Rulemaking could make it an extended period of time before anything could be done.
But it does turn up the noise in terms of what you were saying.
If all of a sudden career civil servants are being moved out just the day-to-day of what functions, so much doesn't come to the White House, as we both know, and happens in the departments and agencies.
So I'm curious if you think this is real, the degree to which you think the over-under on civil service reform.
So Schedule F, just to be clear, I believe, affects people who are GS 15 through 18, I believe it is, who are upper-level civil servants in the federal government.
And broadly speaking, I would say they are not fireable.
And I worked at the Department of Justice and I saw it, and they are lovely people, and I say this with nothing but love, but not all of them are experts.
And some of them need to move on in their careers.
And so right now there's no way to do that.
The thing that I'm aware of in Washington is, especially post-pandemic, the number of federal agency buildings that are empty that we as taxpayers are paying for because so many of the government employees can't afford to live in the city, they live in the suburbs, and they'd rather work from home.
And so we are paying, I think this is fueling part of the national debt, is the size and scope of the government while we are paying for people who cannot be fired and empty buildings.
And so I can understand the desire to have somebody like Elon Musk come in as a guy who might be able to cut through this as a businessman and say, how are we going to renegotiate these leases or can we move some of these people?
How is this going to work?
So it doesn't strike me as, oh, oh, and I think the pushback is that to make the Schedule F employees not have life appointments, you would make them into political appointees.
And they, because political appointees, you could only serve at the pleasure of the president until the end of the administration.
And so that would be a way to move them out.
And so the argument back is that you are politicizing the civil service.
And I can understand that concern, but there must be some way, I would think, to reach a compromise on this because the current system is untenable, I would say, financially, to be carrying that many, that big a size of the federal workforce and the buildings at the same time.
But that's just me as a non-expert in this.
I had to Google Schedule F last night.
But I have seen it.
Once I saw it, I'm like, oh, I know what they're talking about.
And so that would be, I'd be curious to see what you guys think.
But that's my take on that.
Can I jump in on this?
This is such a tricky constitutional issue, and both parties, honestly, are vexed by it.
I think the Republicans and President Trump has made clear that he wants to cut down, and this is a long-standing Republican priority, is cutting down on the size and scope of the federal government.
And yet both sides want to have their cake and eat it too.
The Constitution requires that the cabinet secretaries in the major agencies be confirmed.
Subsequent laws have said that a number of positions going down typically to the assistant secretary level also have to be confirmed.
And there is value in that vetting process.
On issues where Congress has ongoing prerogatives, they want to be able to call people to testify and to be able to engage with the federal bureaucracy with people that they have vetted.
Yet, presidents have wide appointment authority, the so-called political appointees that go down into the federal agencies.
If you're a career civil servant, it is a little bit confusing on who you should be listening to, because federal law says that you have to listen basically to confirmed officials.
And neither Democrats nor Republicans have a very good track record of getting through the confirmation process for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that Congress is kind of broken.
So, almost four years into the Biden administration, they've only confirmed two-thirds of the positions that can be confirmed.
And that's pretty consistent with past practice.
So, both sides want to appoint people into the government to steer the federal bureaucracy around, but they don't really have the authority to do that.
And it's a big problem, and it's not clear to me that either side has a clear solution that they're willing to put forward because what it really requires is both sides getting their senators to adopt a shot clock.
We all love the shot clock at UVA and basketball.
It has defined our defense, but at some point, you turn the ball over on offense if you haven't.
And there's no shot clock in the Senate on confirmations.
They're willing and able to drag these things out, which is one of the reasons that successive administrations don't get to fill their government with the people they want.
So, I don't think the federal bureaucracy and Schedule F, as important as I think those issues are, to have the type of expertise in some ways that we try to train here at the Batten School in our federal government.
I don't think those were not the issues that excited or animated many of our students.
Climate change, abortion, Ukraine, Gaza, these are things we haven't talked about.
And I suspect this election could have significant implications for all of them.
And maybe there are other hot issues.
Climate change.
Let's take that one.
What is this election going to mean?
Any thoughts?
I think there could be some really significant shifts.
Again, the Biden administration and big legislation that was passed during the Biden administration has, I think, been looking toward the potential for the market, in fact, to protect some of those gains because of the tax credits, because of the incentives to the market with regard to some of the climate change-related provisions in that legislation.
And some in Congress, and I think on a bipartisan basis, have said, well, you know, projects have started, efforts are underway.
We don't want to necessarily tamper with that.
You know, so I think for progressives who cared about those issues, they may be looking towards the market as a potential protector.
But I think that there are certainly issues that President-elect Trump has signaled that he is very, very interested in looking at, including some of those provisions, some of the electric vehicle-related credits.
So, you know, that the international treaties and Biden's re-entry to some of those treaties also look like they will be squarely in the crosshairs for shift and for change.
I would say that whether it's climate change or the economy, immigration, any of these, that this election proved that issues do matter.
And I think that was one of the reasons that Harris lost was because she talked about abortion, but that was about it.
And she had a very difficult time saying whether she was with Biden on whatever the issue was or against him.
And so I welcome that there's going to be, I think, a very robust conversation about what the mandate is, what the legislative agenda is going to be.
And alleluia, because Scott Jennings on CNN, who was in our class the other day, you guys might remember, he said there's more to being president of the United States than there is to just not being Donald Trump.
And she didn't make that case for what is the more.
And so I think it's a great thing that we could do deep dives on all the issues.
But in general, in the interest of time, I would say I'm just glad that the issues are back on the table and that that's a great opportunity for both parties to move forward.
And like I said, bring in the problem solvers.
This is going to be hopefully a great next chapter.
So we're going to go to questions in just a minute.
Before we go, I'd like each person to touch on one issue for me.
What are the prospects to help unify this country?
Bill, you're nodding.
So we've been thinking about this regardless of who won the election.
Typically, presidents get four things.
I'll give you four categories.
Who they appoint.
Does he put a Democrat in his cabinet?
And from my perspective, a Democrat that is convincingly a Democrat.
So RFK Jr. doesn't count in this regard.
Two, does he embrace a policy idea that Democrats care about and is willing to work with them on it?
It could be anything.
You know, it could be tax credits for the environment, something that a lot of Democrats care about, and maybe Elon Musk does or Elon Musk doesn't.
Three, is he willing to acknowledge values that Democrats hold that he sees to be valid?
So in his rhetoric, does he acknowledge something on the Democratic side that has broad national appeal?
And then, fourth, are there symbolic things that he could do?
You know, going to visit the home of a former Democratic president in a Homer library.
You know, Harry Truman, give him hell, Harry, was known to be blunt speaking.
And, you know, there could be some resonance in the middle of the country if he were to do something like that.
Other thoughts on prospects?
What he could do and will he do them?
I think this is really tricky.
People look to their political leaders to decide what positions they're going to take on a lot of issues.
And right now, a lot of our political leaders are deeply polarized.
And so I think to reach some kind of compromise for us to come together, it requires that our leaders, not just everyday citizens, but that our leaders are willing to reach across the aisle, that they're willing to take more moderate positions, that they're willing to pass more bipartisan legislation.
And just given the current political environment and the current political climate, I think that the likelihood of us seeing that is not impossible.
But I think that I'm at least pessimistic that that's what we're going to observe.
I would say some of the literature I've been reading in the last 24 hours is all these things that have not happened since George H.W. Bush when we won in 88.
Other people say the party of George H.W. Bush is now officially gone and that this is a whole new era in the Republican Party.
I would say that one of the things I'm seeing in this new coalition, this multi-racial, totally different working class coalition that has emerged, is that That presents a tremendous opportunity in that we studied in class,
there's a professor at Stanford Mopi Arena, and he talks about party sorting and how since the days of George H.W. Bush, the parties sorted more and more so that you used to have liberal Democrats, moderate Democrats, conservative Democrats, Liberal Republicans, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans.
And that's how he was able to get all this sweeping landmark legislation passed is because you could pick off, you know, you could get the conservative Democrats to pair up with the conservative Republicans, or the conservative Democrats would get the Liberal Republicans to jump over.
And that has sort of disappeared.
Everybody who's a liberal is in the Democratic Party.
Everybody who's conservative is a Republican.
But what this new coalition that's come forward says to me is I think maybe we could start moving back to less party sorting because I think most conservatives would say Donald Trump is not necessarily a conservative.
And I think there are working class voters who consider themselves liberal who are supporting Trump.
I think there's a bit of a backlash within the Democratic Party that some of the progressives went too far left and they're going to try and bring them back to the center.
So I think there could be all kinds of working governing majorities that start emerging on various issues and on legislation and that could really help unify our party instead of this gridlock where nobody will talk to each other.
I think that's getting stirred and could be a great thing.
Yeah, I was thinking about much the same.
I mean, as partisans, you want your party to win their election.
I think as a person who cares deeply about democracy, that the idea of every vote being in the mix, that you have to compete for every vote, and that you are looking across different geographic, demographic lines to try and build those coalitions to win is a really exciting and interesting prospect for both parties.
Two, I think the point that both you and Ashley and Bill were making about the kind of legislation that could come out early in an administration is very, very important.
And not only focusing on what the needs are of people, what they've articulated as their deepest concerns and their fears, but identifying bipartisan coalitions to try and move that legislation.
Now, I know, I mean, when I came in in the Obama administration, we had the House, the Senate, the White House, and I understand what it means to have that kind of a mandate.
And parties will act on that, and they do have that mandate.
At the same time, and I think this opportunity exists, and we've seen it across different administrations, and it's one that we exercise as well.
There are big pieces of legislation that can and should be moved that are bipartisan in nature, and that sends a strong signal.
I think the other thing, and I think one of the most powerful tools that a president has, has nothing to do with legislation.
And it has everything to do with the megaphone.
The president is the singular actor that people turn their attention to.
The messages that they send, the tone that they send, all of that matters.
And that is an opportunity, if chosen and if used, to start to drive a different tone and a different narrative and a different conversation in the country, if that is in fact desired.
Let's take some questions.
If you have a question.
Can I just jump in for a quick agree and disagree with Mary Kate, just for fun?
Make it quick, Bill.
Yeah, the agree is George H.W. Bush was absolutely the master of this.
He did so many different things, and the thing that was most effective was he worked with governors.
In fact, he hosted a summit at UVA on education policy that had a governor from Arkansas that was the chair of the Democratic Governor's Committee, Bill Clinton.
And on that and on clean air legislation and a number of other things, he negotiated some big bipartisan agreements with governors as well as through the House and Senate.
I think the place that I disagree is most presidents since have had at least one bipartisan thing that they've tried to advance.
Bill Clinton didn't have to.
George W. Bush did no child left behind.
I'm sure Melody could talk to some Obama ones.
I'm sorry.
Serve America Act, one of them.
Child health, another.
Right.
And in the Biden administration, he had infrastructure, chips, and a number of other things.
But maybe where I'll agree again with Mary Cade is he didn't have a political strategy to capitalize on that.
Nobody thinks about Joe Biden as the unifier that he set out to be, even though he passed these things.
And I think whatever a president does bringing the country together, if they really care about it, they have to continue to campaign on themselves as unifiers.
They have to sell that.
And people don't sell it anymore the way that George H.W. Bush did.
And we haven't talked about the press at all and the role that the press may play, but let's actually get some questions.
So there's a microphone that will come around.
Nikki, how about right where you're standing?
There's a person there.
And try to keep your questions brief so we can get responses.
Hi.
I was wondering if you could speak to what you think are the potential impacts of this administration on the judiciary, because it seems likely to me that this administration is going to get one, maybe two Supreme Court appointments.
So I was wondering what you think Trump's impact on the judiciary will be and what the lasting effects on the country will be.
Melody, why don't I put that on your lap?
Sure.
Well, great question, and I also think you are correct.
Both parties focus, at least inside the party apparatus and in the White House, focus on the judiciary, recognizing that it is a legacy that lasts long past any president's time in office.
And I think the Republican Party has been particularly good at, and working on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I used to spend a lot of time with my Republican colleagues, and quite collegial, and we would go back and forth and talk to one another about what we were thinking and where we thought the other one had done something really smart strategically.
But thinking very, very intently about the youthfulness of its judiciary.
So the opportunity potentially for Supreme Court justices who are getting up there in age to potentially retire and put in younger conservative justices is certainly sitting there, I think, front and center and something that's probably being considered.
And then there are the appellate and district courts as well.
President Trump made great inroads with regard to the judiciary when he was POTUS 45.
I expect that he'll do the same as POTUS 47.
Thank you.
I think we'll just take one question from each side of the aisle and then we can respond to both of them.
So raise your hand high if you have a question.
Nikki, we'll get to that side and then we'll come over here.
Compared to the Democrats, the Republicans have in the past have a really hard time keeping their caucus in line.
Do you think that Trump is enough of a unifier to bring that together?
And I mean, like my reference here, the big one is 2022 when they can decide on their speaker.
Great.
I'm going to take one question on this side here.
Is there a mic back there?
I have a two-part question if we're going after.
Okay, then let's do the question to the woman right there.
Thank you.
Hi.
Yes.
I just want to shout out the Karsh Institute for sort of fostering the engaged dialogue through the Student Dialogue Fellowship.
And so kind of on that note, I was wondering, how did the generational divide kind of play out in the demographics of this election?
And what issues do you think appeal to like the first, second, third time voters in the selection?
And how do you think the parties could have appealed to those issues better to try to get Generation Z to come out and vote?
Keeping members in line and young voters.
Eric Kate?
Okay, keeping members in line.
Like I said, I think they're having leadership votes in the next week.
I think Mike Johnson, if I was going to predict, will probably remain in the top job on the House side for the Republicans, whether he speaker or not.
Because he seems to have been able to lower the level of controversy.
I haven't heard of anybody coming up against him, so I assume he's going to stay there.
Mitch McConnell is stepping down, and so there's all kinds of players interested in that job.
But I would doubt there's going to be the level of fireworks that we saw in the House again.
I think hopefully they learned from that lesson that that was a really dumb thing to be doing.
And then on younger voters, I totally agree on the Student Dialogue Fellows.
I think it's a great program.
And my understanding from the exit polls, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, Ashley, is that I believe Trump won the voters from 18 to 25, which nobody expected.
I think that the fact that as a mom, I am worried about the level of student debt.
I'm worried about whether my children can afford their own houses.
And I'm worried about what the $35 trillion in national debt is going to do to their taxes over the course of their lifetimes.
So I am extremely concerned about this.
I've always been a fiscal conservative, but I think that that generation, the best thing we can do is help them economically and free market, not a bigger government, but free market solutions to help them be able to live the lives they want to live.
Great.
My Reuters data shows that Trump was up seven points from 2020 with voters in that early demographic, but didn't quite carry that early group.
Oh, is that what it is?
Okay, sorry.
Stan corrected.
Hi.
Bill mentioned that the turnout four years ago, I believe it was $158 million.
Maybe it was as high as $160.
And the Reuters number right now for this year is $141 million.
Maybe $140 and a fraction, probably with the lake votes coming in from California.
It might go up to 142.
That's a 10% drop in turnout.
I wonder if any of you have given any considerable thought to how that 10% drop-off is distributed geographically and demographically in the United States.
My guess is that the youth vote dropped off, that the youth vote concerned about Gaza and whatever, just stayed home, some other ones.
The second question I have relates also to democracy.
Mary Kate has mentioned the notion that the Republican Party is on its way to becoming party of the working class.
Many of us will doubt that.
However, the important thing about democracy is to look at what portion of the working class is in fact living in the shadows.
If we have 10 million DREAMers, multiplied by two, the parents, we've got 20 million, maybe 30 million people who have been working in the United States, paying Social Security taxes, paying income taxes for 5, 10, 15, 20, up to 38 years, the last time immigration was directly addressed by the Congress.
You know, you've got, what, a quarter, 20%, a quarter of the working class in the United States that is disenfranchised.
We're talking about the same proportions as during slavery and during Jim Crow.
You've got a substantial, important portion of the working class that cannot vote, does not vote, but they have a prime interest.
They are American.
Somebody who's worked here for 30 years, raised kids here.
They are American.
Thank you, sir.
Fantastic point.
I appreciate that.
Let's actually take your question only at this point.
Turnout drop off, as well as the working class is undocumented or disenfranchised.
Melo, do you want to start and Laherno Ashley?
Let's see.
So, on the first, it'll be interesting, and it'll be a little while when we get past the exit polls and those numbers, when we start to get the really nitty-gritty numbers so that we can see who was there and why.
My guess is that you are probably correct.
It is certainly, I think it came up, maybe Bill raised it early.
One of the things that the Harris campaign had been counting on was high turnout and didn't get it.
And that posed a challenge.
I think, and this goes to the democracy issue as well.
I think for many people, it's a sense of this doesn't work.
This doesn't work for me.
And they don't care about me, so why should I be here?
And one of the things that we have to do is through policy and through engagement and by listening, is to show people that they do matter, that we do care, that we do hear them across the board.
That's just good for healthy democracy.
I think on the immigration issues you raised, you raised some very interesting issues.
The data shows some interesting correlation between immigration and inflation and helping to drive down or tamp down inflation to some degree.
So it's a really interesting issue, but I think it ultimately flows to something you pointed out.
It's been a long time since we have passed a comprehensive immigration reform issue that not only addresses border issues but also addresses path to citizenship issues.
And we will see how that unfurls in the coming months and years.
Ashley?
Yeah, I'll just say that actually, maybe perhaps surprisingly, it appears that turnout was in fact up among the youngest voters.
So it looks like 18 to 29-year-olds actually made up a significantly greater share of the electorate this year than they had in the last presidential election.
But I think, you know, another thing, we are going to be really interested when we have the data that we need to see who didn't show up.
But I think one thing that I'm thinking about is the fact that a lot of Trump voters were really excited to vote for Trump, and more Harris voters were voting against Trump than voting for Harris.
And you can imagine that some people in that situation may have simply chosen not to participate at all.
We are out of time.
I want to thank everyone here for a robust discussion and demonstrating what we can do in this country.
After a hard-fought election, we actually can start talking a mix of policy and politics, next steps, hopes for unification, challenges that we will face.
And I want to thank our wonderful audience for your questions, your attention.
You're continuing to stay engaged.
I have great faith that we can achieve our aspirations.
And I think to do it here at the Batten School at the University of Virginia is a great place to have this dialogue.
So thank you, and thanks for the importance today.
Thanks for having us.
Congress returns Tuesday for the first time since the election for legislative business and votes with a busy month ahead.
Wednesday, House and Senate Republicans will both hold leadership elections for the next Congress.
House Republicans will elect their nominee for Speaker, and Senate Republicans will pick their next leader after retaking the majority in the upper chamber.
Newly elected members will also be in Washington, D.C. for orientation, including selecting their Capitol Hill offices by lottery.
The House and Senate are also returning Tuesday, facing a government funding deadline and must pass additional federal spending legislation by December 20th to avert a shutdown.
As for the floor schedules, the House is back Tuesday at noon Eastern.
Later in the week, members will consider legislation to increase transparency of mail-in ballots by requiring ballot envelopes to have tracking barcodes.
Also, a bill requiring the Education Department make the forms for federal student aid, known as FAFSA, available to students each year on October 1st.
The Senate also returns Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern.
Senators will vote later in the week on several of President Biden's judicial nominations for U.S. district and tax courts, and David Heidema to be director of the Federal Office of Government Ethics for a five-year term.
Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN, the Senate on C-SPAN2.
Also, watch all of our congressional coverage on our free video app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org.
Visit c-span.org/slash results for comprehensive coverage of the 2024 campaign results.
Get the final Electoral College breakdown in the presidential race and see which states each candidate carried.
Dive into our interactive maps to explore the outcomes in Senate, House, and Governor's races, and monitor the final balance of power in Congress.
Plus, watch acceptance and concession speeches on demand anytime.
Stay up to date with C-SPAN, your unfiltered view of politics, at c-span.org slash results.
Sunday, on Q&A, Stuart Eisenstadt, former domestic policy advisor to President Carter and U.S. ambassador to the European Union under President Clinton.
He shares his book, The Art of Diplomacy, in which he discusses his career and the impact the civil rights movement had on him.
We go to eat, and black students from North Carolina Central are sitting in.
You can look at the, you can Google this.
That's when the sit-in started in Queensboro and Durham.
And I said naively to my fraternity brother for New York, why are they doing this?
And he said, What universe do you live in?
It's because they can't be served.
And it was like somebody lifted a veil from me, and I saw the world in a very different world.
I had gotten so used to the segregated world, I didn't question it.
I became very active in the civil rights movement in UNC, and when I was with President Carter, we supported affirmative action and minority set-asides for black contractors.
So these kinds of transformative events when you're young can sometimes carry over into your career, and they certainly did for me.