| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 77-page book, Kaplan claims, quote, civilization is now in flux. | ||
| The ongoing decay of the West is manifested not only in racial tensions coupled with new barriers to free speech, but in the deterioration of dress codes, the erosion of grammar, the decline in sales of serious books and classical music, and so on. | ||
| All of which have traditionally been signs of civilization. | ||
|
unidentified
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Author Robert Kaplan talks about his book, Wasteland, A World in Permanent Crisis, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
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| On Mondays when Congress is in session, we'd like to take a look at the week ahead in Washington to do that this week. | ||
| We're joined by Emily Brooks, a House reporter with The Hill here on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Emily Brooks, start on that plane and helicopter crash here in Washington, D.C. What's the latest in terms of how Congress is reacting to this, whether there'll be a congressional investigation here, and whether they're devising some legislation in response to this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely, Congress is going to be looking into this. | |
| My colleagues have already found that the heads of the Transportation Committee and the House have already received briefings about this. | ||
| Certainly something lawmakers who fly in and out of Reagan National Airport all of the time are certainly very concerned about the safety implications there. | ||
| So Congress will absolutely play a role. | ||
| It is a little bit interesting though in this Congress versus last when now Washington is under total Republican trifecta control. | ||
| I think that the Republican controlled House and Senate are giving a little bit more leeway and room for the Trump administration to investigate and provide information both to Congress and publicly about what's going on. | ||
| A little bit of a change in the power dynamic there from previous investigations we've seen, such as with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that prompted a whole select committee to investigate the matter. | ||
| But we're not quite hearing of anything up to that standard yet, but certainly Congress will be investigating and playing a role. | ||
| What could a legislative response look like? | ||
| There's been local members of Congress, Chris Van Holland here in Maryland, and some of the Virginia members as well who have talked about there being too many flights in and out of Reagan National Airport there, that that's a safety issue. | ||
| Is there legislation to limit the number of flights or what could they actually do? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, actually Congress just approved an increase in the number of flights in the past year's FAA reauthorization bill. | |
| Congress actually greenlit five more round trip flights from Reagan to destinations that are usually further than the radius that airplanes go from and there and that includes places like San Antonio, Las Vegas, I believe there's one to Seattle. | ||
| And so those are actually slated to start in the months ahead. | ||
| I don't believe those flights have started yet. | ||
| So maybe that is something that Congress could reconsider. | ||
| That was a very hotly debated topic at the time with that FAA reauthorization bill. | ||
| And that only comes up every four or five years or so. | ||
| So it would be a pretty heavy lift for Congress to go and limit those flights, but not out of the realm of possibility. | ||
| Another thing that they could do is further restrict the airspace for military flights, maybe prevent any training missions as this was with a helicopter in that congested area. | ||
| So those are things that I think lawmakers would be looking at. | ||
| You talked about the months ahead. | ||
| I want to shift to the House agenda for the months ahead. | ||
| You sat down at the House Republican retreat last week with Speaker Johnson to talk about his strategy for moving Donald Trump's agenda at the beginning of the 119th Congress. | ||
| What's the strategy? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, well, the strategy is hopefully getting everybody together. | |
| I think the very big theme that I saw at that retreat was just how desperate Republicans are to have some kind of unity. | ||
| But at the same time, there are so many fractures and divisions with a very slim majority with fiscal hawks who are demanding really deep cuts on whatever they pass in this bill that's going to encompass the top priorities for the Trump administration agenda on taxes, on border, on energy policy. | ||
| And also, you know, you have other members like in Democratic-run states looking at the state and local tax deduction cap, and that's a top priority for them. | ||
| They want that to be raised. | ||
| But that is going to have a budgetary impact that is going to have to be made up. | ||
| So right now, the timeline that was laid out last week was this week the House Budget Committee was supposed to mark up and advance the legislation that will encompass eventually the Trump administration agenda. | ||
| But we're hearing from our sources that it's not quite clear if that will be able to happen this week because there is still so much jockeying going around about what those deep cuts should be, how deep they should be, what should be included. | ||
| There are some top-line decisions that need to be made before they can go to the next step. | ||
| And with almost zero margin for error in the House after Elise Stefanik gets confirmed because Democrats are never going to vote for this, it's very hard to get all of the Republicans on the same page. | ||
| And meanwhile, remind us where we are right now in terms of government funding and that debt ceiling issue that continues to raise its head through the years. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, absolutely. | |
| That Trump administration agenda bill is not the only thing that Congress has to deal with. | ||
| March 14th is the government funding deadline. | ||
| Congress will have to do either some kind of full year funding through the end of September 30th or another continuing resolution, which I don't think that there's much appetite for that. | ||
| But that is a looming deadline that Republicans may very well have to go to Democrats to help them advance because there's, like I said, all of those fiscal hawks in the House Republican conference who really object to something like a really big, massive omnibus bill that funds the government. | ||
| They don't want that. | ||
| And so, Speaker Johnson might have to go to Democrats for that. | ||
| At the same time, you have President Trump looking at the debt ceiling, the debt limit deadline, which is supposed to be expected to hit around sometime this summer is going to be when lawmakers must absolutely address that or risk the nation's credit rating taking a hit that could have vast economic impacts. | ||
| So, when Republicans a couple of years ago had this debt limit deadline in the minority, they used that to extract concessions from the Biden administration, negotiated some rescissions and funding from Democratic past legislation. | ||
| And President Trump absolutely does not want Democrats who are in the minority to have any leverage on that debt ceiling deadline. | ||
| So, that is putting House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders in a very tricky situation because it's going to be very tough to raise the debt ceiling with only Republican votes. | ||
| So, it very may well be attached to something like that regular government funding that expires on March 14th in a bid to try and get Democratic support for it. | ||
| Or it could be attached potentially to something like wildfire aid for California is something that has been floated around. | ||
| Would that get Democrats able to vote for that? | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, has said that that is a non-starter. | ||
| So, it's going to be another headache for House Republican leadership to figure out how to meet Trump's demands on the debt ceiling at the same time as trying to fund the government and prevent a government shutdown and advance the Trump administration's massive legislative agenda. | ||
| If Democrats were to try to extract something in one of these negotiations, where would they start? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, they haven't really hinted yet, but I'm sure there is a lot that they could try and extract. | |
| I mean, the actions that the Trump administration has taken so far on like freezing funding for foreign aid for the now rescinded OMB memo about freezing grant funding, | ||
| there's a whole lot going on with USAID and seeming to be dismantled over the weekend or put under the State Department a lot of changes that are not quite clear and we haven't gotten a lot of clarity on there. | ||
| Is that something that Democrats could try and get restored or that would be a priority for them? | ||
| There's a lot that they could go through and they're probably in not any real mood to help out the Republicans. | ||
| So they're certainly going to be looking for something. | ||
| But that is exactly what President Trump does not want. | ||
| So it's really a tough situation for the Republican leadership. | ||
| Emily Brooks with us of the Hill newspaper, taking your questions as we take a look at the week ahead in Washington. | ||
| Phone numbers as usual, Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Go ahead and get your calls in. | ||
| She's with us for about the next 10 or 15 minutes or so this morning. | ||
| As folks are calling in, we spent the first hour of our program today talking about those new tariffs signed by the president on Saturday, set to go into effect on Tuesday. | ||
| What's the most interesting reaction you've seen on your beat to this tariff regimen on Mexico, Canada, and China? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, of course, Speaker Johnson, like a lot of things that President Trump is doing, is expressing support for this move. | |
| But I think that this is going to expose a lot of tensions between both the more maybe libertarian-minded Republican members in Congress, like Rand Paul, Senator from Kentucky, who had a post on X over the last few days saying, hey, you know, I thought I remember that when Republicans did not like tariffs because it was considered a tax. | ||
| And now this is like a flagship policy from the Trump administration. | ||
| So there could be some tensions there. | ||
| Maybe a little bit quieter could be some tensions between agricultural state Republicans or those in agricultural districts whose constituents and businesses there could be affected by some kind of escalating tariff or trade war happening with some of the United States's largest trading partners. | ||
| So as the market reacts and as prices get adjusted, however long this lasts, I think could probably affect how people react here. | ||
| So far, like a lot of things that Trump is doing, there's not a whole lot of criticism from the Republican side that's vocal. | ||
| A lot of it is pretty under the radar and maybe privately expressed. | ||
| The quote from Rand Paul quoted in one of the papers today, tariffs are simply taxes. | ||
| Conservatives, once united against new taxes, taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices. | ||
| We won the last election by complaining about Democrats' policies, which gave us high prices. | ||
| Tariff lovers will be forced to explain the persistence of high prices. | ||
| That quote attributed to Rand Paul, Emily Brooks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, exactly. | |
| So that could be some tensions there. | ||
| You know, Rand Paul does tend to be more of a libertarian-leaning member, maybe has more willing to express criticism on something like this than a lot of other members. | ||
| But certainly, I'm sure there are a lot of Republicans in states that will be affected by these tariffs or by retaliatory tariffs that are getting worried. | ||
| And we'll have to see what the impact of the tariffs are. | ||
| Let me go to Mike, who's waiting in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Independent. | ||
| Mike, it is Emily Brooks of the Hill newspaper that you're chatting with this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I've got a question, a couple of questions, actually. | ||
| One on Elon Musk. | ||
| He has total access to Social Security numbers now. | ||
| That scares me more than the tariffs does. | ||
| To have someone that's not elected have total access to everyone's Social Security number. | ||
| Secondly, on tariffs, I bought a handmade guitar, quote unquote, handmade, in Nebraska from a small family company in Nebraska. | ||
| When you look at their part list, the woods come in from Canada and Brazil. | ||
| The electronics come in from Japan. | ||
| They assemble that in Nebraska. | ||
| So yes, it's made in America, but the parts all come in from offshore. | ||
| That company is going to be destroyed by something like this. | ||
| So it's not helping small business in any way. | ||
| What's your thoughts on that? | ||
| Thank you, and have a great morning. | ||
| Thanks, Mike. | ||
| Emily Brooks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I mean, I don't have the exact information on Elon Musk and what all he has access to, but certainly the Doge apparatus that he has set up is taking a lot of liberties and getting a lot of information. | |
| has been reporting about getting access to sensitive information. | ||
| And it is, you know, of course, like we were talking about with Democrats, causing alarm on that side about how much acts he is getting access to. | ||
| I mean, this is not a Senate confirmed position. | ||
| is just something that uh you know individuals who are appointed by the president so uh what what how fast they're moving they're working reportedly around the clock um they're I read another report about some kind of beds in the office building where the Doge members and staff members are set up so they can work as much as possible. | ||
| That's pretty stunning. | ||
| So will Democrats be in any mood to get anything across the finish line with Republicans, given all of they're seeing from Doge and concerns about that? | ||
| Maybe they'll ask for something as some kind of safeguards or check on Doge in response. | ||
| That's just my pure speculation, but certainly something other people have an eye on. | ||
| And to the point about the small businesses and the guitars assembled in Nebraska, yes, certainly there's all of these imports from other countries that are going to be subject to tariffs. | ||
| That is definitely what people are worried about, that cost getting passed along to the consumer, raising the cost of prices there, but also with the impact on businesses, whether they'll be able to pay that upfront cost or whether customers will be willing to buy their products considering potential price increases. | ||
| Emily Brooks, I know we only have a few minutes left with you. | ||
| Sometime in the next 15 minutes or half hour or so, we're expecting to hear from Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he leaves Panama from that visit to the Panama Canal. | ||
| We're going to take viewers there when he does make his remarks. | ||
| An article from the Hill newspaper noting that Marco Rubio has been warning Panama over the canal saying the current status there is unacceptable. | ||
| What will you be watching for from the Secretary of State's remarks this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, certainly, you know, Panama, I think if there's any progress on negotiations for the United States to try and retake it, if it seems like it's positive, if he's taking a more aggressive stance, I think probably that big major tone is something that I'll be looking for there. | |
| But yeah, very certain much top priority of the Trump administration. | ||
| And Republicans from across the ideological spectrum have expressed support for the Panama Canal move. | ||
| So we'll see if there's any progress there or any action that Congress can even take to try and empower the Trump administration to look into negotiations on the Panama Canal. | ||
| There has already been one proposed bill about that from Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. | ||
| So whether that's needed, we'll see. | ||
| David's waiting in Massachusetts. | ||
| It's Pittsfield, Massachusetts. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just have a short thing here. | ||
| As far as his legislative agenda goes, I really believe, and I know that the current, I don't like to call him a president because his agenda is about him and him only. | ||
| And he's going to tear this country down if he's not impeached and the Republican Party isn't disbanded because they're the ones that put him there. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Emily Brooks, that's David. | ||
| Impeachment. | ||
| What would it take in a completely Republican-controlled House and Senate for an impeachment hearing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think that that's incredibly unlikely at this point. | |
| You know, of course, President Trump has been impeached twice in the past. | ||
| Both times there were Democratic majorities, I believe. | ||
| And that's something that I don't think Republican leadership would be eager to bring up in the House, certainly. | ||
| There would have to be something, I assume, catastrophic in some sense in order to bring up impeachment articles. | ||
| But of course, even though there were 10 House Republicans who did vote to impeach President Trump after January 6th, that was, you know, only 10 House Republicans, certainly not Republicans eager to counter signal or move against the president in that way. | ||
| And definitely not when a lot of them are eager to advance that kind of a legislative agenda that they also agree with. | ||
| That includes extending the tax cuts from that 2017 bill that President Trump signed. | ||
| That includes changing energy regulations and boosting funding and enforcement on the southern border and even the northern border. | ||
| Those are all things that Republicans in Congress want to fund. | ||
| And, you know, as far as impeachment, I don't think anything has happened so far to even get any Republicans to even think about impeachment. | ||
| And it would just be incredibly unlikely to see a party impeach their own president for something considering the balance of power and historically what we've seen. | ||
| Blakeland in Brooklyn, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yes. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'd like to know in regards to the tariffs that President Trump has put on Canada and Mexico that are allegedly related to unauthorized crossings of the southern border and fentanyl smuggling. | ||
| What type of publicly available metrics is he looking for in terms of what he wants to achieve so that he may then reverse the tariffs or something of that sort. | ||
| My understanding is that crossings at the southern border are at a low of recent years and that Canada supplies approximately 1% of the fentanyl into the United States. | ||
| So what is he looking to, what numbers does he want to see? | ||
| Is there anything publicly available? | ||
| Yeah, I'm not sure exactly if there's a metric or something that the president is looking to hit. | ||
| You know, when you're talking about border crossings, though, this is something that Republicans have brought up over and over. | ||
| They're not only looking at the numbers of people who are unauthorized crossing the border, but they are also looking at a lot of the ways that has been legal to come across the border and into the country over the past several years and to change that. | ||
| And so, when you're looking at the statistics and numbers about border crossings, you have to also look at Republicans will be looking at asylum cases. | ||
| They'll be looking at whoever is approved to be on humanitarian parole while their case is waiting, they wait for their case to go out in front of a judge. | ||
| So, those are the kind of things that are, you know, technically legal ways for people to enter the country and might not, you know, depends on what statistics you're looking at. | ||
| So, but certainly, Republicans and the Trump administration want to drastically increase a lot of those other categories, get rid of those other pathways. | ||
| One of the things that the Trump administration did was get rid of the CBP1 app, which was a way for migrants to schedule hearings and meetings with border officials at the border in order to expedite and have a more orderly process for getting people into humanitarian parole through that process. | ||
| Now that's been taken away, so there's fewer pathways to be able to schedule that or to just you just have to go to the border in order to do it. | ||
| So, you know, when you're looking at that, there's a whole lot of things. | ||
| And I'm not sure as far as the tariffs what exactly the Trump administration is looking for in order to lower those. | ||
| But I think it's definitely a negotiation point. | ||
| Maybe there's something that Canada or Mexico could say that they could provide, but we'll have to see. | ||
| Speaking of metrics, as tech on X wants to know how much the federal government could save by cutting bloat from their workforce, from the full-time and the contractors, has the Trump administration, Republicans in Congress, put a number on that yet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wouldn't know the number off of the top of my head, but I do know in broad terms, if you're just looking at the workforce and you're looking at the kind of steep cuts that a lot of these Republicans are looking for in order to right the federal budget, reduce the deficit, get, you know, steer the ship slowly back away from getting ever more debt, which is what so many of them are concerned about. | |
| Looking at the federal workforce alone is not going to be enough in order to do all of that. | ||
| There's going to have to be, you know, programs that they are going to look to cut. | ||
| There's talk about things like Medicaid benefits, putting some work requirements or conditions on those is being discussed as part of the reconciliation bill, the massive Trump administration agenda bill that Republicans are working on. | ||
| So while I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, in broad terms, the workforce alone is not going to be enough to address all of those concerns. | ||
| Emily Brooks, I know you got to go start your day on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Final 60 seconds here. | ||
| What didn't we get to that you're going to be watching for this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| I think that the biggest thing is the Trump administration agenda bill, the reconciliation bill, as we call it on Capitol Hill. | ||
| If that gets a markup, and of course, all of the Senate confirmation hearings, what movement there is on some of the more controversial nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| That's going to be very interesting to see if the Trump administration takes any hits on that, on those two more controversial nominees, or if they are able to convince Republican senators to support them and they sail through. | ||
| I'll be watching that as well. | ||
| Emily Brooks covers it all at the Hill newspaper. | ||
| It's thehill.com. | ||
| And you can follow her on X at Emily BrooksNews. | ||
| We appreciate your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| Here's a look from you about what's on your mind. | ||
| It's our open forum, your phone calls this morning. | ||
| Betty is up first in Kentucky, a Democrat. | ||
| Betty, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Are you there? | ||
| Yes, ma'am, I am. | ||
| I'm listening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| In 1970, 73, the first POWs came home and they came from the Philippines. | ||
| And I wanted to say I appreciate every one of them. | ||
| I was there and it was a horrible thing to see in one way and a wonderful other. | ||
| You're talking about Vietnam POWs? | ||
| Yes, the Vietnam POWs. | ||
| They all came to the Philippines to start with. | ||
| And you were in the Philippines? | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Because, well, I thought my husband was working for our airlines, but he wasn't really CIA. | ||
| And if you see the movie coming home from where they landed in the Philippines, the little boy that was hanging out beside the fence was my son. |