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Immigration Bill Passes Amid Anti-Weaponization Fund Revolt; Lebanese Pres. Slams Iran Amid Israeli Strikes, Fraying Ceasefire; ICE To Stop Reporting Deaths Of Recently Released Detainees. Aired 11- 11:30a ET

Aired June 05, 2026 - 11:00   ET

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

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So passionate about through this organization pivotal. I mean, it's the first time I'd really heard her talking like that. Wolf?

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. It's really important powerful interview of Sanjay. Thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, you can catch Sanjay's full interview on his podcast Chasing Life is now streaming in the CNN app. And the next hour of The Situation Room starts right now.

Happening now, accountability and ICE. The Trump administration is making a major policy shift as more immigrants are dying in federal custody.

Plus, going big on gas. Prices are some of the highest we've seen in years, but Costco is undercutting most other gas stations. We're making sense of how the company is doing that.

And --

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't say that. Never say that. Goonies never say die.

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BLITZER: Sean Astin from "The Goonies," "Lord of the Rings" and many other films and shows is among the Hollywood veterans sounding the alarm right now about protecting actors from AI and the changes. It's about to bring.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. Pamela Brown is off today. You're in The Situation Room.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: Breaking news a legislative victory for President Trump that's exposing deep divides within his own party. After more than 18 hours of debate, yes, 18 hours of debate and weeks of delays. Senate Republicans early this morning ran through $70 billion in funding for immigration enforcement. That vote following intense backlash on both sides of the aisle over the President's very controversial so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund that has threatened to do -- that threatened to derail it.

Here with us in The Situation Room, CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox. Lauren, this should have been a rather straightforward vote, but that wasn't the case. Why?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this took more than 18 hours to actually complete. And that is par for the course in the Senate when they have what is known as a marathon voting series vote- a-rama. But there were definitely a lot of hurdles here for Republican leaders in part because of that Weaponization Fund.

Now, the Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made clear on Monday that they were not going to continue pursuing this fund after the court decision. But Donald Trump left the door open and it gave a lot of Republicans especially those who are up for reelection at the end of the year some heartburn about whether or not they were going to be willing to be on the record supporting this.

Now, the fund wasn't actually in this legislation at all. But it was all about timing. And you had a number of Republicans yesterday making clear that they might vote with Democrats on a really important amendment that would have sent this bill back to committee and potentially stopped this $70 billion in immigration funding from moving forward in the Senate. Ultimately leaders were able to convince Senator Bill Cassidy after about three and a half hours to vote with them instead of the Democrats.

But it did give some vulnerable Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine an opportunity to make clear where they stood on this Weaponization Fund. Now at the end of the day, there weren't any amendments that were accepted to this bill that dealt with that fund and only one Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the underlying bill. A lot of Republicans argued to me yesterday that this was about immigration funding. They wanted to keep this about immigration funding. But Democrats obviously made this an opportunity to talk about a plethora of political issues that they want to bring up at the ballot box in November.

BLITZER: Laura Fox, thank you very much for that update. Important developments happening overnight indeed. Appreciate it very, very much.

Also happening now, an Israeli strike on Southern Lebanon has left four people dead that according to Lebanese state media. And this comes despite an agreed ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon and after the Israeli military warned people to evacuate several villages there. But the truth is contingent on the Iran-backed militant group, Hezbollah, to stop fighting. It's a demand the group completely rejects.

And this morning CNN's chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, sat down for an exclusive interview with the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: I'm standing here on the balcony of the presidential palace in Beirut. Over my shoulder is the suburb of Dahieh. It has been a target of the Israelis for the last several weeks and it is destroyed in parts. But also up to 800,000 people maybe more have evacuated. It is a ghost town. It's symbolic of what's happening in many parts of this country during this fighting and during this war. We can hear Israeli drones overhead. I've just had an exclusive global exclusive interview with the president, Joseph Auon. And he has said very, very clearly that Israel needs to abide by a ceasefire.

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He's also said very clearly that Iran needs to stop empowering Hezbollah. He rejected a recent statement by the IRGC in Iran that says it doesn't accept this ceasefire. He told them in no uncertain terms that this is not their country. This is what he told me about it.

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JOSEPH AOUN, LEBANESE PRESIDENT: IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, they don't agree with this, they don't approve this agreement, what happened. It's not your country, it's our country. It's our obligation. It's not your job to interfere into our country. I reject the statement totally, because our people being killed, our people being -- our houses being destroyed. They are using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiation with the United States. It's unacceptable.

And here also, Hezbollah must understand that. Hezbollah must understand that no other way but to sit and talk. No other way to solve this problem and to save what's left except through negotiation and diplomacy.

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AMANPOUR: President Aoun has been a military commander for eight years. He's been head of the army here and he's had a four-decade-long army experience. He's been in combat. He still carries the shrapnel in his body of having been wounded. He is sworn as president to uphold and protect the territorial integrity of this country. And for a man who's been to war, he really means it.

He's a very charismatic communicator. He knows that his power is limited. Not only is his mostly a ceremonial position, he can authorize and engage in negotiations, but he doesn't have as much executive authority because of the different ways the sectarian factions are aligned in this government.

It's not a presidential system, in other words. But he said he's going to use every power that he has to make this war end. And he says that it really takes two to tango. Israel has to stop, has to move back, and Hezbollah has to stop. Both sides need to live in peace. The war needs to end. And then he says there might be another further negotiation towards eventually normalization of relations.

But the first step is an end to this war. And he says he's working on it as hard as he possibly can under very, very difficult circumstances and realities. The key to note is that the majority of the Lebanese people, including the Shiites, who, of course, Hezbollah claims to represent, they want an end to this. They want the sovereign state to be in charge, not a non-state actor.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN in Beirut.

BLITZER: And a special thanks to Christiane for that exclusive, exclusive reporting. And you can watch her full interview with the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, today at 1:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN International. And more analysis on the Amanpour Hour tomorrow here on CNN, 11:00 a.m. Eastern.

We're following other breaking news right now. NASA told the four crew members to board a separate spacecraft due to leaks on the International Space Station. This is a look at the ISS. A spokesperson for NASA just said the agency has now instructed the crew to return to planned operations aboard the ISS. And the leak repair is now paused. The cracks and leaks are on a portion operated by Russia and have been a concern for some time.

But it appears the situation may have gotten worse. Cosmonauts are now trying to fix the problem. We are monitoring this and will bring you all the latest developments that will be coming up.

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And still ahead, why ICE is now changing the way it reports the deaths of released detainees. And a CNN exclusive, new video from inside the country's most advanced aircraft carrier. It shows just how severe the fire on board was during the ship's mission in the Middle East. Stay with us. You're in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: New this morning, Senate Republicans have managed to overcome internal divisions and pass a massive immigration enforcement package. The $70 billion ICE and Border Patrol Bill is a major win for the President. And it comes as we're learning more about changes to ICE's policy on reporting deaths of recently released detainees. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez has reported extensively on the Trump administration's immigration policies. She's here with us in The Situation Room right now. Priscilla, what more can you tell us about this new policy?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this new policy is doing away with an old policy from the Biden administration. And it comes against the backdrop of an unprecedented number of deaths of detainees in ICE custody. This however has to do with those who are released.

Now, some background here about the policy. In 2021, it was adopted by ICE, the idea being that there had to be a reporting requirements for detainees who were released from custody and if within 30 days they died, it would be incumbent on a family member or an advocate to report that to ICE and for ICE therefore to have their own reporting mechanism.

Now, I've talked to former ICE officials about this policy. And, again, it was started under the Biden administration. It's one that advocates push for because it allows for additional accountability of ICE in case their death outside of ICE was in any way connected to what happened during their time in custody. But it was always also very hard to do. It's a very challenging task because they had to rely on someone telling them that the person they released died and then they had to investigate the circumstances of that death and whether it was tied at all to their time in custody.

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So this wasn't a reporting requirement that resulted in a big outcome. It was actually not many that were -- that would come up in this policy. However, it comes at a time where advocates, lawyers want ICE to keep every accountability mechanism they have because there are deaths that are happening at a very rapid pace within custody. And their concern has always been that ICE will release someone when they're sick and absolve themselves of their responsibility and then they die outside of custody.

Now, in a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said this, they said, under this updated policy, when an individual is no longer in ICE custody, then ICE will no longer be responsible for monitoring or reviewing deaths that may occur. They went on to say that ICE is not responsible when an individual passes away weeks after leaving their custody, though they say they are committed to transparency.

It is important to note, Wolf, that what they do need to continue doing and that they are doing is reporting to Congress as well as releasing publicly when a detainee dies in their custody. And that is how we know that there have been nearly 50 who have died since President Donald Trump took office last January. CNN has investigated some of those deaths and found that many of them may have been preventable. So this is still something that ICE is under scrutiny over.

But for this policy in particular, it's one that former say wasn't always effective. Advocates, however, say it's still necessary given the situation that we're in and that ICE has previously been in before.

BLITZER: You always do amazing reporting. Priscilla Alvarez, thank you very, very much. Appreciate it.

And up next, come for the gas, stay for the chicken. Despite some of the highest prices drivers have seen in years, Costco is now cashing in by selling relatively, keyword relatively, cheaper gas. We're going to make it make sense after the break.

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[11:21:44] BLITZER: Happening now, gas prices dropping. They're down nearly 20 cents per gallon since last week. AAA says today's national average is $4.22, $4.22. Despite that, gas across the country has remained above $4 per gallon for nearly 70 straight days. Except, except that Costco, nationwide, its gas prices have averaged below $4 a gallon. CNN Business senior reporter David Goldman is here to make it make sense for us. David, today's question, how does Costco sell such relatively cheaper gas, a little bit cheaper than the rest of the country?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, it really is cheaper, $0.30 a gallon cheaper on average. And that is real money. Because when you look at it, if every American bought gas at Costco today, they would save collectively $112 million. That is $26 a month for the average American household. That's real money that they would save at Costco. And that's real money for Costco to make. That is $27 billion. B, like Blitzer, billion dollars, that they've made on gas just in the past year alone. That's 10 percent of Costco's overall sales. It's a big business.

So what's going on here? Well, there are three things that you need to understand about Costco and gas. The first is demand. The second is memberships. The third one is chicken. And we're going to get right back to that one, I promise. But when you think about demand, right, they sell more gas and they make more profit. And, yes, Costco makes a profit on gas just a couple cents. But the reason that they can sell it so cheap is because of their business model.

They make almost all of their profit on their memberships. They sell, just to get in the door, $65 a year to buy a membership. It's $130 to get that 2 percent back if you're an executive member. And that's where $5 billion of profit comes from, from their membership. That's almost their entire annual profit. And so they can sell stuff for at cost or just a little bit below sometimes. And so that brings me to chicken.

So about half of the folks who buy gas at Costco go through the store. They go to the warehouse. And what are they looking for? That $5 rotisserie chicken. And that cost has never changed. And so it's at the back of the store. They wander through, and they're getting their Kirkland batteries and their Kirkland honey and their Kirkland peanut butter and my personal favorite, the Kirkland vodka. Yes, it's a tradition now on summer Fridays on this show where we're bringing out the booze. And the thing is, this is -- and you can quote me on this, you come to Costco for the gas, you stay for the chicken, Wolf.

BLITZER: I'll do it, and stay for the chicken. All right, good work, David Goldman. Thank you very, very much. We always learn from you. And if you, our viewers, need David to make it make sense, e-mail or send a selfie video of your question to makeitmakesense@cnn.com.

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And just ahead, it's either fight or die. That's how one sailor described a 30-hour battle to put out a fire on the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, a new video exclusive to CNN shows the scope of the damage. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Happening now, the Carmelo Anthony trial is now underway in Texas. He's charged with the fatally stabbing of a competitor at a high school track meet last spring. Anthony told police he was protecting himself after a confrontation with the victim and his brother. But prosecutors say it was a, "sneak surprise attack." Anthony faces up to life in prison if convicted of murder.

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And leaders at the Kennedy Center here in Washington are ordering staff to remove President Trump's name from --