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Inside Politics

Mills Drops Out Of Maine Senate Race, Setting Up Platner Vs. Collins; GOP Plans Vote On Bill To Reopen DHS, A Cave After Weeks Of Pressure; Florida First State To Pass New Maps After Supreme Court Weakens Voting Rights Act; Trump Pulls Nomination Of Casey Means For Surgeon General, Nominates For Dr. Nicole Saphier Instead. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 30, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- this is when she won. She won by a little more than five percentage points. And if you look down the list, 2002, 16, 2008, 23, 2014, 37, she didn't have like a very strong candidate. And then 2020, you were mentioning she had a pretty tough race, but she still won by almost 9 percentage points.

This is a Republican. The -- I think she's the only Republican who's on the ballot who's even remotely endangered this year, but also a Republican in a blue state, in a blue region.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: She's the only Republican who exists on the map up for reelection, who represents a state that Kamala Harris won.

BASH: Exactly.

ZELENY: I mean, and just looking at the arc of that, her rise and fall, you're right. I mean, New Hampshire obviously for generations had Republican senators as well. And there's a competitive race there this year. But Susan Collins has staying power that sort of transcends the Trump-era Republican Party brand. This race will be a test of that, there's no doubt.

But everyone, beginning with Chuck Schumer and probably ending with Chuck Schumer, should not write Susan Collins off --

BASH: No.

ZELENY: -- and out of this race because she's a former staffer who became a senator. She knows her state. So this will be a test of the Susan Collins brand --

BASH: That's right.

ZELENY: -- not just the Trump-era Republican brand. And who knows if there's anything else to be learned about Graham Platner.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. ZELENY: -- I mean, I think pretty much everything is known about Susan Collins. It'd be hard to imagine something new coming.

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: But this will be a fascinating race, there's no doubt. And now we don't have to wait until after the primary. The race is on.

BASH: And just going to go to break, one other factor here. She's chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. She can bring home the bacon, which in a state like Maine, really any state, but especially Maine, that matters.

So, all right, we've got more breaking news from Capitol Hill. The longest partial shutdown on the books could be possibly ending. We'll explain after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:36:34]

BASH: In just a few short hours, we are going to see maybe the best chance at ending the 75-day, 75-day Homeland Security shutdown. The House is going to vote on a Senate bill, which was passed without Democratic support over the weekend. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that money would dry up for TSA funding by the first week in May. So that's this coming week. Tomorrow is the first day of May.

I'm going to get right to Manu Raju, who's on Capitol Hill. Manu, what are you hearing from your sources about the likelihood that this is going to pass?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's all over but the crying right now, Dana. House Republicans are poised to capitulate after rejecting the Senate plan that actually had been approved multiple times on a bipartisan basis without any dissent in the United States Senate.

In fact, the first time the Senate passed this bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security was 35 days ago. And at that point, the Speaker of the House said absolutely no way he would move on that because it did not include funding for ICE. It did not include funding for Customs and Border Protection.

Democrats in the Senate, whose votes are necessary to pass a bill in the Senate, refused to approve funding for immigration enforcement unless changes were made to ICE agents and how they are being deployed across the country. Republicans were not to go along with those changes.

So they said, OK, let's fund every other agency besides those two and move a separate bill dealing with immigration enforcement along party lines. That could take much longer to get approved. Now, after they passed that bill the first time in the Senate, Dana, to open up everything else, Johnson said no. And then the Senate did it again, passed the bill again. Johnson again

said no. And then pressure built on the Speaker, including from some of his own members, like this one New York Republican, who said it is time for Johnson to act.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NICK LANGWORTHY (R), NEW YORK: I don't see how we can leave here without passing it. I mean, I think it should have been passed as soon as we got here on opening night suspensions. I mean, I think this is a no-brainer. I mean, most of us come here to solve problems. It would solve 80 percent of our problems.

We know we're going to go on budget reconciliation and get the rest of this done in funding immigration enforcement in this country for probably multiple years to come. We need to give certainty to those people that work for DHS. I think time is of the essence. There's no time to screw around with this anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Both the House poised to leave for a recess this afternoon. Basically, the Speaker had no choice but to move ahead on this plan, given the White House wanted him to approve the Senate plan. Senate Republican leaders had called on the Speaker to move along this.

And the Speaker declined to comment when I asked him about it just moments ago, Dana, but expected him to say, hey, we're going to fund immigration enforcement on a separate plan. That's why we're OK with opening the rest of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes, of course, the Coast Guard, FEMA, Secret Service, and so many other vital agencies will be funded on this plan that will be approved by the House this afternoon. Dana?

BASH: It's unbelievable, and yet not. I just want to bottom line all your great reporting. This could have been done a very long time ago, what we're seeing right now. And it wasn't.

RAJU: Yes.

BASH: But it is now. So I guess that's good.

Manu, thank you.

Coming up, there's a huge new front in the political map wars. We're going to break down Louisiana's response to the landmark Supreme Court ruling on voting rights.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:42:59]

BASH: We're following a chain reaction to the landmark Supreme Court decision curtailing voting rights in America. If House Speaker Mike Johnson has his way, Republican states across the South could join the redistricting fight. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: Look, the Supreme Court said that in Louisiana's case, it was blatantly unconstitutional. And I think that principle applies probably in other states as well. We want constitutional maps.

RAJU: Should happen this midterm?

JOHNSON: Controversial notion, and I think all states who have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And my panel is back now. Seung Min, I mean, the ramifications of what happened in the Supreme Court yesterday, they're so vast --

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BASH: -- and there's so many questions that we don't know how they're actually going to play out. But in the short term, I do find it interesting that just starting with the place that this case came from, Louisiana, its happening.

KIM: Right. I mean, they're suspending the primaries to be able to allow time to redraw those maps. And if you talk to experts, if you redraw maps in the key states where this matters from the Supreme Court decision yesterday, it might not be numerically a lot. It's maybe one seat here, two seats there.

But in the broader context of the House map, every seat matters so much, not just because we have this tit-for-tat -- for tit-for-tat redistricting fight in so many states across the country, but because the House majority is so narrowed to begin with. And we see the kind of dysfunction that happens in real time this week when that House majority is so small, when every Republican in that majority really effectively has veto power over what the majority does. So the ramifications are massive, both in the short term and in the long term of what this means for lines in the future.

BASH: I want you to look at some of the states in the South which are going to be the most affected by this and the ones where Republicans are in the South calling to redistrict ahead of 2026, so before November.

You see them there. There are the ones in yellow. They have a lot in common, Nia.

[12:45:13]

HENDERSON: Yes, they have a lot of African American voters there. And the representation, if you think about the House and Senate now, there are 66 black lawmakers in those two chambers. This is an historic high. It is so high because of the Voting Rights Act. And when you start to undermine it, as we've seen over these last many years, chipping away at it, you are likely going to get less black representation in the House. And, you know, the CBC is obviously worried about this, and we'll see where this goes overall. But I think, you know, particularly for people of my generation, my father fought along Martin Luther King, marched with him in Alabama.

So this is a seismic day, and it means a lot in terms of those battles that people thought were won, right? And now you see this rollback.

BASH: You know, it's so -- not funny, but it's interesting. As you're saying that, I am remembering walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge --

HENDERSON: Yes.

BASH: -- in 2018 or so with John Lewis and him saying, we have to keep fighting for these rights, even though, yes, they're codified in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which they fought so hard for. We can't sleep at the switch because they could go away.

HENDERSON: And that's the reality.

BASH: Obviously, we should say for people, I mean, I know people who watch the show understand what happened in the Supreme Court yesterday. Part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was to be allowed to draw districts based on race in order to try to help and encourage representation in Congress based on race.

HENDERSON: And listen, I mean, this is the era we live in now. The Trump era is all about a sort of anti-DEI push. We see that, obviously, with what's happening with the Supreme Court, but also just what's happening in the federal government and rooting out some of these programs, rolling back affirmative action.

And it is going to mean fewer black and brown people in spaces, whether it's Congress or it's in universities. And so, listen, again, I think there is a lot of sadness and regret and fear among people my generation and older that a lot of these battles, what were they for if they were so easily kind of taken apart?

BASH: Yes. So there's that, which is obviously the core of this. And then there's something that you were alluding to, which is kind of the balance of power and the numbers. And then even more than that, what I try not to lose sight of when we talk about gerrymandering is the fact that this is likely going to make an already partisan Washington, partisan House of Representatives, even more so.

And it's already been happening with the mid-decade redistricting. And here's what AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said, which is talking about the fact that Democrats, if things change in the South, then perhaps --

HENDERSON: Yes.

BASH: -- things are going to change elsewhere as well. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: We all have to play by the same set of rules. And the Republican caucus has made it very clear that they want and are setting rules of partisan gerrymandering. The Democratic caucus has tried to pass nonpartisan gerrymandering for 10 years. Republicans have rejected it.

If they're going to redraw and gerrymander every one of their states, then unfortunately, we have to provide balance to that until we get to the day where we can all finally agree to put this behind us and pass nonpartisan gerrymandering federally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: Look, the tit-for-tat that we've seen this year is a prelude to a massive change potentially next year in a redistricting and a gerrymander wars. I mean, what the congressman is saying there, basically, is they are going to continue to fight fire with fire. And Democrats are openly talking about making California an entirely democratic, held a delegation in New York as well.

I think we will see how the court challenges to this are. But there's no doubt this is a massive moment in history. I mean, to your point about John Lewis --

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: -- he still had the pen in his office from the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 by President Johnson because he was there. He was there when it happened. So this is the full circle. Now, the other side of this argument is that Justice Roberts and Alito will say is that progress has been made --

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: -- and it's time to move on from these districts. But this is going to be a --

BASH: Let's see (ph).

ZELENY: -- monumental moment. But first up, Florida, will this change how the challenges are, the legal challenges are to the Florida case? We shall see.

BASH: All right, everybody, stand by. A lot more on Inside Politics after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:53:25]

BASH: Breaking news, President Trump is pulling the nomination that he put up for Surgeon General pick Casey Means, and he's replacing her nomination with Dr. Nicole B. Saphier. I want to go straight to CNN's Lauren Fox. Lauren, this is a big deal. Dr. Means is somebody who a lot of people in the MAHA movement wanted. Her confirmation hearing was rocky, including and especially with some Republicans, and she couldn't get through the committee.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, essentially, we never knew what was going to happen in this committee because she was never brought up for a vote. We do know that there were many Republicans on that committee with serious questions about her nomination. And those members included Senator Lisa Murkowski, as well as Senator Susan Collins.

But there's another interesting dynamic here, Dana, and that is the fact that the chairman of this committee is Senator Bill Cassidy, who is facing the race of his life in a Republican primary down in Louisiana. And his opponent, Julia Letlow, has the support of Donald Trump, as well as the MAHA movement.

The fact that he never forced this vote in the committee on Casey Means' nomination has become a clear issue in this race as well. So there are just broader implications here. And you saw in those two Truth Social posts that Donald Trump put up that essentially he was attacking Cassidy directly.

So this is just one more issue that is being added to the whole plethora of things that Cassidy is trying to defend himself in when it comes to this race down in Louisiana, because it's a reminder to people back home that Bill Cassidy was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in the Senate, and that is why Donald Trump did not endorse him. But obviously, this is just adding more fuel to that fire in that really crucial primary down in the state of Louisiana.

[12:55:23]

BASH: All right. Lauren, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Seung Min?

KIM: Yes. I mean, this is -- I was wondering why out of nowhere the President was truthing about Bill Cassidy and just getting angry at him. Now we see why, it's because --

BASH: I was just pulling that up on my phone.

KIM: Right, right. I was just like, he hadn't really attacked Cassidy in a while. What's going on? But this is what was happening. And obviously, getting Casey Means confirmed was a major priority for one of his core constituencies, which is the MAHA movement.

I will point out, I mean, I understand the pressure on Bill Cassidy as the chairman of the committee to try to move that forward. But if Republicans on your committee don't support this nominee, there's only so much that Cassidy can do. It's hard to kind of put up someone in order -- just to have them fail. But certainly it adds to just the other litany of challenges that Cassidy is facing before his primary later in May. BASH: Yes. And it's not as if -- I just want to be clear here. You know, there has been a lot of talk about a split, or splintering maybe is a better way to say it, in the MAHA movement. There is a lot of outrage at this White House over pesticides, and that's going on on Capitol Hill right now.

This doesn't seem to kind of add fuel to that fire, because the doctor that the President is nominating, Nicole Saphier, she is a Fox News contributor. She actually wrote books that are very MAHA-related. In fact, her book was called, "Make America Healthy Again."

ZELENY: Right. I mean, she's a star of this movement. There's no doubt about it. You can see her book right there on screen. Obviously, the President is familiar with her because of her time as a Fox News contributor. But she's a radiologist, works at Sloan Kettering.

So it kind of shifts the conversation a little bit to a different kind of medicine. But I think unclear what the confirmation perspective will be. I mean, I assume she'll be confirmed. Most of the President's nominees are confirmed. But this has definitely opened a window that's the appointment of pesticides.

I mean, that ground of the House to a halt, effectively protecting some companies from being sued. I mean, this is a huge issue that really transcends politics, that this is part of the MAHA movement, that it does not follow a Republican orthodoxy. It's just a concern from actual people. So we'll see how this plays out.

But I think for Senator Cassidy, who faces a very serious Republican primary, is this going to infuriate the President even more in that race?

HENDERSON: Yes. And listen, I don't know what her stance on vaccines --

BASH: Well, I was just going to say, so let me -- so she also wrote a book in addition to Make America Healthy Again, "Panic Attack: Playing Politics With Science And The Fight Against COVID-19." Now, I have not read that book, so I don't know what it says specifically about the COVID vaccine.

HENDERSON: Right.

BASH: I mean, you can sort of get a sense from that title and more importantly, more broadly, the question of vaccines, because, you know, last week we saw like seven hearings and seven days from RFK Jr. And he is who he is. I'm not saying he pulled back on vaccines, but it was very clear from his testimony that the administration is trying to change the narrative on vaccines.

HENDERSON: Yes, I think that's right, because there have been measles outbreaks --

BASH: Yes.

HENDERSON: -- in several states, including South Carolina. And some of these folks who have been very anti-vaccine are all of a sudden like, oh, well, maybe vaccines are actually great because my kid won't get measles. And so I imagine when Dr. Saphier comes up for confirmation hearings, that'll be a big line of questioning where she is on vaccines.

BASH: And can I just go back to Senator Cassidy for a second, because we were talking about Louisiana in the context of the House before the break. The question also is what happens in the Senate. He is a sitting senator from Louisiana. He does have a primary, as one of you were mentioning, at the behest of the President of the United States.

And you're right, I've just found the social media post that the President put up this morning that Bill Cassidy is a very disloyal person whose Trump endorsement got him elected, so on and so forth. He stood in the way of our Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nominee, Casey Means, to the important position of Surgeon General.

So he's actually blaming Cassidy. There's no evidence that it was Cassidy's fault, other than the fact that he chairs the committee. But regardless, any chance that this President has to slam a guy, Bill Cassidy, who is one of the Republicans who voted to impeach him after January 6th, the President takes.

ZELENY: And he did not say, and at least this is a truth here, who he's supporting, and that's Congresswoman Julia Letlow.

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: So -- but it's a three-way primary there, so this is a -- stay tuned on that. Obviously, the President is newly engaged in the Louisiana primary.

BASH: Yes, re-engaged. Re-engaged, yes.

All right, guys, thank you so much. Thank you for a rock and roll hour.

Thanks for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.