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Inside Politics

Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Democratic Gerrymander; South Carolian, Alabama, Louisiana Eye GOP-Led Gerrymanders; Three Dead, At Least Five Others Infected In Hantavirus Outbreak; Health Officials Worldwide Scramble To Track Deadly Hantavirus; Inside The Trump DOJ's Quest To Indict Trump Critic John Brennan. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 08, 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]

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: But I think you know if somebody else tests positive, who wasn't on the ship, that would be an important data point. If we're seeing more human to human transmission, that would obviously be important data point, but today, Friday, I don't think people should be that worried.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: All right. Let's keep it that way. Sanjay, thank you so much. Always great having you on. Have a great weekend. And thank you all for joining us this morning. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Breaking news. A huge defeat for Democrats in the redistricting wars. Their new Virginia map struck down.

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

Just two weeks ago, Democrats were bragging that they turned the tables on Republicans and actually were winning the redistricting war, that the GOP started late last year in Texas. Today, things look really different. The Virginia Supreme Court this morning blocked the Democratic gerrymander plan to flip four seats from red to blue. The ruling was on a legislative technicality.

The court said Democrats used an unconstitutional process to put the referendum on the ballot, but technicality or not, it's a huge loss for Democrats who spent tens of millions of dollars persuading Virginia voters to approve the new map. And it comes one day after Tennessee's governor signed into law a new Republican gerrymander that breaks up the only majority black district in the state. Louisiana. Alabama, and South Carolina may soon pass their own last-minute maps.

So, here's where that leaves the redistricting wars nationwide right now. Republicans have targeted 14 extra seats. Democrats could pick up six, theoretically it would be an eight seat GOP advantage. But here's an important caveat. Just because the seat is redrawn by Republicans or even Democrats, it doesn't mean it automatically goes that way, especially in a year like this one. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here at the table. The president did not waste much time crowing about this Supreme Court decision in Virginia. He said huge win for the Republican Party, and America in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats' horrible gerrymander, Make America Great Again.

If you talk to Democrats privately, they don't disagree with what the president just said. It is a big loss. Here's one senior Democratic official who I was texting with as I saw this report told me. Not good. A major upset in our bid to win the House back, though we still can prevail, but the hill just got a little steeper. Isaac?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah. Another Democratic operative is working on House races this year. Said to me, look, 1.6 million people cast their vote and decided a very, very specific thing. And four unelected judges just said, piss off. I mean, that is the feeling among Democrats now, a real stinging defeat here. They thought that they would be getting this advantage in a bunch of these House districts in Virginia.

Now they won't be, and there is not a lot of time left to get seats anywhere else. Even as Republican led states are moving as you point out in that map to try to get a couple more seats for them. This is -- it is up to the people to vote, but this is very much a case of the politicians choosing the voters before the voters choose the politicians.

BASH: Which again, we should underscore everybody is doing.

DOVERE: Yeah, for sure.

BASH: And it started the mid-decade, push to do this started at the White House with President Trump. It's interesting, just with this Virginia decision, James Blair, the president's top political advisor right now was sitting where you're sitting Nia, last week or the week before, and he was really leaning into the notion that Virginia would strike this down.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICS & POLICY COLUMNIST: Yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what happened. I've been texting with folks and they're saying, and these are folks at the de-trip (Ph) saying, yes, this is a setback, but they feel like, you know, they're roughly, they were trying to get four additional seats, probably two of those. They probably can get particular if it's a wave --

BASH: Because it could be a bad year for Republican.

HENDERSON: It could be a bad year. But listen, this is a big blow, Hakeem Jeffries, I basically wrote a column that was like, this was great for Hakeem Jeffries because he was all in on it. $38 million spent from a group affiliated with him. Obama was in on this. And now this is -- this is a big defeat. And one of the reasons why Virginia was so important as well was there were -- Democrats were anticipating this Supreme Court decision, which is also going to have massive effects. So, they felt like they've got this sort of tranche of four seats. And now, of course that's gone. [12:05:00]

Again, they're still hopeful that they can maybe get one or two of these seats, but it has been a big, big waste of money. You know, they'll have to pivot maybe to 2028 because this was a procedural decision. It looks like voters, at least by a small margin wanted these maps, but they're going to have to wait at least two years to get these maps.

BASH: So, we are reporting what Democrats are telling us privately. Here's the public messaging in light of this defeat in Virginia, just for example, Gavin Newsom, no vote in Tennessee, no vote in Florida, no vote in Missouri, North Carolina, Texas. This is the key Virginia's voter approved maps thrown out, MAGA has rigged this system.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, another way to win the election is to motivate people to come out and vote. That's exactly what that message is trying to do here. I would just note, like when it comes to Congress itself and how it functions, the impact that this is going to have could be really extreme. Because what you're starting to see is that middling, those districts that are hard fought, those make good members, those make members who make our job really interesting because they sometimes will cross the aisle and vote with the other party because they feel like that's what they need to do to stay competitive.

The fewer of those districts you have, the less and less likely it is that people work together, that people cross the aisle, that it matters that the margins are close. If everybody's in lockstep, that becomes a huge question of Congress's ability to do anything.

DOVERE: And also, it feels like what we are getting into here is, redistricting used to be something that happened once every 10 years, and now it seems like we're headed to at least the next bunch of years where it might be happening every two years in a bunch of states.

BASH: Yeah.

DOVERE: And that changes all the way this goes.

BASH: Yeah. I just want to like underscore what you're saying because it's so important that you say extreme, I say bad, like just bad. This is bad for America to have so few -- already have so few of those sort of moderate either Democrats or Republicans in Congress. And it's not even just that it makes your job interesting, it also helps make compromise, which is kind of the way it's supposed to work.

Let's just kind of take a step back for one second. And our friends over at the hotline, at the National Journal put into perspective, not just Virginia, but what we've seen, which is why it makes it so bad for Democrats on redistricting over the last 10 days. (inaudible), the Supreme Court decision significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for more redraws than Tennessee Republicans passed the nine to zero congressional map. Louisiana is now on track to eliminate at least one democratic seat. And then of course, we just saw, what happened in Virginia. And just to sort of continue to pick up on your point. I want to listen to the state Senate majority leader Shane Massey from your home state of South Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHANE MASSEY, (R) SOUTH CAROLINA STATE SENATE: There's going to be another Democratic president at some point. I hope that's not the case, but it's going to happen. And it is important. I think that there's somebody that -- somebody from South Carolina can make a call and somebody at the White House will answer it.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Make sure the map accomplishes the goal. If the end of the day we create a map that gives Democrats more competitive opportunity, what have you gained?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Translation, there's trepidation in South Carolina to take advantage of the Supreme Court ruling like other southern states are.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Listen, because what you would probably have in South Carolina is no black representation, right? You would have a seven, you know, seven Republicans. Clyburn would probably be not in Congress. He's got the sixth districts. So, yeah, there is -- this is a pendulum swing, right? And the idea is that, you know, every action often has an equal and opposite reaction.

And are we going to get into the situation where, as you said, every two years, there is some different map and it sows, I think distrust and disengagement among voters, right? Particularly in some of these states where it isn't even the voters that are making the decisions. It is elected leaders of one party. And so, this -- I think it has set off a real arms race where we could see a House that doesn't really represent America. It doesn't really look like America, both in terms of diversity of ideas or diversity culturally.

BASH: All right, everybody standby. Coming up. It should be fine. We hope. That's President Trump's message on the deadly Hantavirus cruise ship outbreak. Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be here to help explain to all of us what it really means. Plus, imagine having the man who would become pope over to your house for dinner. I'm going to speak to a Vatican reporter who's been there and done that.

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[12:10:00]

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BASH: Right now, there are three deaths, five confirmed cases and several other suspected cases of hantavirus after the outbreak onboard the MV Hondius cruise ship. The ship is now docked off the coast of Spain's Canary Islands where 147 people are waiting to disembark. Those people hail from 23 different countries and include 17 Americans. Health authorities across several countries are scrambling to trace and contain the outbreak.

[12:15:00]

In the United States, five states, Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia are monitoring people who were on board the ship at the same time as the people who died. The CDC confirmed to CNN that a team is enroute to meet the Americans still on the ship and the U.S. State Department is arranging a charter flight for them once they are off the ship.

President Trump had this to say when asked about the virus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: It's very much we hope under control. It was the ship. And I think we're going to make a full report about it tomorrow. We have a lot of people. A lot of great people are studying it. It should be fine. We hope.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sould Americans be concerned that it could spread and how are you --

TRUMP: I hope not. I mean, I hope not. We'll do the best we can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here. Sanjay, it's so good to see you. You know, a lot of people around the world are having a visceral reaction to this news comparing the hantavirus to the COVID pandemic. It's understandable. But I've heard you say many times now to just take a deep breath because these are different situations, explain?

GUPTA: Yeah. And let me preface by saying before that, Dana, that, you know, I've covered outbreaks for 25 years. They are quickly unfolding stories. So, I would say as of 12:15 on Friday, what we would say is that there's very low cause for concern. But let me give you a little bit of the why behind the what because that's what everyone is saying. The World Health Organization, CDC, they're not that concerned about it. But why is that?

And I think there's sort of three primary reasons why that scientists sort of look at. One is just how likely is it to spread from one person to another? And there have been studies on this. It's something known as the reproductive number or are not. And they find that sort of the average during an outbreak of spread with one of these, these viruses is about 1.19, which is lower than flu. And if you use quarantine and isolation, it drops below one.

That makes it very hard for this to turn into something that's a larger epidemic or pandemic. With COVID it was, you know, certainly higher than two, maybe close to four. Also remember with COVID, people could spread the virus while they were still asymptomatic, meaning they didn't even know that they were carrying the virus. With this, there appears to be a pretty narrow window of spread when someone is sick, when someone has a fever and that typically lasts a day or two. So, you know, that's another important data point.

And then finally a big one is we looked at the genome structure of this virus that was done back in 1996, compared it to 2026, 30 years later. And there wasn't much difference. There hadn't been a lot of mutations. Could that change over time? Yeah, that's why I'm saying as of, you know, this time and place, this is what we know. But for those three reasons that makes it very unlikely for this to turn into something that's going to be a broader concern.

BASH: That's fascinating. Not a lot of mutations over 20 years.

GUPTA: Yeah, 30 years.

BASH: One of the things that our team, everybody really is asking is, you mentioned about containment.

GUPTA: Yeah.

BASH: Is the question of how problematic or even dangerous it is that several of the cruise ship passengers have already left the ship and they've flown all over the world.

GUPTA: That's the biggest thing that I'm certainly looking for. You know, when we heard potentially about a flight attendant who became sick, subsequently tested negative. I think there's someone else on a plane who flew with one of these passengers who's sick, who I think is currently being tested. I mean, I think that's, that's a big concern.

But, you know, there've been these studies. Take a look at this, Dana, this is really interesting to me. I don't know if we can blow this up some more, but how does this virus behave in the real world? That was sort of the question that I think a lot of people have been asking.

So, just take a look at the screen. In the upper left was a guy who showed up at a birthday party. This is back in 2018. He was sick when he showed up at the party. He had symptoms. He was at this party for 90 minutes and within that 90 minutes, five people became infected. That's what you see. Just to the right of that first case.

Two of those people then subsequently infected other people, and ultimately 11 people died from that outbreak. 34 people were infected. So that's sort of gives you an idea of what can happen when people are in close quarters with someone who is sick with this particular virus. That's the big concern.

Now, one thing I'll point out, and we dug into this last night, Dana, is that 80 healthcare workers ended up caring for the patients that you see on the screen here. And none of those healthcare workers got sick. Another important data point, in part it could be because of the effectiveness of things like masks, but it could also be that narrow infectious window again. By the time these patients actually showed up to the hospital, they were no longer infectious, no longer spreading the virus to one another.

[12:20:00] So, you know, this can obviously be a problem as you saw at that birthday party, but ultimately that narrow infectious window, I think, makes it much harder for this to turn into something that's going to spread more broadly.

BASH: Fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on, Sanjay. We are very lucky to have you.

GUPTA: Thank you.

BASH: Up next, an appetite to indict. Brand new CNN reporting on changes afoot at the Justice Department terrific behind the scenes reporting on a major push to charge a prominent Trump critic with crimes.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: We have brand new CNN reporting about the investigation into former CIA director and Trump critic John Brennan. And the length the Trump Justice Department is going to find a way to indict him. Brennan helped lead the investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign and then became a frequent anti-Trump pundit on cable news.

CNN's Evan Perez and Hannah Rabinowitz go inside the moments before a senior prosecutor was ousted for not pursuing Brennan quickly enough. And how her replacement is potentially opening a whole new front into President Trump's retribution campaign. Evan is here now. Evan, this is really fascinating. You have so much great behind the scenes, sort of color and drama about what is going on here. I mean, I guess the ultimate question is, is this new prosecutor going to be successful, do you think?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. I mean, I think that that's the big open question. There was this extraordinary meeting that happened just about three weeks ago now at the Justice Department where the prosecutor who's been leading this effort from the U.S. attorney's office in Miami came up and they were -- obviously, the pressure was on to try to do this case. And her message to them was, this is not ready for prime time. This is Maria Medida's (Ph) long.

And at the end of that meeting, the decision was made to get rid of her and remove her from the case because the president obviously was very upset. He had just fired Pam Bondi because of this. And so now his -- one of the president's friends, Joe diGenova has been sent down to Fort Pierce, Florida, which is obviously the courthouse where President Trump was able to defeat those charges about mishandling classified documents. He got a very favorable judge there.

And so, the idea is that this is where Joe diGenova is going to outline this massive case that -- with the theory that essentially, there's been a conspiracy against President Trump since 2016 with the investigation into Russia meddling all the way through 2024, which is the Jack Smith investigations of the president. And so, that's the theory that Joe diGenova is pursuing. He was on a podcast with Rudy Giuliani, just a few weeks ago, and he outlined some of his thoughts on this. Listen?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE DIGENOVA, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: With Letitia James, you don't charge her in Virginia on mortgage fraud. You include her on a massive conspiracy count down in Miami with a bunch of people beginning in 2017, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Brennan, James Clapper and Susan Rice. Because remember, Susan Rice on Inauguration Day 2017, writes a memo to herself, recounting a meeting that happened in early January where all of those people were in the -- in the Oval Office discussing a counterintelligence investigation against Donald Trump and you and everybody else. And Obama said, do it by the book.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And you can see what this -- where this is going. The idea being that they're going to try to bring Barack Obama to the -- to the grand jury, they're going to try to do all of the different things. And keep in mind, I mean this is President Trump's longest running, you know, annoyance, right, which is the idea that because he won the presidency in 2016, that he had the help of the Russians, which he believes is the beginning of this conspiracy.

BASH: Right. And just to sort of kind of put a fine point on it, what Joe diGenova is saying and what you're reporting that has kind of emerged in this quest to find a way to indict John Brennan is to say that the whole investigation was a conspiracy to try to get Donald Trump as opposed to an investigation to see if there was a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.

And, you know, we can't talk about this without looking at the broader context. And you mentioned Pam Bondi being fired and what's happening right now with the Justice Department trying to continue to prosecute anybody that they can find who the presidency sees as a political enemy. And you look on the screen there. I mean, just remember James Comey, he was reindicted for a totally different crime after the first one was thrown up.

PEREZ: Right, exactly. I mean the -- Comey, they've been able to reindict on these seashells and they're not stopping there. They're going to keep looking at him. They're looking at him in another couple of other jurisdictions for possible leaking. So, they're not stopping with Brennan if they're able to get those charges.

DOVERE: And I was talking to a prominent Democrat a couple days ago who's not one of the people that was on the screen, you just showed, who said, I assume that I will be investigated. And that is where this -- this is how it's landing in people's minds, certainly among prominent critics of the president. And we'll see if they're right about this, but it seems like they have some reason to think that. HENDERSON: Yeah. And listen, part of this is Todd Blanche wants to get the big job, right? He's acting right now. He saw what happened to Pam Bondi who wasn't able to deliver what the president wanted. What MAGA has always wanted this idea that all of these people had a conspiracy theory against