Vote-A-Rama Drama
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It's Tuesday, July 1st, and here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning. We will put 51 votes on the floor. Voterama drama, another all-nighter for senators as they move forward on the president's spending and tax megabill. Plus this. This is anything but justice. This is the opposite of our will.

Families in Idaho furious after a plea deal is offered to the man accused of killing four college students. Why they say prosecutors failed them. And today, President Trump heads to the Everglades for the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. Is this remote facility the new blueprint for immigration's crackdown? Then later, it's the confusing world of cryptocurrency. How you can protect yourself if you're crypto-curious.

It is 6 a.m. here on the East Coast, a live look at Capitol Hill, where it was another busy night for senators. Good morning, everybody. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me. And we're going to start with the fate of Medicaid for a presumed nearly 12 million Americans. It still hangs in the balance this morning for more than 21 hours now. Senators have been locked into a so-called voterama on that big, beautiful bill. That means they get to debate all kinds of amendments with no clear end in sight.

Senate Republicans are moving quickly to try and ram President Trump's agenda through Congress. The clock is ticking if they want to meet their deadline of July 4th. Now, most of the amendments were proposed overnight by Democrats, which ultimately failed on party line votes. It's been a long debate. I know people are weary. But at the end of the day, we want to get this done so this country is safer and stronger and more prosperous, not only for today, but for future generations of Americans.

At this point, we're watching closely two Republicans who have shown wavering support for the bill. Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They're both showing concerns over how the cuts to Medicaid would impact rural hospitals specifically in their states. Senators Tom Tillis and Rand Paul are already signaling that they will vote no, leaving Republicans with a razor-thin margin of error.

Joining me now in the group chat, Jerusalem Dempsis, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, Maria Cardona, CNN political commentator and democratic political strategist, and Ashley Davis, former White House official under George W. Bush. Okay, so I want to start with the kind of two schools of reluctance. There's the Rand Paul kind of, and other people who are like the math ain't mathin'.

this thing is expensive and it's not showing any signs of being less expensive and then the people who are trying to protect in particular this kind of safety net program actually how does the party hold it together or do you see this as a performative obstruction before basically just passing it all of the above yeah this is the ugly part of passing some of these bills we were talking before we went on air that

when you do have one party in control of everything, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, it's just everyone starts getting mad at each other and this is where we are right now. I think that you obviously, as you said, we've lost Rand Paul because of the debt ceiling. He'll vote with nothing that raises the debt ceiling. And then we lost Senator Tillis over the weekend.

So we have one more and is at Lisa Murkowski. They've been trying most of the night into this morning to try to get her on board, especially in regards to some of the rural hospital funding that she wants. Susan Collins has been a little bit quiet, but I think at the end of the day,

You'll see in the next couple hours, they have over 600 amendments that have been filed, it may be more than that now. 37 have been voted on, as you said, most of them failed. Did you say 37 out of 600 something? Yeah. Okay, great. No, they're not going to do them all. Oh, I know, I know. They'll probably get to over 1,200. Because we're talking about Medicaid, let me say one thing before I come to you, Maria, which is the president has said over and over and over again that,

He doesn't want them meddling in ways of Medicare and Medicaid that are going to annoy the voters. Let me see, I think we have an example.

Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it. We're going to love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We're not going to do anything with that. Can you guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security will not be touched? Yeah, I mean, I have said it so many times, you shouldn't be asking me that question. What happens if it comes to your desk?

has the tax cuts, but also cuts to Medicaid. Would you veto that? Well, we're not doing that. Would you veto that? I would if they were cutting it, but they're not cutting it. We're not cutting Medicaid. We're not cutting Medicare. The argument is they're going after waste, fraud, and abuse. There is not enough waste, fraud, and abuse to make the cuts that they're talking about. That's the problem. And so the president's advisors are either lying to him or he's gaslighting the American people.

I don't know which is worse. At the end of the day, though, Adi, the massive cuts that are in this bill are going to hurt so many Americans in so many states across the country that the political ads are already just writing themselves for Democrats going into the 2026 midterms. Right, probably with some quotes from Republican senators. Absolutely, and including the president in terms of this being not just the largest transfer of wealth,

from the poor and middle class to billionaires, but also a massive betrayal of the American people of what Trump promised them and Republicans promised them they would do during the election. You know, there was Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri was saying, look, I think Democrats are going to try and score a lot of cheap points off this. But the rhetoric's really tired.

What do you find in like the polling, how people are thinking about it, irrespective of Democrats? How are people perceiving this? - Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing is how few people seem to know about what's in the bill, despite the fact that there's been

near constant messaging about this. I mean, you see on the front page of papers, you see it in Democratic messaging all over the country. But at the same time, you see very small numbers of people who are able to even identify in polls that Medicaid cuts are a part of this program. And it feels very different than in 2017 when the entire fight was billed as repealing the ACA. So I'm not sure how this ends up

playing out in the long term, but in the short run right now, the fact that there's nothing in the bill that says we are cutting Medicaid, instead it points to we're making these procedural changes to how Medicaid works, seems to be working in a Republican's favor, but I don't think it's going to last that long. Yeah, the longer they talk to him. The polling is horrible. The polling on this is awful.

And so I think from the standpoint of what do the voters want and what do they know about, that's one of the reasons why Democrats had this voter-rama, to open their eyes in terms of what actually is in this. And I think that is what has given a lot of Republicans, not a lot, but some Republicans some pause, including one who just completely...

That exploded his political career because he was not ready to make the kinds of cuts that are in this bill. You're talking about Tom Tillis of North Carolina. I think what I do about the rural hospitals here, the fact that they had to put in a rural hospital stabilization fund indicates that they know they're cutting

Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Let me hold there because Tom Tillis, who you just mentioned, I think was like, we're going for a few more hours, folks. So we've got time to talk about this. You guys stick with us. As we look ahead, coming up on CNN this morning, we're going to have a congresswoman who has a plan to, quote, expose every part of the Republican budget bill. I'll sit down with Democratic Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari. Plus,

new details. We're learning about the man police say ambushed fire crews in Idaho, and it's been dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," a new immigration detention facility surrounded by miles and miles of Mother Nature, something the White House calls a "design feature." Look, when you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that's a deterrent for them to try to escape.

I'm CNN's Francesca Street and this is the podcast Chance Encounters. Imagine you're standing in front of the famous Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy and you're about to toss three coins into the fountain and make a wish. Two, three. All of a sudden I heard this voice just saying, you know, if you want the wish to come true, you must throw with the left hand because it's closer to your heart. What?

We're chronicling the summer loves that turned out to be more than just a vacation romance. All roads lead to Rome with Catherine Tondelli, who just threw three coins into the Trevi Fountain and made a wish. Follow CNN's Chance Encounters wherever you get your podcasts. It is now 12 minutes past the hour and here is your morning roundup.

The suspect in the Idaho firefighter killings is identified as 20-year-old Wes Rowley. While the motive is still unclear, his family tells CNN he wanted to be a firefighter. The man started a brush fire, then fatally shot two responding firefighters and injured another. He was later found dead. Officials say it appears he shot himself. The fallen firefighters are Chief John Morris and the end chief, Frank Harwood. Free, free! Free, free!

British punk rap duo Bob Villain's US visas are now revoked. They led a crowd to chant, quote, death to Israel's military at a UK music festival. The group was scheduled to start their US tour in October. Deadline reports they've also been dropped by their agents.

and scary moments on a Disney cruise. Video shows the moment a rescue team from the Disney Wish pulled a young girl and her father into a small boat after they went overboard. Witnesses say the father jumped in the water to save his daughter after she fell from the ship. And...

Coming up on CNN this morning, Elon Musk is warning Congress about Trump's big, beautiful bill, how he how he plans to react if Trump's agenda gets the green light. Plus, we go off script to discover the growing power of crypto, what it means for your wallet. And as we go into the break, another look inside the Senate chamber where we're now hearing it could be a few more hours before the final vote on the president's spending and tax bill.

So I became a fan of crypto. And to me, it's an industry. I view it as an industry. And I'm president. And if we didn't have it, China would or somebody else would. But most likely China. China would love to. Going off script for a second, because we are going to talk about the growing power of crypto and American politics and the impact on your wallet. So you've got crypto companies and their top executives. They shelled out nearly 240 million in political campaign contributions during the last election. That's actually more than any other corporate sector.

Then you've got Donald Trump's presidential campaign receiving more than $18 million in the last campaign cycle. That's according to the FEC. So that's like a lot of money, a lot of influence at a time when Washington is actually making some really critical decisions about the future of digital money.

Now, one of those decisions is the Genius Act. It's a bill recently passed in the Senate with bipartisan support and basically lets banks and financial tech firms, even big stores and retailers issue what are called stable coins, essentially digital dollars that are backed by cash assets. Now to help me sort through all of this, we're joined now by actor Ben McKenzie. He's a longtime crypto critic and he's also the filmmaker behind the recent doc, "Everyone is Lying to You for Money." Ben, good morning.

Good morning. So based on the title of the film, I think I have some sense of your point of view. But I want to ask you about the Genius Act, because this is supposed to be doing something that will make us all more confident in cryptocurrency, right? You have stablecoin, which is

backed by the dollar. You have a regulator now that's supposed to oversee how all this works. I mean, for an example, there are now rules so that if a bank is holding a bunch of this digital currency and it goes under, government officials get to step in. What are your concerns?

Well, we're giving corporations more power over our currencies. What this bill would do, what the Genius Act would do, would allow companies such as banks, such as large corporations like Walmart or Meta to issue their own currencies, cryptocurrencies, which are backed one to one with U.S. dollars. But the problem, of course, is that Americans already don't like the power that large corporations have over us.

A recent poll found 68 percent of Americans have a negative view of large corporations. And now we want to give them more power. And, of course, the corporations would benefit. Of course, the corporations would make money on this enterprise. They would be able to collect interest on the real dollars that you give them in exchange for, say, Walmart coin or something like that. But how would the regular people benefit? I don't think they would at all.

At the same time, you've been doing this for so long. I've been kind of watching you in this space speak out. And you have a presidency and you have an administration that is very deeply kind of intertwined with crypto. I think I was reading that Paul Atkins, the SEC chair, someone with close ties to the industry,

Obviously, Scott Besson and the president himself, who has a meme coin. And in the meantime, we've seen the Justice Department drop their cryptocurrency crime unit. The direction that this is taking seems opposite of what you've been talking about in terms of more skepticism.

Well, I mean, it's opened the floodgates to what I experienced in 2021 and 2022 when I documented it for this film. There's a lot of deception going on. There's a lot of people who are being disingenuous with what their true motivations are. I mean, Donald Trump's embrace of crypto is pretty ironic. As recently as I think 2021 or 2022, he called it a scam. But now he's found a way to benefit from it, to profit himself personally from it.

So all of a sudden he's in favor of it. I think what we're seeing is just an enormous amount of self-dealing and self-enrichment. And unfortunately, it happens with both of the parties. As you mentioned, the cryptocurrency industry has donated some 240 million dollars to political parties and candidates in the 2024 cycle alone. They're the largest corporate

donors of any sector. And so what they're doing is they're both buying influence in terms of getting people all of a sudden to embrace this old 30-year-old technology called blockchain that doesn't really do anything, or they're intimidating them into silence. The crypto industry spent $40 million defeating Sherrod Brown, Senator Sherrod Brown, who is the head of the Senate Banking Committee, to which I testified in 2022. They're intimidating people. And it's working.

And unfortunately, I believe the Genius Act may pass the House. It's already passed the Senate. And it will do so with Republican support, but also with some Democrats being either bought off or intimidated. Basically, in your film, you talk a lot about how crypto jargon can mislead people.

And I'm also struck by the fact that it now feels sort of inevitable that we are moving into an age where cryptocurrency is going to be with us. And as the president said, getting to it first before other nations do. So for everyday investors, how do we start to think about this as it may appear, as you say, as a retailer's special coin or whatever?

Be very, very skeptical. As you point out, the words in crypto don't really mean what they mean in normal English. These stable coins are not stable. In my film, we see when one stable coin went down, it nearly took down the entire crypto ecosystem. It was a coin called Terra Luna.

These stable coins are at best money market mutual funds. That's what they really are. But we're creating a whole new regulatory structure for them, a whole new piece of legislation in order to regulate them. This is deeply problematic because I don't think the American people really understand the systemic risk that we have here.

This crypto legislation and the sort of the factors around it bear striking resemblance to the factors that precipitated the subprime crisis. I'm deeply worried that as crypto embeds itself into our regulated system and into our banking system in particular, at some point it will break as crypto always does, as it always collapses at some point.

And at that point, we will all be bailing them out. And we will be bailing out the largest corporations in America and the largest banks again. That's Ben McKenzie. He's director of the new film, Everyone is Lying to You for Your Money, which is a doc about cryptocurrency. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

Ahead on CNN this morning, we're continuing to monitor the Senate floor where the majority leader says they're close to wrapping up that marathon voting session. You can watch it right there in real time where it is inching towards a final vote on the president's agenda. Plus, how the victim's families are reacting to a plea deal in the case of four murdered University of Idaho students.

Live Aid brought together the world's biggest musicians for one important cause. 40 years later, a new CNN original series explores how it came to be. Live Aid, when rock and roll took on the world. Premieres Sunday, July 13th at 9 on CNN. Good morning, everyone. I am Audie Cornish, and thank you for joining me on CNN this morning. It's 6.30 here on the East Coast. Here's what's happening right now.

Senators slogging through a marathon voting session on the president's agenda. They've been at it more than 21 hours now voting on amendments on the big beautiful bill. You can see Senator Ted Cruz there. We heard from Tom Tillis of North Carolina that it could be a few more hours before the final vote.

And a head Fed chair Jerome Powell will speak to the European Central Bank Forum. It comes just one day after President Trump sent him a handwritten letter chastising him for not lowering interest rates.

And today, the president heads to Florida to visit a new immigrant detention facility dubbed Alligator Alcatraz. It's a tent city being built in an airfield and is expected to house 5,000 migrants. Now, it's surrounded by miles and miles of the Everglades. Alligators and other dangerous wildlife are present, so Florida officials say it needs a little security.

So there's clearly strain on immigration detention facilities across the country. I want you to take a look at this story in the New York Times. It finds that more than 56,000 undocumented immigrants are currently in government custody, exceeding the capacity of 41,000. So that's, doing a little math, more than 15,000 extra people. And that's why the administration is pushing for the open of more detention centers like this Alligator Alcatraz. Border Czar Tom Homan told our Caitlin Collins the big beautiful bill will actually help that.

We can't wait for the open. We'll put aliens in there as soon as we can. We've got to get the big, beautiful bill passed so we can buy more beds. The more beds we have, the more bad guys we arrest, the more people we do. How do you decide who goes there? We're in the country lately. We've got a problem. For more on this, we're going to bring in New York Times national reporter Jasmine Uluya. Jasmine, good morning. Thank you for being here.

Good morning. I want to talk just about how these detention centers have been operating if they're over capacity. What were you learning in your reporting about what's going on? Yeah, so as soon as the Trump administration started ratcheting up raids and federal actions at homes, at workplaces,

at businesses, we started hearing from lawyers that they were having trouble accessing their clients, that it seemed like staff was overworked, that we were hearing that detainees were being kept in rooms that were meant to be just for to hold people a few hours at a time. And so we've gone to ICE, we've asked U.S. Customs and Border Officials to

about these overcrowded conditions and what we were hearing from people. And they've categorically denied any claims that they are

But we've spoken with more than a dozen lawyers, people who have been detained, their relatives who say, you know, some people are going a week or more without showers. They are getting insufficient food. I heard from one mother here in New York who said her son was shuffled across facilities across the country.

had a very hard time connecting with him. Once she did in Pennsylvania, she said that her son had spotted worms in the sink that they use to acquire water. And so we've heard some very disturbing claims from people who are in detention and their lawyers about not being able to get medications and so forth.

And in your story, you actually write that at least 10 immigrants have died in ICE custody in the six months since January 1st, two at the facility in Miami, the Chrome Detention Center, which some people may have seen images where the detainees earlier this month formed a human SOS sign in the yard. And then there were at least two deaths, were suicides apparently, in Arizona, in Georgia. I know the administration has denied this,

But they are talking about this push for expansion for more facilities. Is that an acknowledgment that whatever they're doing, they need more room and support to do it? They definitely are asking for more money, $45 billion in the bill. That's 10 times more than the current budget. And it's important to note that immigration detention has been expanded under both Republican and Democratic administrations for the last decade.

10 years, 20 years. But this is what we're hearing from lawyers is that

the push is just greater than it's ever been. It concerns people that are, that many people who do not have criminal charges that have tried to follow the law, that have tried to apply, that have entered the country and have tried to do it the right way, applying through humanitarian parole programs, whether that's CBP1, that the administration now considers wrongful or that they should have been temporary to begin with.

What's significant about alligator Alcatraz? Do you see this as a turning point or a significant moment in this process? It's one more point of how much this has escalated and how much they're looking to escalate and make it, from what I hear from lawyers, just how making the conditions so difficult here in the United States that people will self-deport on their own.

Jasmine Ulloa is a national reporter for The New York Times. Thank you for sharing your reporting. Thank you.

Elon Musk plans his own personal political revolution if President Trump's big beautiful bill becomes law. In a post on X, Musk writes, "If this insane spending bill passes, the American party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democratic-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a voice." Even the most moderate Democrats find themselves agreeing with the world's richest man.

Elon Musk is right about this. He's got it exactly right. The idea of borrowing $3.5 trillion on the nation's credit card in order to be able to give tax breaks to the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg is financially nuts.

Now it looks like Musk may be getting dozed by Donald Trump. Shortly before one o'clock this morning, the president posted on Truth Social that without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. Quote, no more rocket launches, satellites or electric car production and our country would save a fortune. Perhaps we should have Doge take a good hard look at this. Big money to be saved. Three exclamation points. The

The group chat is back. Where to begin? So first, strangely, Democrats lately have loved saying, "I agree with Elon Musk. I'm not sure where they think that's gonna go." What do you hear in that moment? - Well, first of all, so is the love affair over completely? Like, is it done? Are they even getting back together? - Well, a new one just begun if you have Elizabeth Warren jumping in. - Oh my goodness. But look, I halfway agree with Senator Warren.

Musk is right in terms of the massive cost of this bill. It's going to be almost $4 trillion that it's going to add to the debt. But wait a second, he's calling for a third party. He's calling Republicans and Democrats a unit party. No, no, I understand, which is why I only half agree with what Warren said when she said he's exactly right. I don't think he's exactly right. Fair.

He's right on the cost of it and on the hypocrisy, which is why he is threatening Republicans themselves for running primaries. And I think this is part of the threat, starting a new party. I don't think that's going anywhere. How many people have tried to start a third party? It is just- Have any of them been the world's richest man? Well, no, that's right. But we also found that money doesn't buy everything.

thing, right? He tried to buy the Wisconsin race and it didn't happen. The limits of what billionaire, I mean, he's the richest man in the world and he really can't get many of his policy preferences through. They're going after his industry, the clean energy industry. They're going after his core beliefs, which are around our

around debt deficit reduction. But the other thing that I think is interesting here is despite his disillusionment with the Republican Party, it doesn't seem like he's interested in returning to the Democratic Party. He's just completely out in the wind on his own, which I find to be, in some ways, kind of an indictment of Democrats' ability to provide an alternative to Republicans in this moment. They should be going after anyone in the clean energy industry and asking them, hey, we're the party for you. We passed the IRA. We're trying to defend these things.

if the richest man in the world whose money is made off of solar and electric vehicles, whose money is being taken away by this administration, doesn't see a home for himself in the Democratic Party, I think that's a big problem. The other thing looking at this, Ashley, I wanted to ask you is like, it just, it smacks of a kind of patronage system. Like when I'm for you, I'm excited, but when I'm not for you, I guess I'm going to,

line item you out of the budget. I mean, like what is in the past people used to joke about the U.S. being some sort of banana republic. But that does give me vibes of a country where whoever you pay to play. Well, this is the problem in my mind, that everyone is doing their politics on social media and the 24 hour news cycle. Right. I mean, like, first of all, I don't care if Elon and the president like each other. I don't care if Elon and the Democrats like each other. Like I

first of all it's a lot of self-worth right there is a lot of money in budget and there's also i think that elon's always been a libertarian more than he's been anything and so he doesn't like the democrat party going back to what you're saying because of over regulation but he does like the clean energy part of things but he you know listen i think the

or whatever it was, was gonna end and it ended badly. - But it's interesting, it's ending over spending, right? He's talking about like, this is kind of undermined what Doge has done. - He's talking about spending but he's really talking about the tax on the potential tax that the Republicans put up yesterday in regards to some of the clean energy credits, which is new. I mean, that's what's really makes him mad.

But it does go back that he has a ton of federal contracts. And I'm a huge believer with what he's done with SpaceX. What he's been able to do to cut out the bureaucracy of the federal government by doing it with the private sector is unbelievable. So we have to like...

walk this fine line. Except he's gotten so much money from the federal government. He has, but it's so much better to give it to NASA where it goes into a black hole. Well, in the meantime, he's tweeting about donating to Thomas Massey's re-election campaign, who, you know, he doesn't have any contracts. And that's going to be a party of like four, right? I mean, so it's just...

and I agree with you, starting a new party is going to be tough. Also, Elon kind of reminds me a little bit of Trump 1, where they come into Washington and they think, I have a lot of money, I'm an executive, I'm used to getting my way, and then they realize there's a lot of things in the way. I mean, there's a lot of power in the civil service branch, a lot of power that's been distributed by our Constitution. You can't just point your hand and make everything go the way it does when you're the CEO of a tech company where you go, you know, there's funny stories about people not wanting to get in the elevator with Elon because he'll just ask them,

What do you do? And if he doesn't like your answer, he'll just fire you on the spot. And so, like, you can't do that in the federal government. And that kind of behavior and that kind of, you know, initiative, that was supposed to. And there's no selflessness in what Elon Musk is doing. You know, he talks about the America Party. He doesn't care about America. He only cares about himself.

It'll be interesting to see where that money goes if back into this political system. You guys stay with me. We've got a lot to talk about ahead coming up on CNN this morning. Democratic Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari of Arizona joins us. I'll ask her what happened when she showed up at an ICE detention center unannounced. And more from the group chat after this.

I'm heading to Eloy right now. I want to investigate and perform oversight as I'm legally permitted to do as a member of Congress and make sure that every single person that is in these detention centers is being treated with dignity and with respect and given the due process that they are afforded by our Constitution.

A key piece of the president's spending bill is immigration enforcement. Of course, if it passes, the Trump administration would get a huge cash infusion for its mass deportation plan. And the latest Senate version of the bill carves out $46 billion, as we mentioned, for the installation and maintenance of border barriers, along with another $45 billion towards those immigration detention facilities to expand capacity.

That's not even counting additional funds to hire and retain ICE agents. And this is all happening as the Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship gives the president a green light to deny citizenship to someone born in the US, at least for now. So it's part of why some Democratic lawmakers are visiting ICE facilities to see firsthand how that money might be spent and raise concerns about the human impact of this. And joining us now to discuss is Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari.

of Arizona. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So you actually went to an ICE facility. We were hearing earlier today about poor conditions at some of these facilities. You have Trump apparently going to be in Florida to talk about alligator Alcatraz. What is your concern about the conditions for people being held in these places? I'm horrified by the conditions. I visited Eloy Detention Center. It's about an hour outside of Phoenix. And

Went in, the process to get in was quite smooth. I was inside the facility for about three hours, but the most impactful part was the ability to actually speak with dozens of women who were eating lunch in the cafeteria. Originally, the person giving me the tour allowed me to speak with them.

When I tell you that women were rushing to me to try to tell me their stories as quickly as possible, I'm not exaggerating. They told me stories about everything from forced marches outside in the Arizona heat, which is deadly, and women passing out as a result.

to extremely dehumanizing and degrading rhetoric that they regularly face to purposeful turning off of air conditioning. Again, Arizona heat is deadly. And then after about 30 minutes, the person who allowed me to speak with them rushed over to say, actually,

that I shouldn't have let you talk to these people and we have to keep going. And they really present you with a lot of diplomatic talking points during the tour. So it's overcrowded. We know that the company's profiting off of this policy, like Geo Group, CoreCivic, they have made billions of dollars because these quotas that the Trump administration is trying to meet

and often go mostly going after people who are not serious criminals as they originally said, it's also to make these companies massive amounts of money because they helped get Donald Trump elected to office. - Can I follow up on something you were just saying there because I was noting that ICE has arrested more than 130 Iranian nationals just in one week. That's double like the whole year's amount of arrests before. And the acting ICE director Todd Lyons actually told Fox News that they're targeting

high risk, high threat countries that want to do harm to the U.S. So they are kind of rounding up people who may have military service served in Iran where it's mandatory, frankly. I think we have some sound of him and how he's thinking about this.

ICE is at the forefront of making sure that we're rounding up all these individuals or attempting to locate the ones that did get in. You know, you did see that list of individuals that were arrested. You have one that was demilitarized to Hezbollah. We also arrested a former sniper from a hostile country who snuck into the United States. So those are the type of individuals we want to locate before they can do anything here. Now we're hearing the term sleeper cells. How do you think about all this? I know, I believe your family is from Iran. Can you talk about this targeting?

So on top of the atrocious way that Donald Trump handled the foreign policy aspect and the fact that he almost got us into a massive war in the Middle East, another consequence of what just happened over the last couple of weeks with Iran is how Iranian Americans are now being treated and going to be treated in the United States. There are about one million Iranians in the United States total. They've been here, many have been here for decades.

We know, I have already gotten dozens of calls about folks who have been arrested or who are being detained. I don't know the specifics of every single case, but what I can tell you is I don't trust this administration to be going after real criminals across the board, whether or not they are Iranian or not. They want

to justify their policies and the additional funding that we are seeing in the Republican budget bill right now to funnel more money to ICE. We know it's about 10 times the amount of money that ICE currently gets. And so the fact of the matter is they're going to go after folks. I was called a sleeper cell by Laura Loomer just on social media last week. I mean, you have people who are just deeply, deeply racist.

Of course, you know, the U.S. and Iran have had tough issues over the last 45 years, but it's the Iranian people who have suffered the most under the regime. And the people in this country of Iranian heritage are the ones who have fled that regime, the ones who came to the United States in search of a better life, just like my parents did in the 1970s. I understand in terms of the big, beautiful bill, you have a plan to be reading it.

on the House floor. I mean, this is being debated in the Senate. This is really a performance. But what do you think is the value of this kind of performance? So we'll be outside the Capitol steps starting at 8 a.m. today to read the entirety of the most recent version of the bill that we have. What we know for a fact is that the more Americans find out the details of this bill...

the less popular it is. It is becoming more and more unpopular by the day because why would it be popular? 17 million people will lose their health care. Millions of jobs will be lost because of taxes on the clean energy industry. People will lose food assistance. More money will go to an emboldened ICE. So I think the more that Democrats can do to push back and to

show to the public all of the horrific aspects of this bill. We're going to read every single line of this piece of legislation. There's other members of Congress joining us. We have youth groups, high school students, college students, the rest. And we have to keep putting the pressure on. I don't think this is over. Of course, it's a long shot, but I think we have to fight till the bitter, bitter end because people's lives are literally on the line here. All right. Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

All right, it is now 53 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. The suspect in the case of four murdered University of Idaho students has agreed to a plea deal. Sources familiar with the deals tell CNN that Brian Koberger pled guilty to four counts of murder and likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. He's avoiding the death penalty and also waiving his right to appeal.

Jury deliberations continue today in the case against Sean Diddy Combs, just one hour into deliberations yesterday. The jury sent a note to the judge saying that a wildcard juror apparently cannot follow the judge's instructions. So the judge sent a note back reminding them of their duty to follow the rules. That juror is a 51-year-old male from Manhattan who works as a scientist.

And President Trump threatening Japan with more tariffs after claiming the country, quote, won't buy our rice. That's not true. Just last year, Japan bought almost $300 million worth of rice from the U.S. And in the first four months of this year, $114 million worth. That's according to the U.S. Census Bureau's trade data. The Japanese government declined to comment on Trump's claim, but they do say trade talks are ongoing.

And it wasn't that long ago that we were hearing Democrats talking about the roadmap for Republicans during last year's presidential election, dubbed Project 2025. They were talking about it like this. You ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? And wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do. Donald Trump's Project 2025 would abandon our troops.

Abandon our veterans, our allies, and our principles. Usually Republicans want to ban books, but now they're trying to shove this down our throats.

Now, Democrats may be getting ready to make a book of their own. They're going to call it Project 2029 for the next presidential election. According to a report in The New York Times, outside Democratic strategists plan to roll out an agenda over the next two years. Ultimately, quote, the goal is to turn it into a book just like Project 2025 and to rally leading Democratic presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary season. The group chat is back.

where Jerusalem Dempsis is already chuckling. You might have wanted to have given it a minute until I finish. What is it about this that to you? We just saw this lineup of Democrats holding up Product 2025 and it was a

big albatross around the neck of Donald Trump. He tried to disavow it. He said it wasn't about him. He said, I mean, obviously he's actually passing many of these policies now, but he saw it as a negative over-explanation of many of the more unpopular parts of his agenda. And now Democrats are like, let's copy the thing

that almost helped Trump lose last time. Why won't we call it something else? Why don't you call it like a plan to make America, you know, better or whatever. - That's not sexy and that's why that's not your job. - Well, that's true. - So, I mean, move on. Here's the thing about Project 2025.

First of all, it was very good at whittling down ideas and distilling them, gathering the quote unquote best minds of the community, creating a kind of loyalty benchmark for like, do you agree with this? Do you not? And also creating a scenario where they actually then went on to implement huge chunks of it.

Think tanks, and that's the point. So for you, do you actually look at this and see, is it just silly to call it Project 2029, or was there something there that you see worth emulating? I think what's worth emulating is to actually have a plan once we have a candidate, and once that candidate hopefully wins the White House. So you think because Project 2025 had Trump, there was something to kind of line up behind? Yes, but here's the problem.

I think the reason why Project 2025 was so successful in terms of now, we are seeing the implementation of everything that Democrats had our hair on fire about, right? And the difference is that all of those horrendous policies that are now being implemented are things that are going to hurt the country for years to come. And the middle class and working class and everyone that Trump promised to help.

For Democrats in 2029, I don't really care what it's called. It's going to be the ideas and the candidate that is going to drive this. The reason why Project 2025 works so well is because Trump was an empty vessel. He didn't have any ideas of his own, except for maybe one or two, the tariffs, which we know he talked about forever. Let me let us see. He didn't have...

ideas and so it was easy to insert these horrendous extremist ideas into him that he and now is calling his own when I was researching the the project of 2025 one of the things they said was before if you wanted to be in the government you had to have prior experience and that meant you were part of the Bush era and they kind of wanted the bush folks to go away so well Democrats like us

No, but I mean, let's go back to like Contract for America. I mean, like these plans have, I don't know why they're calling it Project 2029, but as you said, I would think Democrats as well as Republicans need something to go behind to stay on message. Obviously, the

The president's issues were tariffs and they're closing the border. And that's what he's doing. Everyone's getting behind it on the Republican side. And I'm assuming the Democrats are gonna figure out what they're for. I mean, look, the messaging right now with the candidate in New York for mayor,

That's kind of not going to be the mainstream messaging for probably the rest of the country. I mean, you're not going to go behind some of his issues. And so having something that the Democrats can support too. Except for affordability. We can all get around, get behind affordability, which was the number one issue. You know, the approach.

is what will differ, right? But affordability, I think, is the one thing that Democrats should continue to talk about. Let me give the last few seconds to Jerusalem because I don't know what they're going to get behind. Abundance, housing, zoning, like what are we talking about here? I would hope that's my entire dream. Everyone get behind that. But I think

I think the real problem for Democrats is this, it feels like likely to turn into the same thing we saw in the 2020 election, 2016 election even, where you have groups demanding that every candidate fall in line behind their various goals. And so as long as it doesn't turn into that, I think it's good for the Democratic Party perhaps. All right. As we speak, I think we're hearing, is it J.D. Vance heading to the Senate to help?

We don't have video, but we hear he's going to his old stomping ground to do some handshaking. Still debate on that big, beautiful bill. Ahmadi Cornish and the headlines on that are coming up next on CNN News Central. Why would rich kids get in the business of killing? The CNN original series Billionaire Boys Club goes inside the shocking story of 1980s greed and murder. Watch the premiere Sunday, July 13th at 10 on CNN.