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Average Gas Prices Hit $4.18/Gallon, Highest In Nearly 4 Years; UAE To Quit OPEC In Blow To World's Leading Oil Exporters; Pressure Mounts On GOP To End DHS Funding Standoff; Speaker Johnson Rejects Senate GOP Plan To Fund DHS; Southern Poverty Law Center Charged With Defrauding Donors; New Steyer Ad Attacks Becerra's Record At HHS Under Biden; New CA Gov. Poll Shows Wide-Open Race With Voting About To Begin. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired April 28, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: -- about this before finally looking around saying, oh wait, there's no like near-term solution here --
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- anywhere at all and the longer this goes on --
QUEST: But the cake is baking all along.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
QUEST: -- that's the crucial part about it. Every moment that oil is at these elevated levels, the economies are slowing, inflation is getting worse and it is a continuing deteriorating situation.
MATTINGLY: Yes. In dislocations, they'll take months to fix.
QUEST: Yes.
MATTINGLY: Only grow more significant. OK, I actually -- I want to ask you because you and I could talk about the next question probably for the next four or five hours. The UAE announces withdrawing from --
QUEST: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. I was stunned. You probably knew this was coming and have all sorts of reasons as to why it happened. But this is a significant thing from a global market perspective.
QUEST: The reason is because the UAE -- forgive the vernacular, the UAE has been pissed off with the allocation. It's quota that it gets from OPEC. It wants 3.8 million barrels. It's had 3.2 million. They were given 3.5 million.
And they believe the UAE, that's Abu Dhabi, it's Dubai, it's Sharjah and all of those, the seven Emirates, they believe they've spent a fortune on their oil infrastructure. They should be allowed to recoup it. Their oil is cheap to produce. And therefore they need to crank it out.
Now, why is this? It's a both -- there's a paradox here, because the more they want to get for themselves, the more they produce. Therefore, the price will come down. This is about mine is bigger than yours. This is about saying I'm not getting my fair share. And they believe if they take this measure, eventually Saudi will gave or something like that will happen.
MATTINGLY: It'll be fascinating to watch, but there are things are moving right now in terms of ton (ph) of place.
QUEST: Yes, in the U.S.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
QUEST: By the way, by the way, the U.S., which is one of the largest manufacturer producers of energy in the world. The U.S. is rapidly turning into the swing producer that can affect in many cases.
MATTINGLY: Yes. Atlantic Basin, look it up. There are fascinating --
QUEST: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- things happening right now. Richard Quest, always appreciate you, my friend.
QUEST: Thank you.
MATTINGLY: Thanks so much.
QUEST: Thank you, Phil.
MATTINGLY: Well, coming up, House Republicans have a laundry list of bills to pass. Can they actually do it? I'm going to speak to the Judiciary Committee Chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:36:56]
MATTINGLY: House Republicans are bracing for a, quote, "nightmare week." At least that's how one leadership aide described it to CNN. The conference staring down the barrel of a 72-day DHS shutdown, an intraparty fight on controversial government spy powers, all while holding on to one of the most narrow majorities in history in a midterm year.
We didn't even talk about the farm bill. Well, joining me now is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Congressman Jim Jordan from the great state of Ohio.
REP. JIM JORDAN (R), CHAIRMAN, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Great state of Ohio. MATTINGLY: Biased in where we're from. I want to start with DHS funding, especially in the wake of what we saw over the course of the weekend.
JORDAN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: I think one of the questions that I've had for a long time, you've had many battles with the United States Senate not necessarily going the direction that you wanted or House Republican Conference wanted things to go. In this case, they got 100 people to sign off on what they did.
They passed it. It's done.
JORDAN: Wow.
MATTINGLY: You can have the fight on ICE and still get Secret Service funding, DHS funding.
JORDAN: Yes, and we may have to do that, but let's be honest. It doesn't fund DHS completely because it takes out ICE. And understand what the Democrats have been up to. I mean, think about their grand plan.
The Democrats let in 10 million illegal migrants in the course of the Biden administration. Then they create sanctuary jurisdictions, which make it difficult to remove those illegal migrants who do another crime. And now they're saying, oh, we're not going to fund the guys who do the removal. We're not going to fund ICE.
Well, that doesn't make any sense. So why not pass it the way we're supposed to? Now, if we can't do it that way, then I assume we're going to have to get the separate reconciliation to deal with ICE and do the appropriations like the Senate passed.
But that makes no sense to me what the Democrats have done. You know, they shut the government down 42 days in the fall. Now they shut it down, what, 73, 72 days here this spring over ICE and DHS, which I think just underscores how the crazy positions that their party is now taking.
MATTINGLY: Can I ask you because you mentioned the possibility of funding this through reconciliation. I mean, I'm an old approach guy as a CQ alum.
JORDAN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: You know, you guys funded it on the mandatory side -- you funded ICE on the mandatory side through the One Big Beautiful Bill law.
JORDAN: Well, we did some things there to make sure we could keep the border secure. We do that.
MATTINGLY: But ICE is being -- is funded right now.
JORDAN: Well, some of it is, yes --
MATTINGLY: Right.
JORDAN: -- but long term, you don't want to pull ICE out of it because then I think the Democrats will never fund it. There's the left, which has now taken over their party --
MATTINGLY: So this is more about setting a precedent that you don't want to set.
JORDAN: Well, I think that's a legitimate concern when you look at they shut the whole government down for 42 days last fall, longest shutdown in American history, and now they've done it 72 days, 73 days, I think we're at today, over ICE and DHS.
I think that's a real concern. So it's something we've got to weigh as we're making our decision and trying to navigate this whole process and navigate this week.
MATTINGLY: But you see a possibility that you end up taking what the Senate has done.
JORDAN: I think that's a possibility because we may have to because at some point, we're gettinga actually -- our committee is getting a briefing tomorrow from Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the situation with ICE and, you know, how long he can continue to pay people who do all the things that happen at DHS.
MATTINGLY: Another issue that's on your plate, FISA, right now, the intelligence law that has been the subject of a lot of consternation from Republicans in the past.
[12:40:03]
I know there were changes to the law. You now support it. You were very opposed to it for a time.
JORDAN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: Support just the short term and make changes. And do you think you can get it through?
JORDAN: Well, I think a couple things. One, FISA today is a much different program than it was just a few years ago. And you can just look at the numbers in the reports we've got from the inspector general. A few years ago, there were 3 million queries done on U.S. persons in the database that they put together when they're getting information on bad guys overseas.
There were 3 million queries. Last year there were 9,000. There were 278,000 times in 2021 when they didn't follow their own rules at the FBI when they searched this database. There were 127 last year. Most of those were clerical.
So we have -- through the 56 different reforms we did two years ago, we have cleaned this thing up. So I was comfortable going with a short-term extension. Now, do I want at some point a warrant? And, yes, but right now I think when you look at the program, it is vastly different.
And I am comfortable extending this for a short period of time and reauthorizing it for a short period of time in light of the reforms we've done. And no one's worked harder than our committee at getting these reforms that protect your liberties, protect people in the 4th District and people across this country, protect our 4th Amendment and other liberties that we have.
MATTINGLY: You know, to the point that you're making, which hasn't necessarily not enough Republicans agree with your assessment of the changes that have been made or the value of them up to this point to be able to send this through rules and actually put it on the floor.
JORDAN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: And I think at some of -- my question becomes, you know, is Mike -- could Mike Johnson, the Speaker, do anything right now? Or is this just the reality of the House Republican Conference with a couple seats?
JORDAN: Well, we'll get there. What was the Churchill line he said?
MATTINGLY: Try everything.
JORDAN: Well, there's that one, too. He had a number of great lines. But I think one of them was, you know, democracy is the worst form of government there is except for all the others.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
JORDAN: And so sometimes this process gets messy, but we know this program is valuable. It is important that our government be able to spy on foreigners overseas to see what kind of harm and mischief they may want to cause on us.
It is -- that is critical. So we want to keep this program operating. It's very valuable, but we want to do it in a way that's consistent with protecting Americans' constitutional rights and Americans' freedoms and liberties.
And so that's what we're trying to navigate through. It's always tough. It was tough a couple years ago when we reauthorized it. It's tough now, but I'm confident we'll get through it.
MATTINGLY: Do you think that the number of rules meetings that get canceled, rules votes that go down, difficulties having must-pass bills make it through, is a leadership issue, or is it just the reality of your conference period?
JORDAN: No, Speaker Johnson is doing a good job. It's -- and it's a tough job, but it's a tough job because we've got such a small margin. And on any given day, if there are a couple members who have a concern about something, it becomes the issue, particularly when the Democrats, you know, don't want to help us on things that I think are just good, common-sense things.
So, yes, it's a tough job, but I think Mike's doing a good job. It's just -- it's -- like I said, we'll get through it. Sometimes it's not always pretty, but in the end, this amazing experiment, liberty we call America, it works, and I'm confident it will work again.
MATTINGLY: I want to ask you about you sent a letter right after the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
JORDAN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: We saw Kash Patel, we saw Todd Blanche, the assistant -- or the Acting Attorney General, walk through what they had in the indictment. We got a response today from -- in court in a filing from the Southern Poverty Law Center where they said the FBI was aware and actually utilized some of their source information that was shown in the indictment.
JORDAN: Phil, come on.
MATTINGLY: No, I'm just asking. You've -- you are --
JORDAN: They're running a $3 million scam, right? They were telling their donors, oh, these is -- these hate groups are so terribly sending us a bunch of money. Meanwhile, they were paying people in the hate groups to foment the hate, $3 million over an eight-year -- eight, nine-year period of time. It's like that's unbelievable.
Here's a question I have, because the FBI used the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Biden FBI used the Southern Poverty Law Center to train lawyers at the DOJ and people in the FBI. I want to know were any of the confidential sources the FBI was paying, was the Southern Poverty Law Center paying them too?
Were these guys double dipping and the -- while the Southern Poverty Law Center is scamming their donors. Like this is ridiculous because they put themselves out there as the standard. We evaluate what group is a hate group, what Moms for Liberty is an extremist group, Family Research Council is a hate group. You've got to be kidding me.
And they were scamming this thing. This is what was Rahm Emanuel's line. He said, you know, "never let a crisis go to waste." Well, here it's like never pass up an opportunity to create a crisis, which is what they were doing.
I think these weren't informants. I think they were instigators. And that's why they got indicted last week. And God bless Attorney General Blanche for doing it.
MATTINGLY: We will certainly see how the case plays out. I know you sent the letter. We do have to go. But do you have any sense of when a hearing -- it seems like you guys are pretty interested.
JORDAN: Yes, no. We're going to have a hearing next month. Yes, we're definitely moving forward with this. But the -- after the Dobbs decision, there were over 100 churches and crisis pregnancy centers attacked. Jane's Revenge, Ruth's Sentence, these organizations.
[12:45:05]
Not one of those organizations ever made the Southern Poverty Law Center's hate list or hate group list. This is -- this was so wrong what they were doing because they were dividing the country. And it's no accident. I don't think -- and it shouldn't be lost on anyone, that the same week that there's a third assassination attempt on the President, Southern Poverty Law Center gets indicted for all this belonging they were doing and dividing the country.
MATTINGLY: There's no connection between --
JORDAN: There's no connection -- I'm not saying that. But it shouldn't be lost on anyone that they happened the same week. I think that sort of tells us, you know, what's going on out there that contributes to these, you know, three assassination attempts on President Trump.
MATTINGLY: We'll certainly be watching what happens in court, definitely watching your hearing as well.
Congressman Jim Jordan, appreciate your time, sir.
JORDAN: You bet. Thank you.
MATTINGLY: Thank you very much.
And when we come back, why Tom Steyer is accusing Xavier Becerra of losing thousands of children in a new attack in the race for California governor. We're going to break down the ad and new polling on the race. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:50:18]
MATTINGLY: We are one week away from California voters starting to get ballots in their mailboxes for the governor's primary. One week away, of course, from the CNN debate, as well as the top candidates on stage. And we have a new poll on the state of the race, showing it really is wide open at this point.
There is a traffic jam. To say the least, the top Republican Steve Hilton, Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, Democratic Former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra are leading the PAC (ph). Republican Sheriff Chad Bianco is at 10 percent. And everyone else is in single digits.
But don't forget to take a look at that last number. One in four likely primary voters are still undecided. Now, in California, all candidates compete in one primary. And the top two, regardless of party, advance to the general in November.
And luckily, especially with the new poll, and I want to get to some of the ad back and forth and the battles we're seeing play out. But Elex is here. Might know something about this debate. But also, like, just a read from what you're seeing, what you're hearing from your sources.
You're so plugged in out there. Is it as wide open traffic jammy as it seems?
ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: It is remarkable that a week away from voting, we have no idea who's going to win. And you could make an argument that there's about five different people that could be the next governor of California a week away from voting. That is incredible.
It frankly, in some ways, is about the weaknesses of every candidate. Every candidate has a weakness, so it's been hard for them to consolidate. It's interesting, the math of what's going on, there still is that possibility you could have two Republicans in the top two, which is remarkable. And so that's why these debates are so important.
MATTINGLY: Seung Min, I want to play -- there is an -- I want to start with a Steyer campaign ad about Xavier Becerra, and then there was a response that we'll get to in a second. Just watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were kids. They were supposed to be kept safe. But on Xavier Becerra's watch, more than 85,000 migrant children went missing. Some were trafficked. Some were abused. Some were forced into labor and lost limbs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTINGLY: What I find most remarkable about it is just dim-on-dim violence related to missing kids with the HHS office responsible for children, which Democrats never really wanted to talk about ever.
SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, right. And this is a difficult topic, but certainly this was something that did happen under Xavier Becerra, whose tenure at HHS, I mean, broadly speaking, in the context of the Biden administration.
I mean, he wasn't one of the more high-profile, certainly not as the secretary of state or other people. But, I mean, you and I both covered the Biden White House. He wasn't very well-liked by Biden insiders.
He wasn't even the first choice for -- to be HHS secretary. He certainly has a long career in Washington and has leveled -- or has used that experience to run for governor. But, yes, you're right. The dim-on-dim violence is really fascinating, and that's what happens in a primary where sometimes you don't have a lot of policy position differences.
I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here just because there are so many candidates. But when it happens in an intraparty primary like that, it gets very personal. And I think I can imagine that it will continue to get personal as we get closer, as people start voting, as we get closer to that June primary official date and certainly to the general election.
MATTINGLY: Ayesha, I want to ask you about this hit that popped from an anti-Tom Steyer PAC, which, again, words I never thought I would say, based on covering his political career up to this point. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right. Steyer bet big on the Trump Taj Mahal, along with private prisons, coal mines and tobacco, all while stashing the profits in the Cayman Islands to dodge taxes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Me paying more taxes is not the answer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTINGLY: Now, contextually, it's important to note that was about his finance career, the hedge fund that he was involved in. And that last quote is very much so taken out of context when he was talking about needing structural changes, not just his himself paying for all the changes he wanted. We're trying to take out Tom Steyer now at California primary.
AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Yes, I mean -- well, at this point, I mean, I also think that this does show that the Democratic Party I mean, obviously, this is California. It's going to have its own, you know, issues internally like that related to the state. But I think the Democratic Party in general is having a hard time figuring out what its message is, right?
Like -- and it's like, OK, we don't like the billionaires. Tom Steyer, a billionaire. But he's been around a while and, you know, he can back that thing up and stuff like that.
MATTINGLY: A juvenile, yes.
RASCOE: You know?
KIM: Yes. You didn't say (ph) the best part of that ad.
MICHAELSON: Yes.
KIM: -- with a little clip of him dancing with juvenile.
RASCOE: Yes.
MICHAELSON: He found a way to get that in. But he said that about the billionaire. So there's Bernie Sanders organization, our revolution. The whole point of it is to fight billionaires.
RASCOE: Yes.
[12:55:02]
MICHAELSON: And which candidate did they back? Tom Steyer, the billionaire -- RASCOE (?): Yes.
MICHAELSON: -- who says I want to tax the billionaires, is now getting the support of the anti-billionaire group. So that's what's in there (ph).
MATTINGLY: We're literally out of time. Has Gavin get in?
MICHAELSON: Has Gavin get in?
MATTINGLY: Not to run.
MICHAELSON: Oh, to endorse. He says they break the glass moment. If it looks like in the last week that there's going to be top two Republicans, Gavin Newsom, Alex Padilla and probably Nancy Pelosi, endorse the same person and pick who the next governor is going to be.
MATTINGLY: He's not just good on TV. He's a great reporter.
My panel, thank you guys very much. Make sure to tune in to next Tuesday night, May 5th, for CNN's California governor's debate. The aforementioned Elex will be moderating alongside our good friend Kaitlan Collins.
And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.
