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Homan: Feds To Withdraw 700 Agents From Minneapolis; DHS Funding Runs Out Next Friday If There's No Deal On ICE; Trump Repeats Call For Republican To Nationalize Elections. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 04, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Scaling back the Trump administration announces a major pivot on immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, but local Democrats say it's not enough. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and Inside Politics.

For weeks, disturbing scenes on the streets of Minneapolis have gripped the nation. Violence, unrest, the death of two American citizens at the hands of federal agents. Republicans are well aware that these pictures are bad politics and that the President is losing the American people on an issue that has powered his entire political career.

So this morning, the Trump administration announced the beginning of a withdrawal from the Twin Cities. Here's the President's Border Czar Tom Homan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: I have announced, effective immediately, we will draw down 700 people, effective today. My goal, with the support of President Trump, is to achieve a complete drawdown and then the surge as soon as we can, but that is largely contingent upon the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ICE and its federal partners that we're seeing in the community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: But Homan also insisted the President's overall mission has not changed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOMAN: Let me be clear, President Trump fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: 2000 federal agents will remain in the Minneapolis area. Mayor Jacob Frey says this is not a de-escalation, and Minnesota Governor Tim Wallz wrote quote, Operation Metro Surge is not making Minnesota safer. Today's announcement is a step in the right direction, but we need a faster and larger drawdown of forces, state-led investigations into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and an end to the campaign of retribution.

I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here. Kristen Holmes, what are you hearing from your sources in the White House about how this is going so far, a week into Tom Homan being in charge?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, this is exactly what they sent Homan to do. They wanted him to basically play grown up. Despite the fact that Trump was at the Kennedy Center saying we're not going to drawdown in Minneapolis, this was always the plan. And one of the things that Homan has taken very seriously as part of this is these negotiations that he's having with local officials behind closed doors.

One of the things that Trump had told him, and the administration had told him, is we need you to de-escalate this situation, because it is a tinder box now, and we kind of need an off ramp, and he has been doing that, and this was the plan was to bring agents out of the area, and we're going to continue to see that. They wanted him to do this.

But you're going to hear -- still hear President Trump talking about this increased ICE presence across the country and increased immigration crackdown, because that is what they one, want their policy to be, and two, believe that their base wants to hear them doing.

BASH: Yeah, that's really the key. And my question is, are those quotas still being implemented from Stephen Miller and people at the White House? I don't know if we --

HOLMES: Actually he has this 10:00 a.m. call every morning, and it's something that we can check on after this. I haven't asked that. That's a good question.

BASH: Yeah. Go ahead.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: One here is kind of the kind of most important point underneath all of this, which goes to what Kristen is saying and what you heard kind of in the balancing act from Tom Homan there, the overarching policy and agenda as it pertains to deportation and immigration in general has not actually changed.

What they've been doing, we've seen this over the course of the entire first year in several cities, is they use these searches to really ramp up their numbers, their ability to mass deport from areas where they think there is kind of a high volume that they can -- can work on, and then they start to pull out, either because judges, because politics, or because there's enough cooperation.

We're starting to see kind of that same process play out here. I think the dynamic that is different is the politics and the numbers, and this is coming from members of both parties who have seen internal presentations saying this is really bad for us right now on the Republican side. We need to change this, and that, as much as anything else, is what Tom Homan represents, I think in this moment.

BASH: Yeah.

JON RALSTON, CEO, THE NEVADA INDEPENDENT: I mean, this is all kabuki theater, right? I mean, you mentioned this is a political reaction. When you're bringing in Tom Homan to calm the waters. I mean, come on, we know what's going on.

[12:05:00]

And you mentioned it too, Phil, they go from day to day. It's not like a long term strategy. How do we react? There's tremendous public backlash on this so we'll take out 700 -- what were almost 3000 agents doing in Minneapolis, of all places? Last I looked, Minnesota is not on the southern border. Why? Why are they not in Texas? Why are they not in Nevada then? I mean, ask -- ask yourself that question. Just happens to be a Republican governor who is on good terms with Trump.

So this is all just at play acting because of the public backlash.

HOLMES: I will say that is one of my favorite narratives from this whole story is Tom Homan, the moderate on immigration, the voice -- the voice of the reason after years of being one of the most hard-line immigration enforcers, and now he somehow has become this voice of reason and moderation.

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, REPORTER, NOTUS: Well, it speaks to the actual issue at play here, right? Because this idea of how this White House becomes on the defensive about issues -- on the offensive about for so long is really hard, because the reporting that we're seeing out of Minneapolis is not a drawdown. We're seeing the same kind of tactics that led to this whole thing in the first place.

AP had a story yesterday about purchasers being pulled over and guns drawn on them. You know, my colleague, Christa Dutton at NOTUS talked to Republican strategist recently who is talking to a candidate in a safe red district in North Carolina, and this candidate called up the strategist and said, what do I say about immigration enforcement now?

What am I supposed to do about this? And this is the big challenge this White House is facing, is that they do want to have a Tom Homan style push. That's the -- for the base, but they also need to not have it to try to help these candidates out.

BASH: Well, let's look at a little bit of the split screen of that and how it's kind of manifesting itself over the last 24 hours. First, I want you to listen to Tom Homan talking about what's been going on from the perspective, he says, of law enforcement, and then what happened on Capitol Hill yesterday, which was testimony by people who say that they were aggressively handled by law -- federal law enforcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOMAN: We hold our officers at highest standards. These are -- these are professionals. Again, you know these -- I wish every one of you could put that gun on your hip, put that Kevlar vest on, go out there and put up where they put up with. Considering the hate, the rhetoric, the attacks, I think they perform remarkably, and I'm proud of them.

MARIMAR MARTINEZ, U.S. CITIZEN SHOT BY CBP AGENT IN CHICAGO: My own government attempted to execute me, and when they fell, they choose to vilify me.

MARTIN DANIEL RASCON, U.S. CITIZEN SHOT BY CBP AGENT IN CALIFORNIA: I will never forget the fear and having to quickly duck my head as the shots were fired at the car. Any one of those bullets could have killed me or two people that I love.

ALIYA RAHMAN, U.S. CITIZEN DRAGGED FROM CAR BY ICE AGENTS IN MN: I yelled, I'm disabled at the hands grabbing at me, and an agent said, too late.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Jon Ralston, you're coming to us from the real world, Nevada, but I do want to show some of what you each were kind of alluding to, the latest Fox News polling on the question of the president's approval on border security, which is still above water, and then immigration generally, which is very much not above water.

And you're starting to see, like Kristi Noem is talking about the border today, you're starting to see them tout real progress on the border that had been totally drowned out by some of the things that we just heard on Capitol Hill.

RALSTON: Most Americans want border security, right? And even some Democrats have been smart enough to talk about border security, but they're getting killed on immigration because of what's going on. And what amazes me is when someone like Homan talks about all this hate and that these attacks on -- where do they think that was generated from? Have they read the President's tweets?

I mean, this is what -- this is where this is coming from, Dana. And so the fact is, is that they know that this is going to be a big issue. And by the way you look at the cross tabs of these polls, Trump is losing independents overall, and especially on this. And remember, one of the reasons he was able to win in 2024 including in Nevada, was because of Latino men and other parts of the Hispanic community turning against the Democrats. Now that's flipping back and they're worried about the election. It's as simple as that.

BASH: Which is why Phil, on Capitol Hill, we now are in this sprint to try to find some kind of compromise that Republicans are actually working on with Democrats, on some of the Democrats' demands about ICE, wearing body cameras, moving masks, ending roving patrols, tightening warrants.

Dick Durbin, who is still the number two Democrat in the Senate, who has -- who's retiring, but he has a long history of trying to and successfully finding compromise, here's what he said about that today.

[12:10:00] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: There are just nine days long. How confident are you that you can get to a deal in that time?

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Of course, I can. You know, they do things overnight in this place, and there's been fair warning that this is a deadline that we're going to live by. And I don't think there's any excuse for not doing anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Two things can be true. One, the fact that they got to this debate by stripping out a piece of -- stripping the DHS -- DHS funding out entirely, showed a backtracking slash recognition of the political problem the White House was facing and Republicans were facing like nothing I'd ever seen. I certainly didn't expect it.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: It can also be true that the optimism, while I deeply respect it, for somebody who's been in those halls for as many years as Dick Durbin has, because I don't have it anymore, is I would say, maybe a little bit aspirational, given any time I've covered this issue on Capitol Hill over the course of the last 15 years.

Look, this is extremely hard. It's about to get extremely detailed. With the issues on law enforcement, policy in general, let alone immigration, are always very, very complex, and how Republicans navigate these next eight days is going to be really fascinating.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: It requires White House guidance.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: And what does this White House want to do about immigration enforcement? Now, you know. If I was in Jon's home state on this trip, I would not bet on it being done in two weeks, because it's -- because this administration is -- this is a muddy issue now. It's a strange situation. It was an 80-20 thing. Now it's a muddy issue for this White House. We have not seen how they're going to turn the page on that.

BASH: All right, up next, what did the President mean when he said he wants to nationalize elections? Well, he said he meant what he said. His Press Secretary and other senior Republicans are still trying to find a way to clean that up. Plus, we're going to take you inside GOP efforts to keep Ohio's Senate seat red, as Democrats are targeting it with trying to bring back a former Democratic senator. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

BASH: After President Trump said on a podcast that he wanted to nationalize elections. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and top Senate Republican John Thune tried to clarify what they thought he meant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What the President was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge common sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported, that President Trump is committed to signing.

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): I think the President has clarified what he meant by that, and that is that he supports the SAVE Act.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Well, the President stepped on that clean up, and he suggested, nope, he actually meant what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What exactly did you mean when you said that you should nationalize elections? In which 15 states are you talking about?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I want to see elections be honest, and if a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it, because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway.

But when you see some of these states about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is, I think the federal government -- when you see crooked elections that we had plenty of them, and by the way, we had them last time, but go to 2020, look at the facts that are coming out, rigged, crooked elections.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Just because we need to do this. That's not true. There were lots and lots of recounts and court cases and nothing found, the fraud that the President is suggesting.

MATTINGLY: This is a really great addition to my favorite genre of shot chaser in the Trump era, where allies constantly say the President didn't say something, and then he either goes on social media and then -- or subsequently is asked about is like, no, no, I said that thing. You were all -- you're lying to try and cover for me, but I'm not going to let you do it.

And I think it has happened less in the second term, and it underscores, in this specific case, how truly out of bounds Republicans believe what he's saying actually is, in part, most part, I think, because it's literally in the Constitution.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: That the manner, the time, how it all works, is a state purview, not federal. But I also think that people don't want him to go down this path, because they know where this ends. We have all seen it before. We don't need to do this thing about he doesn't really mean that, or he doesn't actually have any pathway to do it. If he can find a pathway, he will. And I think people need to be clear eyed about that.

BASH: And Jon Ralston, we've been talking a lot on this program about the lawsuits going on between the Trump DOJ and the states that are refusing to give over their voter rolls. One of the questions is about your home state of Nevada? I'm going to read something from the Nevada Independent today.

Nevada has been a target of Trump's unfounded claims of widespread election irregularities. In 2022, he said Clark County has a corrupt voting system, and his campaign filed several failed lawsuits during the 2024 election seeking to change the state's mail ballot and voter roll maintenance rules, efforts that critics said were meant to further sow distrust in Nevada elections.

And you can take that last sentence and change the word, Nevada from any -- for any other state.

RALSTON: So first of all, I'm surprised that noted constitutional scholar, Donald Trump doesn't know what the Constitution says about elections. It's shocking to me.

BASH: I think he might know, and I don't think it matters.

RALSTON: Well, either way, it's not good, right? So -- so yeah, and thank you for quoting from Nevada Independent. I understand it's a credible source. But I have to tell you, this is, you know, it's fine to kind of mark this stuff because it's so ridiculous.

[12:20:00]

BASH: No. It's scary.

RALSTON: But this is the scariest thing that's going on, and it's all of a piece, by the way, with what we talked about in the first segment. Trump and others are terrified of what might happen in November of 2026, losing the House, potentially losing the Senate, and we all know what happens if that happens.

So they are filing these lawsuits. They're demanding voter rolls. They want to fix the election that they think they're going to lose. And so getting control of the voter rolls, getting control of the apparatus of elections would allow them to do that. This is very, very frightening, and I have to tell you that the image which months -- once may have seemed like a conspiracy theory of agents in the streets enforcing election -- fair elections in many cities, including probably Las Vegas, I think could be a reality.

BASH: And you know, you talked about really trying to take control, which we'll see. The courts so far have really pushed back against the Trump administration on that. But short of that, there is something that we've seen happen for the last, you know, 10 years, which is sewing doubt in the elections. Let's listen to the House Speaker Mike Johnson and Carlos Gimenez from Florida, both Republicans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): It just it looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream. But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system, and it's essential, and everybody, no matter what party you're in, should agree with that.

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): You may say 100 times that it's false claims, et cetera, but there are a number of people in this country that don't believe that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: They don't believe it because the President said what we played earlier. I mean, it's like a vicious cycle. It's however you want to describe it, a dog chasing its tail.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Yeah, I had an interesting day with this yesterday. It began with talking to like, a Bush-era Republican who doesn't like Trump very much, but said, you know, oh, he just says stuff. Can we just let him see -- he can't do anything about this. Can he just say stuff? And it made me think back to previous elections that the President has done this in -- that he was not on the ballot for, right?

Those Georgia special elections. He said, oh, the vote. You can't trust the vote. What happened? His party got trounced, and those lucky people didn't show up for those elections. Politically, it's not that smart. But I also talked to my colleague, Emily Kennard, called -- called at the White House, and said, you know, what states are you talking about, these 15 states?

And they were kind of vague about it. They didn't really give us a lot of list, but they did mention Oregon. So I called the Secretary of State of Oregon, and it actually took them a little while to get back to me which they did get back to me, but took them a little while because they were literally in meetings planning for FBI raids of their voting stuff.

And, you know, it's a vote by mail state, and for these post office changes to mess up their vote by mail. So the folks who actually do run the elections are planning for something bad to happen. But meanwhile, you have this politics side of like, why in an election year are you telling voters, voting is a bad idea?

BASH: Well, you talked about Oregon preparing probably because they saw what you've been doing great reporting on, which is what happened in Georgia last week with the Director of National Intelligence showing up at an FBI raid, and then your great reporting that she actually was in contact with the President and got FBI agents involved.

Mark Warner, who is the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, was on with Wolf earlier. Here is what he said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): This is an FBI that I am -- I fear, is being overtly used for political purposes by a president who is obsessed about his loss, who may use that loss in 2020 as a rationale to try to take away America's right to have a free and fair election in 2026. That is as dramatic and as important a threat as anything that's going on, on the international front, around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Yeah, I want to agree with what he said there, just in the terms of President Trump is obsessed with the fact that he lost in 2020 and he lets it drive a number of his decisions. I mean, think what we've seen play out in the last two weeks has been that obsession really coming to life in a way that we hadn't seen it in action yet, at least this term.

And that was Tulsi Gabbard showing up in Atlanta saying President Trump directed her to go there, this search of this Election Center, and then this escalation with the President when he's on with Dan Bongino saying that he wants to nationalize the elections. I mean, I specifically asked Karoline Leavitt yesterday, what do you mean when he said -- you said --- you're saying, he said, the SAVE Act, but he said he wanted Republicans to take over 15 states like the that doesn't equate.

And she said, well that's no, it's just about voter ID. And then you had Trump come out there and say, well, there's all these states that are doing this in the wrong way, and it's just, it's a lot going on here, and it is being all driven by the fact that he still believes and fundamentally tells people all the time that he won in 2020.

[12:25:00]

BASH: Everybody, stand by. Up next, the search for the missing 84-year old mother of Savannah, Guthrie, Nancy Guthrie. It is intensifying. What are officials saying about newly reported ransom notes sent to media outlets. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)