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Candidates In N.J., VA, N.Y.C Head Into Final Weekend Before Election Day; Trump Looms Large Over Elections In Virginia And New Jersey; DEM A.G. Hopeful's Violent Texts Become Flashpoint In Virginia; FBI Says It Thwarted Potential Halloween Terror Attack; Congress Leaves Town With Millions Set To Lose Critical Food Aid. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 31, 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]

DR. NATALIE CRAWFORD, FERTILITY PHYSICIAN: And yet even this week, we saw the, you know, the administration rollback and say, there's no evidence to, say Tylenol actually causes autism, which is a great clarifying statement. But I really hate that it's caused at least a month, if not more of a high stress level for a lot of my patients and a lot of pregnant women.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Sorry to hear that. Dr. Natalie Crawford, thank you so much. Great to see you. And thank you all for joining us this morning. You can keep up with us on social media @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here Monday morning and every weekday morning at 10 Eastern.

Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: today on Inside Politics, an actual Halloween nightmare. We're following breaking news. The FBI says it thwarted a potential terror attack planned for around Halloween. We have new details from law enforcement sources who say the plot was quote, ISIS inspired.

Plus, too close for comfort. Candidates in high stakes governor's races are trying to get out the vote in the final four days before an election that will serve as a key political barometer for President Trump's second term. And everybody wants this. A Friday political palate cleanser with the creator of the Netflix hit. One that the Inside Politics team can't stop talking about.

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

Happy Halloween and happy final weekend before Election Day 2025. Elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York will tell us a lot about where voters are. One year after sending President Trump back to the White House, there are countless campaign events today and into the weekend.

Former President Obama will be hitting the trail with Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. The candidates will be making their final pitches, even as millions have already cast their ballots early. A lot of attention is on New Jersey, where Democrats are more worried than they'd like about holding on to the governor's mansion.

Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, a moderate former navy helicopter pilot, made her case on CNN this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKIE SHERRILL (D-NJ): I have a different kind of background, military service. I'm a mom of four kids. I'm focused on driving down costs. I have a plan to take this as the emergency it is, the crisis that it is for voters and address these aggressively, and my opponent doesn't. So, when people are gaging the status quo and who's going to actually make change here, I think that's why they're coalescing around my campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Her Republican opponent, former state assemblyman, Jack Ciattarelli, is expected to cast his vote any minute. We'll take you there when that happens. Here's what he's been saying on the campaign trail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK CIATTARELLI, (R) NEW JERSEY GOV. CANDIDATE: Her entire campaign is based on a stack of lies about me, her disdain for the president and she can fly a helicopter, none of which is going to fix New Jersey. Take a look at your property tax bill. Look at your monthly rent. Look at your electricity bill. Look what's happened to public safety, public education, the shortage of affordable housing, yet the over development our suburbs. These are all the failures of the Democrats that have run Trenton.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm joined by a terrific pair of reporters here in Los Angeles today, Peter Hamby of Snapchat and Puck News, and Melanie Mason of POLITICO. Happy Halloween to you both. OK, so we're in California. This is one of the places where we're going to kind of -- kind of get a taste of where voters' minds are, particularly the Democratic Party.

I think it's fair to say, is it going to be a key test here in California. But Peter, just kind of big picture this as we head into this final election before the first off year elections of the Trump second term.

PETER HAMBY, HOST, SNAPCHAT'S "GOOD LUCK AMERICA" & FOUNDING PARTNER, PUCK NEWS: I mean, Melanie, I have both been obsessively covering Prop 50 out here in California, its implications for Gavin Newsom. Virginia, New Jersey, are always the two bellwethers in an off year, taking the temperature of where the electorate is, you know, against the White House, in this case, occupied by Donald Trump.

Because those states, while they lean blue, do kind of resemble the rest of the country more than New York City, obviously and then California. You've got a lot of affluent, suburban voters, a lot of educated voters. You've got in New Jersey at least a lot of Latino voters and black voters. Twice as many Latinos actually in Jersey than Virginia, and Trump made inroads with them last year.

So, look, I think Abigail Spanberger is clearly favored in Virginia. That's not news. You're right that the New Jersey race is tightening. Suffolk had a poll just yesterday where she was only winning by four points. Donald Trump came within six points of winning New Jersey last year.

At the same time, his approval rating in New Jersey is like 39 percent, it's the same in Virginia. Phil Murphy, the current governor, that's the difference, I think, also that New Jersey has an incumbent Democratic governor that Mikie Sherrill has to deal with, who's also very unpopular. Him and Trump have the same approval rating in New Jersey.

But one big note, I think that's interesting, is that Donald Trump is the obvious backdrop to all of this. There's a government shutdown happening. He's unpopular. We could see these votes as a referendum on Trump. But while that's all happening in the news and voters in Virginia, New Jersey, watch the news.

[12:05:00]

You got a lot of educated voters who follow this stuff, especially with the shutdown. People live near New York and Philadelphia, D.C., but the candidates themselves are actually not -- the Democrats not talking about Trump too much. They're letting the earned media stuff happen. The paid media and messaging is about what Democrats want to campaign on, affordability costs, affordability costs.

BASH: I agree with you. But they're connecting the two in many ways that, like, basically, Donald Trump said, the cost of things would go down and they haven't.

MELANIE MASON, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Right, that's absolutely right. I mean, I still think they see Trump as the ultimate galvanizer. And I mean, there's no better test case than what we're seeing out here in California with Prop 50, where it's just Trump, Trump, Trump all the time.

But even in these governor's races, I do think that we're seeing, you know, Mikie Sherrill very much is trying to link Jack Ciattarelli with Trump. And sort of use that as a way to turn off, not just, you know, her Democratic base voters, but also these may be centrist voters, independents.

I think the really interesting thing is that this is the first chance we get to see kind of slicing and dicing the electorate, you know, where there was pretty significant movement in 2024. You mentioned Latino voters, younger voters, those are two groups that swung pretty significantly towards the right in 2024. And we've seen from polling that they're unhappy with what they're seeing from Trump. But this is the first time we actually get to see them cast a vote and see if they're even motivated to cast a vote. BASH: So, you both live here in Los Angeles. Peter, in your current figure -- your current life, you're here, your former life you worked with us, and you did a lot of reporting in Virginia. So, I just want to ask a little bit about the specifics about the messages there. So, let's listen to a campaign from the Spanberger -- an ad from the Spanberger campaign, rather about how she's painting Winsome Earle- Sears, the Republican as an extremist.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: OK. Now let's listen to Winsome Earle-Sears, and one of the things that she is saying in the last days and weeks of her campaign is, well, what about this guy, Jay Jones, who our viewers, I'm sure remember is a candidate -- a Democratic candidate for attorney general in Virginia, who we learned, sent some pretty horrible texts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have nothing to say. Abigail, what if he said it about your two children -- your three children. Is that when you would say, he should get out of the race, Abigail?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAMBY: I think that Winsome Earle-Sears would love for the Jay Jones' texting scandal to affect Abigail Spanberger's campaign at the top of the ticket. Polling suggests it is not, however, in our partisan times, it could be interesting next Tuesday, where you've got three races in Virginia, gov. L.G., Attorney General, Jay Jones is running. He sent those text messages.

Jason Miyares rising star. Chris LaCivita, by the way, Trump's advisor is Jason's advisor. There could be some ticket splitting. There could be an under vote for that attorney general's race, because the Jay Jones scandal is pretty unsettling. Let's be honest, and even Democrats are queasy about it. But I don't think it's going to affect the top of the ticket.

The Winsome Earle-Sears messaging from Abigail Spanberger is very interesting, I think, for national viewers here. Trump did not endorse her. She's criticized Trump in the past. So, Trump is there. He's obviously across the Potomac. He's a big issue. But the Spanberger campaign is trying to portray Winsome Earle-Sears in these ads as weird.

There's an ad where she's like talking and saying, I'm speaking, and she's chanting USA, go look at the ad. It's kind -- she looks kind of odd. And she's even acknowledged that Winsome Earle-Sears that there's clips out there that don't capture her at her best.

She is a conservative Christian. She's a former marine. She just feels like a Republican candidate from the 90s, running in 2025. And they've been able to portray her as just very conservative, running on cultural issues, trans issues, abortion, not cost, affordability, government shutdown, et cetera. BASH: No, that's a really, really good point, because we see those ads as somebody who lives in D.C. You talked about President Trump, the way that he, as any incumbent president kind of hangs over any race. The former president, Democratic president, Barack Obama is going to be on the trail this weekend. It's kind of amazing that he is still the closer. And the question is, how much is that going to help?

MASON: Well, first of all, I do think it's very interesting how involved he's getting this election cycle, because we had seen him sort of take the -- I'm a former president, I'm going to remove myself from campaigns. He would show up, of course, at conventions and things like that, but be pretty selective about where he would weigh in.

[12:10:00]

And I know that a lot of Democrats, there was a lot of, where is Obama? Some frustration there. And now we're seeing him actually hitting the campaign trail. He is the closer in the closing ad for the Pros 50 campaign. And so it feels like there's been a calculus with President Obama internally that he wants to be a little bit more involved. I think it also says a lot about the state of the Democratic Party right now, that who's their closer, the guy who was president 13, you know I guess 13 years ago was when he was last elected.

And so, that's as there's so much angst, I think, in the Democratic Party of who is the face of the party next? Who is the rising star? At the end of the day, they're still going back to Barack Obama. They see him as their best option.

BASH: All right. We're going to have to sneak in a break. What you're seeing to the right of your screen there is Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor in New Jersey after casting his vote, or maybe he's going in to cast his vote in Bridgewater, New Jersey. All right, we're going to sneak in a break.

Up next. The FBI says it has stopped a Halloween terror attack. What we know about the plot that sources say was ISIS inspired after a few messages.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: We're following breaking news out of Michigan. FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted this morning that the agency thwarted a potential terrorist attack planned for the Halloween weekend. Two law enforcement sources tell CNN, it involved an ISIS inspired plot that unfolded in online chat rooms.

CNN's John Miller joins me along with CNN senior national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem. John, let me start with you. What are you hearing from your sources about this?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, the FBI swept out from the Detroit field office last night and through this morning, taking people into custody, executing search warrants and doing subpoenas for phones, computers and other material. This all relates to an investigation that started months ago into people who were communicating online with each other here in the United States, in the Detroit area, Dearborn, Michigan, Inkster, Michigan, but also talking to people overseas, possibly connected to ISIS.

The discussions were geared towards, should they do an ISIS inspired plot here in the United States? So, what that plot was? The -- when that plot would be, what the target would be, was unclear as they discussed various options in terms of timing. But this week, when a group of those men that were being monitored went to a shooting range with AK-47 and other weapons, fired a large number of rounds of ammunition, practiced tactical high speed reloads.

And in the discussions, it was picked up a reference to what we are told was pumpkin day, a possible reference to Halloween. The FBI went into the mode of, do we have the correct controlling features around this group in terms of monitoring, physical surveillance, electronic surveillance.

So that if a plot spun up quickly, we could stop it in time, because now intent has been established, but capability has increased by the trip to the shooting range. And the decision was made to take it down now and sort through who to charge, who to charge with what, based on the evidence they've gathered over these many weeks.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, better be safe than sorry on steroids there. Juliette, this is a rhetorical question. The FBI director announcing that there have been arrests, but not sharing any details or charges, doing so on social media. Is that typical?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY, DHS: It's typical for this administration and this FBI director. I think we were all sort of adjusting to it, because he'll announce something, sometimes he announces it not quite before it's done and then we don't know what the details are. So, when we read the FBI director saying a terrorist attack has been thwarted, that makes it sound like, you know, this was very imminent.

As John says, we don't have that yet. It also is just -- it's just a -- it's a way that this director is that is not necessarily good for law enforcement. You don't want to get too far ahead about what the claims are, but you're also the investigation is ongoing. As John alluded, this is in Dearborn, Michigan. It is the high Arab and Muslim American community that are the highest in the United States. Anyone who knows that community knows about Dearborn.

What are those connections that those young adults, and some of them, not even adults yet under 18, had to people abroad? Who were those people? And where are those people right now? If they were planning something serious and then is the group bigger? So that's why this tactic of Patel I've been critical of before this and even will be now.

And I want to just alert to one thing. There is a statement by the Dearborn Police Department about the FBI. And it seemed, at least in my reading of it, that there wasn't much connectivity between those two law enforcement agencies. We've seen this in the past. The FBI will sort of come in and sort of bypass normal protocols of Joint Terrorism Task Forces law enforcement. So that just means a lot of people have to adapt because I don't think it's going to stop.

[12:20:00]

BASH: Juliette, thank you so much for that important analysis. John Miller, thank you for bringing us your excellent report. As always, thanks to you both. Coming up. As of tomorrow, millions of American families are set to lose aid that keeps food on their tables. And it's because the government is shutdown. And what's Congress doing about it? Spoiler alert, not much.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: There are tumbleweeds on Capitol Hill today. Congress, the few who are actually in town, especially in the House, they're gone. There's no end in sight right now to the shutdown and no more money for SNAP benefits, vital food assistance, keeping poor children, the elderly and disabled from going hungry. That as of tomorrow, is going to be gone as well. This is how one Democratic senator talked about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): It's a failure. And like I said to all of the viewers, I'm apologizing that we can't even get our -- together and just open up our government. Ask the hungry people on Saturday. You know, it's like -- that's the thing. You know, Americans are not leveraged. This is not -- this is not some -- game show about who's winning, or whatever. It's just like, like we have to be better than this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: One ray of hope for the people Senator Fetterman is talking about. A federal judge has indicated she may order the administration to tap emergency funds to pay those benefits for at least a little bit longer. We could get a decision any minute on that.

My smart reporters are back. Melanie, I just want to set the table for these SNAP benefits, and we're talking about less than 24 hours now. Who we're talking about? So, share of households that receive SNAP. 83 percent have children, elderly or disabled individuals in those household. Households, 17 percent have non-disabled adults under 50.

MASON: That's right. We're talking about the most vulnerable people right now. And so, I think when you hear Senator Fetterman talk about how the American people shouldn't be leveraged. I mean, that's who we are really talking about, is people who are dependent on these benefits to fulfill their most basic needs.

I think what is very interesting is this court case that's playing out right now. Where you do have the Trump administration, fighting pretty vociferously to not, you know, dispense and you tap into these emergency funds. And so, as there's so much conversation on the political side about who gets the blame, who sort of pays the political price? Yes, of course, it's the Democrats who are right now withholding their votes to get to 60 to reopen the government.

But you have the Trump administration basically putting their marker down, and we already know that they do like to pick and choose how they wanted this shutdown to be felt. And it seems like, right now, they're saying we do not want these SNAP benefits to go out. And so that seems like perhaps a political opportunity for Democrat.

BASH: Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, I interviewed Mike Johnson, the House speaker on the show this time yesterday, who pushed back on the idea that the administration has the ability to use that emergency fund. This judge might have a different view.

Let's talk about blame. The Washington Post, ABC News, is both -- new poll shows that people hold Trump and congressional Republicans responsible to the tune of 45 percent, congressional Democrats 33 percent.

Peter, I was talking to a very seasoned House Democrat who privately said that they're worried that Democrats are starting to get more of the blame on this and that it needs to -- they need to find a way out.

HAMBY: There is some variance in this polling. I think one reason Donald Trump posts on Truth Social last night to end the filibuster and end the shutdown, is that he probably saw that poll. And by the way, Mike Johnson of Shreveport knows this, a lot of the SNAP benefits.

BASH: Yeah.

HAMBY: You know, people in red states depend on food stamps. So, I think a lot of Republican members are going to start to hear about this, but when they go back home. But yeah, there are some polls that show people narrowly blame Republicans over Democrats. That New Jersey poll I referenced earlier speaking the governor's race. The Suffolk poll found 47 percent of people in New Jersey blame Trump and Republicans. I think 33 percent blame Democrats.

Again, it's very interesting to see how long Democrats can carry on the shutdown while also thinking they're winning the messaging war. I reported on this for Puck. I think it's very clear they won the initial messaging war by framing the shutdown around Obamacare. They still think they are.

You haven't seen a lot of defections among moderates in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses here. But you know, I do think, though, they still think they're winning, even if polls show a different variance. BASH: So, I mean, this is -- this is going to sound super crass, but just take it for what it is, because this is a political discussion going on here. That Democrat I said -- that I talked to, said, you know, yes, we're winning on Obamacare, but losing on SNAP. And these are all people who are real people, and it's not, as John Fetterman said, people who are part of a game.

You mentioned the filibuster. This is fascinating because President Trump didn't just kind of tweet like two words, he put an entire long post up. This is just part of it. It's now time for the Republicans to play their trump card and go for what is called the nuclear option, get rid of the filibuster and get rid of it. Now, this is something that the Senate Majority Leader John Thune