CSPAN - Washington Journal 01/13/2025

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Jan. 13, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:54

Washington Journal 01/13/2025

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john mcardle

cspan 30:10

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alex padilla

sen/d 01:05

brian lamb

cspan 00:47

gavin newsom

d 01:48

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barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

donald j trump

admin 00:12

george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

r 00:04

jacob soboroff

msnow 00:12

margaret brennan

cbs 00:18

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		To reach those who need it most.
		Charter Communications supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
		Well, coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		And then Andrew Desiderio of Punch Bowl News previews this week's confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet picks and looks at key congressional news.
		Also, Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute discusses their new report on how so-called think tanks are funded.
		Washington Journal starts now.
		to join the conversation.
		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Monday, January 13th, 2025.
unidentified		The House is in at noon Eastern.
		The Senate returns at 3 p.m. today, but we'll begin on the deadly wildfires in and around Los Angeles.
		With the death toll rising, firefighters now bracing for several days of winds that could hamper efforts to contain the blazes.
		Meanwhile, early estimates expect the ongoing wildfires to be the costliest in modern U.S. history.
		So this morning, we're hearing from you about natural disasters and your experience with federal, state, and local governments during and after those emergencies.
		Give us a call if you've been impacted by the current California wildfires.
		It's 202-748-8002.
		If you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, it's 202-748-8000.
		And otherwise, if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
		You can also catch up with us on social media, on X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
		On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
		And a very good Monday morning to you.
		Go ahead and start calling in now.
		This is the front page of the Los Angeles Times that residents of Los Angeles are waking up to and looking at this morning, bracing for a long fight and recovery.
		High winds expected to return as fire investigators look back and officials look forward.
		A picture of one of the blazes in and around Los Angeles there.
		It was yesterday on NBC that Democrat Senator Alex Padilla talked about the response by leaders in Los Angeles and in the state and his confidence in that leadership.
alex padilla ▲ ● ▼		Look, I do have faith in our leaders and not just as individuals, but especially because we, after disaster, after disaster after disaster, have gotten really good at working together.
		And it's not just the elected officials.
		Let me give even more credit to the first responders, to the emergency response personnel, police officers, firefighters.
		When you have federal agencies, state agencies, county and city agencies all collaborating to work very effectively, very efficiently, that's how we're able to protect lives and save lives and protect properties and respond to whether it's fires in this particular case.
unidentified		It could be atmospheric rivers and floods and other disasters we've had here in California.
unidentified		But most importantly, let me send a message to all the families out there, more than 100,000 families this place, the families of those who have perished in these fires.
alex padilla ▲ ● ▼		Our hearts are with you.
		And the perspective of these families are what's driving the urgency of the efforts to put these fires out as quickly as possible and begin the planning process of providing the temporary assistance, shelter, and otherwise to impacted families and the planning that we know is going to happen for the recovery and rebuilding of these neighborhoods.
		As I've had a chance to tour these communities, every house is a home.
		Every home is a family.
unidentified		We can and we will rebuild.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Senator Alex Padilla yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press.
unidentified		We showed you the front page of the LA Times.
		Here's two more national papers starting with the New York Times.
		Their focus on the fires today.
		Their lead story, as LA's inferno began, its mayor was not in town.
		Mounting criticism of Mayor Karen Bass threatens her grip on leadership.
		That is, again, the lead story in the New York Times today.
		To the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the headline there: LA officials race to fight rumors and conspiracy theories as well.
		Fast-proliferating online falsehoods, forcing public officials nationwide to adopt a new job when crisis strikes in their communities.
		Their duties now include knocking down the inevitable wave of lives, lies, and half-truths, and conspiracy theories, some wild, some believable, that have lately become part of every major public emergency, from Hurricane Helene to the recent Tesla explosion in Las Vegas.
		That's the story from the Wall Street Journal.
		It's Governor Gavin Newsom, who yesterday launched a California fire facts page in an attempt to combat some of those rumors, some of those conspiracy theories.
		And some of the issues that he takes on is the idea that California cut its firefighting budget, saying it's a ridiculous lie.
		The number of California fire personnel has nearly doubled since 2019, and California fires budget has nearly doubled since 2019 as well.
		Other topics he takes on, including the wildfires being caused by California's mismanagement of forest lands, saying the budget for managing the forest is now 10 times larger than it was when Governor Newsom took office.
		It was a $200 million annual budget in 2018.
		The state has now invested some $2 billion.
		Other topics taken on there as well.
		This morning on the Washington Journal, we are simply asking you about your experience with the federal government during natural disasters.
		If you've been impacted by this latest one in California, it's 2027-8000.
		It is 2028-8002.
		I'm sorry, if you've been impacted by this one in California, otherwise, we split the numbers regionally.
		2027488000, if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, and 202748-8001 is in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
		We'll also put the numbers up on the screen for you so you can punch the numbers in yourself.
		Taking your calls in this first hour of the Washington Journal today and want to hear from you throughout the morning as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Also, I want to let you know about an event we're covering later today on C-SPAN.
unidentified		It's an address on foreign policy.
		President Biden set to give that address from the State Department.
		It's happening today at 2 p.m. Eastern, and we'll be covering that on the C-SPAN networks.
		That address by President Biden coming ahead of his Wednesday address, his more formal farewell to the nation.
		Again, that's set to take place Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern.
		And it's also a busy week here on Capitol Hill with plenty of confirmation hearings, some 14 hearings taking place over the course of three days this week.
		We're going to dive into it a little bit later this morning in the week ahead in Washington.
		But setting aside this first hour simply to hear from you about your experience with government during natural disasters, go ahead and call in.
		I want to show you one more member of Congress, Judy Chu, a congresswoman from California, part of her district impacted by one of those fires in California.
		She was talking about the availability of water and some of these rumors that have taken place amidst these fires.
		She was on Face the Nation yesterday.
		This is what she had to say.
margaret brennan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I understand that there were water pressure issues in the Altadena area.
		There was no local police or fire department.
		You all rely on the county for that kind of resource.
		Do you think going forward, does this need to change?
		Have you talked to the governor?
unidentified		We have been in touch with the governor, but what I want to do is to assure people that there is enough water.
		And in fact, the fire department agencies have assured me that there is enough.
		But when the fires first happened, there was a combination of drastic winds and the fire.
		And as a result, they were overwhelmed.
		This is not an ordinary incident.
		And many fire hydrants were going on at the same time.
		And also, the electricity used to pump the water had been turned off so that there would not spark any more fires.
		So that happened at that point, but I believe that we're in a good place right now.
		Judy Chu on Face the Nation yesterday, federal officials going on the Sunday shows.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We'll show you more of them throughout this first hour this morning.
unidentified		As we hear from you about your experience with the government during natural disasters, want to hear your stories.
		It doesn't have to be just wildfires, hurricanes, floods, other times when you've interacted with state, federal, or local government amid a natural disaster.
		Dwight is in Fairfield, California, up first this morning.
		Good morning, Dwight.
		Good morning, John.
		Good morning, Washington Journal.
		Yes, I'm in Northern California, John, and I'm going to tell a little story here starting in 2018 when we had the Paradise Fire, which at that time was the largest wildfire in California.
		The cause of it was a lack of maintenance from our utility provider, which is Pacific Gas and Electricity.
		Billions of dollars in property destroyed.
		A lot of people, you know, left without homes.
		Everything burnt down, kind of like the same thing that's going on in Southern California.
		Now, the response in Northern California, as it compared to the Palisades and the Eden fire, totally different, John.
		The Palisades fire, you're talking about homes that are from $4 million to probably up to $100 million.
		And those people are up there for a reason.
		They're getting away from people.
		There's limited access to their properties up there.
		And they're responsible for trimming and mitigating their properties around there.
		Now, with them saying that not enough water in the hydrants, the Congresswoman just said something about not enough water.
		She's talked to the fire department.
		Fire department's not responsible for water and the hydrants.
		That's the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
		They're responsible for that.
		And when you start getting up in those hills, John, there's less and less and less public service.
		That's why they go up there.
		So there's no access going on up there.
		But this is just going to be a money grab because we have conflicting regulations between the Environmental Protection Agency, federal, environmental protection agency, state of California.
		We go through this every time there's a fire in the state of California and it starts pointing.
		They start pointing the fingers at each other.
		The Republicans are saying, hey, it's the state's problem.
		The state is saying, hey, it's the federal government's problem.
		And we go through this all the time, John.
		And those people that's up in Palisades, they don't have no problem like they did in Paradise.
		Paradise will stand in community colleges.
		These people are probably going to their second and third homes.
		And hey, I have sympathy and empathy for them.
		Don't get me wrong, because I do.
		But totally different response because of the power and the money.
		Those people up there are popping bottles and clicking glasses.
		Yes, they lost a lot, but they'll make that stuff up, John.
		So don't believe the hype is all I'm trying to say.
		And taking my call, sir.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Dwight in Fairfield, California, asking you for your stories, your experience with government during natural disasters.
unidentified		One more front page for you.
		This is USA Today.
		Wildfires ravage all parts of LA society.
		Dwight talking about some of those multi-multi-million dollar homes that have been impacted.
		One story from the Wall Street Journal noting celebrities playing a central role as this tragedy unfolds, paired with the hellscape imagery of flames and smoke, the appearance of celebrities and influencers made the impact of the destruction seem both more relatable and more surreal.
		There were paparazzi photos of Ben Affleck and other stars stuck in their cars in evacuation gridlock on The Tonight Show.
		A tearful Jamie Lee Curtis said, Where I live is on fire right now and pledged a million dollars to relief efforts the next day on social media.
		TMZ offered a slideshow celebrities who lost their homes in the LA fires, which included several dozen examples from Jeff Bridges, Billy Crystal, Mel Gibson to famous couples, Miles Teller and Kaylee Teller, and Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montague.
		That's the story from the Wall Street Journal.
		This is Gary in Berlin, New Hampshire.
		Good morning.
		Your experience with government during natural disasters.
		Hi, good morning, and how are you this morning?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well, Gary, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, I just feel so sorry for those poor people in those California fires.
		I just hope by the grace of God that their homes are not destroyed or anything like that, although I've seen a lot of them being destroyed.
		But I also watched MSNBC this morning, and I don't like how all these false lies are being spread.
		These people don't need this.
		They need government to come together and work with these people and help get these people back on their feet.
		And I hope Donald Trump does that.
		And speaking of Donald Trump, I'd like to know: have any of you guys reached out to Mitch McConnell and asked him why he did not vote to impeach Donald Trump?
		If he hadn't voted to impeach Donald Trump, we would not be in the situation we are in.
		And also, have you guys reached out to Merrick Garland to ask him why he took so long to appoint a special counsel?
		It is very obvious Donald Trump should never have been allowed to run for public office again.
		To come back to the natural disasters and your concern about rumors and conspiracy and conspiracy theories in the wake of natural disasters, why do you think, as the Wall Street Journal story points out this morning, that this is now part of natural disasters, responding, trying to knock down rumors and conspiracy theories that those who respond, those federal agencies, now more and more have to make that a major part of what they do in the response?
		Well, what I've seen this morning is that resources are being taken away because they have to debunk all these false conspiracies.
		This is Donald Trump and his MAGA people.
		I hope people that voted for him this last election are satisfied.
		I hope they're satisfied because now they're going to get what they want.
		A false conspiracist, a liar, a cheat, a rapeser, a fraudster, and a felon.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Gary in New Hampshire this morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is from that Wall Street Journal story on rumor mills conspiracy theories amid natural disasters.
unidentified		They go on to write: President-elect Donald Trump joined the social media fray in this latest disaster on his true social platform.
		He blamed the fires on California Governor Gavin Newsom, claiming the Democrat had refused to sign a water restoration declaration that would have brought additional water to LA.
		Musk, Elon Musk, shared that post with his 212 million X followers.
		A Newsom aide countered with a statement that there was no such document as a water restoration declaration.
		That is pure fiction.
		Newsom on Saturday refuted the rumor that firetrucks sent from Oregon were being held in Sacramento for emissions testing.
		This is false, he said on X, calling it offensive to the brave men and women who are fighting on the front lines right now.
		The state also launched that FireFacts webpage, which we showed you earlier.
		This is John in Fort Myers, Florida.
		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're next.
unidentified		Your experience with government during natural disasters.
		Yes.
		Good morning, and thanks for C-SPAN.
		My point that I'd like to make is: two years ago, we lost our building and house to Hurricane Eon and then had to go through the process of trying to rebuild.
		And I would suggest that local leaders in that set up timeframes that require their bureaucracies to act.
		It was impossible to get information, combine that with a shortage of contractors.
		And I think it could have been done more efficiently.
		Either hire people from outside their jurisdiction to process permits, keep it simple.
		What constitutes a contractor, the definition.
		And for us, we're two and a half years out and haven't even begun the process yet.
		So I would just think in terms of requiring administrations to get back with people in a reasonable period of time, a week, two weeks, 30 days, and have a solution.
		That's it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		John, before you go, you say you're two and a half years removed and you haven't begun the process yet.
unidentified		Why do you intend to rebuild there?
		Well, some of the issues we're facing, we're in our mid-80s, and so it would probably take three years just to build an ordinary house because of outside conditions.
		Now, very expensive, and the permitting period I would think would take a minimum of six months.
		And that would be fast.
		So each circumstance is different.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		John, thanks for the call from Fort Myers.
unidentified		This is Debbie out of the Keystone State.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Debbie, your experience with government during natural disasters.
unidentified		Well, I haven't had any personal experience, but I've been watching the news station on the fires.
		I used to, I was born and raised in California, so I know about the Santa Ana winds.
		And they used to call them the devil winds.
		But, anyways, I've been watching the fires and going back and forth through the news stations.
		And some of these rumors actually started with Gavin Newsom because on one TV station I saw that he said that the Indians came to him and couldn't fish and needed water to fish.
		So Gavin told them that he would help them.
		And Gavin said that he knocked down three or four reservoirs of water and it showed the land of all this water.
		It looked like a lake.
		And then another news station, a news person over the weekend asked him what he thought about what Trump said about his comment about the smelt fish and him wasting the water when they need it now for the fires.
		And Gavin denied it and he said he didn't know what Trump was talking about, but he didn't say that and he did.
		So some of the rumors are coming straight from the office.
		That's Debbie in Pennsylvania.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Larry in Gates, North Carolina.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, John.
		Hope you're doing well, and this is my first phone call, so happy new year.
		Happy New Year to you.
		Thank you.
		We've had a few hurricanes in this area.
		Never really had to deal with the federal government.
		But the local government is where I believe many of these things can be squelched.
		In our area, we're right by the dismal swamp and a lot of lumber lands.
		International paper used to be right at my back door until it was sold.
		These places are suspect of fires, but we do controlled burns.
		And every about two to three, maybe even four times a year, we do controlled burns in the area, and the signs are all up.
		There's a controlled burn in progress, which really helps to keep things under control.
		So the local government is extremely important in that.
		Where was the local government in these California areas?
		The Santa Ana winds, to my knowledge, have always been the Santa Ana winds.
		So to say that climate change is the reason for all this is happening is kind of beyond my comprehension.
		And I wish that the local governments would make a bigger stink in these areas where they need things like water and controlled burns, which would let something that if a wildfire happened to creep up, would not let it be so devastating.
		Thank you for your time, sir.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Larry in North Carolina.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Everett Piper in the op-ed pages of today's Washington Times writing to some of the things that the caller just speaks about.
unidentified		Everett Piper saying, the truth is that we have known about the seasonal Santa Ana winds and the wildfires that they cause for millennium.
		Anyone who spends five minutes reading will quickly find that these fires predate the Industrial Revolution and modern climate change policy.
		Historical records from our government, for instance, indicate that large wildfires have been a natural part of California's ecosystem for hundreds of years and their frequency has remained consistent over the last century.
		No one should have been surprised by this past week's winds and flames.
		However, the devastation was caused not by cars we drove in our neighborhood or cows, but by people that we elected.
		Everything that just happened in Los Angeles could have been prevented.
		Politics caused this crisis, not science.
		Everett Piper writing in today's Washington Times, more from members of Congress on the Sunday shows and throughout the weekend.
		It was actually Friday that Congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio called for some federal disaster relief to be held until California addresses some of the issues at the heart of these fires.
		This was his interview on Fox.
		These California lawmakers are going to be pushing for, you know, the states prone to disasters to have to have money allocated toward this to push for relief.
		California wants the money without changing the policies that are making the problem bad or worse.
		And I don't see how Republicans could possibly support that.
		I mean, we support the people that are plagued by disaster, but we have to put pressure on the California government to change course here.
		I see.
		So has there been discussion already about the federal help that's coming to California?
		And are you saying that there's a little bit of pushback unless you see policy changes?
		Yeah, I think so.
		And I think, how do you do that?
		Because you don't want to send the message to families, oh, we're not going to take care of you.
		They certainly didn't have a problem saying that to people in Western North Carolina in the Biden administration.
		Instead, the Biden ministry is, oh, don't worry about it.
		We're going to take care of everything.
		And so different response when it's out there where the Hollywood elites live.
		So that's disappointing from the Biden administration.
		Help is on the way from President Trump and a new administration.
		But when it comes to congressional funding, the idea that we're going to have an open checkbook, no matter how bad your policies are, is crazy.
		Florida is prone to hurricanes.
		So they do lots of things to mitigate the risk of hurricanes.
		California is prone to fires, and they do things to make the fires worse instead of responding to make them more resilient.
		Ohio Republican Warren Davidson, that was from a Friday interview on Fox.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This morning, here's some more newspapers that the citizens of California are waking up to this morning.
unidentified		This is the Ventura County Star.
		Residents try to get news on their homes there and a picture of the blazes.
		Some more for you as well from out in California.
		It's the San Francisco Chronicle.
		The question that one couple is asking, will things ever be the same?
		One more from California for you.
		This is the Desert Sun reactive to proactive is the headline there showing more pictures of the blazes.
		And then from Nevada this morning, it's the Elko Daily.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Crews try to corral the blazes before the winds return.
unidentified		Those winds expected to start to return a little bit later midweek this week.
		This is Michael in Sanford, Florida.
		We're asking you about your experience with government during natural disasters.
		Go ahead.
		Thank you.
		Good morning.
		We have a condo over in the Daytona area.
		And there's been a couple of hurricanes that have come through here the last few years.
		And one of them gave us, you know, took away all the dune along the shore.
		And it just, you know, our experience in trying to get permitting and approval from the local county authorities who are so concerned over these turtles.
		They protect the turtles, the nesting.
		The dune was entirely washed away by this storm a year and a half, two years ago.
		There was nothing left.
		And yet it still took us months, six, eight, ten months to get approval from the local authorities to come in and rebuild the seawall to protect the condominiums.
		We've got two buildings, 100 units.
		And it was just unbelievable to think of what has to be done.
		And I understand the need to protect nature and everything, but when everything was completely removed by the storm, there were no more turtlenest left because the dune was entirely wiped out.
		And yet, it was like trying to make a miracle happen to get the authorities to approve the permitting so that we could get it repaired before the next storm season hit us.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Michael, when you say the authorities, are you talking about state government, federal government?
unidentified		This is the local county government.
		Now, I can't say that there wasn't.
		My sense is, and I wasn't that close to it, my sense is that there was also state people involved with the county.
		That's Michael in Florida.
		This is Steve out in California in Anaheim.
		Go ahead.
		Good morning, John.
		You people need to quit demonizing each other.
		It's counterproductive.
		I was in Melbourne, Florida, through your last caller when the hurricane hit there.
		And yeah, the hurricane basically destroyed all the beachfront out there.
		But I've got to give it to the local authorities as far as getting the electricity and everything back on.
		They did pretty good.
		It was back on within three days, considering all the damage that storm did.
		Now, out here in California, we haven't had any rain in almost an entire year, so everything is dry.
		So this canard of how you have to go clear out brush so that the Santana winds won't burn.
		Most of these trees and stuff are on private property.
		And the winds come down this canyons every year.
		I remember in the 70s where it burned from the San Gabriel Mountains all the way to the ocean past Pepperdine.
		And the only thing that put it out was that it finally hit the ocean.
		But as far as water and stuff goes, that's where we have super scoopers and helicopters and all this other stuff to put out fires because the working hand crews on the ground with hoses, they just can't do it.
		There's just too much fire.
		So, you know, when you got too much wind, you can't use these aircrafts.
		And that's why the fire got out of control.
		Now the winds are kicking up again.
		And you've got to realize that these sparks can fly from anywhere from two to five miles and start other fires, you know, because it's in a canyon area.
		I mean, we're going to have to rethink how we fight fires or how we store water or how we quit building in areas that we shouldn't be building because the problem in California is overpopulation.
		You know, they just build everywhere and without no regard to safety or the topography or knowledge of the weather or the problems that we have out here.
		And as long as the state makes money on selling houses for their tax revenue, things aren't going to change.
		Okay, John, I think that's about it.
		Steve, have a good day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Before you go, Steve, as a California resident, what's your view of Gavin Newsom during this current crisis in and around L.A.?
unidentified		Well, I think he's pretty useless.
		I mean, I'm not a really big fan of this guy because he's just been a disaster.
		I mean, you look at Florida's governor, which I'm not a fan of him either.
		But as far as getting stuff done, he's like Biden.
		He'll get on the prompter and he'll read the prompter without really stating the facts.
		And I think he contributes to the problem.
		If he would just come out and say, hey, it happened, there was nothing we could do and leave it at that.
		But now he's got to, oh, we're going to investigate this, investigate that.
		And at the end of the day, you're going to find out that basically the fires were caused by just a drought and the winds.
		I mean, there's nobody's fault for whatever happened.
		It just happened.
		And this happens all the time.
		And like I said, you build in these areas.
		This is what you're going to have to put up with.
		Now, as far as clearing the land and stuff like that, they could cut down every tree in California and you still have grass fires because it's a history of fires in California.
		But with climate change and the lack of rain, because that's basically what keeps the house from burning all the time, is water.
		It would stop the fires.
		Now, they're planning on building a canal or tunnel from Northern California to bring water, more water down to Southern California.
		But if you don't have any rain, you got a hole in the ground that's useless.
		I mean, there's other ways that we could create water out here, but they just won't do it.
		Okay.
		All right, John.
		That's it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Steve in California talking about Gavin Newsom.
		An interview with Gavin Newsom appearing on Meet the Press yesterday.
		Gavin Newsom responding to some of the criticism from the incoming president about how California has dealt with these fires.
gavin newsom ▲ ● ▼		Well, I called for him to come out, take a look for himself.
		We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist.
		He's the president-elect.
		I respect the office.
		We have a president of the United States that within 36 hours provided a major disaster declaration over a text.
		We had support from the president of the United States, Joe Biden, with 100% reimbursement.
		All the resources you could hope for or imagine, constant communication.
		I'd like to extend that to the president-elect.
		I don't know what he's referring to when he talks about the Delta smelt and reservoirs.
		The reservoirs are completely full of state reservoirs here in Southern California.
		That miss and disinformation, I don't think, advantages or aids any of us.
		Responding to Donald Trump's insults, we would spend another month.
		I'm very familiar with them.
		Every elected official that he disagrees with, very familiar with them.
jacob soboroff ▲ ● ▼		We do know, though, from reporting here locally that that one reservoir that serves the Palisades was not full.
gavin newsom ▲ ● ▼		And that's exactly what triggered my desire to get the investigation to understand what was happening with that local reservoir.
		That was not a state system reservoir, which the president-elect was referring to as it relates to the Delta and somehow connecting the Delta smelt to this fire, which is inexcusable because it's inaccurate, also incomprehensible to anyone that understands water policy in the state.
		My understanding is that you have put a call into President-elect Trump.
unidentified		Has he called you back?
gavin newsom ▲ ● ▼		No, that was months ago.
gavin newsom ▲ ● ▼		was after his victory so I look forward to him again coming out here in the spirit of well you forgive me for interrupting but you did invite him to come out here Have you had any response?
unidentified		No, nothing.
jacob soboroff ▲ ● ▼		Multiple times, Mr. Trump has threatened to withhold aid for California wildfires, both as president and now again as president-elect.
unidentified		Are you worried that he might actually do that?
gavin newsom ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, he's done it at Utah, he's done it in Michigan, did it at Puerto Rico.
		He did it to California back before I was even governor in 2018 until he found out folks in Orange County voted for him and then he decided to give them money.
		So he's been at this for years and years and years.
		It transcends states, including, by the way, Georgia.
		He threatened similarly.
		So that's just, that's his style.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Gavin Newsom on Meet the Press yesterday, that interview appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, taking your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal, simply asking you about your experience with government during natural disasters, 202748-8002.
unidentified		If you live in and around LA, if you've been impacted by these current wildfires.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Otherwise, if you're in the eastern or central time zones, 202-748-8000.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		If you're in the Mountain North Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
unidentified		One op-ed from USA today.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The author is Bobby Scopa, a retired fire chief, author of the book Both Sides of the Fire Line.
unidentified		Bobby Scopa writing today, there used to be something called a fire season, but now we have fires year-round asking what's going on, saying it's complicated and complicated problems can't be solved with simple solutions.
		We need nuanced discussion, not positions based on ideologies.
		As we watch the fires burn our neighbors' homes in Southern California, we have to keep in mind that the fires aren't burning because of inadequate water supply, a particular fire chief, or reduced budget.
		They're burning because the Santa Ana winds and high temperatures with low humidities.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When you have 60 mile per hour winds or greater, there's no fire chief water supply or budget that's going to put out the fires.
		The modern complication is the urban growth into wildlands, and that's Southern California.
		But we have a growing fire problem throughout the entire United States.
		Bobby Scopa's column, if you want to read more in USA Today.
		Staying in California, this is Rhonda.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		It's good to speak with you.
		You know, I've been thinking about this and watching what is going on down there in Los Angeles.
		Here in California, I live in the northern part of California.
		I'm in Folsom, California.
		And over the last few years in 2022, we had a horrible destructive fire, the campfire, which was in Butte County.
		Then we had the Tubbs fire, which was in Napa and Sonoma.
		People of those fires and many more that happened here in California since 2022 never recovered.
		And if you think about even what happened over in Maui, the horrible devastation there, there are people today who are homeless.
		And now that hasn't even, the subject of that hasn't even arisen.
		Right now here in California, prior to this disaster in Los Angeles, we have a homeless crisis.
		Now this just adds to it.
		You asked the gentleman from Anaheim who I loved what his response was.
		Governor Newsom, no.
		They are so ill-prepared here in California.
		And as stated before, the two callers before me, we haven't had any rain, none at all.
		And here, up where I live, here in the Sacramento Valley, going towards Nevada, now that's nothing but dry brush.
		It is just horrible what's going on here in California.
		And I'm telling you, I don't have no faith in our governor.
		I think he's a, forgive me, but he's a bubbling.
		I don't want to say that.
		That's not kind to say.
		But I feel that Bass and Newsome, I think it's time for them to get out and let someone with intelligence on how we could approach this issue that is now starting to become daily.
		I thank you.
		And you know, I'm a big fantasies fan.
		And thank you.
		And my heart goes out to Los Angeles.
		This is Rhonda in Sacramento.
		Thank you.
		Bye-bye.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Rhonda, in California, you mentioned Karen Bass.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Again, that front page story.
unidentified		It's the lead story in today's New York Times.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		As LA's inferno began, its mayor was not in town.
unidentified		Mounting criticism of Karen Bass threatens her grip on leadership.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's the headline going to the jump page of that story inside the New York Times.
unidentified		It notes, when a cascade of deadly and destructive wildfires erupted across the Los Angeles region on Tuesday, the mayor was on her way home from Ghana in West Africa, where she had attended the inauguration of a new president.
		It was not her first trip abroad as mayor.
		Our review of her public daily schedule for the past year shows that Ms. Bass has traveled out of the country at city expense at least four other times in recent months before the Ghana visit, one to Mexico for the inauguration of the president of Mexico there, three times to France for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
		The New York Times noting in their story that it's in contradiction to what she told the New York Times in an interview back in October of 2021 saying that not only would I live in Los Angeles, but I would also not travel internationally.
		The only places I would go if I were elected would be to DC, Sacramento, San Francisco, and New York in relation to LA.
		The New York Times saying that pledge that she made has been spectacularly broken in her time since becoming mayor.
		That's a New York Times today.
		Taking your calls on your experience with government during natural disasters, about 20 minutes left in this segment for you to call in.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones.
unidentified		It's 8,001 if you're in the Mountain of Pacific time zones.
		And 202-748-8002 if you've been impacted by these wildfires.
		This is Elspeth in San Fernando, California.
		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		748-8000 in the northeastern.
		Elspeth, you with us?
		Go ahead, turn down your television first so it's easier to hear, to hear you, and then go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's your experience with government during natural disasters?
unidentified		I live in San Fernando Valley, and the closest fire to me is the first fire.
		And that is pretty good contained.
		But I'm in my 80s.
		I live alone and it's pretty nervous.
		But I have packed my evacuation suitcase and medication and so on and ready to evacuate if I have to, but I hope not.
		But it's just horrific, absolutely horrific, what is going on.
		And I feel for all those who lost their homes.
		But it seems so many volunteers are out there and helping out.
		And so on the firefighters, they are amazing.
		And government, I don't have any experience with them.
		I just follow what the phone is saying there.
		And I am thanked the firefighters.
		That's all I can say.
		But one thing I wanted to say that has nothing to do with this, but when Carter was his burial in the cathedral in Washington, no of the eulogists mentioned that he got the peace prize.
		I'm a Norwegian, so Norway is giving it out, but nobody mentioned it.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thank you for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Elspeth, stay safe.
		Thanks for calling in.
		How close would you say the nearest fires are to where you are?
unidentified		It is the worst fire that in Silmar.
		That is very close to me.
		That is the one I have to watch out for.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And how are you keeping informed?
		You say I'm watching my phone.
		Are you talking about updates on evacuations?
unidentified		I have, I can opt, I can, I mean, the phone will ring and tell me to evacuate if I have to evacuate.
		And I can also the television gives news.
		And so that's what I can also go to a government base on the internet and get upstairs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Elspeth, if you don't mind saying, you said you packed up your medication in a bag in case you have to leave.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How do you figure out what you're going to take with you if you have to go?
unidentified		That is a big question.
		I have packed photo albums and I have packed two sets of shifts and my medication.
		And that's about it.
		There's not much, I can't get too much in a small use case.
		But those are the most important things.
		I mean, I can maybe take a painting with me in the car.
		Otherwise, it's also, I mean, if this area has to evacuate, I mean, if everybody is going to take their own cars, you know, it will be jammed, the roads will be jammed.
		So, but I pray I don't have to evacuate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Elspeth, thanks for the call.
		Stay safe out there in California.
		This is Chuck coming back to the East Coast or coming back to Alabama, the Gulf Coast.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes, I was involved with the North Carolina disaster that happened recently as an assessor for the utility company there and for the electrical utility.
		And I just know that FEMA response is very slow there.
		And that's what I have to say about that.
		But getting back to California's problems, this is a very high-tax state where most people can't hardly even afford to live there for that reason.
		It looks to me like common sense would tell you if you spend one quarter of the amount of money that you spend on climate change agenda, if you look just spent it on trying to learn how to fight a fire, then you'd have been a lot better off the situation.
		Instead of just trying to come up with a pie-in-the-sky reason for all this stuff happening, if you'd actually figure out a way to prevent it or stop it when it gets there, it would be a lot better and a lot better use of taxpayer money.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chuck, in North Carolina, where did you go?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What did you see?
unidentified		Whoa, a lot of roads washed out there and a lot of houses, people just houses taken off foundations by rushing water.
		And like I say, I think FEMA got around to everybody eventually, but there's a, you know, it's probably, you know, and I was, I am a 40-plus year emergency management employee, and probably that would probably be the most widespread damage that I have seen in my career.
		Now, this California fires may top it.
		It looks to me like it's going to.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How'd you get around in North Carolina, Chuck, with all those roads washed out and everything?
unidentified		Well, best way you could.
		You just have to, Matter of fact, sometimes you're very scared, trying to afraid you're going to fall off a mountain there because the roads watched out on either side of you.
		Just take the middle part of the road that's still intact and go on up there the best way you could.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was the hardest hit?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What was the hardest hit town that you saw, Chuck?
unidentified		Asheville.
		In its area around Asheville, North Carolina, and the area around it.
		But we're actually in the last city we went to, we were there for two weeks, and actually we started off in Charlotte, where the damage wasn't that bad.
		We moved gradually east.
		And the last place we went to was Old Ford, and their entire downtown area was flooded where, you know, it was, look, flooding is probably worse than fire damage because in this aspect that fire damage, you got to start over.
		And hopefully that's maybe the best thing.
		Because flooding, you got to rebuild and all that.
		It never does get back like it should.
		Water damage is actually worse than wind damage, really.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Chuck in Alabama.
		This is James out of San Marcos, California.
		Good morning.
unidentified		I hate having to waste this call, but this is the issue.
		Natural disasters are natural.
		Many years ago, I was on the front page of all major newspapers around the country fighting the fire with my garden hose.
		Yes, I live on eight and a half acres of land.
		Yes, we move away from the city because we don't like the congestion.
		We don't like the crime.
		We don't like other things that take place.
		So yes, we like to be on our own.
		But this is not a fire on its own.
		A fire, if you don't have any idea of how fires work, all you have to do is throw sand in the air when there is a breeze and you will see exactly how fires go.
		Fires go in the direction that the wind goes.
		In the morning, we have winds from the west, the ocean going east, and in the afternoon, we have fire wind going from the east.
		I'm not going to take and condemn any politician at this time about the issue.
		It had nothing to do with the amount of water.
		It had nothing to do with the amount of fire people.
		It had to do with the wind and how fast it goes.
		I watched a house about a mile away from my house go up in flames in a heartbeat when the storm, when the fire went around my house simply because of the wind.
		And it saved my house and the other house went up in flames.
		We lost four houses on my street, but we are all living out in the country.
		So one had 20 acres, one had 10, I had eight, and I still live there.
		And yes, let's wait until it's all over with and rebuild.
		You're not going to be able to get, I hope that we can get that people can get some kind of coverage from their insurance because many insurance policies were closed down.
		Companies were closed down like State Farm and did not enter any insurance for many families around this state of California because of the fire hazard.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask you, when you said you were on the front page fighting with the garden hose, was that in 2014?
unidentified		It could have been in 2014.
		If you see my picture there, the fire's right behind me.
		I'm in a blue shirt.
		I'm about 75 years old.
		And James, and you don't have to say, is your last name Harkins?
		It is.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		So, James, I found the picture from Getty Images, one of those news images website.
		May 15th of 2014 is the date James Harkins, 72, refusing to evacuate his home there amid the fires.
		Can you just explain what we're seeing and what you were doing?
unidentified		in that picture.
		Let me say this to you.
		As I told everybody that I was interviewed by, I have no responsibilities.
		My family is out there on their own.
		My dog has just died, so I have only myself.
		That is why I stayed there, not because of any other reason.
		When the fire came, it was a rush.
		When the winds came, they came in the morning and they go, just like I said, they go in the afternoon.
		You have no control over the wind.
		All it starts, all it has to have is a spark to go and then it's gone.
		Many of these homes, the fire is going to burn from going under the eaves into the roof and burn the house down.
		And James doesn't matter.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		James, and I'm just going to read you the caption that went with this photo.
		Again, this is from 2014.
		And as you said, this is a news photo, and you noted it appeared in papers all over the country back then.
unidentified		James Harkins refused to evacuate his home of more than 20 years.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		He used a garden hose to combat the flames racing up the hillside towards his home.
unidentified		Let it go up in smoke, he quipped.
unidentified		No, no, no, not without a fight.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Harkins welcomed the help of some firefighters who came to aid him.
unidentified		What about my things, my memories, my things to pass on?
		He added, it's mine.
		If it burns down, I don't have a lot left.
		What fire was that in 2014, James?
		I think that was a Cypress fire or the citrus fire, something like that.
		I never paid any attention to it.
		I never paid any attention to the date of it.
		I just know that I was there and I had gotten there just before the sheriff had closed down all the access.
		And when the sheriff came to tell me I had to leave, I said, no, I do not have to leave.
		I'm here and I'm going to stay here and protect my property.
		But I do not have any responsibilities.
		I knew the fire could come.
		I knew that the fire could come there and I knew I could have left or never come there, never went there, but that was not the issue.
		People that know the fire is coming need to get out of the way because in this case, the case that's going on right now, you cannot individually fight the fire.
		I could individually see the fire walking around my property and it did not burn my house down.
		Thank God, because that's the only thing that saved it.
		If you are living in any of the areas that you're told to get out of and they are like the areas that are burning, meaning all those homes that are there, you have no chance.
		Get in your car, get on the bike, whatever it is, and leave because you are going to be causing other people to have to try and find you.
		Do not stay and try and protect your property as I was trying to protect my property.
		My whole issue is totally different than those people that are being involved in the fire today.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		James, thanks for telling the story.
		Thanks for calling in this morning.
		Appreciate the call.
unidentified		Have a great day and enjoy.
		Jason is next out of Maine.
		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about your experience with government during natural disasters.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'd like to thank the FEMA people that came to Maine last December.
		Well, actually, they were here in January.
		We had a storm in December, and it took a lot of shingles off the roof of my house.
		And in Maine, we had to be told to go to FEMA.
		I didn't even realize I would qualify.
		But the people that came to Manchester, Maine, in December 24 were the nicest people.
		They were great.
		They helped me out.
		They stayed here longer than they were supposed to stay here.
		They traveled from way out of state.
		And I just want to say, you know, thanks for this opportunity.
		So let me thank them.
		Jason, thank you for the call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		About five minutes left this morning.
		If you do want to call in and talk about your experience with government during natural disasters as you continue to call in, one more op-ed from today's papers.
		This is the New York Times.
		Patty Davis writing in, actress, daughter of Ronald Nancy Reagan.
		The dream of California is up in smoke is the headline on her piece.
		LA seemed like paradise.
		Who could have imagined it would look like this?
		She writes, I want us to stand up for an earth that was created with perfect balance with beauty and mystery and a divine artistry, an earth that was put here not for our consumption and our greed, but for our nourishment.
		An earth that has so much to teach us and that needs protection now more than ever.
		We have thrown an entire planet out of balance and now we are suffering the consequences.
unidentified		Weather patterns so severe, we have no idea how to combat them and the resulting fires and floods and hurricanes and tornadoes more severe than anything we've known before.
		We can grieve and be righteously angry at the same time, or there is another scenario.
		We can be nomads watering across, wandering across barren acres of land that were there for our sustenance.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		If only we'd have had the sense to know how to protect the earth that we were given.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Patty Davis writing in the New York Times today.
unidentified		Amy, North Fork, California.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		You're next.
		Yeah.
		Hi, John.
		I listen to your show a lot, and I'm surprised that I got through.
		And I had a store.
		We were affected by the Creek Fire in 2020.
		We have a store up there.
		I've been up there for over 100 years.
		And it was on Labor Day.
		We had the busiest time of the year.
		And you're asking about our experience.
		Yes, ma'am.
		Locally, Forest Service, first of all, we were given no warning about the fire.
		Nothing at all.
		It was coming up the San Joaquin River Canyon.
		And we were not told about anything.
		And so we had to get our people out of the campground, which we had close to 250 people.
		And the best way that the only safe place we could take them was down to the lake, Mammoth Pool.
		And everyone was safe, and that went fine.
		They were great.
		Everything worked out fine.
		But the after effect is what bothers me.
		We still have potential for fire up there.
		And even before the fire, even before 2020, before the Creek fire, I had complained that we had a lot of bug-infected trees or the beetle dead trees.
		And I was told by the Forest Service that it wasn't an issue, not an issue.
		And it did become an issue.
		And the embers and everything burned up and it had fodder to burn.
		So I was furious.
		I'm still furious.
		It's been five years, six years now.
		And we're just starting to get our store rebuilt thanks to our insurance and our local help.
		We've had help from Madera County, from our local Forest Service people.
		But the problem as I see it is that there's no money for local services.
		I don't know where the federal government or where USDA puts their money, but it's not in our local Forest Service.
		And that needs to come down because our local people, our local people know what's going on.
		They know where the danger is and they know where to go.
		The higher levels, the regional levels, and the federal levels have no idea.
		They just throw money.
		And when we really need it, when we could have been helped, when people could have been helped, those people were not to be found because they didn't know about us.
		So my biggest aggravation is that the local agencies need to get funded and to be able to do what they need to do.
		And as far as, you know, I mean, our force has been aimed at hootie the owl rather than smokey the bear.
		Pick up the garbage and let's make it look nice for people.
		And forgetting what the real purpose of forest service is in these times.
		It's dry, yes, but it's always been dry.
		It just has a lot of fuel for a lot of fodder for fuel and fire.
		And that's as I see it.
		Amy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for the call from North Pork, California.
		Amy, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around, plenty more to talk about this morning, including up next, we'll focus on the week ahead in Washington with a distinct focus on all of those nominees coming to Capitol Hill for their congressional hearings this week.
		We'll be joined by Andrew Desiderio of Punchball News for that.
unidentified		Later, it's Ben Freeman from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statescraft.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A new report is out on think tanks and their funding.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Stick around.
unidentified		We'll have those conversations this morning on The Washington Journal.
		The House continues work on the Republicans' priority list of 12 bills focusing on border security and immigration policy.
		The Senate continues work on the Lake and Riley Act, legislation to require Homeland Security Department officials to detain migrants for theft-related crimes.
		Also, stay tuned to the C-SPAN networks for comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees.
		On Tuesday, Pete Hegseth, nominee for Defense Secretary, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
		Wednesday, South Dakota Governor Christy Noam, tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security, will appear before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
		Florida Senator Marco Rubio, nominee for Secretary of State, heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
		Also, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, nominated for U.S. Attorney General, will begin her confirmation hearings.
		She'll testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee across two days, Wednesday and Thursday.
		Watch this week live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
		Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime.
		c-span democracy unfiltered witness democracy unfiltered with c-span Experience history as it unfolds with C-SPAN's live coverage this month as Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress.
		And a new chapter begins with the swearing in of the 47th President of the United States on Monday, January 20th.
		Tune in for our live all-day coverage of the presidential inauguration as Donald Trump takes the oath of office, becoming President of the United States.
		Stay with C-SPAN this month for comprehensive, live, unfiltered coverage of the 119th Congress and the presidential inauguration, C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
		The Washington Journal continues.
		Every Monday when Congress is in session, we like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington to do that.
		This week, we're joined by Andrew Desiderio, the senior congressional reporter at Punch Bowl News, and Andrew Desiderio.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's 14 confirmation hearings this week, 13 nominees, 11 committees holding hearings.
		What is a senior congressional reporter to do?
		How do you focus your efforts?
unidentified		Well, you've got to prioritize, right?
		In terms of the nominees that are the most controversial that are going to have the most difficult time getting confirmed, you've got Pete Hagseff, first thing tomorrow morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
		He, of course, is President Trump's nominee to be Defense Secretary.
		His nomination, I think, is going to be the most important one to focus on this week.
		But there are a couple of others who actually don't even have confirmation hearings this week that are on the national security side.
		So Republicans we know want to prioritize the national security nominees who will not have their confirmation hearings this week and in fact will be continuing to meet with senators.
		So there's going to be a lot of action both in those committee rooms and outside of those committee rooms.
		I would say those other two that don't have hearings this week that are going to be controversial are of course Tulsa Yabbard, the nominee for director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel, the nominee for FBI director.
		In Kash Patel's case, he probably will not get a confirmation hearing until February at the earliest.
		In the case of Tulsi Gabbard, she could get a confirmation hearing as soon as next week, but the Intelligence Committee has not yet noticed that hearing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What is the strategy for having 14 hearings in three days?
unidentified		Is there a strategy here of doing that with Republicans in the control of the Senate, obviously, and Donald Trump coming in and these being his nominees, of course?
		Yeah, I mean, look, this is what they try to do every four years, especially when a new president comes into office, right?
		They try to stack these as closely to the inauguration date as they can.
		Of course, the Senate cannot vote to confirm any of these nominees on the floor until the new president is inaugurated.
		So the question becomes, who is a candidate for day one confirmation?
		That would require obviously someone who's going to get every Republican, every Republican senator's vote, and also a substantial number of Democratic votes.
		And the only one I see who could be a candidate for that right now is Marco Rubio, the president's nominee for Secretary of State.
		He has his nominee before the, or he has his confirmation hearing, excuse me, before the Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday of this week.
		So he is, I think, the likeliest to get confirmed on Inauguration Day.
		It would be obviously the afternoon of January 20th.
		Four years ago, when President Biden first came into office, the nominee that he had confirmed on Inauguration Day was Avril Haynes, the Director of National Intelligence.
		A couple days later, he had Lloyd Austin, the Defense Secretary, confirmed.
		And then a few days after that, he had Anthony Blanken, the Secretary of State, of course, confirmed.
		So it is normal to prioritize national security nominees on the floor if you're Senate leadership.
		In the case of Trump's crop of cabinet nominees, they are some of the more controversial ones, aside from Marco Rubio, of course.
		So you could very well see a day one confirmation.
		After that, it'll be up to Senate Democrats in terms of whether they will yield time or not, because under the Senate rules, each nominee, under regular order, if you use the full time, each nominee would take up a few days of floor time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Out of curiosity, does Marco Rubio get to vote on his own nomination?
unidentified		He can as long as he is still a sitting senator by the time the vote happens.
		He could technically wait to resign until right before he becomes Secretary of State, of course.
		So that could be interesting.
		I've tried asking him about this to see what his plans are.
		He doesn't have any specifics to share yet, but that could very well be fascinating.
		I will say he does not need his own vote.
		He's going to get 80, 85 plus votes probably in the Senate.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		In general, what senators stick out come confirmation time?
		When is it?
		Who are the senators that really tend to make a splash during these confirmation hearings?
unidentified		Yeah, look, during the hearings, obviously it's dependent on who sits on what committees.
		On the floor, it's a lot different because you have the sort of perpetual swing votes.
		Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, I would put Mitch McConnell in that category now that he's not in leadership anymore.
		Mitch McConnell has a singular focus for the remaining two years in his Senate term, which is to continue to advance his national security doctrine, his foreign policy doctrine, how he sees the world.
		And that involves, of course, pushing back against what he sees as a more isolationist streak popping up in his party.
		And one of the ways he is thinking about doing that is on these nominations, right?
		So, you know, you have to really consider, is Mitch McConnell going to vote for someone like Tulsi Gabbard?
		Is he going to vote for someone like Pete Hegseth?
		I think a lot of it depends on what they say during their confirmation hearings and how they lay out their case.
		But I would say just in terms of who to watch on the Senate floor, I think those three, Collins, Murkowski, McConnell, beyond that, I think it's nominee dependent because some senators, as we know, do have their pet issues they like to focus on when it comes to certain subject matter areas that cabinet nominees could have jurisdiction over.
		So again, it's nominee dependent, but I would say those three are the ones to focus on.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		C-SPAN callers also have their issues they like to focus on when they call in, inviting viewers to call in during this segment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We can talk about any of these confirmation hearings.
unidentified		It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Independents 202-748-8002.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And let me just run through the schedule real quick of when these are taking place.
		And we're covering most of these on the C-SPAN networks and also online, trying to let you see as many of these as possible.
		Again, there's a lot this week.
		On Tuesday, it's Pete Hegset for Defense Secretary, Doug Collins for Veterans Affairs Secretary, and Doug Bergham for Interior Secretary.
		Then on Wednesday, a bonanza of confirmation hearings.
unidentified		Christy Noam, Homeland Security Secretary.
unidentified		Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, Pam Bondi, Attorney General.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Chris Wright, Energy Secretary.
		John Ratcliffe, CIA Director.
		Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary, and Russ Vogt for OMB Director, Office of Management and Budget.
		Thursday, you've got Eric Scott Turner, HUD Secretary, Lee Zeldon, EPA, and Scott Besant for Treasury Secretary.
		As you mentioned, Tulsi Gabbard, DNI Director, is what she's up for, not among those listed.
unidentified		What should viewers know about Tulsi Gabbard and Section 702 of FISA?
		Yeah, so I reported last week that Republicans and Democratic senators who had met with her were unclear on her position on that critical national security authority, which basically allows the federal government to conduct surveillance on foreigners outside of the United States for the purposes of safeguarding national security, rooting out terrorism, things like that.
		And I presented that information to the Trump transition team, said we were going to report it.
		And then as a result, Tulsi Gabbard gave her first public comment since being nominated for the job, in which she came out in support of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
		Did you interview with her or was this a statement?
		This is a statement, yes.
		And this was notable for two reasons.
		Number one, she proposed legislation when she was in Congress just four years ago, actually, to get rid of Section 702 entirely.
		And number two, she voted against reauthorizing it every time it came up during her tenure in the House of Representatives.
		And this is something she's been pressed on during those private meetings.
		And again, I was told by senators from both parties who met with her that they came away from those meetings less than clear in terms of what her position was.
		So it was notable that she came out in support of Section 702 because, again, those Republicans in particular who were on the fence about her were looking for her to give a full-throated endorsement of this authority.
		And it's not just sort of some abstract thing where she just relies on what Congress does as it relates to reauthorizing Section 702.
		She actually, as Director of National Intelligence, if she's confirmed, she will have to recertify the program itself as early as April of this year.
		If she doesn't recertify it, the program goes dark.
		So this is not some abstract concept.
		This is something that lawmakers care a lot about.
		And so I think it helped her confirmation prospects that she came out in support of it publicly.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And the statement, again, that you received on this from Tulsi Gabbard: if confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans' Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is there more to that statement explaining why the change of heart?
unidentified		Yeah, look, I think number one, she probably knew that it would help her confirmation prospects to come out in support of it because, again, there's in the Intelligence Committee in particular, there are a lot of really hawkish Republicans and hawkish Democrats when it comes to national security and just general government surveillance.
		One of her big issues with this program is civil liberties protections, right?
		That was one of her arguments against it when she was in Congress.
		She referenced Fourth Amendment rights there in that statement.
		What she was basically saying to me was that given the reforms that have since been enacted over the last few years as it relates to Section 702, she feels comfortable that there are enough civil liberties protections, Fourth Amendment protections for Americans because the concern has been that while this program does target foreigners who are overseas, the concern is that the data of Americans gets swept up incidentally.
		And so that's been the whole criticism of the program from people like Tulsa Gabbard over the years.
		And you've had this push and pull every time this comes up on Capitol Hill between security and personal freedom.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Andrew Desiderio with us this morning, taking your phone calls.
		We've got him for about another 20 minutes this morning, so get your calls in.
		This is Chris up first in Alexandria, Virginia, Republican.
		Chris, go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, gentlemen.
		I have a few quick questions.
		First, for your guests, how long typically does it take a president to fill his cabinet and not just the cabinet, but all the political appointees?
		I believe there are almost 4,000 of them.
		That's the first question.
		And the second question is: do we know where President Trump is in filling all of those positions?
		I've seen articles in various sources that he's appointed, I think, most, if not all, of his cabinet, but I'm not sure about the middle executive appointees that had large divisions within the federal bureaucracy.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for the question.
unidentified		Yeah, those are both good questions.
		I'll take the second one first.
		So actually, over the weekend, President Trump unveiled a lot of additional sub-cabinet nominations, we call them.
		These are deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, positions that do require Senate confirmation, but depending on the individual nominee, oftentimes get through without any real hiccups, sometimes even via unanimous consent on the Senate floor.
		And when it comes to how quickly these cabinet nominees in particular can be installed, you look back into the last time, last couple times a new president came into office under President Biden in 2021.
		It took the Senate a couple of months to fill out his entire cabinet.
		I mentioned at the start of the show that obviously the Senate focused on national security nominees in the first week, that being the Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State.
		And then, you know, from that point, it's up to Senate leadership to decide which ones to prioritize.
		We know that Senate Republican leadership this time around, they want to do the same exact thing.
		They want to prioritize national security nominees.
		But in the case of some of these nominations that Trump has put forward, the more controversial ones are in the national security realm, and therefore they're going to take a longer time to get through the process.
		And again, even if they're ready for floor time, even if they're ready to be put on the Senate floor for a confirmation vote as soon as next week, it'll be up to Democrats to decide if they want to yield back time to get these nominees quickly confirmed.
		In the case of Pete Hegseth, for example, the nominee for Secretary of Defense, I strongly doubt Democrats are going to agree to collapse time on that nomination because they are really focused on exposing who they see as an unqualified and unfit nominee for this position.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And just for the viewer, I was trying to remember the last couple of administrations.
		The Partnership for Public Service, I believe, is what they're called, their political appointee tracker.
		They don't track all 4,000 of those appointment positions, but they track about 800 of them.
		And it looks like they're going to be doing it again for this next administration.
		They worked with the Washington Post to do that last time, but maybe a place for the viewer to go for that specific information.
		This is George in La Plata, Maryland, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning, John.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		What I'd like to do is just commend the cabinet members that are going to be leaving our service, and that would be Admiral Kirby, Alexander Blinken, and Jake Sullivan.
		These guys, their dedication has just been phenomenal.
		And I'm pretty pessimistic about some of the characters that Trump has nominated to be as dedicated as they have been to this country.
		Who are you worried about in particular, George?
		Well, Hagstack, for one, and Tulsi Gabbard.
		John, I've called a couple times.
		John McCain, Republican, converted to independent.
		But I'd like to remind Congress, too, and our representatives that when Matt Gates was still up for nomination and the Congress decided, oh, should we let all this news come out about him or not?
		I think we need to remind our representatives that it's not a big boys club that they've got going up there.
		They're representatives of the United States.
		And me and all the people that vote for whether it's Trump or Kamala Harris.
		If there's bad stuff going around, the background of these people, then they need to put that stuff out and not decide whether it should be put out or not because it might be detrimental.
		That's not a big boys club they got going up there or a private club.
		And Trump doesn't read the daily briefings.
		He never did.
		So I think it's pretty important that the people in the cabinet, you know, are focused on just what's best for this country.
		Because, you know, Trump, I don't think his priorities are what's going to happen in China, what's going on in Russia, and all these other countries that are threats to the United States.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		George, let me take your comments and let Andrew Desiderio jump in.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you want to pick up on?
unidentified		Well, the caller mentioned the presidential daily briefing, right?
		The reason why Section 702 is so important, one of the many reasons why it's so important, is because 60% of that presidential daily briefing, which is compiled and done by the Director of National Intelligence, 60% of the information in that briefing is brought in via Section 702.
		If not for Section 702 of FISA, that information would not be included in the President's daily briefing every single day.
		So this is a big chunk of the information that the President learns, that his national security team learns, and that's why it's so important, especially to these Republican senators who are weighing this confirmation vote and whether to support her.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just some of the dates and times on some of these key confirmation hearings that callers are talking about that you've talked about that you can watch on the C-SPAN networks.
		Let me just run through a couple of these.
		Tuesday, it's Pete Hegseth, his confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary.
		He'll be in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee 9.30 a.m. on C-SPAN 3 is when and where you can watch that.
		Wednesday, it's Marco Rubio, his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
		That's at 10 a.m. Wednesday on C-SPAN 3.
		And Lee Stefanik's confirmation hearing, his next ambassador to the United Nations, if she is confirmed, C-SPAN 3, 10.30 a.m. Eastern, again, Thursday.
		And there'll be a lot more listings as well throughout the week, but those are some of the key ones.
unidentified		We've spent 20 minutes focusing on the Senate and confirmation hearings.
		What is going on in the House this week?
		What should we be watching for?
		Well, not much, to be honest with you.
		The House is focused right now on planning for reconciliation, which is the process by which Republicans are going to try to pass President Trump's agenda.
		Obviously, there's been this whole debate of do we do it in one bill?
		Do we do it in two bills?
		It sounds like an unimportant process sort of disagreement that folks should not be focused on, but I think they should be focused on it because Republicans need to come to an agreement on how to proceed here before they actually get started on passing elements of President Trump's agenda because they need to pass a budget resolution.
		This is what lays out what they're going to do as part of the process.
		And this is how they draft the reconciliation instructions and committees.
		So that has to happen before they can even actually get started on all of this.
		So that's why the process dispute is important here.
		A bunch of House Republicans were at Mar-a-Lago over this past weekend meeting with President Trump.
		We're told that a lot of the House Freedom Caucus members were pressing the president on this issue because they, ironically enough, agree with Senate Republicans that the two-step strategy is best.
		The idea of doing border security first as part of a one reconciliation bill and then pivoting to tax cuts later in the year.
		The House Republican leadership, Speaker Mike Johnson, they disagree.
		They think it's better to just do one sort of mega bill, if you will.
		And so that was a big focus of the discussions this past weekend at Mar-a-Lago.
		Senate Majority Leader John Thune has quite eloquently laid out the case for the two-step process.
		And he hosted President Trump for a meeting at the Capitol last Wednesday during which Senator Thun and other Senate Republicans, including Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, all these more traditional Trump allies, were making the case directly to him, to the president, for the two-step process.
		He, President Trump, is still siding with Speaker Johnson in terms of one bill, not necessarily because he thinks his ideas are better, but because he thinks the House is really too dysfunctional right now to be able to pass two separate pieces of legislation on this front, and they don't want either of those obviously to go by the wayside.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This might be very much in the weeds of how these things work, but how do you get two bites at the reconciliation apple?
		How can you do this in two bills versus one?
		Right.
unidentified		So, you know, you have a chance to do this under the procedures and the rules of the Senate.
		And if you can do it twice, then you can sort of you have, again, you have two bites at the Apple.
		You have two chances to get this done.
		And it depends sort of whether those budget resolutions, those vehicles were used in the previous year or not.
		There are a lot of different rules and regulations that go into it.
		Four years ago, or I guess three years ago now, Senate Democrats could have taken two bites at the Apple in a single year.
		They decided to pass first the American Rescue Plan in 2021, and then in 2022, pass the Inflation Reduction Act.
		So they decided to split them up into one year versus the next.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A couple minutes left with Andrew Desiderio this morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Larry in the Keystone State Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		And good morning.
unidentified		How is everyone doing?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
unidentified		How are you doing?
		Okay, I have a question, too.
		The confirmation hearings concerning Tulsi Gabbard, who is nominated by President Trump for the position of national intelligence, wasn't she the one that shot her dog because the dog growled or didn't listen to a command?
		Well, there are dog trainers, there are tasers or shock callers, you know, and there are no charges filed.
		And a similar incident, and going back a little bit concerning Sarah Palin.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Larry, let me just clear that up.
unidentified		I think you might be referring to Christy Noam in the dog incident from the book that she wrote that a whole lot of attention.
unidentified		Yeah.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I think that's what you're referring to, Larry.
unidentified		Okay, I'm sorry.
		Yeah, Christy Newman.
		Yeah.
		You know, and I just don't understand the situations, you know, like that being her nominated as national intelligence.
		Now, going back a little bit to another incident, you know, with Sarah Palin, who took office December 4th, 2006 as governor.
		And she was in a helicopter and she resigned, I think, in July 3rd of 2009.
		She was in a helicopter, and I've seen this on the news media.
		And there was a video of her with an assault rifle in a helicopter chasing a coyote or a wolf running nowhere to hide.
		And the video showed her shooting an animal.
		My question is, aren't there game laws in Alaska?
		And no charger ever filed with her.
		And who's paying for all of this?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, Andrew Desiderio, the cricket incident, that was the name of the dog that she wrote about in her political memoir that got a lot of attention.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that is a stumbling block for her in the confirmation hearing?
unidentified		No, I really don't think so.
		It was more of a stumbling block for her prospects to be chosen as President Trump's running mate last year.
		But in terms of the Senate confirmation process, I don't think there's going to be an issue there.
		Again, it's not for some of these nominees who are definitely more on the controversial side and they're not going to, you know, the assumption is they're not going to get any Democratic votes.
		You know, Republicans, remember, have a 53-seat majority.
		So as long as they can keep everyone together or only lose a couple of votes, these folks are going to get confirmed.
		And she is not one who is on my list in terms of ones to watch for potential defeat.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And just run through that list.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Again, who's on your list to watch for potential defeat?
unidentified		Yeah, I would say right now, Pete Hagseff, the Defense Secretary nominee, his hearing is tomorrow morning.
		We were discussing that earlier.
		And then two more whose hearings are not this week, that being Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence.
		Her hearing could be as soon as next week, depending on when the Intelligence Committee actually notices it.
		And then the third one I would say is Kash Patel, the nominee for FBI director.
		His confirmation hearing likely will not be until February.
		That's because the Senate Judiciary Committee this early on prioritizes the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General nominees.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And then give me a different list.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who are the nominees on a list of nominees who would likely get a significant number of Democratic votes?
unidentified		Yeah, I would say Marco Rubio, as we discussed before.
		He's someone who is likely going to be confirmed the afternoon of the inauguration.
		It's not just the fact that Marco Rubio is their colleague.
		You know, obviously they give great deference to their colleagues when they're nominated for these positions.
		But secondly, Marco Rubio is someone who on foreign policy is within the mainstream of Republicans.
		So most Democrats would look at him and say, you know, I disagree with him philosophically, but I don't have an issue with him serving as Secretary of State under a Republican administration.
		Others, I would say, you know, for example, Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary nominee, he's already got a bunch of Democrats coming out in support of him, including his home state Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin.
		And another one, I would say, is Elise Defonik, the nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
		She could get a handful of Democratic votes.
		I believe Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, has already said he's going to support her.
		So, you know, I think there are a number of cabinet nominees who are going to secure Democratic support.
		The question is, how many and will that even be necessary?
		Because, again, if you've got 53 Republicans in the Senate and all of them support this respective nominee, whoever you're talking about, you don't need any Democrats.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To Troy in Tennessee, Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Hey, Andrew, thanks for coming on please, Sandy, and talking to everybody.
		But I have to take issue with you and everyone in Washington making a golden calf out of Section 702 of FISA, which was used to spy on the Trump campaign.
		It's to spy on Americans for no reason at all other than the corporate state of Washington wants to spy on them.
		The border's been open for four years, wide open.
		Anyone can walk in.
		So suddenly, Tulsi Gabbard is some kind of national security threat.
		You guys are gaslighting us.
		We know it.
		We're not stupid.
		This is why everyone in America hates everyone in Washington and how we elected the reality of the story.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask you, do you think it was wrong of Tulsi Gabbard to come out and say that this is a tool that she will continue to use?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The statement that we read earlier?
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, honestly, she really sold out.
		And it's, you know, I know she's trying to get into power, but, you know, it's time that we had leaders that grew a spine and said that, you know, Washington cannot continue to push around the entire world.
		You're about to cost World War III.
		And you're a bunch of clowns up there.
		I will note when it comes to FISA Section 702, this was something that Republican senators were actually saying to me was a problem for them in terms of her confirmation and prospects.
		I don't think any of us in the news media are necessarily playing it up as something that's a must-have or is super important.
		We're just listening to the voices of, again, these Republican senators who get to vote on this and who are saying that this is a problem for them for her confirmation prospects.
		So again, we brought this information to the Trump transition team, and that's what caused them to issue this statement to us on behalf of Tulsi Gabbard supporting Section 702.
		Again, people who oppose Section 702, people who are worried that it's, you know, in the words of this caller, you know, being used to sort of spy on Americans, they do feel like Tulsi Gabbard has sold them out on this issue.
		But again, when it comes to her prospects for confirmation, this was a must.
		a must-do for her.
		She needed to come out and say this, or else her confirmation prospects were going to be significantly in doubt.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I know you have to go get your day started on Capitol Hill.
		Final minute or two.
		What haven't we gotten to that you're going to be watching for this week in Washington that we should know about?
unidentified		The Senate is going to be considering, continuing to consider rather, the Lake and Riley Act, which is a piece of legislation that would make it easier for law enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants suspected of committing crimes.
		This is something that Senate Majority Leader John Thune is aiming for to be sort of an early legislative win for him, for his new majority, and for this new Republican trifecta in Washington.
		On Thursday of last week, 84 senators, so every Republican and almost every Democrat, voted to open up debate on this legislation.
		A number of Democrats support the bill in its current form.
		So, you know, you got to think about can this get to 60 votes?
		It probably can in its current form, but a lot of the Democrats who voted to advance it last Thursday want amendments, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
		They want the chance to amend this piece of legislation.
		What Republicans are saying is that they're open to narrowly tailored amendments on this issue, but they don't want this to become sort of a comprehensive immigration bill.
		So the next two days will be critical.
		There is another procedural vote tonight in the Senate on this.
		This one will not be controversial, but over the next couple of days, we'll see how serious Democrats are in terms of wanting to try to amend this piece of legislation.
		Do they have the votes to sort of filibuster this before it can get to final passage?
		I suspect that there are enough Democrats right now who would vote yes on final passage on the legislation as currently constructed.
		I will also add that because the House has passed this, if the Senate passes it this week, that means it goes to the White House, right?
		The current president is obviously Joe Biden.
		But what we have reported, what we reported last week, is that Republican leaders in the House and the Senate want to hold that piece of legislation, assuming it passes both chambers, which it's already passed the House.
		They want to hold that piece of legislation until Donald Trump comes into office so that he can sign it potentially on day one.
		And there was discussion of potentially trying to catch Joe Biden by surprise and put him in an awkward spot by sending this piece of legislation to him on his final day or final couple days in office.
		But they have decided that they're likely going to wait until Trump comes into office so that he can for sure sign this piece of legislation and they can notch a legislative win on an issue of border security that was a very dominant theme in their messaging as part of the election last year.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		If you want to know what's going on under the Capitol Dome, you probably should be following Punch Bowl News.
unidentified		Punchbowl.news is where you can go at Punchbowl News as well on your social media websites.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Andrew Desiderio is a senior congressional reporter with Punch Bowl.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And thanks for starting your week with us.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up later this morning, Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft joins us to talk about how think tanks are funded.
		But first, it's more of your phone calls.
		Our open forum starts now.
		Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about, the lines are yours to do so.
		The numbers are on your screen.
		Start calling in, and we will get to those calls right after the break.
unidentified		Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
		Hi, Harry Up Chairman.
		You do solemnly swear.
		I will faithfully execute, and I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.
		The office of President of the United States.
		And will to the best of my ability.
		And will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend.
		Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		The Constitution of the United States.
unidentified		So help me God.
		Congratulations, Mr. President.
		Watch C-SPAN's all-day inauguration coverage on Monday, January 20th, including the historic swearing-in as Donald Trump takes office as the 47th President of the United States.
		c-span democracy unfiltered democracy is always an unfinished creation Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
unidentified		It isn't just an idea.
		It's a process.
		A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
		It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
		Democracy in real time.
		This is your government at work.
		This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Here's where we are on this Monday morning on Capitol Hill.
		The House is in at noon Eastern time.
		The Senate comes in at 3 p.m. Eastern today.
		Also, today from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Biden is set to give a foreign policy address.
		That's going to take place at the State Department, and it's happening at 2 p.m. Eastern today.
		Look for live coverage on the C-SPAN network, C-SPAN.org and the C-SPAN Now app.
		Other events going on today in and around Washington that you can watch on the C-SPAN networks on C-SPAN 2 coming up in just about 25 minutes this morning from the American Enterprise Institute, a discussion on the relationship between parents' rights and children's safety and well-being.
		Again, 9 a.m. Eastern, if you want to flip over to that, C-SPAN2, C-SPAN.org, and the C-SPANNOW app.
		One more for you today.
		A security briefings, preparations on the inauguration.
unidentified		D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is joined by U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger and others as well on preparations and security measures for President-elect Donald Trump and the January 20th inauguration.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's at 11 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPAN Now app.
		And as we talked about before in our previous segment, there will be plenty of confirmation hearings to watch this week.
		There's some 14 hearings, 13 nominees, 11 committees is where these will take place.
unidentified		Here's one that's getting a whole lot of attention.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, former Fox News host, his hearing before the Armed Services Committee in the Senate.
		That is tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.
		That is on C-SPAN3, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN Now app.
		On Wednesday, Marco Rubio is up for his hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
		He's, of course, been nominated to serve as Secretary of State in the Trump administration.
		On Thursday, one to watch.
		It is Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
		She has been nominated to be the next ambassador to the United Nations.
		She'll be at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well.
		That's 10:30 a.m. on Thursday Eastern time, and that's on C-SPAN 3.
		So stay tuned to the C-SPAN networks throughout the week, the place for you to go if you're interested in these confirmation hearings.
unidentified		And now it's our open forum.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Any public policy that you want to talk about, any political issue, now is the time when we turn this program over to you.
unidentified		Let you lead the discussion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Kelly is in Denison, Ohio, up first on the line for Republicans.
unidentified		Kelly, go ahead.
		Hey, John.
		Hey, I'd just like to say I got an idea for a great show and a comment.
		A great show would be how many conspiracy theories in the last eight years have come to be true.
		And my second question is to you, John, and your host there on the show.
		Are you guys journalists or are you just entertainers?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Kelly, I see myself as somebody who facilitates discussion and whose most important job is to do something that other networks don't do, and that's allowing you and the callers to be part of this program.
		So, no, I'm not out there walking the Capitol like Andrew Desiderio, our previous guest, and stopping members in hallways for interviews.
		If they come here to the set and take your calls, I'll start that discussion with an interview.
		But what Andrew Desiderio does is much more what you're thinking, the classic reporter-journalist mode.
unidentified		A journalist is somebody who goes after the truth.
		And who are the journalists that you trust, Kelly?
		Well, like whenever, let's say that those guys who were exposing the tax cheat on Hunter Biden and these guys here who got shot down, or the FBI agents who had their stuff stolen from them because they were reporting the truth.
		How about Obama when they first started spying on the Trump campaign all the way through?
		There's so many things to be looked at conspiracy-wise that have turned out to be true, John.
		That's Kelly in Ohio.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Eugene in Kansas, Republican as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		Good morning, C-SPAN listeners.
		I just want to get my chance to get in and say next Monday on the 20th, we want to welcome Donald Trump back to the presidency.
		Everybody have a nice day.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And I didn't catch the end of your comment there, Eugene, but I think you finished up.
		It's 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We spent the first hour of our program this morning talking about natural disasters in the wake of those ongoing fires in Los Angeles.
		This is the front page of the LA Times this morning, bracing for a long fight and recovery.
		High winds expected to return as fire investigators look back and officials look forward.
		That's what L.A. residents are waking up to this morning.
		We can talk about that topic or any topic this morning in our open forum.
		This is Steve in Cincinnati, Ohio, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I'd like to make a comment about C-SPAN's coverage of President Carter's funeral.
		You know, I always thought that C-SPAN had wonderful reporting of public events, but they had Carter's funeral up in the right-hand corner and then Congress on the left side.
		And I just thought it was really, really poor judgment, whoever decided to do that.
		And why in the world did Congress have a session on the day of the funeral of a former president?
		I mean, weren't a lot of them at the funeral.
		And it seems like they take off for every other reason anyway.
		They don't have sessions all the time at the drop of a hat for different things.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And so, Steve, you're talking about what we call the double boxing, having both on at the same time.
		I'll explain that the reason is our commitment is that when the House is in session, we show you what's going on in the House on C-SPAN.
		So anytime it's in session, we show you what's going to happen here on C-SPAN.
		When the Senate's in session, we show you what's going to happen on C-SPAN too.
		So that was the reason to keep that commitment, but also be able to show you, obviously, the state funeral coverage and the various events and the transfers of the casket, whether it was at Andrews Air Force Base or outside the Capitol.
		All of that, though, streamed online for you to watch.
		You can go back and watch all of it in its entirety online.
unidentified		C-SPAN.org is where you can go to do that.
		So it was an attempt, Steve, to keep that commitment that we've had since C-SPAN started, but also give you other opportunities to watch it as well.
		Well, I guess my issue is, why in the world does he even have a session of Congress for the funeral of a president?
		That's not something we control.
		Congress is schedule.
		The House and Senate controls their own schedule.
		Well, and then, you know, they're always making comments there on C-SPAN that you can go online.
		You know, a lot of older people can't go online.
		You know, it's not as easy as some of you make it sound.
		But thank you anyway, John.
		I appreciate it.
		Steve, appreciate you out in Ohio and Cincinnati.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		This is Kevin in the land of Lincoln, Republican.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, sir.
		First of all, thank you for your show.
		It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people.
		And I say, go God and go Trump.
		Trump has just, he's endured ever since he started the gunshot, the impeachments, on and on and on, trying to get him in prison, trying to stop him from voting in states.
		But God prevailed, and I thank the Lord that he did, and I thank God that Trump's going to be in there.
		And can I pray for our country?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Kevin, it's your time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's your phone call.
unidentified		All right.
		Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
		Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
		Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
		Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
		I pray that the world will heal itself.
		I pray they'll fear Donald Trump and that he will take charge and we will be a godly, respectable country again.
		Just God bless you, man, and thank you for what you do.
		I don't feel like you're picking sides or trying to push other narratives.
		And like the other caller had called, they had, you go from, you can just sit and go from CNN to Fox News, and you can see the lies and the differences like daylight and dark.
		But anyway, keep up the good work.
		God bless our country.
		And thank you so much from Southern Illinois and Kevin Saul's.
		Have a great day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To Dottie in the Bay State, Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just want to extend my sympathy to Jimmy Carter's family and friends.
		And I thought he was a great president, and I voted for him.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you remember most about Jimmy Carter, Dotty?
unidentified		He was like a regular guy, and I thought he was a kind person.
		And I don't know.
		I just was happy with my wife doing Jimmy Carter's rain, not rain.
		That's the wrong word to use.
		I'm a little bit nervous.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's okay.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Were you surprised that he lost in 1980?
unidentified		Yes, I was.
		I was.
		I couldn't understand it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What did you think of Arnold Reagan?
unidentified		I wasn't a Reagan fan.
		I just wasn't a Reagan fan.
		I liked Jimmy Carter.
		You know, I just, that's all I can say about it.
		I just thought he was a good person.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Dottie, thanks for the call.
		This is Justin in Wisconsin, Middleton, Wisconsin, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you so much for taking my call.
		This is my first time calling, but I just want to say I appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage.
		I am a regular listener and watcher of C-SPAN, and so I appreciate that.
		And I just wanted to make two quick points.
		I just hope that this current process for confirming the appointees for Donald Trump is fair.
		I tend to lean more conservative, but I did not vote for either of the major candidates because I have some major moral objections to the moral objections to the current coming president.
		But I just hope that they, like last time with Trump's appointees, said not just rubber stamp everybody, that they truly, you know, see if the person is qualified and make the determination.
		So I think that is good.
		And then last, but certainly, I just want to say that I appreciate Chief Justice Roberts coming out, what was it, a week or two ago saying that we are going to continue to be a nonpartisan court and we are just going to continue to just execute justice fairly instead of just saying, you know, a lot of people believe that the Supreme Court is just going to do everything for Trump.
		And so I appreciate it that they are maintaining their nonpartisanship.
		And thank you for taking my call.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Justin, before you go, is there any nominee that you don't think is qualified at this point?
		I think we lost the caller.
		It was his first time calling in.
		Justin, you can call in if you're still listening once a month, every 30 days is when we ask you to call in to give some time for other callers as well.
		But welcome you to call in once every 30 days.
		This is Michael in Pennsylvania, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi there.
		Good morning.
		How are you?
		Doing well.
		Good.
		I'm just calling in regards to the Los Angeles fires.
		It's definitely a travesty, devastating for those families.
		I pray to God for those who are affected for sure.
		But it's definitely a shame that the Democrats in California have allowed this to happen with certain bills and laws preventing water to go where it needs to go,
		protecting small fishes in streams and letting fresh water flow out to the ocean, as well as The DEI hires or those being passed over for DEI hires who aren't able to properly do the job.
		There's a chief, I can't remember her name off the top of my head.
		I'm trying to remember.
		The deputy chief, I believe her name is Christine Larson.
		She's the head of their Equity and Human Resources Bureau.
		And years ago, back in 2019, she said or was asked a question: well, what if someone isn't physically fit enough to remove someone from a burning building?
		Or what if someone was too heavy to be removed from a burning building?
		And her response was, well, if they got themselves in the wrong place, then that's why I'd have to carry them out of the fire.
		You know, it's blaming the people rather than someone who needs to physically do their jobs.
		And that's really all that I have on that matter.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Michael in Pennsylvania.
		Bobby Scopa is a retired fire chief and author of Both Sides of the Fire Line and host of the podcast Bobby on Fire.
		And she writes in today's USA Today about these fires, saying we used to have something called a fire season, but now we have fires all year round asking what's going on, saying it's complicated and complicated problems can't be solved with simple solutions.
		We need more nuanced discussion, not positions based on ideologies.
		As we watch the fires burn our neighbors' homes in Southern California, we have to keep in mind that the fires aren't burning because of an inadequate water supply or a particular fire chief or a reduced budget.
		They're burning because the Santa Ana winds and high temperatures and low humidities.
unidentified		When you have 60 mile per hour winds or greater, there is no fire chief, water supply, or budget that is going to put out the fires.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The modern complication is the urban growth into wildlands, and that's Southern California.
		But we have a growing fire problem also throughout the entire United States.
		Her column in USA Today, if you want to read it.
		This is Kathy out of Raleigh, North Carolina, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I would like to address the man from Southern Illinois who said the prayer and how he thanks God that Trump was elected president back to the presidency.
		I find it, I'm questioning how someone who claims to be religious, say a prayer on national TV, would support Donald Trump to be our president.
		This is the most ungodly man we've ever had in the White House.
		Let's compare Jimmy Carter to Trump.
		Trump is divorced two, three times, has children from three different women.
		There's nothing moral or godly about Donald Trump.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Kathy, do you think Jimmy Carter was the most moral or the most godly president that we've had?
unidentified		I think that he was someone that we could look up to for sure.
		I don't understand how the people that are voting for Trump based on God and religion think this is the man that they should be looking up to or that we should all be saying that he's our savior for this country.
		He's a disgrace.
		He's a felon.
		He's a convicted sexual predator.
		There's nothing that's admirable about the man.
		He's been multiple times.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who are the other presidents that you think we can look up to or could look up to in your lifetime?
unidentified		In my lifetime, well, I know that the Trump supporters would hate me for saying this, but Barack Obama is a good man.
		He's had no scandal during his presidency.
		He took us out of the 2008 Great Recession.
		He tried to bring the country together against, you know, when Mitch McConnell said we will do everything to make him fail.
		We have some type of affordable health care for people that we never had before.
		You know, when you have health care for profit, you're going to have issues.
		But he tried.
		He tried and he got the furthest, I think, out of anybody in the past, in my lifetime, to get something on the table and passed.
		So he, to me, is an admirable man.
		Trump is not.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Kathy in North Carolina.
		Catherine is next out of Carrollton, Texas, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, sir.
unidentified		How are you?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
unidentified		You're my favorite commentator.
		You're a couple of callers that said you don't pick sides.
		And that's why I call.
		I'm going to keep this short, hopefully short.
		There's two issues that I want to bring up today.
		I pray for the people out in California, but we've got a bigger problem.
		And I think the guy that said the prayer had a right to pray.
		And I agree with the other young lady that thought that Trump is not a good president.
		We all have free speech.
		But my main point is: we've been in South Korea for 70 years.
		We've been in Germany.
		Mexico and Canada came to help us with those fires.
		The South Korean students are ranked number one in math and science.
		The United States is ranked 39th.
		We've got bases all over the world, and we didn't have water in the fire hydrants.
		And that they're going to look at.
		But my point is to all of your viewers and all your callers: stop picking on one president versus another.
		We've got to, and I called on the independence line.
		I'm voting for the people that do things for their constituents.
		And sometimes we go off the rails.
		But if we look at what we do around the world and then see what you have, Trump is right.
		Take care of your people first.
		Take care of your people.
		We're running around, and now Japan had another earthquake this morning.
		When Katrina happened, we sent our whole seventh fleet for them to have water, clothes, medical help.
		We never can have the ability to take care of our own people.
		And I just want your viewers to understand this very and very critical point.
		Some of our students graduating from high school can't have been read.
		We've got some bigger, bigger issues.
		We're going to have a doctor and a nursing shortage.
		And people are just in their own narrow mind.
		So where are all those countries that we have bases in for 70 years now?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Catherine, to your point.
unidentified		Go ahead, sir.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To your point, this is from USA Today.
		Canada and Mexico sending the United States help fire crews, aircraft, and equipment from Canada, including from British Columbia and Quebec, among the first on the scene to help battle the fires.
		Meanwhile, Mexico's president said in a news conference Friday that the country's Secretary of Foreign Affairs had spoken with President Biden and Gavin Newsom about sending Los Angeles to Los Angeles, a support team of firefighters from Mexico's National Forestry Commission and National Secretary of Defense.
		We're going to send support, not just because the people and government of Mexico have always been giving, but also because there are many Mexican people in this zone of the United States the statement from the Mexican president, Gavin Newsom, thanking both the Mexican government and the Canadian government.
		This is Bob in Arkansas.
		It's Tuckerman, Arkansas.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, I just wanted to make a comment about the fire in California.
		I used to live in Orange County, California, and we had the Santanas, and we had them blow real hard.
		I don't know if any water system would be able to control that.
		One thing I do slide them on is the fact that they didn't get the resources in when they should have at the first.
		Their whole plan is screwed up and Newsom is screwed up.
		We talk about all the money that went to the illegal aliens in California.
		And then I wonder, well, what about all the people that are living out on the street in California, especially the areas that got burnt down?
		What happened to them?
		Where are they at?
		Comment about the previous caller that said something.
		He prayed for the president.
		There's nothing wrong with that.
		We've had good presidents and we've had bad presidents.
		What you need to do is pray for all of them and hope that they do the right thing.
		I don't care.
		I like Richard Nixon and he resigned.
		Bill Clinton had Monica in the Oval Office and he never resigned.
		Hillary was Secretary of State.
		And you know what happened?
		We lost a bunch of people overseas because of it, because she made the wrong decision.
		When she was running for office, she says, who do you want to answer the phone in the middle of the night when there's a crisis?
		The trouble is she didn't answer the phone.
		She was only Secretary of State, though.
		But the thing is, when Obama was elected, what I did, I called the White House and I left a thing on the comment line.
		I told him, I said, I didn't vote for you, but I hope you succeed because if you succeed, America succeeds.
		And that's what we should do with our presidents.
		Back them up.
		And if they don't do the right thing, the next time they come up for election, don't vote for him.
		But let's see what they do.
		Biden, it's too bad.
		He was just too old for the job.
		And I'm 88 years old, so I know where he's probably at.
		He's younger than me.
		But the thing is, some of the things he did was good and some were bad.
		And a lot of things were bad.
		The border was bad.
		The Ukraine deal was bad.
		But if you go back in history, you'll find out that Obama screwed up with the Ukraine in 2014.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bob in Arkansas.
		This is William in the Narrows, Virginia.
		Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, I just want to say something about Trump.
unidentified		How in any world can we take our tax dollars and have him protected in 2014?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's all you want to say, William?
unidentified		Yeah, it's just a waste of money.
unidentified		Let him spend his money and have him protected, not ours.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's William.
		This is Lori out of Ohio Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		It's been a while since I've called.
		I only call when you are hosting the show.
		Again, I'm calling basically about the same thing.
		The two-party system is corrupt.
		It never worked for anyone.
		And the bottom line is people are team blue, team red.
		The woman earlier stated how evil Trump is and how great Obama was.
		No, Obama was not great.
		He bailed out the bankers.
		Actually, had bankers working in his cabinet.
		So, you know, no, none of them are good.
		Jimmy Carter, he was the best out of the, from George Washington all the way up to Biden.
		Bottom line is Biden is facilitating and funding a genocide in Gaza.
		He's had his dirty hands up in Ukraine since 2014, and it needs to stop.
		People need to wake up and stop being sycophants to the two-party system.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Laurie, why don't we have a third party, a third party on par with the Democrats and Republicans?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why has that been so hard to come together and emerge?
unidentified		It's the bottom line, dollar and money is buying politics.
		There's no money, and they're never going to allow anyone that's going to change the capitalist system.
		And the Democrats and Republicans both support the billionaire class.
		They're bought and paid for by the billionaire class.
		A third-party system doesn't have any chance.
		When Bernie was running in 2016, they squashed him.
		They made sure that he was never going to be near the Oval Office, even though he literally won and would have won the primary.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Lori, I tell you what, you might be interested if you stick around about 10 more minutes.
		We're going to be talking about money.
		We're going to talk about the money behind think tanks in Washington, a new report from the Quincy Institute.
		Stick around.
		I think you'll find that conversation interesting.
		That's at 9.15.
		Thanks for the call.
		This is Rodney in Miami.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Morning, John.
		The lady that was talking about morality and how terrible Trump was, I mean, I think when you go back in history and you look at some of the presidents, let's say Bill Clinton, I think he set a new low for morality in the White House based on the Monica Lewinsky affair.
		You know, you look at Obama, I think he divided the races more than any other president.
		You look at Joe Biden wouldn't even acknowledge that he had a granddaughter in Arkansas.
		But what I wanted to say was, I had a couple of things.
		One, in the Bible, imperfect people like David and Paul and Moses did amazing things.
		I don't think Trump is perfect, but any president that will stand up and make America that really is the strongest Judeo-Christian influence in the whole world stronger will always get my vote.
		Now, I wanted to mention, you mentioned USA Today several times, Tom McClintock, Congressman Tom McClintock, has an amazing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today.
		I was just, I was stunned by how good it was.
		So I would appreciate you kind of pulling that up and telling the people about that.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Rodney in Miami.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Vicki, St. Louis, Missouri. Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I would just like to say that I think there are a few people in this country that are delusional to think that Donald Trump would ever be mentioned in the same sentence as being moral.
		I think people can't remember what happened during the pandemic.
		We lost 1.2 million people.
		You never hear Trump mentioned about those people dying.
		Never.
		These people since the pandemic have been sitting Christmas after Christmas, dinner after dinner, without their loved ones sitting there because he tried to make it think that it wasn't real.
		And that just really hurts my feelings.
		It just really does.
		That's all I have to say.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Vicki in St. Louis, Missouri.
		This is Congressman Tom McClintock's op-ed posted yesterday in the Wall Street Journal.
		Bad policy served as kindling for California's wildfires.
		Bad forest and water management, misplaced priorities, and price controls all played a role by Tom McClintock.
		This is Mike in Michigan Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I've got a question rather than a comment.
		Is there any way you can check if Trump on those donations that were given to him, if that would be considered income and would he have to pay taxes on that?
		And he got quite a few people to donate money to him and he transferred it to his lawyers.
		But that should be considered income because I've had friends that have had to pay because we took up donations for them.
		So could you find out about that for me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, you're talking about political donations.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		There's been a lot of reporting recently about donations to the inaugural committee.
unidentified		No, no, I'm talking about donations to him to pay for his lawyers.
		He took political money and to pay his lawyers.
		That should be considered income.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		Mike, tell you what, we do these money in politics segments often and bring in experts whose job it is to do this all day long and go through the forms.
		That would be a better person for that question than me sitting here.
		But I promise you we're going to do more of those segments.
		We just did one last week, actually, but it was focused on the inaugural committee donations.
		But a really interesting one on the Washington Journal, I believe it was last Monday, a week ago today.
		You can look that up online at C-SPAN.org.
		Wayne is next in Springfield, Missouri, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, sir, and good morning to you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's on your mind?
unidentified		Yeah, I was just talking.
		I heard a lot of people talk, you know, about judging Trump and doing this and everything else, you know.
		And I don't feel like it's right for somebody to point fingers at other people.
		They ought to, you know, look at their own lives, you know, what's going on with them, because nobody is perfect in this world.
		You know that.
		You know, nobody is perfect.
		Everybody fails.
		They have mistakes and stuff.
		You know, his was just all over the, you know, the news and everything like that.
		You know, you know, my mother voted for him before she died.
		She died in my arms, you know.
		That was a tragedy, you know.
		And I don't have any family.
		I used to live in North Carolina.
		You see the floods going on there.
		You know, I feel sorry for those people, you know.
		And I see the fires in Los Angeles, you know.
		But my point is, you know, they had fires before in the past in California, and they knew they was, you know, there.
		Why come they didn't pre-plan all of this?
		You know, even though it wouldn't have happened, you know, a week ago or whatever, but they would have the water supply backed up, you know, so when it come along, they wouldn't, you know, have the supply to do it because a lot of people, you know, they're not movie stars.
		They're every fever, work hard every day, and they can't afford to rebuild their homes.
		It's hard.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Especially in the economy, you know, we're facing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Wayne in Missouri.
		John is in Harrison City in Pennsylvania.
		Republican.
		Good morning.
		John, you're with us.
		Then we go to James in Ohio, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, James.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Yes, I want to speak to you for a few minutes.
		I'm 95 years old, and I've lived through 20 or 20-some presidents of the United States of America.
		And I am a veteran of World War II and a Korean veteran.
		And I've served in the 7th Fleet of the U.S. Navy in the 8th Marines for six years.
		And I have quite a bit of things I'd like to say to some of these people that hasn't lived through the Depression and never had to go hungry for food.
		And back when I was a boy, you didn't have a long-distance telephone.
		You rang it three times and you got the neighbor down the street.
		And I didn't hear of hardly any long-distance telephones.
		We had a radio, but you couldn't hardly hear anything.
		And up until about 1940, you never heard of a long-distance call.
		And these people today, I feel so sorry for them because they are so stupid.
		It just seems sad for me to listen to these people.
		If I live out this administration, I'll be 100 years old.
		And I pray to God that I will, that I can see my 100th birthday.
		And I could tell these people a lot of things.
		It seems to me that the education has runt the country.
		I have an eighth-grade education that I got at a run-room school.
		And it was a different time when I was born under the Republican administration of Hoover.
		I could speak to you and tell you a lot of things that has taken place.
		I served in the United States Marine Corps under we were segregated in the Marine Corps for six years when I served in the Marine Corps.
		And it's hard to say, but some of the best days of my life was under segregation.
		I want to tell these people.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why do you say that, James?
unidentified		Well, I like to tell the black people and the white people, you're just black because God made you that way.
		And I'm just a white man because God made me that way.
		And we'll just have to live with each other and try to get along with each other the best we can.
		We don't owe no reparation to me.
		They don't owe no reparation to the blacks for the Civil War.
		That was a couple hundred years ago.
		And there's just so many things that are so disturbing to me at this time in life.
		I sit here and I listen to the journal every morning.
		And I feel so sad for these people that want to divide the country.
		I'm a Democrat.
		I was born a Democrat because in the Depression, if you wasn't a Democrat, you didn't get anything.
		And I'm still registered a Democrat because I was 21 years old when I registered to be a Democrat.
		But when they took a junior senator from the worst county in the whole United States to be president of the United States, I quit the Democrat Party.
		And I wish they had an independent and a Republican and a Democrat Party so we could vote as we surely would like to.
		I've been an independent ever since, but I'm still registered as a Democrat.
		But the end of the Democrat Party was when Hussein Obama was elected president.
		And I could even tell you how he became a citizen.
		But that's a long story.
		His mother was from Indonesia.
		She's a good person.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We'll take the call from Ohio.
		Just a couple minutes left in our open forum and other people waiting.
		This is Frank in Pennsylvania, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
		The reason I'm calling is I have a bone to pick with you.
		I had to boycott Pedro, and I think you're on the list now.
		A few months back, Pedro allowed someone to say the Our Father Lord's Prayer on the air, and now, and that blew my mind when that happened.
		And now you.
		The caller asked you, May I?
		I'm not sure why your answer was no.
		This is a political show, not a religious show.
		I'm not sure if you guys have like weekly, monthly meetings between the hosts and the producers, but if you guys do, what I'm requesting is at the next meeting in the topic, saying, Hey, that wacky caller, he might be right onto something.
		You guys are the last true political show with honesty and openness.
		And you guys are taking that away from us.
		It's getting out of hand how many religious callers call up and you allow them to quote Bible verses, mention God and prayer over and over again.
		This is not a political show anymore, and it's a shame because you guys were the best for a while.
		But if this continues, I will be boycotting Washington Journal.
		I came here to learn about politics, not about people's religion.
		And John, I'm a little disappointed that you allowed that to happen today.
		And I'm disappointed that the producers are allowing this to happen.
		And if it continues, it's a shame.
		There's nowhere else to turn for political true political commentary and discussions that isn't biased.
		You guys are the last.
		So if I lose you guys, I guess I have no more to turn for politics anymore.
		But I hope you guys really discuss this because it's getting out of hand.
		It's getting out of hand.
		And just for all your other callers that talk about they want to send thoughts and prayers, there's a famous saying that prayer is a way to do nothing and still pretend you're helping.
		Stop praying for people after disasters.
		If your God is real, pray before the disaster.
		Let's see if your God is real then.
		John, thank you for letting me share my voice.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Frank in Pennsylvania.
		This is David in Ohio, Akron, Ohio, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Yeah, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I called you before.
		It's been over a month, but I know that I've made observations since I've been studying politics.
		First of all, I'm a patriotic American, but I am a main patriot, not a Wall Street patriot.
		I cut my political teeth on the Vietnam War.
		And when I began to do research, I saw the colonial connection between the West and Vietnam.
		Vietnam was the Vietnamese were trying to get their independence from colonialism.
		People need to remember that the United States was born out of a fight against colonial England.
		Now, what happens, what's happened in the meantime, is Wall Street has become a colonial power.
		So the same colonial practices that we objected to from the British, we are imposing those on other people.
		We also have special interests that actually represent other countries that lobby for our congressmen, and they're pretty much owned because if they don't do what they say, they'll get primaried.
		And the Citizens United.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And David, I tell you, exactly what you brought up just then is a topic we're going to be talking about next on the Washington Journal.
		So appreciate the call.
		Stick around for the discussion because it's an entire new report about the funding of think tanks in Washington and who's behind that funding and foreign governments that fund some think tanks in Washington.
		So David, hope you stick around.
		That's David, our last caller in this segment of the Washington Journal.
		Ben Freeman is with us next for that conversation.
		He's with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
		We'll be right back.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has spent 40 years in the United States Senate, 17 of those as leader of his Republican colleagues.
		That's the longest any senator has been at the top of the leadership rung in either political party.
		Senator John Thune was elected a few weeks ago to head up the Republican majority in the Senate in 2025.
		Meanwhile, journalist Michael Tackett's book, A Profile of Senator McConnell, is called The Price of Power and subtitled, How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party.
		Mike Tackett, the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief of the Associated Press, conducted over 50 hours of interviews and was granted access to never-before-released oral histories.
unidentified		Journalist Michael Tackett with his book, The Price of Power, How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
		BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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		Whether you're passionate about politics, the environment, or community stories, StudentCam is your platform to share your message with the world.
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		Washington Journal continues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A conversation now on think tank funding with Ben Freeman.
		He's director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
		And Ben Freeman, we should probably start this conversation by explaining what the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is.
		Are you a think tank?
unidentified		We are indeed.
		And first of all, thank you so much for having me.
		And the Quincy Institute is a, it is a think tank.
		It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, we sometimes call ourselves an action tank because we're not just there thinking, we're trying to get stuff done.
		And really our purpose is to reduce the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.
		And critical to our discussion today, we try to call out some of the special interests that are driving U.S. foreign policy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		How is the Quincy Institute funded?
unidentified		We are funded in a lot of different ways.
		We have a lot of small donors, we have big donors, we have foundations.
		Critically for our purposes, we are not funded by foreign governments, we are not funded by the U.S. government, and we are not funded by defense contractors.
		And so this really frees us up, we think, to offer kind of a clear, unbiased view of the U.S. foreign policy process.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Is that unusual?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are most think tanks taking money from one of those three places you just mentioned?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		We are, in many cases, we are on an island at the Quincy Institute.
		We're surrounded by other think tanks in D.C. who do take money from foreign governments, the U.S. government, and defense contractors.
		Many think tanks take considerable amount of funding from all three of those entities.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What is the think tank funding tracker?
unidentified		Thank you so much for asking that.
		To me, it's a labor of love.
		It's something we've been working on for almost a year now.
		And it's a publicly available website where anybody, any of our viewers here, our friends in the media and friends in Congress can go to find out how the top think tanks in the U.S. are being funded.
		It provides painstaking details about that funding, what year funding was received, which specific, if it's a foreign government, which foreign government that is, what branch of that foreign government that money came from, and whenever possible, the exact dollar amount of that funding.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What should viewers know about the Atlantic Council?
unidentified		Many, many things.
		But I think what they can find in the Think Tank Funding Tracker about the Atlanta Council is that they're heavily funded by foreign governments.
		We actually found that the Atlanta Council receive more money from foreign governments than any other think tank in the U.S., more than $20 million from foreign governments in the past five years.
		They're also one of the top recipients of Pentagon contractor funding, too.
		They get a lot of money from the very top defense contractors.
		And sort of what we see with the Atlanta Council is this huge money, huge amount of money coming in from some of these foreign governments and some of these defense contractors.
		And what we tried to do a little bit was to trace that back to work the Atlanta Council was doing.
		And what we found was in some cases, it appeared that the Atlanta Council was making recommendations that would benefit some of those funders.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who are the foreign governments that give the most money to American think tanks?
unidentified		By and large, it's America's allies.
		It's our Democratic friends.
		It's our friends in NATO.
		It's places like the United Kingdom, Canada are some of the top donors.
		If you look at the top 10 most generous donors, it's mostly filled with democratic regimes that are allies of the U.S.
		However, the very top foreign government donor to think tanks was the United Arab Emirates.
		They gave more than any U.S. allies.
		And the UAE is an authoritarian regime.
		It's been complicit in war crimes in Yemen and in Sudan, too.
		They're helping to fund the RSF there, which was recently declared a genocide.
		So in many cases, the UAE is a very destabilizing regime.
		And yet we see them donating millions and millions of dollars every single year to the top foreign policy think tanks in the U.S.
		We also see in that list too, other authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia.
		And the third highest foreign government donor to think tanks was actually the government of Qatar, which is another authoritarian regime in the Middle East.
		It's got its own human rights issues to deal with, its own destabilizing behavior.
		Both Qatar and the UAE have been caught red-handed, illegally meddling in the U.S. political process too.
		And yet, Qatar, just like the UAE, is giving millions of dollars every year to think tanks in the U.S.
		So we think it's important for folks to know about this and to have a clear-eyed vision of all the cards on the table when they're looking at analysis coming from think tanks that receive funding from these authoritarian regimes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The numbers from your report, and this is available at quincy.org, this report that we're talking about.
		The United Arab Emirates, over the course of a four-year period, nearly $17 million given to U.S. think tanks.
		The United Kingdom, $15.5 million.
		Qatar, $9 million.
		Canada, $8.6 million.
		Germany, $8.5 million.
		How were you able to track this money?
		How easy was it to come up with these numbers?
unidentified		It was anything but easy.
		It was painfully hard, in fact.
		Here's the thing about think tank funding is that think tanks aren't actually required to disclose their funding.
		And we actually found, we looked at the top 50 think tanks and we found that more than a third, 18 of them, they disclose absolutely nothing about their funding.
		We call these dark money think tanks.
		And, you know, we see that as very problematic.
		But amongst the think tanks who do disclose this information, in most cases, we get sort of a partial transparency that they might release the names of their funders, but no dollar amounts, or they might release some dollar amounts, but you get these wide ranges.
		You don't really know exactly how much funding is coming in.
		But to get that information, we had to scour their websites, annual reports, financial documents.
		You named it, anything that they've released that was publicly available where we could track down this information.
		We did.
		And at thinktankfundingtracker.org, you can even see some of our sources there.
		For every one of these donations, you can see the source where we got this information.
		But it was really, really hard to do.
		And as I mentioned, this whole process took almost a year to put together.
		And so, one of our big goals with this is we'd like your viewers to be able to not take a year to unearth some of these conflicts of interest and be able to very quickly just go to our website.
		And if they have a suspicion about somebody might have a conflict of interest, might have some baggage, they can really quickly go to our website and look that up in a hurry.
		So, they don't have to be a nerd like me and pour through all these annual reports.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A few minutes ago, we mentioned the Atlantic Council.
		The Atlantic Council has a donor acceptance policy.
		This is how it reads: Acceptance of any contribution is at the discretion of the Atlanta Council.
		Accordingly, each is subject to a condition, which is reflected in a written acceptance letter for any contribution of $250 and above that stipulates that the Atlantic Council is accepting such contribution on the condition that the Atlanta Council retains intellectual independence and control over any content funded in whole or in part by the contribution consistent with the Council's intellectual independence policy.
		What do you make of that?
unidentified		It's noble of them to put out a disclosure like that.
		Those intellectual independence policies are not unique to the Atlantic Council.
		We see this at most of the top think tanks.
		However, we also know a lot of these think tanks, they'll put out those policies, and yet they'll allow donors to preview research before it's published, to make comments on that research, and in some cases, provide line edits for that research.
		And we also know that some of these top think tanks are doing what we call pay-for-play research, where a donor pays a specified amount of money to get a specific report done or a bank created.
		So, in other words, they're literally paying for the products that some of these think tanks are doing.
		The Atlanta Council, for example, through leaked emails, we learned that the UAE ambassador had advanced access to some of the Atlanta Council's reports before they were published and had the opportunity to provide his comments to the scholars in advance of the publication of those reports.
		Our concern is that when donors are given that kind of opportunity, it really allows them to play censor.
		And, you know, if they come back to those scholars and they have unfavorable recommendations for the report, you know, we worry that some of this research might be bent to the whims of some of these foreign funders.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's 9:30 on the East Coast.
		Ben Freeman is our guest with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
		He's the director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy Initiative there.
		Phone lines for you to call in.
		It's split by political party as usual.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		He's with us till the end of our program, 10 a.m. Eastern this morning.
		Mr. Freeman, as folks are calling in, the top 10 think tanks that receive funding from the U.S. government include the RAND Corporation at over $1.4 billion, the Wilson Center to the tune of $52 million, the Stimson Center, Atlantic Council, Aspen Institute, Center for a New American Security, the German Marshall Fund, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, and the Inter-American Dialogue.
		Why is the United States government giving money to think tanks?
unidentified		It's a very good question.
		In some cases, this money is going to think tanks because the federal government needs answers to some very hard questions.
		And the top recipient of that funding, as you mentioned, was the RAND Corporation.
		And RAND is what's known as a federally funded research center.
		And that's really a fancy way of saying these are kind of the government's nerds who help the government to answer some of these tough questions that they might have.
		Most of the research that's being funded by the federal government going to RAND, it never sees the light of day.
		These are private reports, usually going to the Department of Defense and the different service branches there.
		And they're hoping that these RAND scholars can help the Department of Defense answer some of these really prickly questions.
		And it's all done behind the scenes.
		I don't particularly see any sort of conflicts of interest or problem with that private front.
		I think we do get into some interesting questions when we think about the federal government using taxpayer dollars to fund very public-facing think tanks.
		In some cases, as we identify in the report, those think tanks are kind of promoting an agenda that would benefit the agencies that are funding them.
		And we really see this, especially with the Department of Defense, you know, funding kind of these hawkish think tanks, then who unsurprisingly recommend higher budgets for the Department of Defense.
		And you can sort of see this cycle continuing on at this night.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are some examples of that that you would cite?
unidentified		Yeah, more money going to the Department of Defense and then the Department of Defense in turn providing more money to those think tanks.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, which think tanks are you referring to there?
unidentified		Oh, yeah, I think the Wilson Center is a good example.
		But we really see this at just about any think tank the Department of Defense is funding.
		You, you know, in some cases, they have service members who go on staff at these think tanks.
		You know, they publish research there that would appear to benefit those services.
		You know, you really see it across the board, you know, from top organizations like Brookings, you know, Wilson Center, and really any of those think tanks that they're funding.
		I think that there's good legitimate questions about whether U.S. taxpayer dollars should be going to think tanks that are also effectively lobbying the federal government on foreign policy issues.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And the Department of Defense, by and large, the agency that gives the most to think tanks, followed by the Department of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and then so on down the line.
		All this information available at quincyinst.org.
		If you want to scroll through it yourself or call in with your questions about it, now's the time to do so.
		This is Alex up first in Minnesota, Independent.
		You're on with Ben Freeman.
unidentified		Hey, thanks for taking my call and thanks for putting this together.
		It sounds very interesting.
		I'm excited to take a look.
		I have two things I was hoping you could comment on.
		One is I think you've done a good job of talking about like the reports that think tanks are asked to put out, but what about actually taking action on behalf of the donors?
		So an example would be, I think, the German Marshall Fund was on C-SPAN a while ago and they were talking about their work flagging what they were considering misinformation.
		And I asked them, I called and asked if they were funded by the U.S. government and they said yes.
		And I said, don't you see a conflict in the fact that you're being funded by the U.S. government and then you're in turn flagging things for censorship.
		And the person kind of demurred.
		So I was hoping you could expound on examples like that where they're kind of being used as a cutout to achieve maybe things that a government wouldn't be allowed to do legally.
		That's the first thing.
		And the second thing is what about companies or other think tanks that are used as cutouts by foreign governments to avoid the impression of foreign government funding.
		So CEFC, which is paying millions to the Bidens, they were a company, but they're really a cutout for the Chinese government.
		And they were spreading their money around to the Bidens and to like Columbia University and other things.
		Should there be a law to make it so that you can't take money from cutouts in that way?
		And thank you for taking my questions.
		Mr. Freeman.
		Those are absolutely excellent questions, and I'll try to answer them in order.
		When it comes to U.S. government money going to think tanks, this in some ways is a bit of a loophole because federal agencies are not allowed to use their funding to hire lobbyists to lobby on their behalf.
		They can't go out like a lot of other folks can and hire a K-Street lobbying firm.
		But when you really look at the work that think tanks doing, I think you're absolutely right.
		It's not just about the reports and kind of the research end of it.
		That's really just the beginning of what think tanks do.
		Think tanks are testifying before Congress.
		In some cases, they're outright helping the right legislation.
		And so, if we believe that funding is influencing what think tanks do, and we also know that think tanks are helping the right legislation, then you can really see a clear path here for the U.S. government giving money to think tanks that are then, again, going on to directly influence legislation on their behalf.
		So, I think there should be some serious questions asked about that U.S. government funding.
		To your second question, this is a really, really good point, and I think a pivotal issue to bring up that we're seeing more and more foreign governments turning to think tanks.
		And by the way, we found over $110 million going to think tanks.
		That amount of money has gone up.
		We looked at the last five years, that money has gone up almost every single year that we looked at.
		So, foreign governments are turning to think tanks more and more for influence in the U.S.
		And a big reason that they're doing that is, as I mentioned, think tanks don't have to disclose their funding.
		Under current law, they don't have to disclose a nickel that they get from a foreign government.
		Whereas, if that foreign government hires a lobbying firm, a PR firm, they're going to have to register under what's known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
		And once they do that, there's a lot of filing requirements.
		Everybody, they have to report how much money they're giving.
		They have to report the contract.
		The firm they hire has to report everything they're doing on behalf of that foreign government.
		But if you fund a think tank, you don't have to report any of that stuff.
		And yet, in many cases, we see think tanks doing work that really resembles very closely some of this lobbying and public relations work, just without the disclosure.
		And that's really the impetus of what we were trying to do: to shine a bright light on this rather dark and not transparent field of think tank funding.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Renee and Marietta, Georgia, sends this question via our tech service.
		How are the heritage and AEI funded?
		Renee is saying they seem to be the most powerful think tanks these days.
unidentified		It's a wonderful question.
		I'll tackle AEI first because that's a really quick one.
		We have absolutely no idea how AEI is being funded because they are one of those dark money think tanks that I mentioned.
		They do not publicly disclose their donors.
		I have emailed them on multiple occasions asking them for their donor information.
		And they rather politely explained that they do not make that information publicly available and they have no intention to do in the future, so far as I can tell.
		But we do know about AEI, they have sort of let slip at public events that they do accept funding from defense contractors.
		And on one occasion, a public event, they mentioned this.
		And the chairman of their board, he owns a company that owns pieces of defense contractors too.
		So we know there is some defense contractor money in there, but that's about all I can tell you because AEI is one of those dark money think tanks that doesn't disclose its funding.
		The Heritage Foundation, they do disclose some of their funding.
		Heritage very recently, over the years, I had kind of beat up on Heritage a little bit about taking a lot of money from defense contractors.
		But just last year, they publicly announced that they were going to sever their ties with those defense contractor funders.
		They're no longer taking that money.
		I also know that the Heritage Foundation doesn't take any money from foreign governments either.
		And so, at least on two of our buckets, the Heritage Foundation is not taking money there.
		They're a little bit murky.
		They're kind of in the middle in terms of transparency on the rest of their funding.
		A lot of their funding comes from a huge small donor base that donates to them too.
		So, you know, we would hope they would be a little more transparent in their funding, but they're certainly much more transparent than ADI is.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The top Pentagon contractor donors to think tanks.
		Here's the top five: Northrop Grumman at the tune of about $5.6, $5.7 million over the course of four years from 2019 to 2023.
		Lockheed Martin, $2.6 million.
		Mitsubishi, $2.1 million.
		RTX, about $1.8 million.
		And Airbus at about $1.6 million, $1.7 million.
		What should we know about Pentagon contractors donors?
unidentified		There's a lot to know about him.
		Great question.
		I think when it comes to that list you mentioned there, it's well worth noting that when you talk about companies like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, these are some of the very top defense contractors.
		These are what's known as the primes.
		These are companies that are getting tens of billions of dollars every year in Pentagon contracts and in taxpayer money that they're getting every year.
		And yet, what we see with this think tank funding is that they're turning around and taking at least a little piece of that and giving that money back to think tanks, who, in many cases, as I mentioned before, are making recommendations that would be a financial benefit to them.
		And this includes things like recommending specific arm sales to Ukraine that are made by their funders, recommending other arm sales to places like Israel for the war in Gaza.
		We see this over and over again that these think tanks that are funded by these Pentagon contractors, they're making recommendations that would be a financial windfall to these contractors.
		So again, you're seeing this sort of, I would say virtuous, but I'm not sure it's quite virtuous, but you're seeing the cycle of taxpayer money going to these entities and those entities then donate to think tanks who recommend more taxpayer money going to these entities.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		To New York, this is Cheryl Waiting, Republican.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		So you came on the show and you listed all of these Arab think tanks as a top think tanks, but I would think AIPAC, pro-Israel think tanks would be near the top.
		So I don't know.
		I find that hard to believe.
		And John, you had on think tanks talking about the Israel-Palestinian, I won't even call it a war, a conflict.
		You never have any think tanks that had the Palestinian point of view.
		For the past six months, it's all been pro-Israel think tanks, and you let them go on for like half an hour.
		You take one or two calls.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Cheryl, what you're saying isn't true because I've hosted segments where we have people from a variety of viewpoints on that specific topic.
		If you missed it, it's available at c-span.org.
		I would encourage you to search through those.
		But let me let Ben Freeman jump in on Israel and think tanks.
unidentified		AIPAC is certainly a word that we hear all the time.
		comes to whenever we're talking about foreign influence in Washington, I think AIPAC is one of the first things on folks' heads.
		But for us, APAC is a really tricky case because APAC is not actually a foreign entity.
		It's the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
		This is a domestic organization.
		It's funded by domestic sources.
		And so by our definition, we were looking exclusively at foreign government funding, what we could say for sure, money that was coming from a foreign government.
		APAC just doesn't meet that threshold.
		Until we hear some sort of smoking gun, that APAC is getting funding from the Israeli government.
		I'm not aware of that.
		But if that does come up and that changes, then we will go back and update the database and include that APAC funding, which actually brings me to a point.
		We're going to update this database every year.
		And so as some of these funding dynamics change, and to your question, if we do learn concretely that APAC is funded by the Israeli government, then we would certainly add it in then.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Madeline, is in Texas independent?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for waiting.
unidentified		Yes, this is Madeline.
		I have a question.
		Go ahead, ma'am.
		Yes, I want to know.
		It has to do with, are you on the air now?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am, you are.
unidentified		Okay, I wanted to ask.
		I wanted to ask y'all, why are they taking money out of the social security of old and the disabled?
		They're taking $400 out of my check every month, and I can barely make it, honey.
		I can't even afford to go down to get a car.
		I got to ride a bus once a month to get groceries to go to town.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Madeline, certainly an important topic and one we will certainly come back to.
		But I've got Ben Freeman focusing on think tanks right now and want to focus on his report because it's an interesting new report.
		Ben Freeman, think tanks that focus on domestic policy versus foreign policy, do some of these countries that give money to think tanks, do they give them to think tanks that focus on U.S. domestic policy or is it strictly on the foreign policy side?
unidentified		Yeah, we really don't see that as much.
		And, you know, part of this is that these foreign governments are hoping to get something in return for their donations.
		They're just as much investments as they are donations.
		So we do see far less money from foreign governments going to think tanks who don't focus on foreign policy type issues.
		That's not to say some of these foreign governments are quite generous with their donations.
		We've seen, I mentioned the UAE and Qatzer, they've been quite generous donating to U.S. nonprofits following natural disasters here.
		I live in the great state of Florida and I know the UAE specifically has donated following hurricanes here.
		So they do make charitable contributions to domestic issues.
		But when it comes to think tank funding, they are very much focused on U.S. foreign policy-centric think tanks.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who are the most transparent think tanks?
unidentified		I really, I can't say this enough, but when we finished this report, I kind of fell in love with the Stimpson Center's transparency.
		This is the, to us, it was only one of two organizations that got our full five of five star rating when it came to transparency.
		And the Stimpson Center really does it all.
		They put out their annual reports every year.
		They list all of their donors in those annual reports.
		And they don't just list them.
		They list the exact dollar amount that each of those donors is giving.
		And it's a level of transparency that we just don't see at other think tanks.
		They're not hiding behind anonymous donors or any of these other sort of shell games that think tanks can play.
		So we really recommend that when think tanks are considering how do they improve their level of transparency, take a hard look at the Simpsons Center.
		And we should all try to be emulating that model.
		What does the Stimpson Center do?
		The Simpsons Center does a little bit of everything.
		They have a very large focus on U.S. foreign policy.
		And I think like Quincy in some ways, they are an action tank.
		They're looking to testify before Congress.
		They're making recommendations for policy proposals in the foreign policy space.
		They're really doing a lot of things that a lot of other think tanks are.
		But again, they're doing it in a transparent fashion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Paulette in Florida, Democrat.
		Good morning.
		You are next.
		You're on with Ben Freeman.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I wanted to, you know, well, I wanted to say something there before when he was talking about the domestic side and that the funding is not relative to the domestic side.
		I think that's a lie because the countries that fund all of it go into play.
		You know, when you keep the people poor, the richer stay richer.
		So is it not domestic?
		And I wanted to make a short little, well, they said it's a joke, but it's not a joke and it's not dirty or anything like that.
		But just to show what all that funding is is really.
		You have a billionaire, you have a working class person, and you have an immigrant.
		They give 100 cookies to all three.
		The billionaire take 99 and then tell the working class that the immigrant wants your cookie.
		So it's all about money and keeping people dumb.
		But people are rising up and they're learning and they're constantly trying to figure things out.
		So please just be honest.
		Did you hear that lady crying about Social Security check?
		You think that's not all into play?
		Come on now.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Ben Freeman.
unidentified		Yeah, Paulette, I very much hear you.
		We are, I assure you, we are coming through the data.
		We are looking to see where that foreign government money is coming from, where it's going.
		And if we find it going to some of these domestic interests, we'll certainly do our darnest to tell folks about it.
		I will say on a very basic level, there's only the pie that is the U.S. government's budget in any one year.
		It is to some extent, it's a finite pie.
		We only have so much of the pie, and we got to figure out how to chop it up every year.
		And so when you see some of these forces like foreign governments that are clamoring for U.S. military bases on their soil or arms sales, all these sorts of things, they're clamoring for taxpayer dollars to go to them.
		And Pentagon contractors too are clamoring for more money to go to them.
		At some point, that money has got to come from somewhere.
		And taxpayers are paying for all of this.
		And so they might be squeezing some of these domestic interests to give more money to some of these money interests that are donating a lot of money to think tanks.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Suki on X wants to come back to why you did this research project in the first place, saying, is this guy trying to make everything seem nefarious?
		Why?
		So no one believes anything anymore?
unidentified		Yeah, that is a wonderful question, actually.
		And I would dare say quite the opposite.
		I've worked at think tanks, a variety of think tanks for 15 years now.
		And actually, where this started was about two years ago, a public opinion poll came out that said think tank experts were wildly distrusted.
		In fact, they were less trusted than just about anybody you could think of.
		Doctors, engineers, even lawyers.
		Lawyers were more trusted than think tankers.
		There's more lawyer jokes than there are lawyers.
		But even lawyers were trusted more than think tank experts.
		And so we sort of said that's a problem.
		We think tanks, think tanks have a really important role to play in the policy process.
		We want them to be trusted again.
		And so we started taking a hard look at their funding and we realized maybe the public does have some cause for concern because a lot of think tanks, they're not transparent about their funding.
		They do have these glaring conflicts of interest in some cases.
		And they're kind of hiding this from the American public.
		So what we're hoping for actually is that we get more of this information out there.
		We encourage think tanks to be more transparent.
		We hope at the end of the day, this will actually lead to an increase of confidence in think tanks, less of a conflict of interest and more trust that these think tanks are really working for the greater good in the U.S. policy process.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The German Marshall Fund, according to your report over four years, received some $16 million from foreign governments, another $3.2 million from the U.S. government, and nearly $1 million from Pentagon contractors.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What should we know about the German Marshall Fund?
unidentified		Yeah, I think the German Marshall Fund is unique in some cases.
		You know, as the name would imply, this is an internationally focused think tank.
		I don't think it would surprise anybody to learn that the German Marshall Fund gets money from foreign governments in Europe and from the U.S. government as well.
		And I think because of that sort of their gamut, the role that they played, I think there's a lot of kind of truth in advertising when it comes to the German Marshall Fund.
		And so I think, you know, I personally was a little less concerned with the amount of money going to the German Marshall Fund.
		And if I remember correctly, I don't remember the specific details of it, but I believe it was overwhelmingly from our European allies.
		And I'm sure some folks may have their own concerns about that.
		But to me, as an independent researcher, I wasn't too worried about the German Marshall Fund's funding.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Some $4 million from the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, some $3.1 million from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sweden, $2 million from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway, $2 million from the United States Agency for International Development, and so on down the line.
		You can see it on your screen there.
		Just a few minutes left with Ben Freeman this morning.
		If you want to get your calls in, the numbers will put on the screen for you.
		I did want to ask Ben Freeman, included in this report is recommendations for think tanks, for Congress, for the media.
		What would you like to see done here to change this process that we've talked about?
unidentified		Yeah, I think since we're talking on TV, I think one of the things we're hoping for is that media outlets will use this as a resource.
		So when they have a guest on from one of these think tanks, they can quickly look up the funding of that think tank and then let their viewers know.
		If they're talking about an issue, mention the United Arab Emirates, if they're talking about the United Arab Emirates and they work in an organization that receives funding from the United Arab Emirates, we're really hoping our friends in the media will let their viewers or their readers know about that potential conflict of interest.
		We're hoping a similar thing too on Capitol Hill.
		As I mentioned, think tankers are working directly with Congress, directly with the executive branch.
		And we're hearing from congressional staff that a lot of what we had in this report, this tracker, came as a surprise to them.
		They had no idea about some of these financial ties that some of these think tanks that they've been talking to had.
		So we're hoping to make it easier for them to access that information too.
		And then we're hoping what we really want to do is encourage Congress to set down some concrete rules about disclosing think tank funding.
		Right now, as I mentioned, it's really the wild, wild west.
		You know, think tanks aren't required to disclose any of this, and more than a third of think tanks disclose nothing about their funders.
		We're hoping that Congress will help to change that and require think tanks to dispose this funding.
		We've seen some promising signs of that.
		There's the Think Tank Transparency Act has been introduced in the Senate.
		The Fighting Foreign Influence Act has important improvements about increasing, requiring think tanks to disclose their foreign government funding.
		We're hoping in this next session of Congress that one of these good bills will pass and then think tanks will at least be required to disclose any funding they get from foreign governments.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		A question from Jay Sanders on X. What's your opinion of 501 C3 think tanks that have 501 C4 action arms?
unidentified		A great, great question.
		And Jason, we're seeing this more and more and more in the think tank landscape.
		There's this sort of, you know, antiquated notion, I'll call it, that a think tank is just this nonprofit.
		It's kind of the ivory tower for DC.
		It's just independent.
		You know, all they're doing is their research.
		That idea has gone out the window because of these C4s where they have this explicitly political arm to many think tanks now.
		And we're seeing this across the think tank spectrum, you know, from conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, you know, they have Heritage Action.
		The Center for American Progress on the other side, you know, on the left, they have a C4 too.
		And so, you know, Republican or a Democrat, it doesn't matter.
		We're seeing think tanks arming up in this political space explicitly.
		My concern here is that it's really hard to disentangle this funding.
		You know, you see these think tanks that have both a 501c3 and a 501c4.
		The staff are in the same office.
		You know, they're sitting arm in arm.
		They're sitting right next to each other.
		So I think it's really hard to disentangle when you're making a charitable contribution to the C3 side or can that money sort of fungibly find its way over to the political advocacy side.
		I think there's important questions to ask there.
		But I think on a very basic level for viewers, when you're looking at the work coming out of think tanks that have both a C3 and a C4, on some level, you got to recognize that even the C3 side, that could be politically weaponized and it could ultimately be used to influence elections.
		So at the very least, you got to take that research with a grain of salt and know that on some level, it might be political.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Two websites for our viewers.
		It's quincyinst.org for the Quincy Institute and thinktankfundingtracker.org.
		If you want to go directly to this project that Ben Freeman and his folks at the Quincy Institute put together.
		Ben Freeman, thanks so much for the time this morning.
		Let's talk about it more down the road.
unidentified		It's been a pleasure.
unidentified		Thank you.

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