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Kavanaugh: "Race-Based Remedies...Should Have An End Point"; Roberts, Kavanaugh Signal Openness To Further Gut Voting Rights Act; Primary Politics: Rep. Seth Moulton Challenging Sen. Ed Markey; Young Democrats Push Elderly Lawmakers To Get Out Of The Way. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired October 15, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Warning their loss of their daughters and asking for accountability from the camp leadership. Also last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law tougher rules around camp safety, something the families of Heavens 27 as they call themselves, advocated for.

Having covered the tragedy on the ground in Central Texas this summer, and having attended camp mystic myself as a child, we will, of course, keep following the story closely.

Thank you for joining us this morning. We'll see you back here tomorrow at 10. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague Dana Bash starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on Inside Politics, supreme stakes. We're following breaking news out of the High Court on a case that could reshape voting rights in America. We have new details from the bench where conservative signals were loud and clear.

Plus, a younger Democrat is using Joe Biden's campaign as his reason for challenging a 79-year-old Senate incumbent. We have the inside scoop on the growing divide between that party's old and new guard. And we have new exclusive reporting on the push to indict President Trump's self-perceived enemies. It involves a former top ally, diary entries and a throwback AOL account.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We do start at the Supreme Court and a monumental case that could transform federal elections for decades to come. Arguments are about to wrap up in the case over Louisiana's congressional map and whether the state can draw that map in such a way to ensure that minority voters are fairly represented.

The two likely swing votes, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared likely just in the way they were talking and asking questions to ban states from considering race when drawing district lines.

Listen to Justice Kavanaugh in a key moment. He was questioning whether the country still needs that provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRETT KAVANAUGH, JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT (voiceover): The issue, as you know, is that this court's cases in a variety of contexts, have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point. And what exactly do you think the end point should be? Or how would we know for the intentional use of race to create districts?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now this ruling has the potential to undermine, if not completely overturn a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, intended to ensure black voters have adequate representation. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters right now. And David Chalian, I'm going to start with you, and I am going to start by showing our viewers the maps that we're talking about to Louisiana specific.

There is the GOP drawn map, which has one majority black district out of the six districts. It combines Baton Rouge and New Orleans into one, and that means that Shreveport, it would be a Republican seat. The current map is what you see on the right. There are two majority black districts out of six.

And what you also need to know is approximately one-third of the population of the state of Louisiana is black. So, I want to talk about this, but also, as you do so well, why it matters for the entire country?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Yeah. I mean, I don't think we can stress the importance of this case enough, and I know there's always danger in reading the tea leaves of oral argument and where a decision will be here. But given that this has been a sort of a John Roberts hobby horse over the years. I think it's pretty safe to imagine where the court may end up here, which is sort of gutting these -- the portion of the Voting Rights Act that would impact this kind of congressional district drawing.

You could -- it is not unreasonable, Dana, to say that Republicans may be able is in the south, where this has been applied, maybe gain 12 seats out of this whole redistributing--

BASH: On that note, we have from the sources the fair fight action black voters matter fund. They think that Democrats could lose up to 19 seats.

CHALIAN Yeah. I mean, there are projections that are, are that high? So, what you're talking about is this doesn't necessarily mean to imply next year. It'll depend on when this ruling comes down from the court, because if it comes in June, primary season will have already begun. The idea of changing for 2026 would be tough, but for generations thereafter, I mean, this could be a permanent advantage for Republicans in building an enduring majority in the House of Representatives. [12:05:00]

BASH: Right. I mean, there's so many critical angles to this, and the way that the House of Representatives would look would be different in terms of numbers. But also, the way it would look in terms of race and representation would be very, very different. And Tia, David mentioned Chief Justice Roberts.

If you go back to 2007 and one of the opinions that he wrote. He said the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating based on race. That is a lovely thought. And the question before the court is whether the United States of America is there right now?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: And my question is, is the court -- how do you find evidence that states and of course, this is going to have a trickle- down effect all the way down to local governments. But there's repeatedly evidence that race, you know, black voters are not -- are being disenfranchised. They're not getting equal representation.

So even at that Louisiana map, when you're talking about a state where one-third of the voters are black, but that is not reflected in a lot of these governing bodies, particularly in Congress, until they were mandated to draw that second majority black district. So how do you now argue?

Well, we think if left to own their devices, the legislators in Louisiana are going to do the right thing. There's just not evidence of that. So -- and I know that there are a lot of people who say we're past that. We're past the Jim Crow era. We're past the era of just drawing maps just to disenfranchise black people.

But there is evidence, black voters matter. They put out a really good primer on this case, and they talked about that there are, you know, Republican operatives that were helping draw maps in multiple states that talked about using race as a factor in how they drew lines in certain states. So, the evidence just -- I know that there are a lot of people who want it to be, you know, want it to be a certain way, but the evidence is not that the U.S. has got there.

BASH: Phil, just to kind of put this in the historical context that it should be put 1965, the year of the Voting Rights Act. There were six black members of the House of Representatives, zero from the south. Now there are 59, 27 from the south.

And before I bring you in on that note, I just want to listen to a little bit more of what happened in the Supreme Court this morning, which again, these arguments are still going on as we speak. Elena Kagan asked a representative who was arguing for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. What on the -- what the impact would be to eliminate the Voting Rights Act provision that they're talking about?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANAI NELSON, PRESIDENT, LDF (voiceover): I think the results would be pretty catastrophic. If we take Louisiana as one example, every congressional member who is Black was elected from a VRA opportunity district. We only have the diversity that we see across the south, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Phil?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I think what -- first to start with that point. You know, you talk to Democrats who have been talking with working with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. There is a palpable fear that the CBC, which is an extraordinarily powerful.

And I think historically, very relevant group of members in Congress, not just the Democratic caucus, the House writ large, that could be taken down by as much as a third, if this ends up going in the direction that Brett Kavanaugh seems to hint that it's going.

It's significant, it's transformative. It's also a couple of months after the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. But it's also not happening in isolation. And I mean that in two kind of critical areas.

One, the kind of progression driven by the conservative legal movement of a project that has been years long, and they have been very, very forceful in their efforts to get to this point, to whittle away at this specific section of the Voting Rights Act over the course of several court cases, over the course of several years.

This would be kind of the ultimate culmination of that effort, but it's been an effort that has been ongoing, and obviously the conservative legal movement is more powerful and more of a central role, obviously, with the 63 majority in the court than they've ever been.

The other is kind of the cultural moment, the political moment that we're in writ large, where the pendulum has swung dramatically away from diversity, equity, inclusion issues, race issues, in general. In terms of the Trump campaign, Republicans, I think culturally, kind of mainstream. That has been the case.

And it's all happening while President Trump is in the midst of a redistricting effort that is more overtly political and aggressively attempting to block Democrats than -- I think we've ever seen that's so public before. And this is all happening at the same time as this case is playing out. And I think it underscores the stakes here for decision that seems likely at this point.

[12:10:00]

BASH: And this is to your point, Catherine, this is a court that was put in place to meet the cultural shift that Donald Trump has been pushing in because he got the opportunity to put three people on the court in the first term. CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG NEWS: That's absolutely right. This is Donald Trump's Supreme Court. In a lot of ways, he wanted a more conservative court. He really relished putting these justices in, and they're going to be vocal about, you know, what he has seen the court do since this court has come into place.

And it's right that this happens also, as he is very aggressively and openly trying to get states to redistrict ahead of the midterms. Our reporting shows that he is very fixated on the midterm elections, because he knows what happens when you lose a midterm and he doesn't want the investigations, the potential impeachments, the things like that that could happen to him if Democrats take back control of the House.

So, he is really looking for any way to try and influence the midterm elections, and one of that is that he's been pushing Republican led states very hard to try and read audit, districts to try and get more Republican seats.

BASH: We're going to talk more about that. We actually have the only Democrat in Kansas coming on this program to talk exactly about the try, the move that her state is making to eliminate her seat.

Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere because we have a pop quiz. What's older, Congressman Seth Moulton or Senator Ed Markey's entire congressional career? The answer when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: The push from young Democrats for a generational reboot is heading back to Massachusetts. 46-year-old Congressman Seth Moulton is challenging 79-year-old incumbent Senator Ed Markey. Here's how Moulton launched his campaign today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Our party has clung to the status quo, insisted on using the same old playbook, and isn't fighting hard enough. The next generation will keep paying the cost if we don't change course. This isn't a fight we can put off for another six years. The future we all believe in is on the line. We're in a crisis, and with everything we learned last election, I just don't believe Senator Markey should be running for another six-year term at 80 years old.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Markey was first elected to Congress in 1976, that was two years before Moulton was born. That's the answer to the trivia question. My panel is back. Phil Mattingly, this is fascinating for many reasons, but mostly because it is not happening in a vacuum. This is part of the very large, very aggressive discussion going on inside the Democratic Party about whether it's time for generational change.

MATTINGLY: I think that's what Seth Moulton was alluding when he said, in the last election, it wasn't--

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: He was very settled.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: Look, hey guys, we're going to put this down, see if you can pick it up. What I'm fascinated by, yes, this is a -- this is an ongoing discussion, both privately and oftentimes publicly within the party, and has been since the day after the election, frankly, probably for the 170 days after Joe Biden dropped out during the election, maybe the years beforehand too.

What I think is fascinating about this particular race is it's not cookie cutter, like young versus old. This will dictate and define for the Democratic Party, rather--

BASH: Progressive versus conservative.

MATTINGLY: Exactly. That's my point. It doesn't fit into a nice kind of cookie cutter. Well, this is going to be the race that explains how the Democratic Party landed on this very divisive debate within the party. Seth Moulton has been in the House for a decent period of time. He is not -- he's often somebody who, you're smiling. So, I know you know what I'm talking about.

Needles kind of the leadership of the House certainly tried to take on (inaudible) several times doesn't have like great alliances around the House caucus. Ed Markey became like a progressive superstar. We're talking about during the break when he won his Senate race a couple of years, five years, five and a half years ago.

And so how this slots out going forward? How party members, particularly progressives who are talking about generational change, who are agitating for generational change slot themselves in this race. If they do it all, I think is probably going to be more time than anything else.

BASH: Yeah. And I think your point about how this doesn't fit in because there is a progressive in the race that's Ed Markey. There is somebody who's on the more conservative side, on the Democratic Party, and he's the younger one. And just because somebody is older doesn't mean that they're more conservative, I don't know, like Bernie Sanders, for example.

But let's look at the Democratic incumbents more broadly, just this election year alone, who are facing challenges from within their party, from more younger challenges -- challengers. I think we have, there you go. I mean, it goes from Eleanor Holmes Norton here in D.C., all the way to Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and beyond.

MITCHELL: Yeah. And I write about one of the members on that photo, Representative David Scott of Georgia. And I've interviewed those challengers, which includes one of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. So that's going to be a colorful primary.

But I do think also not all 80-year-olds are created equal. You know, Donald Trump is 79. He just did a 24-hour whirlwind trip to, you know, Egypt, and came back and worked a full next day. And that was the kind of schedule that Joe Biden never embraced, right?

[12:20:00]

BASH: I can do that.

MITCHELL: And a lot of people younger wouldn't be able to do it. And so, I say that to say, it can't just be age, you know. And that's what makes it so nuanced when you start talking about these members and what they're capable of doing, because it's -- a lot of those members that you just put again on that graphic, it's not like they're vegetables. They're still doing the job to a degree.

But the question for their constituents and a lot of their challengers is, are they doing it at a high enough level that they're serving the people? And that's, again, a lot of times with the nuance of the conversation.

BASH: Let's drill down a little bit more on Seth Moulton, and you kind of alluded to the fact that, you know, he is not afraid to piss off his fellow Democrats, especially those in the leadership. He also was one of the first people after the election to effectively say, guys, our language is way too for lack of a better way to say, it woke.

Here's what he said. Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formally male athlete, but as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that. David?

CHALIAN: Yeah. I mean, as you noted, that was in the immediate aftermath of the election. Everybody was sort of responding to the anti-trans ad that the Harris campaign had trouble responding to, and he was seeking a different path there. I mean, I think his performance as a Democratic presidential candidate in the primary in 2019 also showed he had trouble with the Democratic base of the party.

And I do think back to the original point here. I do think we talk about the generational divide that is roiling the Democratic Party. And in some cases, by the way, the threat of the new generation has caused some of these older generation folks to retire.

BASH: Lloyd Doggett in Texas?

CHALIAN: OK. Or Jerry Nadler in New York, or Jan Schakowsky in Illinois. So, some of them have sort of seen the younger generation said, OK, my time to step back--

BASH: --received. CHALIAN: --others, not so much. You know, Brad Sherman, others are pressing, are pressing forward. So, people respond to it differently, but it can't -- I just don't think we can conflate it with the ideological divide that is very real inside the Democratic Party as well. And yes, at times, like in the Maine Senate race that we were talking about yesterday, you have the young person (inaudible) who is also the progressive antidote in that race, in many ways. And so, sometimes, or Mamdani in New York, they do line up that way, but sometimes, like here, they do not.

BASH: Yeah. They're all of these things are swirling. This is not the first time there has been a challenge within the party to Ed Markey, Joe Kennedy, the third, ran against him in Massachusetts, a place where his name is pretty golden, and he didn't even come close to Ed Markey back in 2020.

LUCEY: No, that's right. I mean, Markey had some pretty high-profile progressive coming in to support him, and you could potentially see that again. One thing that I do think is interesting, you know, as we talk about generational divides versus the ideological divides. One thing that you're hearing people on all sides of the spectrum, I think talk about a lot, is prices and affordability.

You're seeing that from Zohran Mamdani. You're seeing that in Seth Moulton's ad. Is the first -- the first policy thing he talks about is prices. And so, I do think that is one kind of bridge that you're seeing a lot of different people that perhaps come at different ways, but that is a key concern they are picking up with voters.

BASH: Yeah. That's such a good point. All right, everybody stand by. Coming up. Trump aide turned critic. John Bolton could be indicted this week. And we have exclusive new reporting on the evidence investigators have uncovered, at least they say they've uncovered. Plus, Republicans in Kansas want to draw the state's only congressional Democrat out of a job. She's going to be here to tell us how she's fighting back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Right now, federal prosecutors are working to finalize an indictment against another of President Trump's self-perceived enemies. This time, it's his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton. The Justice Department has been investigating Bolton's handling of classified materials for years and carried out a high- profile search at Bolton's office and home nearly two months ago.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz has brand new exclusive reporting. The investigation centers on meticulous diary like notes that Bolton kept in an AOL email account. Katelyn joins us at the table. Katelyn?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Dana, we are now getting a better handle of what this investigation into John Bolton looks like. And we're in a moment where there's a lot of discussion. Is the Justice Department just doing what Trump wants for retribution. And I'll say, as far as we know, as far as the sources I'm talking with, this is not the same thing as the investigation and indictment of James Comey if Bolton were to be indicted, or the investigation and charging of Letitia James the New York A.G.

Couple of reasons. One, it's a long investigation. This has been going on for some time into John Bolton looking at--

BASH: Even in the Biden administration.

POLANTZ: Yes. And there were parts that closed and came back. But what this piece is, looking at his AOL account, what he was writing in there, essentially notes, summaries when he was in the Trump White House. That's been something that's gone on for a long time. It's complicated. There's meat to it. There's pages and pages of probable cause and search warrants that's largely redacted.

But we do know that part of this is the U.S. intelligence got information about what was in Bolton's accounts because they were looking at a hack from a foreign adversary.

[12:30:00]