRAK: No, not at that time. But now when I look back at it, I realize that I am a part of history.

ELAM: What does it mean to you to be here for this 80th anniversary of the surrender?

SOMRAK: Well, first of all, I'm glad to be alive to be here. I've had so many of my shipmates that are not here. So it's kind of humbling in a way.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Wow, Stephanie, you're in Pearl Harbor now. He was there on the attacker Pearl Harbor, and there the day that the Japanese surrendered.

ELAM: Yes, he was here for the surrender. And just to take a look, Dana, if you look right back there, that's the memorial for the U.S. Arizona. That is where the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, drawing the United States into World War II.

And where I'm standing right now, right here, this is where the table was set up, where the Japanese got on board in Tokyo Bay, aboard USS Missouri, and signed the surrender officially ending World War II. And it's really poignant to talk to a man who's going to be 101 next month.

All of these men that I've talked to are between 99 and 101. All of them really keeping up their health, their fitness, to make sure that they could make it here for one last visit to the USS Missouri. It was important for all eight of them who are living to make it here, Dana. Really impressive.

BASH: Sure is.

Stephanie, thank you so much.

And before we go, some sad news to report about two legends of journalism. Former CNN Anchor and Correspondent Charles Bierbauer passed away at age 83.

[12:55:03]

He joined CNN in 1981, not long after CNN was born, and he reported from the Pentagon, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the anchor chair. Newsmaker Saturday with Charles Bierbauer was one of the first programs I worked on as a cub producer at CNN. He brought excellence and class to everything he did.

We're also remembering the life of CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, who passed away this weekend at age 73. He was known as the unofficial presidential archivist for his encyclopedic knowledge of the White House. I personally learned so much from Mark when I joined the White House beat. I will never forget his kindness.

Both of them were brilliant journalists. May their memories be a blessing.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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