| Speaker | Time | Text |
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|
unidentified
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| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb with Axios discusses the week ahead in Congress and Republicans' work with the Trump administration's legislative agenda. | ||
| Then Jeff Moardock, Washington Times White House reporter, talks about the latest on President Trump's actions and White House News of the Day. | ||
| And Cato Institute senior fellow Dr. Jeffrey Singer examines the Trump administration's approach to combating the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Monday, February 10th. | ||
| It's been three weeks since President Trump was sworn into office. | ||
| Since then, he's taken dozens of actions aimed at fulfilling campaign promises, including shrinking the federal government and carrying out mass deportation across the country. | ||
| To start today's program, we're asking you to grade President Trump's first three weeks in office. | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us today. | ||
| We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few moments. | ||
| But first, wanted to share some new polling on our topic from CBS News. | ||
| The headline, Trump has positive approval amid energetic opening weeks, seen as doing what he promised. | ||
| The article says, with most describing him as tough, energetic, focused, and effective, and doing as he promised during his campaign, President Trump has started his term with net positive marks from Americans overall. | ||
| Many say he's doing more than expected. | ||
| And of those who say this, most like what they see. | ||
| Very few think he's doing less. | ||
| His partisans and his voters in particular say he's got the right amount of focus on matters like ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and deporting those who are in the country illegally. | ||
| It goes on to say his deportation policy finds majority approval overall, just as many voters said they wanted during the campaign. | ||
| And that extends to sending troops to the border too. | ||
| But one key issue looms, Americans say the administration isn't focused enough on lowering prices. | ||
| Inflation was seen as a key reason. | ||
| Mr. Trump won the election. | ||
| The poll finds overall that President Trump's overall job rating, 53% approve, 47% disapproving. | ||
| President Trump was on Fox News yesterday. | ||
| An article from the outlet says President Donald Trump detailed his plans to instruct Doge lead Elon Musk to probe the education and defense departments for wasteful spending. | ||
| The president told Fox News chief political anchor Brett Baer in an exclusive pre-Super Bowl interview that the billionaire entrepreneur has been a trustworthy ally in fulfilling his promise to cut red tape. | ||
| The article talks about the interview. | ||
| It aired just before yesterday's Super Bowl, and it focused on the changes the Trump administration has enacted since his inauguration last month and the first 100 days of his presidency. | ||
| From yesterday's interview on Fox News, here's President Trump's talking about his efforts to cut the government and also Elon Musk's role. | ||
| Some of your plays have raised some questions and had some pushbacks. | ||
| 19 states attorneys general filed a lawsuit and early Saturday a judge agreed with them to restrict Elon Musk and his government efficiency team Doge from accessing Treasury Department payment and data systems. | ||
| They said there was a risk of irreparable harm. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| And does that slow you down on what you want to do? | ||
| I disagree with it 100%. | ||
| I think it's crazy. | ||
| And we have to solve the efficiency problem. | ||
| We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the things that have gone into the government. | ||
| You take a look at the U.S. AID, the kind of fraud in there. | ||
| You found significant points. | ||
| Well, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that's going to places where it shouldn't be going, where if I read a list, you'd say this is ridiculous. | ||
| And you've read the same lists, and there are many that you haven't even seen. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's a big scam. | ||
| Now, there's some good money, and we can do that through any one of a number. | ||
| I think I'd rather give it to Marco Rubio over at the State Department. | ||
| Let him take care of the few good ones. | ||
| So I don't know if it's kickbacks or what's going on, but the people, look, I ran on this, and the people want me to find it. | ||
| And I've had a great help with Elon Musk, who's been terrific. | ||
| Bottom line, you say you trust him. | ||
| Trust Elon? | ||
| Oh, he's not gaining anything. | ||
| In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. | ||
| He's so into it. | ||
| But I told him do that. | ||
| Then I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. | ||
| He's going to find the same thing. | ||
| Then I'm going to go to the military. | ||
| Let's check the military. | ||
| We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. | ||
| But I campaigned on this, Brett. | ||
| More of that interview is expected to air today on Fox News on special report with Brett Baer. | ||
| But this first hour of today's program, we are asking you to grade President Trump's first three weeks in office. | ||
| We will start with Mitchell in New Jersey, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mitchell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I give him a complete F, and here's why. | ||
| It's one thing to go after waste and abuse, but it's another thing to just do these things criminally. | ||
| There is no possible way that you could have audits and accurate audits of what these individual departments do in two weeks. | ||
| These are complex organizations. | ||
| And the other thing is that he's violating the Article I powers of Congress by just going in and dismantling these agencies. | ||
| For instance, the OMB director basically said he's going to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. | ||
| They're making things up, too. | ||
| They've been fact-checked on a number of things. | ||
| Like, as an example, they have said that the USAID is delivering, I heard Trump say it, $100 million of condoms to Hamas. | ||
| It's just a lie. | ||
| It's just not true. | ||
| They're being called into court, and now the latest thing, and this is something that I think all your viewers should be really cognizant of and really concerned about, is they are starting to push back on following the court orders. | ||
| Tom Tillis two days ago said, I'm quoting, that yes, the actions of Musk and Company runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense, but nobody should bellyache about that. | ||
| JD Vance had said that they should stand up like Andrew Jackson did and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him try to enforce it. | ||
| And yesterday, Vance also expanded on that, saying the judges were pushing back on Trump's executive orders, arguing they're going too far. | ||
| If a judge tries to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. | ||
| If a judge tried to command the Attorney General in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. | ||
| Elon Musk condemned a judge who ruled against Doja's action, saying a corrupt judge is protecting corruptions. | ||
| He needs to be impeached now. | ||
| This is really, really dangerous stuff that's going on in this country. | ||
| And if I know somebody in the Republicans are going to like, they're going to say Joe Biden didn't follow the law and he gave out student loans, which isn't factually true. | ||
| He just found a pool of money that was legal. | ||
| And he did, so he didn't disregard court orders. | ||
| I know that's going to come up in the response to what I'm saying here. | ||
| But this is a very, very dangerous thing. | ||
| And once the rule of law is circumvented by the administration, and it's exactly what they're trying to do, and they're aided and abetted by their party, I mean, where are we as a country? | ||
| And that's really all I have to say. | ||
| I appreciate you listening. | ||
| We'll go to John in Connecticut, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you? | |
| Do you want? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm grading President Trump pretty well right now. | |
| This is what he campaigned on. | ||
| And let's give him a chance and see what happens. | ||
| It's only a full month yet, and we've got four years. | ||
| So let's give the man a chance in his administration. | ||
| And let's all work together and just make this country better than it was. | ||
| Not just the past administration, the whole, everyone, every administration. | ||
| We've got to get back to normalcy around here. | ||
| And that's all I'm saying. | ||
| But thank you for your time. | ||
| Thomas in South Dakota, line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Thomas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to thank C-SPAN for the great coverage. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I watch it every day. | ||
| And I work for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign for president. | ||
| And one thing I want to mention here. | ||
| I give the President Trump an A-plus, in a sense, of getting action done. | ||
| Number one is we have, since 1997 till now, have lived on continuing resolutions. | ||
| And I think that they may be going around doing it the wrong way, but I know one thing, to take $200 billion out of the Defense Department would be a very, very good thing to do. | ||
| And I know they can do that. | ||
| So another point I want to make is that those continuing resolutions, if Mr. Trump may enhance the Congress, the Congress, not to meet only 113 days a week and not get their work done before the time they need to, maybe they will start getting it done before they need to get it done. | ||
| And it can be a lot more effective to stop the fraud abuse. | ||
| But anyway, let's give him a chance. | ||
| And I agree with the caller from Connecticut. | ||
| Let's just try to compromise and work things out. | ||
| Thomas, your governor, former governor, Christy Noam, is now Homeland Security Secretary, and she's been taking an active role in the administration's deportation efforts. | ||
| What do you think about how they're doing there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a great question. | |
| And to answer that, I would have to at least would know more so in 90 days how this all plays out. | ||
| That was Thomas in South Dakota, Dennis in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I give Trump a triple F. | ||
| He ran on lowering prices. | ||
| All these executive orders that he signed, not one of them has anything to do with lowering prices. | ||
| In fact, most of them will raise prices because of his tariffs. | ||
| And since he ran on, that was one of his principal things running on lowering grocery prices and stuff. | ||
| He gets an F because he has done nothing, nothing to lower prices. | ||
| Have a nice day and thank you. | ||
| Jason in Texas, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I give him an A, I guess, for shaking up the system. | ||
| That's what he wanted to go in there and do. | ||
| And one of his campaign promises was to make the more leaner, efficient government that we need. | ||
| We don't get $36 trillion in debt because you're lean and efficient and there's no corruption at all. | ||
| Obviously, there's some kind of corruption going on there. | ||
| Otherwise, people want to be pushing back so hard up there. | ||
| They're used to a certain lifestyle and living. | ||
| I give him an A for closing the border and dealing with the border issues that the previous administration had an F on. | ||
| I also give him an A for what he's doing in North Carolina and trying to do in California. | ||
| And other than that, I don't want to hold up other callers, so I'm going to let you go. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Democrats in Congress have been pushing back on President Trump's efforts and calling out Elon Musk's involvement in efforts to cut government funding. | ||
| It was yesterday on ABC News's This Week that Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, was talking about his, was responding to President Trump's efforts. | ||
| Here is a clip from that interview. | ||
| Yeah, listen, I think this is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate. | ||
| The president is attempting to seize control of power and for corrupt purposes. | ||
| The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies. | ||
| That is the evisceration of democracy. | ||
| You stand that next to the wholesale endorsement of political violence with the pardons given to every single January 6th rider, including the most violent who beat police officers over the head with baseball bats. | ||
| And you can see what he's trying to do here. | ||
| He is trying to crush his opposition by making them afraid of losing federal funding, by making them afraid of physical violence. | ||
| And so, yes, this is a red alert moment when this entire country has to understand that our democracy is at risk. | ||
| And for what? | ||
| The billionaire takeover of government. | ||
| I'm sure we'll talk about this, but Elon Musk is insider federal agencies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But let me just say right now, they want to cut the federal budget. | |
| They would all disagree that it's corruption or anything else. | ||
| They want to cut the federal budget and the workforce. | ||
| Do you have issues with that? | ||
| Well, I don't, but there is no evidence that that is the goal. | ||
| Ultimately, at USAID, they sent a whole bunch of people home who are still getting paid. | ||
| And I think you have to ask: why are they doing this if it's not actually accruing any savings? | ||
| And to me, again, the reason is that somebody like Elon Musk stands to gain from the closure of USAID. | ||
| It makes America much less safe around the world, but it helps China. | ||
| USAID is a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. | ||
| Elon Musk has many major business interests at stake inside Beijing, and so making Beijing happy is going to accrue to the financial benefit of Elon Musk and many billionaires who outsource work to China. | ||
| Senator Chris Murphy talking about Elon Musk's Doge efforts. | ||
| And one of the programs that they had put in place was a deferred resignation offered to federal government employees. | ||
| This headline from the Associated Press: Judge temporarily blocks Trump plan, offering incentives for federal workers to resign. | ||
| This happened, this is from Saturday morning. | ||
| A federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's plan to push out federal workers by offering them financial incentives. | ||
| The latest turmoil for government employees already wrestling with upheaval from the new administration. | ||
| Thursday's ruling came hours before the midnight deadline to apply for the deferred resignation program, which was orchestrated by Trump advisor Elon Musk. | ||
| More on that. | ||
| That hearing is expected to be held today. | ||
| A federal judge will hear more in that case, that temporary block. | ||
| A caller bringing up Vice President Vance's response to that ruling. | ||
| He says: if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. | ||
| If a judge tried to command the Attorney General and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that is also illegal. | ||
| Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. | ||
| Back to your calls, asking you to grade President Trump's first three weeks in office. | ||
| Steve, San Jose, California, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I would grade him an A minus only because I don't want him to lose focus. | ||
| And I think he might have lost just a tad of focus by renaming Mount McKinley and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. | ||
| Those things are not of interest to a lot of people. | ||
| But I give him an A-minus. | ||
| And have you noticed that he is laser-focused on several issues, reducing waste and fraud. | ||
| The cries of the Democrats regarding Musk, yeah, it to me they ring hollow. | ||
| Musk is privy to a lot of secrets regarding space technology. | ||
| He would do nothing, I trust him explicitly, he would do nothing to hurt national security. | ||
| And curious, curiously, have you noticed how the Democrats, the liberals, the progressives don't want to talk about everything that Musk is uncovering, especially regarding USA aid. | ||
| The Laura Ingram, among others, conservative TV, conservative radio, is just listing them repeatedly, but none of your liberal papers, none of your liberal TV stations have listed them. | ||
| They don't want to talk about them. | ||
| And you might ask a caller, a liberal, progressive, Democrat caller, why they don't want to talk about them. | ||
| I'll let you go. | ||
| Governor Steve, we'll go to Diane in St. Paul, Minnesota, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Diane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And what I'm calling about, when I write Mr. Trump, I give him an F below an F for the simple reason that I watch him now making an attempt to dismant all ways that people of color have a way of even getting jobs. | ||
| Meaning, I know I'm 75 years old, and I know had it not been for the federal government and I was able to get a job, even with a master's degree, I was able to get the master's degree because there were programs out there for me. | ||
| So I could raise my family out of poverty. | ||
| And we had to compete, you have to compete with white males. | ||
| And what the white males are mad about now is that we come in, people of color come in, and we qualify because you can't, we couldn't get a job when somebody tells us that we come out of high school. | ||
| But I work for a warden because I work in corrections. | ||
| I work for a warden who didn't have no college. | ||
| I had a master's degree, and I couldn't have gotten the job that he got. | ||
| And that's here in Minnesota. | ||
| So I can imagine what it's like down south. | ||
| I know what it's like down south. | ||
| I was born and raised in Arkansas, and we had to use the white kids' books. | ||
| We didn't get no new books. | ||
| And we only had one room schoolhouse. | ||
| And the white kids had the good schools to go to. | ||
| We didn't have them. | ||
| And if we go back to that, because I think this is what this about Bill America is all about, is putting them on top and us on the bottom. | ||
| And the other thing, I wish you would check for me about this, I heard nobody mention about it, about this special order that President has given to, has written for South Africa. | ||
| And what he says is that the Afrikanos are being treated, mistreated, and he wants to give them the permission to be able to migrate here to America or wherever else with a special order. | ||
| And that's not right. | ||
| That's discrimination because there are also black people in Africa who wants to come to America. | ||
| But no, he's making a special order. | ||
| Will you check that out for me, please? | ||
| I haven't heard y'all mentioning it at all about that order, the executive order he made for to get Afrikanos out of Africa who have demonstrated against the indigenous people there in Africa for decades. | ||
| So now, I've been to Africa. | ||
| I've been to South Africa. | ||
| This is about the South African people. | ||
| So, you know, he's making special. | ||
| It's all right for them, Dr. Got your point, Diane. | ||
| We'll go on to Mark in New York, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| I find it very interesting that people either grade Trump an A or an F. I'm definitely in the F category. | ||
| He ran on lowering prices. | ||
| I haven't seen any prices go lower. | ||
| I haven't seen any executive orders trying to help people in their day-to-day lives. | ||
| All his executive orders are political. | ||
| He's not trying to just get rid of fraud, waste, and abuse. | ||
| Why would he get rid of all the foreign aid? | ||
| I mean, there's going to be probably a million people in Sudan that starve now because they're not going to get food that we provided for them. | ||
| This is less than 1% of our economy. | ||
| And they do say that they are going to audit the Pentagon. | ||
| I have to see it to believe it. | ||
| But that is the biggest waste of our money. | ||
| So we spend $900 billion a year on the Pentagon, and it never gets touched. | ||
| It's never passed an audit. | ||
| And he just shuts down U.S. aid because, you know, God forbid we actually help people who are starving. | ||
| But this is what MAGDA is all about. | ||
| It's about cruelty. | ||
| It's about racism. | ||
| It's about making crime the way of the land. | ||
| Mark, you were talking about the economy in the past three weeks. | ||
| Have you seen, have you had any changes to what you're seeing where you are, for better or worse, or your personal situation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, absolutely not. | |
| I mean, you know, we'll see what happens with the stock market. | ||
| I'm retired, and I depend on my investments, and I depend on Social Security. | ||
| And I don't trust him at all. | ||
| I believe he's going to try to cut Social Security, Medicare, all the things that help people because they're not interested in helping people. | ||
| They're interested in the billionaires having total power. | ||
| And that's what Trump is really there for. | ||
| And if anybody thinks different, well, they're just in a big bubble. | ||
| That's Mark in New York. | ||
| Janet in Arizona, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Janet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm really feeling like I'm on the Titanic with this gentleman that's running our country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I feel that the immigrant system needs to be improved. | |
| These are hardworking people. | ||
| We shouldn't gather them up and put them in Cuba. | ||
| We should pick up all the lazy, drug-addicted, non-working people laying around in our parks that can't even speak anymore. | ||
| The homeless problem in our country is way worse than the immigrant problem. | ||
| And I'm just so sad for America. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| That was Janet in Arizona and Janet talking about immigration. | ||
| The BBC had an article on Friday outlining some of President Trump's actions. | ||
| It says 17 things Trump and his team did this week. | ||
| One of those, number eight, sent first plane of deportees to Guantanamo. | ||
| The U.S. sent the first group of migrants to Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday after Trump announced plans to expand migrant detention at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. | ||
| It was yesterday on CNN's State of the Union that Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam was questioned about the legality of those efforts and how long they would be detained. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Undocumented immigrants detained in the United States, as you mentioned, have a right to legal counsel and due process. | |
| But one of the questions is about whether or not Guantanamo, you have the law on your side to actually use Guantanamo for this purpose. | ||
| We have seen, obviously we know about the 9-11 detainees there. | ||
| We also know that when somebody who is trying to get into the United States illegally is interdicted at sea, they've been brought to Guantanamo. | ||
| I don't believe that people who are already on U.S. soil have been brought to Guantanamo. | ||
| No, well, Guantanamo Bay has been used for migrants in the past. | ||
| You're right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When they've been coming to the United States, we have a legal basis used there. | |
| Are you comfortable that it is legal to bring people who are already on U.S. soil to Guantanamo? | ||
| I am, and the President's comfortable with that, and his legal scholars are. | ||
| And obviously, there'll be people that will be critics of that. | ||
| But we are standing up the operations, believing we have all legal right and authority to do so. | ||
| And that facility has been used for migrants in the past. | ||
| The direction that they're flowing and the agreements that we have with their home countries will continue to keep that population changing. | ||
| A lot of this, as you said, the timeline for how long people are going to be there depends on whether or not anybody's going to take them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it could be that some people are going to be there indefinitely. | ||
| You know, what's interesting to me is the previous administration knew who these people were that were committing these crimes. | ||
| They knew where these folks that had final removal orders were in our country, could have negotiated agreements with these other countries to take them back home and didn't. | ||
| And we saw countries like Venezuela release their prisons and their mental health. | ||
| And are you comfortable that you're going to be able to just keep them there indefinitely? | ||
| I'm super thrilled that Secretary of State Rubio has been actively going out and negotiating taking people home. | ||
| So that's part of all the decisions on when we identify people in communities as soon as we're able to go get them and return them back home as quickly as possible. | ||
| So my goal is that people are not in these facilities for weeks and months. | ||
| My goal is that there's a short-term stay. | ||
| They're able to go incarcerate them, take them, follow the process, and get them back to their country. | ||
| That's your goal, but you're not ruling out that they could be there for weeks. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I'm not going to rule that out because we are going to continue to make sure that we're talking with every single country, but it's not an option for us to leave people here illegally anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American citizens have been put behind people who have chosen to come and break our laws, and that's not going to happen anymore. | |
| About 30 minutes left in this first hour asking you to grade President Trump's first three weeks in office. | ||
| We'll go next to Tim in Kentucky, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everybody. | |
| I'm going to give him a Z, and I want to give a shout out to the guy from New York. | ||
| He's dead on, spot on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I don't have any problem with what's calling Musk and all this. | ||
| I disagree with it, but I don't have any problems with getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse, all that. | ||
| That's fine and dandy, but he has an agenda, and his agenda is right-wing extremism, and he's out to destroy everything that he calls the left-wing lunatics, whatever, all that. | ||
| That's his agenda. | ||
| Stuff his own pockets with money and destroy just democracy. | ||
| That's what I'm against. | ||
| Let's do it right. | ||
| Let's give Musk oversight. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Ken in Winter Haven, Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I do certainly appreciate C-SPAN. | ||
| I believe everybody is missing the point here. | ||
| Trump was given absolute immunity for official acts by the Supreme Court, and he can do anything he wants and claim immunity or whatever. | ||
| But he and all of the president's men are going to do anything they want, legal or illegal, and he can claim immunity. | ||
| And all of the president's men can say, yeah, the president ordered me to do this. | ||
| So it's all on Trump. | ||
| And it's going to get worse before it gets better. | ||
| I mean, a mere three weeks into his presidency. | ||
| And I believe we are already living under full-blown fascist, racist dictatorship. | ||
| And it's going to get worse before it gets better. | ||
| The only thing that's going to stop him is a Supreme Court reversal of that immunity. | ||
| Ken, let me, you're calling in on the Republican line. | ||
| Did you vote for President Trump in 2024 or any of the other elections? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Never voted for him. | |
| I mean, I never followed him before in his fight life, but every time I ever saw anything about him from, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, I was given the very distinct impression that he's a low-love, sleazeball opportunist, and he'll do anything for money. | ||
| No, I never voted for him ever. | ||
| But until the Supreme Court reverses that, the sooner the better. | ||
| I mean, somebody's got to bring a case to the Supreme Court that focuses on that one specific issue. | ||
| I mean, we're either a country of laws or we're lawless. | ||
| At your point, Ken, we'll go to Joseph in Princeton, West Virginia, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would grade Trump F minus. | ||
| And here the highlights of why. | ||
| In over 225 years, our country has never been attacked and overcome by forces outside the country. | ||
| Presently, we have forces within the country headed by this man dissembling our democracy and dissembling our country. | ||
| And I'm very, I'm very shocked and ashamed that it's going. | ||
| I'm old, but I have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren that have to live here. | ||
| I don't know what the future's going to be like. | ||
| This man, I have served 22 years in the service. | ||
| I was proud to serve my country and defend it. | ||
| I've heard this man called people that died in the service of our country, losers and suckers. | ||
| This fatally flawed man, convicted felon, morally corrupt, is now running our country. | ||
| The rule of law has been bent, and he is above it. | ||
| And all I can say is God help us. | ||
| That's Joseph in West Virginia. | ||
| Tony in Southfield, Michigan, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I really feel today, Kat, who just got off the air. | ||
| But people should really look at what's going on. | ||
| Just like the guy said in Florida, he has carte blanche. | ||
| Look at what he's got. | ||
| He's got the FBI, Giuseppe's, the CIA. | ||
| If the Supreme Court made a ruling and he decided not to follow that ruling, who's to police him? | ||
| There's nobody. | ||
| And it's a really scary thought. | ||
| Our way of living in the United States is about to be changed under the laws that we thought we were being governed by. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll go to Jeff in North Carolina, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Yellow? | ||
| Jeff, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, I'll give him an A-plus. | ||
| You've got to realize this man had, hey, he's been there three weeks. | ||
| What do you think he's going to find in six months? | ||
| And a lot of these people find that it's going to the Supreme Court. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| Sit back and let it happen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And these callers call in if Trump cured cancer, if he wiped out the debt, they would still hate on him. | |
| But a lot of these callers calling in, these Democrats, this hate, hate, hate. | ||
| I think a lot of them was up there on Easter Sunday dressed as transvestites slashing their fake boots. | ||
| That's exactly what I think. | ||
| Give the man a chance. | ||
| That was Jeff in Michigan. | ||
| An article from Roll Call talking about the budget efforts, efforts to fund the government. | ||
| We'll be talking more about that during the 8 o'clock hour with our guest Stephen Newcomb of Axios. | ||
| But first, the article says that House Republican leaders emerged late Thursday from a roughly three-hour meeting without an agreement on the contours of the massive budget reconciliation package that they've been talking about for weeks. | ||
| Points out that earlier in the day, top Republicans met with Trump at the White House to try to work out, work through remaining issues. | ||
| The key sticking point going in was cost. | ||
| Trump's priorities for the package, including permanent extensions of his 2017 tax cuts, plus new tax breaks and spending, could push the price tag near $6 trillion. | ||
| It was yesterday before the Super Bowl on Fox News Sunday that House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke about the state, about where the budget efforts to fund the budget stand. | ||
| And you're working on getting the framework together for a budget for the vehicle that will get to all kinds of things. | ||
| The border may be extending the tax cuts. | ||
| In the meantime, your colleagues over on the Senate side, Lindsey Graham, among them, says it's time to get moving. | ||
| He's released his own framework. | ||
| He says this on X. | ||
| I have tremendous respect for Speaker Johnson. | ||
| I hope the House will move forward soon, but we cannot allow this moment to pass, and we cannot let President Trump's America First agenda stall. | ||
| One of the things he cites is borders are Tom Holman and the operations that are going on. | ||
| He says, you're going to run out of money for what's going on at the border. | ||
| So he's not going to wait for the House. | ||
| He's moving ahead. | ||
| Yes, Lindsay's a good friend. | ||
| I have great respect for him as well, and I understand what they're engaging in. | ||
| They want to move the agenda, and so do we. | ||
| President Trump got a mandate to deliver that America First agenda. | ||
| He's working at breakneck pace, as you just saw in the opening of the show, to do that with the executive branch, and we're going to do it with legislation. | ||
| So it's a very complicated and complex set of things that we are delivering. | ||
| Of course, we're going to secure the border. | ||
| We're going to make sure that American communities are safe. | ||
| We're going to get American energy dominance going again in the economy and restore common sense. | ||
| But to do all that in one big bill takes a little bit of time. | ||
| So we're working through that process very productively. | ||
| We've been building on this for a year, Shannon. | ||
| All through last year, we had our committees of jurisdiction working on the ideas to put it together. | ||
| Last month, we did that in earnest in January. | ||
| And as recently as this past week, we spent four and a half hours at the White House on Thursday and three hours later that evening working through the final details, and we're very, very close. | ||
| So I appreciate the Senate's zeal. | ||
| We have it in the House as well. | ||
| But as I reminded my friend Lindsay, I have about 170 additional personalities to deal with, and he's only got 53 on the Republican side there. | ||
| We have a very diverse caucus with lots of interests, but we are going to get this job done. | ||
| Back to your calls, asking you to grade President Trump's first three weeks in office. | ||
| We'll go to Roland and Detroit Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Roland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, I will give President Trump an F, and it's because although I think Biden and his prosecutors unfairly targeted him with all these charges, Trump seems to be on a revenge tour, which is not healthy. | ||
| It's not a healthy thing to exact revenge. | ||
| Some scholar once said, on your way to revenge, make sure you dig two graves. | ||
| This country is too massive and powerful to engage in that kind of child's play. | ||
| And I still am holding on to confidence that the three branches of government will smartly and intelligently and independently look at everything and make good cause. | ||
| Just don't do it because Trump said you should do it. | ||
| And that Supreme Court, I'm sure they're going to become more flexible. | ||
| Even Congress, they're not going to let anything go through. | ||
| That is my hope. | ||
| And as far as Musk Doing an audit, a billionaire who has nothing to lose. | ||
| Why doesn't Trump in the United States hire an independent auditor like Ernest and Young to look at the books? | ||
| Why do they have this guy in there? | ||
| It just makes no sense. | ||
| And I still look forward to this country and our world moving in a more progressive, fair way. | ||
| That was Roland in Detroit. | ||
| Josie and New York, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Josie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a Democrat, but I have voted Republican before. | ||
| I'm not going to grade Trump. | ||
| I'm going to simply say that I think this is supposed to be a democracy. | ||
| Seems more like a dictatorship. | ||
| And I'm 66 years old. | ||
| No prices have gone down. | ||
| I just want this country for everybody to be treated fairly. | ||
| It's a dream. | ||
| And I also don't like the fact that he's put Musk in there. | ||
| What does he have to do with anything? | ||
| He wasn't elected into anything. | ||
| I don't trust it. | ||
| That's my opinion. | ||
| And it's not because I'm anti-Republican or anti-Democrat. | ||
| It's because what I'm seeing going on. | ||
| Some things I do like that he's done, but other things I don't. | ||
| It seems more like he's a dictator. | ||
| And it frightens me for my future generation family. | ||
| I'm already a senior citizen. | ||
| I'm 66 years old. | ||
| I watch C-SPAN. | ||
| I'm not really political, but I've been watching C-SPAN. | ||
| I want to thank you. | ||
| And I want to wish you a pleasant day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's all I had to say. | ||
| That was Josie in New York. | ||
| Steve in New York City, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| All I want is, I'll give him an A. | ||
| And all I want to say is all of you people calling in and giving him an F and an F minus and a Z, you should really remember you were selling us for four years that your guy was in great cognitive health when he was clearly demented. | ||
| And that's what was running the country. | ||
| We still have no clue who was running the country. | ||
| We want to know and we want you, we want to abide by the rule that there is one ball, not two, not three. | ||
| You don't get a special law. | ||
| You don't get a free pass. | ||
| What about all these people who were spying on us, spying on campaigns? | ||
| You are crooked people, and we're going to find out who you are and we're going to get rid of you politically. | ||
| We're going to drive you out of office. | ||
| And I expect after they find out what USA was into, that lots of you are going to resign. | ||
| Lots of your politicians and your party people are going to resign because they were laundering money through there and they were setting up operations and warfare. | ||
| We'll leave it there and a reminder to our callers that you can be passionate without using bad language. | ||
| We'll go to Timothy in Beaver Falls, New York, line for independent. | ||
| Good morning, Timothy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| This is my first time calling. | ||
| I don't know how to grade his first three weeks. | ||
| I'm curious to see what he's going to do in his next 90 days or so. | ||
| Timothy, what do you want to see him focus on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to see him focus on what he said he was going to do in terms of lowering prices, and I haven't seen anything about that on gas, groceries, and so forth. | |
| It seems like everything's been going up. | ||
| And I know it's going to take time for stuff to actually go down, but he's focusing on the wrong things, in my opinion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I guess if I'm going to grade him, I'll just give him a D right now because I feel like he's focusing on the wrong things. | |
| That's Timothy in New York. | ||
| William in Houston, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Suzanne and the Suzanne audience. | |
| Look, first of all, he doesn't get an F because, number one, he's a convicted criminal and a draft dodger. | ||
| And also, you cannot take a millionaire to all day to automate it to audit millionaires. | ||
| But I just wanted to say that, you know, all the people that's going to get terminated, they deserve it because that's what they voted for. | ||
| At the end of the day, a DNI has always been benefit to everyone except the minority. | ||
| Okay, I worked in corporate America for over 40 years. | ||
| And in my department, in those 40 years, I worked with only less than a handful of African Americans, less than five. | ||
| So this whole issue about DNI being targeted toward the minorities. | ||
| But once these departments with this rogue clearance that they're doing, it's going to hurt the megas because they hold 95% of all federal jobs. | ||
| So we'll see how they feel when they come home, they don't have a paycheck. | ||
| And when they sit at home, they're not going to be able to get this seven-month pay because once they leave their job under circumstances of this illegal way of doing it, they violated themselves. | ||
| They'll see. | ||
| So have a good day and enjoy this. | ||
| And I'm just sitting back and watching. | ||
| I'm retired now and just paid $1,000 on $20,000 worth of Social Security. | ||
| So people don't tell me if you're making less than $300,000 that you're going to get a tax break because you're not getting anything. | ||
| Have a great day and enjoy it. | ||
| And I'm watching the Dog and Pony Show. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| You get your F? | ||
| That was William in Houston. | ||
| We'll go to Lisa in Alexandria, Virginia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Lisa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would give the president an A. | ||
| And number one, because you say in their statements all weekend long was that when they stopped the funding for you say there were babies that were going to be starving for necessary food that They were giving them. | ||
| My question is: here we are in America paying overprice for food, and they're saying all of our food is coming from other countries, so that's why we're paying higher prices now because of the tariff. | ||
| Then, where is you say buying the food from? | ||
| What country are they buying the food from? | ||
| And number two, it is time overdue to slim down this government. | ||
| You cannot have all these employees and keep paying them and expect to get the budget into a balance. | ||
| And I think we need to go back to a balanced budget so that we can stop spending money on unnecessary things and on people in government's own agenda versus what the president's agenda. | ||
| Because that's why we have a new president every four years, is because we want them to set their agenda. | ||
| And the government employees are under the executive office, which falls under the president, and they should be following his agenda. | ||
| And that's just the bottom line to it. | ||
| Lisa, when looking at cuts to the government, do you think that President Trump and Elon Musk are on the right track? | ||
| Or are there other areas you think they should look at? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, definitely. | |
| I think they need to be number one, the agriculture to see where the money's going to. | ||
| And number two, we've got foreign agricultural services, we've got foreign services in HHS, and foreign services in almost every agency. | ||
| So, why are we using another agency to send money? | ||
| It's like the money's going out from every agency, the Pentagon. | ||
| That definitely needs to be looked at because, you know, everybody knows that for decades, they've been failing on their audits. | ||
| And we know that auditors coming in from outside the government, and they do this all the time. | ||
| And they go over government spending, and they are given the information. | ||
| So, I don't see any difference in what Doge is doing and from what's that pens and booms or their name that do the government auditing. | ||
| There's no difference in it. | ||
| That was Lisa in Virginia. | ||
| Looking again at the list from BBC, wrapping up President Trump's actions last week. | ||
| Number one was proposed the U.S. takeover of Gaza. | ||
| It says that at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. would, quote, take over and own Gaza, resettling its Palestinian population in the process. | ||
| Trump proposed developing the territory devastated after 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas into the Riviera of the Middle East. | ||
| It was yesterday on CBS's Face the Nation that Democratic Representative Elon Omar of Minnesota was asked about that plan. | ||
| I want to ask you about something President Trump said this week alongside the Israeli Prime Minister. | ||
| It took many by surprise. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. | ||
| We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. | ||
| The president said Palestinians would be permanently removed. | ||
| How do you think this is heard and understood around the world? | ||
| Well, that's just plain out ethnic cleansing and genocide. | ||
| That's what he's talking about. | ||
| The Palestinian people will remain in Gaza. | ||
| There is no support around the world for the ludicrous suggestion that he is making. | ||
| Well, he's going to give them a choice to leave, open the gates. | ||
| Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of the people in Gaza would love to remain in their homeland and be where they're born. | ||
| Just a few minutes left in this first hour. | ||
| We'll go to David in Flemington, New Jersey, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you. | |
| Two points, one about Israel, one about the budget. | ||
| What I've noticed with Israel in comments that are made and actions that have been taken around the country since Hamas attacked is that people in whom, and there are a ton of them, as shown by the rates of anti-Semitism in this U.S., which are at a record level, people in whom anti-Semitism is a deeply rooted illness, | ||
| have used all the actions of Israel since the Hamas attack and comments by the President of the United States as a vehicle, a construct, to front a shill, to get on C-SPAN, to agitate on campuses. | ||
| And I want to be objective. | ||
| I lived in Israel. | ||
| There are more than enough reasons to criticize Israel, to raise questions about Israel. | ||
| Netanyahu. | ||
| David, bring it back to our question. | ||
| We're grading President Trump's first three weeks in office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I think I would rate it as a C with a lot of vagaries. | ||
| I think Gaza is going to remain a problem, but I'm also deeply concerned that people used the front of being concerned about people in Gaza and people in Israel to express anti-Semitism. | ||
| I would say it's half of the people. | ||
| We are at record anti-Semitism. | ||
| And I want to caution. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| David, we'll go to Charles in Alabama, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, first time, Calder. | ||
| I want to grade President Trump a year. | ||
| That's about all I had to say. | ||
| Charles, tell me a little bit more about why you're giving him that grade. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one reason, he can't stay on one topic. | |
| He's all over the place. | ||
| I don't know about this Gaza Strip and this Palamol Canal and all this stuff. | ||
| That was nothing said in this campaign. | ||
| So he's just all over the place. | ||
| What would you like to see him focus on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, just doing the right thing. | |
| I mean, he know what he's doing. | ||
| He just needs to do the right thing. | ||
| And the people that he's putting in, that's not the right thing. | ||
| I mean, you can't file a bunch of people and make the government going to run straight. | ||
| That was Charles in Alabama. | ||
| We'll go to Steve in Massachusetts, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Tammy. | |
| I hope your favorite team won yesterday. | ||
| I noticed you're wearing green. | ||
| I'm a Patriots fan. | ||
| Anyhow, I would give President Trump, report cards have lots of grades on them. | ||
| I'll give him an A on the border. | ||
| Everything else is incomplete. | ||
| The reason I give him an A, harken back to Andrew Jackson and the nullification crisis of 1832 to 1833. | ||
| South Carolina wanted to secede at the time due to protective tariffs. | ||
| They wanted to get their cotton to market to Britain, to France, whoever wanted it. | ||
| And their economy was supported by slavery. | ||
| Eventually, Jackson said he would use force, and he also, they compromised on the tariffs. | ||
| They made them, they would lower them down. | ||
| Now, come to today, and I mentioned the border crisis. | ||
| We have all these sanctuary cities, okay? | ||
| This is the same thing, and I cringe when I hear a Democrat saying, or anybody saying, these are the people that we can use to clean our floors, serve food, etc. | ||
| This is equivalent to serfdom, okay? | ||
| And I think President Trump is going to call out these sanctuary cities. | ||
| And this is, you know, it's simply a nullification crisis. | ||
| They are not following federal law just like under slavery with Jackson. | ||
| So I'll leave it there. | ||
| I could go on all sorts of tangents, but I do appreciate C-SPAN and you taking my call. | ||
| Steve in Massachusetts. | ||
| And our last call in this first hour is Crystal in Philadelphia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Crystal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yo, yo, yo, from the champion city of Philadelphia. | |
| Oh, yes. | ||
| I'm so happy about that. | ||
| But the last guy was just saying about the cotton tariffs and stuff. | ||
| Cotton that was picked with free labor. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Give everybody rights. | ||
| No rights, but that's okay. | ||
| Shameful, spineless jellyfish. | ||
| That's what the Republicans are. | ||
| Lawless. | ||
| Lawless. | ||
| Trump lines the hallway with the military as he marches down to talk about some ridiculous nonsense. | ||
| Ridiculous. | ||
| A pack of lackeys and they're the losers and suckers, and we're left to pay the price about it. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense to take away rights, left and right, for this convict, loser, rapist, and it's just a horrible situation that America finds itself in. | ||
| And I just tell people, wake up, look what he's doing. | ||
| Look what he's doing. | ||
| He puts all his people in here, and they line up to take away, talk about buying Panama Canal. | ||
| My price of eggs, I had doubled eggs. | ||
| I had a nice little party yesterday. | ||
| And the prices are up. | ||
| He was going to liberate Ukrainia and all like this. | ||
| He's a liar, a liar. | ||
| And people, please wake up. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Leave it there. | ||
| That is the first hour of Washington Journal. | ||
| Up next, we'll be joined by Axios. | ||
| Axios is Stephen Newcomb. | ||
| We're going to discuss the week ahead in Congress and Republicans' work with the Trump administration on advancing its legislative agenda. | ||
| And later, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Singer will discuss the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. and the Trump administration's approach to addressing it. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session. | |
| The House will consider legislation establishing new penalties for evading U.S. Border Patrol agents in car chases. | ||
| The Senate continues voting on President Trump's cabinet nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give the semi-annual monetary policy report before two committees. | ||
| First on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee. | ||
| Also, C-SPAN continues our comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees. | ||
| The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold hearings for two cabinet nominees. | ||
| On Wednesday, former Oregon Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeReamer, the nominee for Secretary of Labor. | ||
| And on Thursday, for former businesswoman Linda McMahon, who's a nominee for Secretary of Education. | ||
| Also on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the nomination of Kash Patel for director of the FBI. | ||
| Watch 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. | ||
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| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
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| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, cspan.org slash podcasts. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| 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. | ||
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| C-SPAN, created by cable. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now is Stephen Newcomb. | ||
| He is co-author of Axios's Hill Leaders newsletter. | ||
| We are talking about Congress and the Trump legislative agenda. | ||
| Stephen, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for having me. | |
| We'll start with Congress and what they're going to be working on this week. | ||
| Number one is the budget. | ||
| Remind our audience what the fiscal deadlines Congress is facing, what they are, and what the deadlines are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so they've got a government funding deadline in March 14th. | |
| This is sort of the deal that Republicans made last year, late last year, after Trump had won the election, that they would kick government funding too early in his first 100 days, really. | ||
| So now they're coming up against that. | ||
| And the short of it is that they're just not on track to get this done by March 14th, at least a regular order passing all these bills. | ||
| So they need to sort of supercharge this process over the next month. | ||
| And if they're going to reach the March 14th deadline, we're really going to need some action here from appropriators and from leadership in the next two weeks. | ||
| Something that's a phrase that we're going to be hearing a lot of is reconciliation. | ||
| This is a legislative maneuver that the GOP could use to explain what that is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so it's essentially the budget reconciliation process allows Republicans in the Senate to circumvent the filibuster process. | |
| So they won't need 60 votes in the Senate. | ||
| They only need 50, which is obviously the big hurdle for any party in the Senate. | ||
| And what they're able to do there is move money around, change federal spending priorities. | ||
| They can't necessarily make policy through the reconciliation process, but they can allocate money differently for different priorities and different offices. | ||
| So, these next two, they're trying to take two bites at the apple, at least the House GOP is. | ||
| They want to do a border bill and then another one that has to do with taxes and tax reform and extending those tax cuts. | ||
| So, this is the, in the first year, really, of the Trump administration, this is the biggest thing that's in front of them. | ||
| Something else that we could be hearing is the phrase budget resolutions. | ||
| Both the House and Senate can use those, explain what they are, and what role they could play in the process. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, right now, that's the big holdup: are the resolutions and trying to figure out which chamber is going to go first in this process. | |
| The issue for Republicans right now, the biggest issue for them on Capitol Hill, is that they have a very slim House majority. | ||
| Really, the challenge is to get anything through that House most likely is going to get through the Senate. | ||
| So, they've been trying to figure out which chamber will go first. | ||
| They want the House to go first, again, because that's the biggest hurdle. | ||
| But they have had major delays in the markups of their budget resolutions, internal disagreements within each other. | ||
| But the Senate last week unveiled its first budget resolution, ready to go if they have to. | ||
| Procedurally, in the Senate, it's a little bit slower to get that started, and that's usually why they defer to the House. | ||
| But we're going to see how much patience Senate Majority Leader John Thune has with House Speaker Mike Johnson to be able to get the troops in order on the House side and get a budget resolution done. | ||
| And it was Senator Lindsey Graham, who's chair of the Senate Budget Committee, who announced that the Senate has their bill ready to go. | ||
| The House, like you mentioned, does not, other than the approach to passage, final passage, what do we know about the House and Senate, the differences in their priorities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, they want to do the same things at the end of the day. | |
| They have the same agenda. | ||
| It's how do they get there? | ||
| And I think that Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, wants to do this in two processes with one bill, one bill being for the border and energy and defense, and then another tax package. | ||
| They want to go first with the border bill. | ||
| On the Senate side, they want to do one big package, tax, border, all in the same package. | ||
| Mike Johnson sees it as easier to get two bills through the House, not packing everything into one. | ||
| He says that Senate leadership doesn't totally understand the reality of politics in the House, but Senate leadership wants to do it in one bill, get it done. | ||
| And I think that really, again, that's the tension point: how much patience does John Thune have with Mike Johnson and allowing him to try and do this two-bill approach? | ||
| Our guest for the next 25 minutes or so is Stephen Newcomb. | ||
| He is the co-author of Axios' Hill Leader newsletter. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines: Republicans, 202-748-8001, Democrats, 202-748-8000, and Independents, 202-748-8003. | ||
| And it was last week that Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, spoke to reporters and pushed back on the idea that Democrats could hold up passage of a bill. | ||
| From Meet the Press yesterday, I want to show you this clip. | ||
| It's Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, on that same topic. | ||
| We'll get your reaction on the other side. | ||
| Okay, you take me to my next question because your colleague Jeff Merkley basically said he's prepared to try to shut down the government over some of these sledgehammer actions that he's seeing by Elon Musk. | ||
| Are you prepared to shut down the government to join Democratic colleagues who want to stand in the way of keeping the government open? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you have to look at what the Trump administration is doing right now. | |
| They are simply trying to dismantle the government. | ||
| So, yes, look, if we have to take steps to be able to hold them accountable, use the leverage that we have to force it. | ||
| I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we're seeing when it comes to this administration's actions. | ||
| And for us to be able to support government funding in that way, only for them to turn it around to dismantle the government, that is not something that should be allowed. | ||
| So, just to be clear, Senator, you are open to voting yes to shut down the government. | ||
| So, make this point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is on them. | |
| This is about whether or not they can get the votes. | ||
| They are the majority. | ||
| And if they cannot govern, then that's for the American people to see. | ||
| But I've worked in government. | ||
| I've worked through multiple government shutdowns. | ||
| I would be the last person to want to get to that stage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But we are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis, seeing this administration taking steps that are so clearly illegal. | |
| And until we see a change in that behavior, we should not allow and condone that, nor should we assist in that. | ||
| Senator, the Republicans do have control of both chambers. | ||
| How likely is it that Democrats could, in fact, shut down the government when it comes to these talks and the issues that they want to act on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, the reality facing Democrats on Capitol Hill is they don't have many leverage points at all. | |
| Like Senator Kim said, Republicans have unified control of the government. | ||
| The one leverage point they do have is government funding. | ||
| They have that leverage because in all likelihood, House Speaker Mike Johnson is going to have to call on minority leader Hakeem Jeffries for some Democratic votes to get any funding resolution through the House. | ||
| And then the Senate Majority Leader Jon Thune will need a number of Democratic votes in the Senate, at least seven of them, to pass the bill. | ||
| So they need Democratic support. | ||
| The debate going on internally between Democrats right now is whether it is politically or politically helpful to shut the government down. | ||
| Can you blame it on the Republicans? | ||
| You've seen Senator Kim already making that argument that it would be Republicans' fault versus, again, when they were in power, when Democrats were in power, they were saying a government shutdown was harmful. | ||
| It was dangerous for America, for national security. | ||
| Well, they need to look themselves in the mirror and decide if that is something that they're willing to do in the first 100 days of this administration, not voting to pass government funding. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Andrea in Illinois, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Andrea. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was calling because I haven't heard anything on the news about whether or not in shutting down all of these agencies, those services are still available to Americans, like student loans or any of the other things. | ||
| I know that some farmers are not getting some cost sharing, things like that. | ||
| Can he talk about what we know about whether the government is functioning at all? | ||
| Yeah, so it's pretty scattershot, right? | ||
| Because there was a lot of orders that came from the White House, the Oval Office, an array of agencies were affected, and there's been an array of court decisions that have been handed down, whether it was injunctions or the courts blocking the move. | ||
| So it depends on which agency and which area of government you're looking at of what is functioning. | ||
| Now, what Democrats on Capitol Hill have sort of raised the alarm about most is the government funding, the spending freeze, grants and loans and aid to community services. | ||
| We know that a lot of those in a lot of communities around the U.S. have been delayed, or if not canceled, the Head Start programs. | ||
| I think that that's what Democrats are going to call raise the biggest fuss about. | ||
| And I think that that's what they're carrying into this fight about government funding. | ||
| What they're saying in Democratic leadership that I talked to, that in any government funding conversation and any agreement that they make with Senate and House Republicans and with the White House is they need express language in this agreement to rescind that funding freeze and guardrails so that they make sure that the executive branch sort of spends the money in the way that Congress has appropriated that money. | ||
| Members have reported that they're getting calls in the thousands compared to the double-digit numbers that they may normally see. | ||
| How have members responded to calls about the calls that they're getting about Elon Musk and what they're seeing the Doge team do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think that they're in a hard position. | |
| They have constituents calling them telling them that they need results, they need to do something. | ||
| But again, we've already talked about the sort of the futility of Democrats on Capitol Hill right now. | ||
| They can't do anything really concrete except this government funding deadline that they have coming up next month. | ||
| So they have constituents telling them that they want action, they want them to stand in the way, but there's only so much that they can do to stand in the way. | ||
| They've held a lot of press conferences raising awareness. | ||
| I think that the Democrats have really tried to use social media to get this message across. | ||
| But again, they're hearing from folks that they want action, and there's really just not much that they can do right now. | ||
| Let's hear from William in Tennessee, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| All I have to say is I think the Democrats should go aboard these cruise liners, have a fleet of cruise liners, and send the Democrats out to the deepest part of the ocean and pull the plug. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Any response for William? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the Democratic Party, if you take a big picture view at it in 2024, really catastrophic loss for the party. | |
| They were cast into the wilderness in the White House, in Congress, state houses across the country. | ||
| What they're trying to figure out right now is how do they get out of that wilderness. | ||
| So in some ways, they have been cast out by voters. | ||
| They've been thrown out of power in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And the internal debates that are going on within the party are what do we need to focus on? | ||
| What should our leadership look like? | ||
| What should our message be? | ||
| And how do we get that message across to Americans? | ||
| And who is it that we need to be talking to? | ||
| They lost the blue wall. | ||
| They held the blue states in California and New York, but lost the margins. | ||
| I mean, it was pretty catastrophic for the party. | ||
| Let's hear from Mark in Kerry, North Carolina, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| We're doing well, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, I got a bunch of questions, but let's just stick with this one. | ||
| You've got these people showing up at these different government agencies, the treasury and so forth, and they're looking at this what I consider to be secret documents or whatever information. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And why isn't the media pushing to see the receipts? | |
| You know, the federal government does everything in writing. | ||
| And they say, well, we're here for read-on. | ||
| Well, how do we know that? | ||
| And that's my main question. | ||
| Well, I think that that's a question for the courts, honestly, more than anything else. | ||
| And they have ruled against the read-only situation for the Treasury Department payment systems. | ||
| They've ruled against that. | ||
| So the judiciary is obviously trying to set up some guardrails and stand in the way here. | ||
| I think that my colleagues in the media have done some really incredible reporting on sort of not only what the Department of Government Efficiency is trying to accomplish and what they're doing, but who works there, how they've recruited those folks. | ||
| So I think that there's a lot of reporting out there. | ||
| And if you're interested in sort of oversight, there's a lot of stuff out there, and you should also go read about it on Axios. | ||
| We may learn more about the work of Doge. | ||
| There's a hearing on Wednesday with the subcommittee on delivering on government efficiency titled The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud. | ||
| Who's going to be testifying at that hearing and what are you expecting to come out of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I would say that the number one focus of that hearing and the most fascinating one for me is Marjorie Taylor Greene because she is sort of trying to transform herself from this right-wing flamethrower, this person who was sort of on the outskirts fringe of the party, who is now becoming sort of an establishment figure, having the chair of a powerful committee that is going to be in the spotlight for this first hearing. | |
| So I think it's interesting to pay attention to her. | ||
| And then from the Democratic side, who on that committee sort of becomes the, because a lot of these hearings are fought in the media, the social media clips, who has those moments of flair, who has the good back and forths? | ||
| I think that that's the challenge for the Democrats. | ||
| As Stephen mentioned, a lot of media outlets do show you clips. | ||
| You'll be able to watch the entire hearing here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Let's hear from Tracy in Kalamazoo, Michigan, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tracy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I think this is a very dangerous time for our country. | ||
| And the gentleman that called just recently saying that the Democratic Party should essentially be drowned in the ocean is reprehensible. | ||
| Donald Trump is spreading lies, and he has demonized half of our country for over five years. | ||
| People are not aware that USAID performed a vital function that crossed the good name of the United States of America across the world. | ||
| And people are not unaware that there is drug-resistant tuberculosis spreading among poor African children, especially in the West Cape. | ||
| And it's going to spread through Africa and it's going to take off and it's going to come to America. | ||
| And shame on America for turning its back. | ||
| Donald Trump is doing tremendous damage. | ||
| And we can't continue to demonize half our country. | ||
| That's just rotten. | ||
| And I think it needs to be called out every time we hear it on C-SPAN because it comes up very often. | ||
| And it's dangerous. | ||
| It's very dangerous. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| On USAID, though, I think that an argument that I've heard from Democrats on the Hill, especially folks who are worried about foreign affairs, veterans like Mark Kelly, Senator Mark Kelly, is the vacuum that the U.S. may be leaving on the international stage with these aid programs and the fear that it will be filled by China, by Russia, | ||
| sort of yielding this soft power that the U.S. has done so successfully over the last century, the fear that adversaries to the U.S. will move into that space and sort of fill the gap that the U.S. has left in places like Africa. | ||
| The Senate is gaveling back into session this afternoon, and they are going to be working on confirming more of President Trump's cabinet picks. | ||
| Tell us who they're going to be looking at and what we know about the status, the likeliness of them being confirmed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that the biggest ones, obviously, the headliners that have still yet to be confirmed, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Castratel for FBI director. | |
| At Castro Tell, they won't get to. | ||
| They have to do the committee vote this week. | ||
| It was delayed last week. | ||
| So the Gabbard nomination. | ||
| I think that if you talk to Republicans, they feel better starting this week than they did two weeks ago, especially after the Gabbard and the Kennedy hearings. | ||
| They got some good news from some swing votes, folks that they weren't sure would vote for either of these candidates. | ||
| They were able to pass both of their committees, which was a good indicator of Republican support. | ||
| But it will be close. | ||
| I would not expect much, if any, Democratic support for either of RFK Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| And this is going to be up to three or four or five Republicans, depending on how they want to vote. | ||
| You're looking at folks like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Todd Young, Tom Tillis, folks like that to really hold the fate of these nominees in their hands. | ||
| And one of your headlines from last week, Rust Vote confirmed as Trump's budget director amid Dem protest. | ||
| Remind us what happened and if we could see that happen with Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so what the Democrats did with Rust Vote was they completely protested the committee vote on him as OMB director. | |
| It's interesting the OMB director is not usually one of the headline-making nominations, cabinet. | ||
| You hear about the secretaries much more. | ||
| But Democrats, especially after the OMB funding freeze, really latched on to the vote nomination. | ||
| And I think that that's why they made a concerted effort to boycott that vote. | ||
| They held the Senate floor for 30 straight hours, protesting his vote, debating his vote. | ||
| So I don't think you're going to see that with a lot of these other candidates. | ||
| One, it's very time-consuming. | ||
| It takes a lot of energy. | ||
| And ultimately, all you're doing is standing in the way of a process that is going to be over in 30 hours. | ||
| Anyway, they will be confirmed with Republican support. | ||
| But I do think you will see them take every opportunity possible to debate it, stand on the floor, vote against it. | ||
| Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, made a plea last week for blanket opposition to the nominees, and we'll see if he gets that. | ||
| Let's go to Jay in Waldorf, Maryland, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So, Senator Johnson, other Republicans, it's up to them. | ||
| What I mean by that is when Watergate happened, the Republicans were the one that told Nixon you need to resign. | ||
| Now, not resign. | ||
| Trump's not going to resign, but I'm saying they need to tell Trump and Doge, look, we need to be more reasonable. | ||
| This is not a, can't be like a corporate takeover of the government. | ||
| We need to do this more in the traditional manner. | ||
| Republicans and Democrats in the Congress, the Congress has the power of the purse. | ||
| That's in the Constitution. | ||
| So they need to, Republicans can say, yeah, we can push more of the Trump line about cutting some of these programs. | ||
| And the Democrats, it'll be a compromise. | ||
| We'll cut some of these programs, but we'll also save a lot of these programs, or some of them at least. | ||
| Anyway, it's up to the Republicans. | ||
| They need to be reasonable and say, look, you know, what if in a few months or years, Doge says, we don't need as big a Congress. | ||
| 400-some members, we don't need that. | ||
| Let's whittle that down. | ||
| So their power is going to be affected. | ||
| Republican and congressmen and senators, their power could be affected, as well as the Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's what Republicans are, reasonable Republicans to say, yeah, we need to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse, but we need to do it the traditional constitutional way, the legal way, with give and take in the Congress. | |
| The president makes proposals and recommendations, and we do it that way. | ||
| We don't go in and just take over agencies and fire everybody because eventually you're going to find out, oops, you made some mistakes there in firing some of those people, especially in the Defense Department. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's the appeal that Democrats on Capitol Hill are making: if you want to stop the funding of these programs or these agencies, there is a process to do that. | ||
| There's a process. | ||
| They have the budget reconciliation process coming up. | ||
| They can appropriate money however they want. | ||
| They're in control of Capitol Hill. | ||
| That's the argument from Democrats that there is a way to accomplish what you have really accomplished so far, but you can do it through Congress. | ||
| I think that there's a big alarm, not just from Democrats on Capitol Hill, but from also Republicans who are concerned with the amount of executive power that the president has flexed so far in the first two months of his presidency. | ||
| And really, honestly, on Capitol Hill, there has not been many Republicans who have stepped forward publicly and stood in the way of that, even including leadership. | ||
| And I think that that's something to watch: when do we get to that point? | ||
| Do they get to that point? | ||
| But we also know that President Trump uses the bully pawpit, you know, very strongly, both from campaign events to social media. | ||
| And he has a pretty powerful media ecosystem. | ||
| And those pressure campaigns can be pretty powerful and pretty brutal. | ||
| So that's all the forces that Republicans are sort of thinking about when they're trying to make a decision of do I speak up against the president or do I not. | ||
| I think we've hit most of the highlights in terms of what Congress is focusing on budget as well as Senate confirmations. | ||
| Is there anything else that you're keeping your eye on or any one that you're keeping your eye on this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The interesting thing for me this week and long term is the reality that we've talked about all morning, really, is that, yes, Republicans are in control, but over the next two years, they're going to need Democratic support to do anything that they want to do outside of the reconciliation process because the reconciliation process is filibuster proof. | |
| They can do that with their own majorities. | ||
| But everything else, government funding, any of their other priorities, a border bill that exists outside of reconciliation. | ||
| You can't really even legislate through reconciliation. | ||
| You can just move money around. | ||
| And I talked to Purple State Senate Democrats last week who started the administration making a direct appeal to the president saying that we want to work on a border resolution. | ||
| They had a bipartisan border bill last year that was ready to go, almost got across the finish line. | ||
| I talked to the same folks last week who were making those appeals, and a handful of them told me everything that the president is doing right now is making it almost impossible for us to even approach those conversations on a bipartisan border compromise, which I think there's interest in both parties for that. | ||
| So Trump burning bridges in Congress that he's going to need and that Republican leadership is going to need over the next two years. | ||
| Our guest, Stephen Newcomb, co-author of Hill Leader newsletter with Axios. | ||
| Stephen, thank you so much for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Still ahead this morning on Washington Journal. | ||
| Cato Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Singer will join us to discuss the fentanyl's approach to addressing it. | ||
| But first, more of your calls and comments in our open forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| I'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session. | |
| The House will consider legislation establishing new penalties for evading U.S. Border Patrol agents in car chases. | ||
| The Senate continues voting on President Trump's cabinet nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give the semi-annual monetary policy report before two committees, first on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee. | ||
| Also, C-SPAN continues our comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees. | ||
| The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold hearings for two cabinet nominees. | ||
| On Wednesday, former Oregon Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeReamer, the nominee for Secretary of Labor. | ||
| And on Thursday, for former businesswoman Linda McMahon, who's a nominee for Secretary of Education. | ||
| Also on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the nomination of Kash Patel for director of the FBI. | ||
| Watch 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 john dickinson is one of the most significant founders of the united states who is not well known by all the american public Author Jane E. Calvert is trying to change that with her new biography, Penman of the Founding. | ||
| John Dickinson is known for his nine essays under the title Fabius, published anonymously in newspapers during the time that the states were deciding on whether to approve the new Constitution. | ||
| John Dickinson of Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania was the only founding figure present and active in every phase of the revolution, from the Stamp Act crisis through the ratification of the Constitution. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Jane Calvert talks about her book, Penman of the Founding, a biography of John Dickinson. | |
| 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. | ||
| Cspanshop.org is C-SPAN's online store. | ||
| Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open forum for the next 48 minutes or so. | ||
| We'll go right to your calls, starting with Ron in Colorado, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| As far as Doge goes, we spend about three times more on private contractors than we do on federal employees. | ||
| And the fact that we got a private contractor in there deciding who should be in the government. | ||
| And if you remember right, we had a Halliburton private contractor that accidentally electrocuted soldiers in Iraq and they got paid extra $83 million. | ||
| So that's something to chew on. | ||
| And another thing, back in February, a guy was arrested. | ||
| And it turns out, and I dare anybody to Google this, the Barisma emails were actually Russian disinformation. | ||
| The guy was arrested in February. | ||
| In February, Trump also lost a lawsuit to Christopher Steele of the Steele dossier. | ||
| And this information they used in the Biden impeachment of the Barisma emails in his corrupt family were Russian disinformation. | ||
| Look it up. | ||
| And so as far as research goes, these people need to do some more research. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Ron in Colorado. | ||
| John in Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm kind of, I'm kind of nervous. | |
| Go ahead John. | ||
| John are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| We will go to Randy in Madison, Wisconsin, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You guys have a demographic problem, by the way, because linear TV is what you guys are on. | |
| It's actually just watched by old people. | ||
| So you're always getting old people, which is why you get some really crazy people. | ||
| Well, let's talk about what Trump has done so far. | ||
| First off, firing the Attorney General was actually so he could commit crimes, right? | ||
| Because he is a criminal. | ||
| You hired a criminal for this job and he's committing crimes. | ||
| That's the first thing. | ||
| He fired him so he could commit crimes. | ||
| Then what did he do? | ||
| He sent Doge in the middle of the night the following week to start firing people. | ||
| Who does stuff in the middle of the night? | ||
| Not to mention he's unelected. | ||
| You have an unelected billionaire. | ||
| George Soros did this. | ||
| You people would lose your minds. | ||
| I mean, the crimes are endless. | ||
| The Inside the Treasury gives you a map to who we're paying throughout the world for our intelligence. | ||
| He now has that. | ||
| He has ties to China. | ||
| I mean, at the endless, oh, they said JD Vance just yesterday said that they can ignore the courts. | ||
| So he has no controls of it whatsoever. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| You're now a dictatorship, America. | ||
| That was Randy in Wisconsin from NPR. | ||
| This headline. | ||
| Federal judge pauses deadline for Trump administration fork resignation offer until Monday. | ||
| It says that a federal judge in Massachusetts granted a request from labor unions on Thursday to pause Trump's administration's quote: deferred resignation offer to federal employees until Monday. | ||
| U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr., a Clinton appointee, issued the decision just hours before the deadline for federal workers to accept the offer to resign from their jobs now with the promise that they can keep their pay and benefits through September 30th. | ||
| O'Toole said the court had just received a brief from the government and wanted to give labor unions that bought that brought the lawsuit until close of Business Friday to reply. | ||
| He scheduled another hearing for Monday, that's today at 2 p.m. Eastern, where he will consider the merits of the case. | ||
| Back to your calls, Bobby in Kentucky, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bobby. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Everybody talking about all this wasteful money. | ||
| Why don't people like Newsom out there in California check where all his money's going to that California is so damn broke and got that big monster rail system that's going nowhere, | ||
| but yet he's able to afford a $9 million home in Malibu or wherever it is, and then they Democrats are spending all this money on transaction comic books and heterosexuals over all these poor countries. | ||
| They'll get hung over there. | ||
| That's what them countries think about them people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Kevin and Washington, D.C., lying for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| There's a conference in Munich called the Munich Security Conference, and a young congressman named Jake Auchinclaus said that the most important thing we need to do is buy a security treaty because the possibility of non-state actors making a weapon like COVID could cost only tens of thousands of dollars. | ||
| They could also do fentanyl and ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. | ||
| So I think we need to listen to young congressmen like Auchinclaus from Newton, Massachusetts. | ||
| He spoke at GlobeSec security conference on Thursday, a transatlantic forum. | ||
| Steve Clemens organized. | ||
| And the guy from Cato is a doctor, and he had a forum called COVID Collateral. | ||
| And so he's an expert on COVID. | ||
| And Jake's father was the successor of Anthony Fauci. | ||
| So he's a surgeon and a really smart guy, Jake Auchinclaus. | ||
| So this Fauci is also being investigated by a dozen state attorney generals. | ||
| And I think he's a good guy, but he covered for this guy, Dazak, who should be in prison. | ||
| And Farrar from the World Health Organization, who said it was crazy to say that COVID was man-made. | ||
| He said it came from nature, and it was a big lie. | ||
| Are you still there? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Kevin. | ||
| I'll give you about another 30 seconds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| So the Keno is a really good person to ask. | ||
| How can we get a treaty that bans the offensive use of biotechnology and only use it for defense? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That's Kevin in Washington, D.C., Nicole in Brandon, Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Nicole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| So my name is Nicole, and I'm a minority. | ||
| And I don't straddle the fence as far as Democrat or Republican. | ||
| I think that Trump, the Republicans, are finding money that had disappeared. | ||
| And as an American citizen and a minority, I never gotten any free money. | ||
| I never gotten any free programs. | ||
| I've been working since I was 14 years old. | ||
| So keeping that in mind, I'm glad they kind of cleaning things up because maybe we'll have a fighting chance. | ||
| The people that actually came from here was born here, live here, and has never had the opportunity to take advantage of these programs that all these other people have been that wasn't even here or has a United States birth certificate. | ||
| That was Nicole in Florida, and she was talking about Doge's efforts from yesterday's CNN State of the Union. | ||
| It was Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam that was asked about Elon Musk's access to sensitive data housed within DHS's Federal Emergency Management Agency. | ||
| Here's that clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Washington Post is reporting that Musk and his Doge team have access to FEMA's sensitive disaster data, which includes personal information about tens of thousands of disaster victims. | |
| Have you authorized Elon Musk and his team to have access to Americans' personal data that is housed inside DHS? | ||
| We're working with them at the President's direction to find what we can do to make our department much more efficient. | ||
| So I think if they have access, this is essentially an audit of the federal government, which is very powerful and needs to have happen. | ||
| That agency, and one of the things I've been very clear to the appropriators in the Senate and the House is please give me the authority to reprogram funds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's funds. | |
| But that's different from him having access to personal data that is housed in the United States. | ||
| The president has authorized him to have access to the program. | ||
| And you feel comfortable. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I remember a time when Republicans were very careful about and worried about the government, particularly unelected people. | ||
| We can't trust the government anymore. | ||
| Having access to personal data. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, absolutely. | |
| You are the government. | ||
| Yes, that's what I'm saying, is that the American people now are saying that we have had our personal information shared and out there in the public. | ||
| And the New York Musk has access to it. | ||
| But Elon Musk is part of the administration that is helping us identify where we can find savings and what we can do. | ||
| And he has gone through the processes to make sure that he has the authority. | ||
| I am today by the work that he's doing by identifying waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| And his information that he has is looking at programs, not focusing on personal data and information. | ||
| Not focusing on it, but he has access to it. | ||
| You know, we'll be continuing to talk to him about what all he has access to. | ||
| But this audit needs to happen to make sure that we are going through a process that adds integrity back into these programs. | ||
| And people's personal information has been out there in these caseworks that have been closed for a long time that people are getting responses now that they haven't had before. | ||
| About 30 minutes left in this open forum. | ||
| Want to give you a programming note on what Congress is doing today. | ||
| The House will be gaveling back in at noon Eastern. | ||
| Lawmakers there will be considering several bills under suspension of the rules involving China currency practices and their impact on foreign exchange markets. | ||
| Also, the Senate will be back in at 3 p.m. Eastern to continue debate on more of President Trump's cabinet nominees. | ||
| Senators will vote at 5:30 p.m. Eastern to advance the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to serve as Director of National Intelligence. | ||
| You can watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN and the Senate on C-SPAN 2 and all of our congressional coverage on our C-SPAN Now app and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Back to your calls in this open forum. | ||
| We'll go to Arnold in Brownfield, Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Arnold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Arnold. | |
| Yes, I'm a full-blown Trump supporter, and I wondered: what do you think or how long do you think these Democrats are going to keep their panties in a wad over everything Trump's doing? | ||
| Arnold, we were asking during our first hour for people to grade President Trump's first three weeks back in office. | ||
| What grade would you give him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
An A. What do you like specifically that he's done so far? | |
| I like what he's done at the border. | ||
| I like what he did about the boys and playing in girls' sports. | ||
| I don't think that's right. | ||
| I don't disagree with anything that he's done. | ||
| That was Arnold in Texas. | ||
| James in Weaverville, North Carolina, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think the problem we have is not a spending problem, but it's a revenue problem. | ||
| Looking back in the history of our national debt, Bill Clinton administration was the only one that presented an annual budget surplus. | ||
| And if you check what George W. Bush done, well, it started with Reagan when he started to trickle down economics and sent all of our manufacturing to third world countries. | ||
| And then along came Bush and wasted the surplus we had and then gave massive tax cuts to the rich. | ||
| And then Obama pulled us out of the Depression. | ||
| And then here come Trump and they gave massive tax cuts to the rich back in 2017. | ||
| And right now they're trying to see where they can cut the average people out of benefits to keep them having to take back the tax cuts that were given to the rich. | ||
| But that's what we need. | ||
| We need more revenue coming in because the top 3% own over half the wealth of the nation. | ||
| And I think we're under siege by the rich, the top echelon of society. | ||
| And I think the Republican Party, if you study their history, they are for big business and for the rich and well-to-do. | ||
| But the Democrats, the working class, need to take back the country because we are in dire straits right now. | ||
| The working class to me is being destroyed. | ||
| We can't afford housing. | ||
| Education belongs to the rich folks. | ||
| Everything you look at is geared toward helping the wealth and they run the country. | ||
| And I think the fate of the nation is in the hands of the rich. | ||
| That was James in North Carolina. | ||
| Go to Tommy in Shelby Gap, Kentucky, line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Tommy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everybody. | |
| I hope everybody's doing okay out there. | ||
| I think I just wanted to say that I find it just terrifying that, you know, I understand people appreciating their political candidate, people, you know, liking Trump, but I find it really disturbing that people have no criticism at all. | ||
| That's what bothers me. | ||
| It's almost, I don't want to say cultish, but it feels a little bit cultish to me. | ||
| I live in a very sparsely populated part of the country and a place that people think of as very conservative. | ||
| But I would like the viewers to know that, you know, out here there are different people. | ||
| We aren't all just folks who want to send all the Democrats to the middle of the ocean and drown them. | ||
| We have nuanced ideas, and I think especially we have nuanced ideas within our families and within our communities. | ||
| And that a lot of times when you get one-on-one with person, they're a lot more reasonable. | ||
| So I just would ask people to kind of, you know, ask questions more about their political candidate and look with a little bit more of a discerning eye and really try to steer away from these kind of politics that drive us away from our family and our community and from us being able to get together. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| That was Tommy in Kentucky. | ||
| President Trump has been in office for about three weeks and something that he has talked about are tariffs on countries from the Associated Press this headline. | ||
| Trump says he will announce 25% steel and aluminum tariffs Monday and more import duties are coming. | ||
| The article says that those tariffs, 25% on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as others. | ||
| And it says that Trump also reaffirmed that he would announce reciprocal tariffs, probably Tuesday or Wednesday, meaning that the U.S. would impose import duties on products in cases where other countries have levied duties on the U.S. | ||
| He said aboard Air Force One yesterday on the way to the Super Bowl that if they are charging us 130% and we're charging them nothing, it's not going to stay that way. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| We'll hear from Dave in Las Vegas, Nevada, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I don't know what's wrong with people. | ||
| 34 felony counts allegedly assaulted 26 women, convicted of one. | ||
| Nobody does anything. | ||
| Nobody does anything about the 34 felons. | ||
| He breaks every law in the book. | ||
| He's cutting off food to 6 million people in sedan. | ||
| He's going to, they're literally going to die. | ||
| And then he has them starmed the White House, break every law in the book, get police officers killed. | ||
| He did that. | ||
| And then they parted in the news media does nothing about it. | ||
| What's wrong with, do you think government's going to be better now? | ||
| And you put millions, he's getting rid of the middle class people. | ||
| You don't get it. | ||
| There's something wrong with you. | ||
| He's not a Republican. | ||
| He's a communist fascist. | ||
| And he's trying to get rid of the government. | ||
| He's going to hurt millions of people. | ||
| This guy is demanded, deranged, and warped. | ||
| So that's the guy you got running the country. | ||
| We're in big trouble, people. | ||
| And we need a march on Washington. | ||
| Everybody needs a march and have him removed from office. | ||
| That guy is sick and deminished. | ||
| We'll leave it there. | ||
| Dave, we'll go to Chris in Columbia, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to say to everyone that's listening that I can't imagine what they think is going to happen with all the money, supposedly, that's going to be recovered from this supposed waste, frost, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| You know, that's public funds. | ||
| It was invested smartly in a lot of cases in NIH and research. | ||
| It helps our economy. | ||
| There's going to be so many job layoffs, and it's going to impact the entire economy in such a bad way. | ||
| Inflation is going to go through the roof, all from disinvesting in the American public. | ||
| And nobody's going to get a tax break except for the super rich. | ||
| This is a theft. | ||
| It's a theft of public funds. | ||
| I wish people would phrase it that way more often. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Chris. | ||
| We'll go to John in California, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, what's baffling to me is that there's still so many white guys for Harris that are calling in. | |
| The people that are deranged at this point are the ones that still think that there was no waste, fraud, and abuse after what's been uncovered. | ||
| I mean, come on, people. | ||
| It's not rocket science. | ||
| When you're given a billion dollars and then you're asked, hey, what did you do with that billion dollars? | ||
| And then you cannot account for it, that's waste. | ||
| So I'm not sure exactly what some of your callers are talking about because to me, it seems like they're still listening to the mainstream media after how many years now has it been since they've been exposed for their state-ran propaganda? | ||
| I mean, you have talk about abuse. | ||
| I mean, nobody cares that the Department of Justice illegally spied on a president or had attorneys withhold evidence or point fingers at people that were actually doing the same exact thing that they were claiming that Donald Trump was doing. | ||
| Why doesn't anybody care about the corruption of the Biden family and how corrupt they are and the payouts they got? | ||
| So take a look in the mirror, people. | ||
| Lastly, what I'll say about this is thank God Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is on Donald Trump's side. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was John in California. | ||
| We'll go back to your calls and comments in just a moment. | ||
| But first, we want to talk with Jeff Mondock. | ||
| He is a White House reporter for the Washington Times. | ||
| There's a busy week coming up, as always, at the White House. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
| Thank you for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Jeff, I think you probably just heard our last caller talking about Doge. | ||
| That's a popular topic this morning. | ||
| Talk about how the White House administration is responding to the outcry about Doge and Elon Musk's efforts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what they're arguing is that it's within the president's purview to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. | |
| And they frame the argument has that they're going into these agencies, and what they're finding is essentially slush funds for various projects, various liberal causes that the president says he ran on opposing. | ||
| And they're arguing that he has the authority to do this. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see. | ||
| We've got some temporary halts in the court. | ||
| The Trump administration has not done well in the courts so far. | ||
| We'll see what happens this week. | ||
| But even as these lawsuits and opposition rise up, the President, Elon Musk, remain undaunted. | ||
| Trump said over the weekend that this week Doge is going to look at the Department of Education, which, as you know, Trump ran on a campaign promise of shuttering, as well as the Department of Defense, which has an $800 billion budget. | ||
| So I'm sure there'll be plenty of things that they can find at the Department of Defense. | ||
| And Jeff, you mentioned the lawsuits. | ||
| One is it's going to be heard today more about the federal buyout offer, and there's a few others going on. | ||
| How has the White House and the administration responded to the lawsuits? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they haven't really said a lot in terms of public. | |
| They're kind of trying to let the court process play itself out. | ||
| What they mostly have done is just try to argue again that they do have the authority to do this. | ||
| You know, one of the things that I think is kind of interesting is the argument against the buyout centers on appropriation and whether or not the funds are available. | ||
| The White House is arguing that, as the head of the executive branch, these are executive-level positions. | ||
| That puts the president in charge of them. | ||
| Therefore, whether the money is appropriated or not, he does have the authority to offer buyouts or eliminate the positions. | ||
| And much of the outcry is related to Elon Musk's role in the cuts and examining these departments for possible waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| What is your sense of how often Musk is checking in and who is he talking with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Musk is checking in, he's talking directly to President Trump. | |
| He's checking in with President Trump on a fairly regular basis. | ||
| It's interesting how much that he has come in and out of the Oval Office in the past few days, and it sounds like he's working hand in hand with Trump on this. | ||
| And something that President Trump said during his interview with Fox News is that, you know, pointed out that Musk doesn't need to be doing this, that he's surprised he has the time to put into this effort. | ||
| Remind us how long the Doge committee is supposed to be working for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Doge committee, there's no end date to it. | |
| It's going to keep going until they've gone through all the branches of the government. | ||
| This could go on for quite a while. | ||
| And for everything they find, there's going to be opposition. | ||
| Just look at USAID as a great example. | ||
| All the stuff that they have found in USAID, but the opposition to that is fierce. | ||
| And it's kind of interesting that there's such fierce opposition to eliminating USAID because a lot of people forget back in the 1990s, President Clinton had authored a proposal to eliminate USAID. | ||
| It didn't go very far, but it's been in the crosshairs of certain presidents for quite some time. | ||
| The Senate confirmed Russ Vogt as the new OMB director last week. | ||
| This is his first full week in that role. | ||
| Remind us, or what role do you expect him to play in the Trump administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's going to play a key role in culling and eliminating and shrinking the federal workforce. | |
| That has been one of his big priorities. | ||
| You've seen a little bit of some of the things that like the buyouts, for example, that was something that Russell Vault had thought of. | ||
| You're going to see a lot more of that start to ramp up once he gets in and once he gets settled. | ||
| And there have been more than a dozen of President Trump's cabinet nominees have been confirmed so far. | ||
| The Senate working on more today, including Tulsi Gabber to be Director of National Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy to be HHS Secretary. | ||
| Is the administration confident with those two? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, those two are the most controversial, and they are still, the administration is still very confident that those two expect to pass. | |
| I think Tulsi Gabbard will have the hardest time. | ||
| I think in the end, she does get confirmed. | ||
| Kash Patel is also one that we will be watching closely. | ||
| His committee vote for FBI director was postponed to later this week. | ||
| What do we know about the likelihood of him being confirmed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he will be confirmed. | |
| He did a very nice job at his confirmation hearing trying to distance himself from some of President Trump's more controversial law enforcement decisions, such as the pardon for the January 6 rioters. | ||
| I think that he did well, and I was surprised there wasn't as much Democratic opposition to him as I thought there would be. | ||
| I think people will be surprised how much it'll probably be on party lines. | ||
| Maybe they get one or two Democrats, but I think he sails through with little problem. | ||
| We've talked a lot about Doge and the efforts there. | ||
| What are you going to be watching this week in terms of Doge or other White House actions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the most interesting thing this week is President Trump's meeting tomorrow with King Abdullah of Jordan. | |
| Because King Abdullah of Jordan has vastly opposed President Trump's plan to relocate Palestinians in Gaza, have a U.S. takeover of the region, and try and has the president put it, turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East. | ||
| However, we send $2 billion in aid to Jordan. | ||
| That's aid that they cannot afford to lose. | ||
| So the president has a lot of leverage over the king, but there's going to be a lot of opposition. | ||
| There's already a lot of opposition to King Abdullah within his own country. | ||
| A lot of people in Jordan did not like that they stepped up to help bat down some missiles when Iran was raining missiles on Israel. | ||
| They do not like the idea of bringing Palestinians into Jordan, which is something President Trump keeps floating. | ||
| That could further weaken his leadership in that country. | ||
| So he's really between a rock and a hard place here. | ||
| He can avoid, he can push back against President Trump, but then he's going to lose the aid. | ||
| He could stand firm against President Trump, but then he's going to be a weaker leader in his own country. | ||
| Jeff Moordock, White House reporter for Washington Times. | ||
| You can find his work online at WashingtonTimes.com. | ||
| Jeff, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Just about under 15 minutes left in this morning's open forum. | ||
| We'll go to James in Florida, line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, can you hear me now? | |
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I give the Trump administration a D, a real low grade. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And number two, I'd like to see C-SPAN start at 6 o'clock in the morning because we, the little people, like C-SPAN. | |
| Number three, I give you an A because you do a very, very good job. | ||
| And number three, I thought the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl halftime show was terrible, terrible, a triple F. | ||
| We thought the Super Bowl halftime show was awful. | ||
| What do the C Span, C-SPAN callers think about the Super Bowl halftime show? | ||
| James in Florida grading a lot of things this morning. | ||
| We'll go to Calvin in Raleigh, North Carolina, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Calvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We have all here that saying we don't miss the water until the whale runs dry. | ||
| I believe the United States is about to expand what that feels like. | ||
| I believe that we're going to realize that it wasn't that bad with President Biden. | ||
| I would also like to give a shout out to Mr. Putin for causing chaos and also choosing someone to cause chaos and division in the United States. | ||
| So, Russia, if you're listening, Mr. Putin, you got what you wanted. | ||
| Has anyone realized that after Vice President Harris lost, the marching of protesters in the streets stopped immediately? | ||
| They talked about people eating cats and dogs stopped, as well as hackers and division people stopped. | ||
| I believe that Mr. Putin thought about this saying: Together we stand, but divided, we fall. | ||
| And I believe that Putin, along with the Republican Party, helped to create division in the United States to prove that. | ||
| The Republicans want to get rapists, criminals out of the United States. | ||
| I think that the Mexico president said it best when she told reporters: for Americans to avoid rapists and criminals in the country is not to elect one for president. | ||
| But it is obvious that the people that voted for this man weren't smart enough to realize that. | ||
| And I really believe that most of the people that voted for this man to be president of the United States would later say, Oh my God, I wish I had never voted for this man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll go to Paul in Riverview, Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everybody. | |
| Good morning, everybody. | ||
| First thing I'd like to say is congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles and the gentleman who just said that the halftime was terrible. | ||
| If he's just tuning into the Super Bowl for the halftime, he's tuning in for the wrong reason. | ||
| The other thing is, a lot of people are very concerned about Elon Musk having access to personal information. | ||
| A couple items I have there. | ||
| One is most of America turns over their personal information to their local doctor's office, their bank, their loan officers, so on and so forth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You freely hand it over. | |
| I'm more concerned about the people that sit in front of the computers every day at their jobs at the Treasury Department, Social Security. | ||
| They have access to your personal information, but nobody complains about that. | ||
| I'm less concerned about the gentleman who is the richest man in the world having access to my personal information. | ||
| What good is it going to do him? | ||
| My last item I'd like to bring up is the Department of Education. | ||
| I'm a baby boomer, so I went through the public education system before there was a Department of Education. | ||
| We made out just fine. | ||
| I'm not sure what the Department of Education does. | ||
| If there's anybody that can explain that to me, I'd love to hear it. | ||
| And I do have one more item. | ||
| There was a lady, I don't know if it's a woman or a man that called in earlier that was talking about January 6th and said that the rioters had killed an officer or something. | ||
| That's not true, and there's certainly it disappoints me when State's ban does allow people to make absolutely false statements and they're not corrected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sometimes you do. | |
| Sometimes you refer to an article and clear it up, but quite often it's not done. | ||
| And that just disappoints me. | ||
| That's all I have. | ||
| I hope everybody has a great day. | ||
| And again, congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles and the city of Philadelphia. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Paul in Florida. | ||
| This headline in this morning's The Hill, Senate Democrats launch portal for whistleblowers in Trump administration. | ||
| It says that Senate Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, so they are launching a new portal for whistleblowers to expose wrongdoing and abuses of power in the Trump administration. | ||
| It says that they noted the Whistleblower Protection Act prohibits retaliation against federal employees who disclose evidence of wrongdoing. | ||
| Monday's announcement of the new portal is the latest escalation of Democrats' tactics and pushing back against the Trump administration's effort to freeze spending and cuts to federal programs. | ||
| Just a few minutes left in open form. | ||
| We'll hear from Marietta in Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Marietta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi, I want to talk about karma. | ||
| Karma is what goes around, comes around. | ||
| The white American man bought the colored man and made him their slave and forced them to suffer. | ||
| Now in comes karma, aka Elon Musk. | ||
| The white man has bought the white American man for a little over $250 million. | ||
| And now they are his slaves. | ||
| And he will force them to suffer. | ||
| So now America has finally come together with a common goal. | ||
| And that is we are all slaves now. | ||
| We are all going to suffer. | ||
| We are now all owned by the African man. | ||
| That's narrator. | ||
| We'll go to Russell in Kansas, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Russell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just would like to say that it's about time somebody got into office that's going to take the wall that the Democrats have put up down, open the gates, and allow those people that are less likely to wake up and open their eyes to the real world. | ||
| Things need to be changed, and it's on its way. | ||
| It's about time. | ||
| That's about all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll go to Skip in Pennsylvania, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Skip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| How are you doing this morning? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| I hope you're doing well. | ||
| Okay, I don't know if any of these folks have ever studied the Bible, but please look at the four hidden dynasties: financial, political, educational, and religion. | ||
| It's all coming to an end. | ||
| Thank you very much, and you have a wonderful day. | ||
| Love you guys. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| We'll go to John in Braddington, Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, thanks for working. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'd just like to give the Super Bowl halftime show a super big F. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| Why do we turn in to watch the Super Bowl for everything? | ||
| All the entertainment, the football games. | ||
| I give Trump a A plus for everything he's doing. | ||
| I give C-SPAN about a D. | ||
| And there's no conservatives on C-SPAN. | ||
| And that's what do you give Trump? | ||
| What do you think his personal grade is? | ||
| We'll go to James in Lawrence, Massachusetts, lines for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Tammy. | |
| I just got a couple of quick questions. | ||
| One, have you ever seen on mainstream media or have you ever read the entire word-for-word excuse that Joe Biden used to pardon his entire family? | ||
| And do you ever intend to put that up so that people will know exactly what he said? | ||
| And I know because there's been other hosts that would look up the meaning of fascists during the thing, you know, smuggly and everything else. | ||
| I'm just asking, why don't they ever put out the complete truth about what Joe Biden said of why he was so scared and pardoned his entire family? | ||
| And I appreciate that very much. | ||
| And I thank you very much. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| Bill in Jonesboro, Arkansas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I've got a question. | ||
| Why are the Democrats getting so hostile and upset about anybody investigating any of the government departments for waste? | ||
| Are they afraid they will find that the money is going into their pockets? | ||
| If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it clacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. | ||
| So God bless. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's hear from Roger in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Roger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I have to say, I listen to both sides of this coin. | ||
| And everybody really needs to take a deep breath. | ||
| Everybody wants to save money. | ||
| Efficiency is important in government. | ||
| Nobody argues that. | ||
| It's the way you go about it. | ||
| And under the circumstances, you have to look at somebody goes in and cancels a program, and now we have people all around the world starving, or perhaps virus is breaking out, Ebola, or whatever. | ||
| And there are ways to do things. | ||
| And that's where I find that the Trump is just so abrasive. | ||
| Their whole administration forcing unqualified people into major key positions. | ||
| This is not the way to go about making America more efficient. | ||
| And I'd love to hear what other people have to say about that. | ||
| But Elon Musk, he's a disaster. | ||
| He's a smart guy. | ||
| Nobody's going to argue that. | ||
| But there are ways to do things. | ||
| And this is just, it's outrageous the way the American people have to sit on the sideline and watch this all go down and feeling somewhat helpless. | ||
| And we're not helpless. | ||
| And at the same time, you know, the Republicans all go kiss the ring down in Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| And the fact is, if these Republican senators and congressmen would get off their butt and realize they have the power, not individually, but as a group, these guys could shut up Donald Trump and at least tame, tame the way he wants to change government. | ||
| And that's what we're talking about. | ||
| Taming a beast and for the right reasons. | ||
| So everybody have a great day. | ||
| Great to hear that the Eagles won. | ||
| And really, oh, everybody's got to take a deep breath. | ||
| You take care. | ||
| That was Roger in Wisconsin. | ||
| And our last call in this open forum is Nate in New Jersey, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Nate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| Love this show, as always. | ||
| I just had to call in, and I see so many people are calling in opposition for the hashtag show yesterday at the Super Bowl. | ||
| I just think that is super funny. | ||
| Like where Errol Smith and other white acts are slated to perform at the Super Bowl, no one has an issue. | ||
| But when we have a black artist kind of talking about black culture, black history moth, what we've been through as a community and as a people in this country, there's so much opposition. | ||
| And I just want to let people know that even though they don't like it, black history is American history. | ||
| And I'll step offline. | ||
| And I thank you for your time today. | ||
| That was Nate in New Jersey in our last call in open form. | ||
| Next on Washington Journal, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Singer will join us to discuss the fentanyl administration's approach to addressing it. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This week on the C-SPAN networks, the House and Senate are in session. | |
| The House will consider legislation establishing new penalties for evading U.S. Border Patrol agents in car chases. | ||
| The Senate continues voting on President Trump's cabinet nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. | ||
| The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give the semi-annual monetary policy report before two committees, first on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee. | ||
| Also, C-SPAN continues our comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees. | ||
| The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold hearings for two cabinet nominees. | ||
| On Wednesday, former Oregon Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeReamer, the nominee for Secretary of Labor. | ||
| And on Thursday, for former businesswoman Linda McMahon, who's a nominee for Secretary of Education. | ||
| Also on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the nomination of Kash Patel for director of the FBI. | ||
| Watch 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 john dickinson is one of the most significant founders of the united states who is not well known by all the american public Author Jane E. Calvert is trying to change that with her new biography, Penman of the Founding. | ||
| John Dickinson is known for his nine essays under the title Fabius, published anonymously in newspapers during the time that the states were deciding on whether to approve the new Constitution. | ||
| John Dickinson of Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania was the only founding figure present and active in every phase of the revolution, from the Stamp Act crisis through the ratification of the Constitution. | ||
|
unidentified
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Author Jane Calvert talks about her book, Penman of the Founding, a biography of John Dickinson, 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. | ||
| Listening to programs on C-SPAN through C-SPAN Radio is easy. | ||
| Tell your smart speaker, play C-SPAN Radio, and listen to Washington Journal daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Important public affairs events throughout the day. | ||
| And weekdays, catch Washington today. | ||
| Listen to C-SPAN anytime. | ||
| Just tell your smart speaker, play C-SPAN Radio. | ||
| C-SPAN created by cable. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. is Dr. Jeffrey Singer. | ||
| He is a Health Policy Studies Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. | ||
| Dr. Jeffrey, or Dr. Singer, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| Why don't we start by having you talk about your background both as a practitioner and also as a health policy researcher at Cato? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, I'm originally from New York, as you could probably tell from my accent, but I've been in Arizona now for 45 years and I've been practicing in private practice as a general surgeon for about 40 years. | ||
| And I'm also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, where I work in the Department of Health Policy Studies. | ||
| The Cato Institute is a 501c3 nonprofit, nonpartisan, libertarian think tank that develops public policy proposals based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. | ||
| And I work in the health policy space there. | ||
| Much of your research has focused on the fentanyl epidemic. | ||
| Where are we in this public health battle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if the research holds, we're not anywhere close to seeing things get significantly better. | |
| A study came out by the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, was published in 2018, where they were able to get data from the CDC going way back into the 1970s. | ||
| And what they demonstrated was, looking at the data, that the overdose rate from non-medical use of drugs has been on a steady exponential increase trend since at least the late 1970s. | ||
| The only thing that's changed is that at different points in time, different drugs are predominating among those drugs as the principal cause of overdose deaths. | ||
| So, for example, in the early 2000s, the principal cause of overdoses was diverted prescription pain pills that found their way into the black market and that recreational users like to use. | ||
| Then, as the policy establishment and the political establishment wrongly blamed it on doctors over prescribing prescription pain pills and clamped down on prescription on prescribing, which prescribing levels are now at 1992 levels, then the people using non-medically migrated first to heroin and then heroin got mixed in with fentanyl and then it became fentanyl. | ||
| And we'll see what's next. | ||
| But it's generally been on a steady increase. | ||
| Now, it spiked during the COVID pandemic, along with alcohol use and other substance uses. | ||
| You know, a lot of factors involved there, including the fact that because of border closures and supply chain issues, it was difficult to ship, grow and ship opium, which is processed into heroin. | ||
| So the drug trafficking organizations switched out to fentanyl, which they could synthesize easily in their lab. | ||
| And fentanyl is much more potent and potentially deadly than heroin. | ||
| So that also contributed a spike. | ||
| Now that the pandemic has passed, we're starting to see an ebb in the overdose death rate. | ||
| We're also starting to see a return of heroin into the drug supply. | ||
| So that may also be contributing. | ||
| And we also have seen a lot of states and even federal policies start to accept harm reduction strategies, which have helped also to reduce deaths. | ||
| But we're still at just under $100,000 a year, which is amazingly high. | ||
| And if we continue our restrictionist sort of doubling down on the drug war, then I would predict it's just going to continue either at the same level or higher level. | ||
| Dr. Singer, you mentioned some of the causes and not causes for the crisis. | ||
| Remind our viewers what exactly fentanyl is and what we know about how it impacts the human body. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, first of all, just a little bit of nomenclature. | |
| So there are opioids and they're opietes. | ||
| That's O-P-I-A-T-E-S. | ||
| Opiettes are derived directly naturally from the opium plant. | ||
| So codeine and morphine are opiets. | ||
| Opioids are opiates that have been chemically modified to get a certain desired result. | ||
| So for example, dilaudid, which people have commonly taken, or oxycodone or hydrocodone, vicodin or norco. | ||
| These are opioids. | ||
| They use the original natural substrate of morphine and they make additional molecule, they add additional molecules to get a desired result. | ||
| And those are called semi-synthetic opioids because they still have some of the natural part. | ||
| And then there are completely synthetic opioids that don't require the plant at all and they could just be made in a test tube. | ||
| Fentanyl is one of them. | ||
| Fentanyl has been around since the 1970s. | ||
| We use it every day. | ||
| It's a very important drug. | ||
| It rapidly reduces pain and wears off quickly. | ||
| We use it in anesthesia. | ||
| If anyone has had a general anesthetic or even a procedure where they had intravenous sedation, they likely receive fentanyl. | ||
| We give it to patients recovering in the recovery rooms, post-op and intensive care. | ||
| And we even have fentanyl skin patches. | ||
| One of the brand names is duraegesic that we've been giving to patients for decades, where you put a patch on your skin and over about 72 hours, a small dose slowly gets absorbed. | ||
| And that usually reduces your requirement for oral pain pills because you got that sort of in the background supplementing any pain pills you'll have. | ||
| So it's a very useful drug. | ||
| There are also what we call fentanyl analogs, which are modifications of fentanyl, slightly different than fentanyl. | ||
| And there are a few of them that we use in the medical field, mostly in anesthesia. | ||
| Alfentanyl, Sufentanil, Remifentanil. | ||
| Now, in the black, just like methamphetamine, which by the way is a legal prescribed drug, was developed to treat ADHD. | ||
| And the brand name of the original methamphetamine brand name was Dezoxin. | ||
| We still prescribe it occasionally, even though they're more popular, like Adoral is more popular. | ||
| But like that, fentanyl can be made in a lab, in an underground lab, and then sold on the black market. | ||
| So that's why it's important to distinguish between fentanyl and illicit fentanyl. | ||
| And our guest for the next 35 minutes or so is Dr. Jeffrey Singer. | ||
| He is a health policy studies senior fellow at the Cato Institute. | ||
| He's joining us for our discussion on fentanyl crisis in the U.S. If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling. | ||
| And now the lines are regional for this. | ||
| If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're in the Mountain or Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| There's also a line. | ||
| If you have been impacted by the fentanyl crisis, you can call 202-748-8002. | ||
| And Dr. Singer, you mentioned that it can be made. | ||
| The illicit version can be made chemically. | ||
| Once it's made, how does it get into the U.S. legal or illegal crossings? | ||
| And which borders are we looking at? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, well, first of all, it's very easy to synthesize. | |
| And once it's made, according to the data from the government, roughly 90% is smuggled in by legal U.S. citizens or residents, mostly in cars and trucks through legal border crossings, not, you know, like through the illegal entry points. | ||
| And it doesn't just come in through the southern border crossings. | ||
| It comes in through the airports. | ||
| It comes in through the mail. | ||
| It occasionally comes in through the northern border crossings. | ||
| It's so powerful, and that's why it's gotten popular for the drug trafficking organizations to use that a very small amount can be hidden very easily. | ||
| Most dogs at border crossings are not able to smell fentanyl, so it's easy to smuggle through. | ||
| And a lot of people think that the illegal migration across illegal border crossing areas is related to this, but that's actually a mistake because, like I say, the government's own data shows that most of it comes legally. | ||
| And think about it: if you were in the drug trafficking business, it makes much more sense, especially considering the billions of dollars that this brings you for sales on the black market. | ||
| It makes much more sense to pay a handsome sum to some U.S. citizen who will then drive it through the border and deliver it as directed to someone on the other side and will not be suspected at all by law enforcement than it is to trust somebody who is trying to maybe migrate up to the United States through Central or South America or elsewhere and put some of it in their backpack and tell them when you get across to the other side, | ||
| make sure you hand it over to somebody. | ||
| I mean, it just makes no sense. | ||
| It makes much better business sense to spend that money on hiring people to do it. | ||
| The precursors to make fentanyl originally were mostly coming from labs in China, but as pressure has been placed on the Chinese government to put pressure on these labs that are making the precursors, they're now coming from a lot of other places. | ||
| So we're seeing them made in India. | ||
| And these are from the Drug Enforcement Administration reports on this, that they're coming from India, from Myanmar, from parts of Southeast Asia. | ||
| And just recently, we learned that there are Canadian quote-unquote super labs that are making fentanyl directly, the precursors and the fentanyl. | ||
| Most of them, those super labs are shipping it to drug traffickers in Australia and New Zealand. | ||
| But some is coming south of the border into the United States. | ||
| The point is that when you have drug prohibition, the opportunity to make money by set, and remember, this is not, people seem to talk about it as if, you know, drug trafficking organizations south of the border launch missiles into the United States that explode and release fentanyl into the air that then goes looking around for people to go into and kill. | ||
| That's what they say. | ||
| They're sending fentanyl in the air. | ||
| They're poisoning our country. | ||
| No, we have drug prohibition. | ||
| And just like with alcohol prohibition, as long as there's a market and there are people who want to buy it, the market is going to be met. | ||
| And there's a term we use in the policy world called the iron law of prohibition, which is the harder the enforcement, the harder the drug. | ||
| Prohibition incentivizes the drug traffickers to come up with more potent forms of the drug that are easier to smuggle in smaller sizes. | ||
| And once you've taken the risk of smuggling them, you could subdivide into more units to sell. | ||
| So you get more bang for the buck. | ||
| During alcohol prohibition, we weren't smuggling in beer and wine into this country. | ||
| They were smuggling in whiskey. | ||
| And in fact, there's a real life example of the Iron Law prohibition. | ||
| It probably happened yesterday during the Super Bowl. | ||
| When people are tailgating in football games, they're drinking beer and wine in the parking lot, but you're not allowed to bring any alcohol into the stadium. | ||
| Most people don't smuggle in beer and wine. | ||
| They smuggle in the hard stuff in flasks. | ||
| So it's our drug war actually that is making this happen. | ||
| So when the source of prescription paint pills that found their way into the black market dried up, the users were then sold heroin. | ||
| And then around 2012, the traffickers realized that if they add a little bit of fentanyl to the heroin, it'll make it more potent so they can smuggle it in tinier packages. | ||
| And so it started appearing in heroin around 2012 and gradually increased in amount. | ||
| And we saw this originally show up in the eastern part of the United States and work its way west because the eastern part, most of the heroin smuggled in was called white powder heroin from places like in Afghanistan and Asia. | ||
| And that's easier to mix fentanyl in with, whereas the heroin coming in from south of the border is mostly black tar heroin, which you can mix it in with, but it's more difficult. | ||
| But that's why it made its way in that direction. | ||
| So by the time the COVID pandemic hit, there were supply chain problems. | ||
| The ingredients to make heroin, because you have to convert morphine to diacetyl morphine, which is heroin. | ||
| And you need acetic anhydride. | ||
| And there was a backlog in the supply chain for acetic anhydride, which by the way is used for other things like making aspirin. | ||
| And it was also getting difficult to ship opium around the world because of all the border closures due to the pandemic. | ||
| So the cartels switched to fentanyl because that was easier to make and an abundant supply. | ||
| And then for a few years during the pandemic, that was almost exclusively the opioids smuggled into this country. | ||
| So many non-medical users of, let's say, heroin, they weren't necessarily thrilled that they were getting fentanyl because it's a completely different experience. | ||
| But they had a dependency and they took what they can get. | ||
| And then over time, their tastes would change and they start to like fentanyl. | ||
| Now that those problems have abated, we're starting to see heroin reappear again because we have a very healthy black market. | ||
| And if there's a demand for heroin, the demand would be met. | ||
| So there was just a report in Axios about a month or so ago that we're seeing a big boom in heroin again in the United States. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Jim in Texas on the line for impacted by the fentanyl. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just want to start out. | ||
| People may be surprised that whether you are prescribed opioids for chronic pain or whether you're recreational user, the rate of developing severe opioid use disorder is about 7%, regardless of which of the populations you're part of. | ||
| So I think most people think that if you use opiates even one time, you're probably going to turn into an addict. | ||
| The other thing is, I mean, we have created the crisis, the fentanyl crisis, because of, you know, started out with trying to reduce prescriptions and then rescheduling of Hydrocoda and things like that. | ||
| And when you think about it, if 8%, 8.5% of the adult population suffers from chronic pain, this has a huge impact. | ||
| There's a lot of people out there that unnecessarily, you know, either go to illicit drugs, heroin, fentanyl, simply because it's become unaffordable to go through the rigmarole of getting going to pain management doctor, which in fact I'm currently driving to a pain management doctor right now. | ||
| Now, I've had chronic back pain for decades. | ||
| It used to cost me about $300 a year, everything, doctors, prescriptions, whatnot, to address my chronic pain. | ||
| Now, it's costing over $100,000 a year. | ||
| Now, of course, I don't pay all of that. | ||
| The VA colors most of that. | ||
| So you may have your comments on that. | ||
| What is the solution? | ||
| Do we reschedule the drugs? | ||
| I don't think we make them all legal, but let me hear what you have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, thank you, Caller. | ||
| Well, first, I want to correct you about the addiction rate. | ||
| Actually, this is government data. | ||
| And if you could check out my blog post, I've written about this a lot. | ||
| According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which conducts the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, they've been tracking the addiction rate to prescription pain pills, for example, for adults aged 18 and over since 2002. | ||
| And the addiction rate to prescription pain pills for adults has never been higher than 0.8%. | ||
| The population is growing, so 0.8% may become a bigger raw number, but it's never been more than 0.8%. | ||
| And they've also tracked that for heroin and for other opioids. | ||
| And it's all less than 1%. | ||
| I know you're not supposed to say that because they've had a lot of movies on Hulu and Netflix suggesting that that's not true, but you could go to the website of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and find out for yourself. | ||
| And opioid use disorder is a broad term. | ||
| So there's addiction, which comes under that umbrella. | ||
| And addiction is defined as compulsive use despite negative consequences. | ||
| And you see that with alcohol use disorder, gambling addiction. | ||
| So in other words, even though you want to stop, it's an underlying compulsive behavioral disorder that makes you continue to do it and you know it's harming you. | ||
| Also under the umbrella of opioid use disorder is dependency, which is a completely different thing. | ||
| Opioids are a kind of drug that when you've taken them steadily for a couple of weeks, then your body adjusts physiologically. | ||
| And if you suddenly stop taking it, you can go into a withdrawal reaction. | ||
| And that comes under opioid use disorder as well, but you really don't have this compulsive disorder. | ||
| So I've had surgical patients who were critically ill and in intensive care for weeks, and they became dependent on the morphine they were getting intravenously. | ||
| And we just tapered them off of it gradually over a couple of months so to avoid withdrawal. | ||
| And then they never craved it. | ||
| They never felt that they needed it again. | ||
| And there are a lot of other drugs, by the way, that cause dependency, including antidepressants, beta blockers, which are commonly prescribed for high blood pressure. | ||
| If you abruptly stop that when you've been on it for a while, you could actually get a fatal withdrawal reaction. | ||
| You could have a stroke or a heart attack. | ||
| So dependency and addiction are two different things. | ||
| Now, as far as the pain management issue is concerned, unfortunately, because our policymakers have wrongly concluded that this is all the fault of doctors treating pain, and to be honest, there have been some dishonest doctors out there who are using their medical degree to sell prescriptions. | ||
| And some of them are high-profile cases. | ||
| Of course, I don't blame that on the chemical. | ||
| I blame it on prohibition because you can make a lot more money selling prescriptions for painkillers than you can Taking care of a patient in your office because prohibition makes it a very lucrative business for people who want to be dishonest. | ||
| So, anyway, because of that, doctors have been put under pressure by law enforcement, by state laws, and they're afraid to prescribe pain pills now. | ||
| And in fact, the latest data show that we're now prescribing at below 1992 levels, which is back in the days when the National Institute on Drug Abuse was urging us to prescribe more because they said we were under-prescribing. | ||
| And the overdose rate, of course, has gone up. | ||
| So, a lot of pain patients, you know, not only have we obviously not done anything to reduce the overdose rate by doing this, but we made a lot of pain patients go untreated or be abruptly tapered by their doctors who are afraid they'll get a visit from law enforcement. | ||
| And some of them, in desperation, are going to the black market to get their supply. | ||
| And the dangers of the black market are that you don't know what you're going to get. | ||
| So, you may think you're purchasing oxycodone, which is what you usually use, but it could turn out that it's counterfeit and it's fentanyl. | ||
| And that's happening all too frequently. | ||
| Also, a lot of pain patients are committing suicide. | ||
| There's been a doctor Stefan Kertesh at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, has been keeping track of that. | ||
| I hope that answers your question. | ||
| And Dr. Singer mentioned a blog post. | ||
| You can find his writings online at Cato.org. | ||
| We'll go next to Heather in Canton, Ohio, line for impacted by the fentanyl crisis. | ||
| Good morning, Heather. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a question. | ||
| My brother is a fentanyl addict, and he is insane. | ||
| Even if he doesn't have it, he still thinks that he's getting zapped, like if he touches metal. | ||
| He actually mutilated himself down there, thinking that he had bugs in it. | ||
| And I'm wondering if he'll ever be okay again. | ||
| I really feel terrible about what your brother is going through. | ||
| He may have some underlying psychological disorder as well as addiction to the fentanyl. | ||
| So it's hard for me to say without getting familiar with his case. | ||
| But, you know, some people turn to drug use as a form of self-medication for whatever underlying mental health condition they have. | ||
| So that may be part of your brother's problem. | ||
| It's rare for just using an opioid continuously. | ||
| I'm not aware of it causing you to develop psychosis. | ||
| It's not been associated with that. | ||
| Let's hear from Dennis, also in Ohio on the line for impacted by fentanyl crisis. | ||
| Good morning, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Hey, I'm calling. | ||
| The reason I'm calling is because Trump can do anything he wants to do to try to stop this, but the American people are hooked on illegal drugs. | ||
| They want it. | ||
| So they're going to do anything they can to get it. | ||
| Which, of course, if they can't get it the way they want, our crime rate goes up, and it's just a huge problem. | ||
| I don't know how you're going to solve this. | ||
| Even if he tries to stop coming through the border, American people want these drugs, and they're going to do whatever they can to get them. | ||
| So what do we do? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's what we, well, in 1920, when we instituted alcohol prohibition, we had a whole lot of people dying from tainted bootleg alcohol. | ||
| We had a whole lot of corrupt politicians. | ||
| We had the growth of organized crime. | ||
| We had a crime wave in cities where gangs were fighting over territory for distribution of alcohol. | ||
| And we kept tightening up the border. | ||
| This time, the border was coming through the northern border where whiskey was made in Canada. | ||
| And finally, in 1933, we got smart and said, you know what, this was a bad idea. | ||
| Let's make it legal and regulated. | ||
| So now, for example, when I go to my drug dealer, which is the nearby liquor store here in my area of town, I happen to like bourbon. | ||
| And when I go to the aisle that has bourbon on the shelf and I look at a bourbon bottle that says 45% alcohol, it never even enters my mind that maybe they're lying to me. | ||
| Maybe it's 50% alcohol. | ||
| Maybe it's got fentanyl in it. | ||
| That's because it's legal. | ||
| And if a teenager goes into that store, the retailer is going to seek ID to make sure the teenager is 21 or over because the dealer doesn't want to lose his liquor license. | ||
| So that's a good way to keep it. | ||
| It doesn't work 100% of the time. | ||
| There's always fake IDs and things, but it's a good way to reduce access to young people. | ||
| So the answer is that we need to end the war on drugs. | ||
| As long as people are going to want this, a healthy black market will exist and organizations will always find a way. | ||
| You could put walls on borders. | ||
| You could do all sorts of things, but it's sort of like water going downhill in a brook. | ||
| You could add boulders to different parts of the brook, but the water is going to find its way around the boulders and trickle downstream because gravity takes the water downstream. | ||
| So that's, and like I said, the iron law prohibition. | ||
| The harder you enforce it, the more you're ensuring the fact that something even more deadly and dangerous is going to come around. | ||
| For example, in the last couple of years, we've all heard that the cartels have been adding the veterinary tranquilizer, xylosine, to fentanyl. | ||
| I think the DEA reported about a year ago that 23% of C's fentanyl had xylosine in it. | ||
| The users referred to it as trank. | ||
| That's not even an opioid, so you can't reverse it, but it potentiates the effect of the fentanyl. | ||
| So again, you could smuggle it in smaller sizes. | ||
| And now there's another synthetic opioid, not in any way chemically related to fentanyl. | ||
| The category is called nitazines. | ||
| It was actually developed in the 1950s by a company that's now called Novartis, but never brought to market. | ||
| And since around 2019, it's been making its way into the black market. | ||
| In fact, the end of 2023 in the UK, they were reporting that there was a huge amount of nitazine showing up in the black market there. | ||
| And it's been reported in toxicology studies here as well. | ||
| It's just not a lot of labs are aware of it, so they're not all testing for it. | ||
| So if it gets too difficult to make fentanyl, the cartels will then move over to nitazine. | ||
| There's always going to be something else. | ||
| So my answer would be the ideal solution would be to end the war on drugs, treat these. | ||
| These are randomly decided to be illegal. | ||
| Cocaine was legal. | ||
| It was put in Coca-Cola and Moxie up until 1914. | ||
| Starting in 1914, we decided to make certain types of drugs federally illegal, and that's when the problems began. | ||
| And if we only learn the lessons that we learned with alcohol prohibition and make it legal and regulated, that would put the cartels, they'll have to go in, well, they're already in multiple other lines of work anyway, including money laundering and selling DVDs and smuggling humans. | ||
| So they'll just have to concentrate on those other industries, just like when alcohol prohibition ended in the United States, the organized crime of the United States moved over to things like drugs. | ||
| So that's the real answer. | ||
| In the short run, if that's not politically feasible right now, at least remove government obstacles to harm reduction strategies. | ||
| There are many states, in five states in this country, including Texas, which is a huge population. | ||
| If you wanted to hand out fentanyl test strips to people in an area where you know there was a lot of drug use, so they could test what they bought to see if there's fentanyl in it, you can get arrested because that's considered distributing illegal drug paraphernalia. | ||
| So In New York City, since the end of 2021, they've had the city has permitted two overdose prevention centers to operate where people come inside, they use their drugs in a clean, safe environment, they get to test it first, and there are people standing nearby to rescue them in case if they overdose. | ||
| Well, that's actually against the law federally. | ||
| There's a thing called the Crackhouse Statute that doesn't allow that, but it's been operated, these two organizations have been operating since the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, and they've already reversed more than 1,300 overdoses. | ||
| These are people who would be dead. | ||
| Now one is opening up. | ||
| It's just opened actually in the state of Rhode Island that the state government approved. | ||
| And the state legislature just approved one that they're working on getting online in Vermont. | ||
| But that's federally against the law. | ||
| In the previous administration, the Justice Department exercised prosecutorial discretion and chose not to prosecute. | ||
| But there's no telling what will happen in this administration. | ||
| So if you can't make this legal and learn the lessons of alcohol prohibition, then at least let organizations that want to help people minimize the risk of overdose death and the spread of disease like HIV and hepatitis from shared needles and that kind of thing. | ||
| At least get out of the way of people who want to do that by removing the laws that don't allow that. | ||
| Dr. Singer, to your point, you're talking about possible solutions. | ||
| The House has passed the HALT Act last week that would permanently classify fentanyl-like substances into Schedule I. Explain what that is, and do you think that would help at all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, actually, coincidentally, I have an article in Reason.com that went live this morning. | |
| And the title of the article is, Is the HALT-Fentanyl Act Delusional or Just Performance Art? | ||
| And the right answer is it's both. | ||
| So the HALT-Fentanyl Act, well, first of all, in 2018, the Drug Enforcement Administration, through a temporary emergency order, said that all of these analogs of fentanyl, other than the ones that are already FDA approved and being used, like I mentioned earlier, from now on, all the other ones will be Schedule I. Schedule I means no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, and they're totally banned. | ||
| They're not allowed to be prescribed or anything. | ||
| And that order was extended a couple of times by Congress, but is scheduled to expire in March of this year. | ||
| So the House just passed an act that will basically make that order permanent, so it wouldn't expire. | ||
| So if they herald this as a big change, that's where it's the performance art because all it's doing is continuing what has been unsuccessful since 2018 in reducing overdose deaths. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Now, the delusional part, I think we've already alluded to, which is you can't stop this. | ||
| But on top of that, heroin is Schedule I. | ||
| It's been Schedule I since the Controlled Substance Act was passed in 1970, 70. | ||
| Cannabis is Schedule I. | ||
| We don't see any cannabis in this country at all, right? | ||
| And we don't see any heroin use in this country because there's Schedule I. Psychedelics are Schedule I. | ||
| We don't see any of that, do we? | ||
| So the point is that just making it Schedule I'm deluded if you think that's going to suddenly do something. | ||
| In addition to that, there are other features of the Act that will also be harmful. | ||
| So for example, when a drug is Schedule I, it's very difficult if you wanted to do clinical research trials to see if they could have medical use. | ||
| We all know cannabis has had accepted medical use since antiquity. | ||
| There have been a lot of studies now, including government-approved ones, showing psychedelics can be very helpful in treating addiction, depression, PTSD. | ||
| But in order to get permission to do research on a Schedule I drug, there are a whole lot of regulatory hoops. | ||
| It's highly restricted. | ||
| Now, this Halt Fentanyl Act recognizes that. | ||
| So they had a couple of provisions in there to try to mitigate some of the restrictions, but there's still restrictions. | ||
| And so if you're in the pharmaceutical industry, it's just too much of a hassle. | ||
| Those restrictions are a deterrent for you wanting to go do research using those drugs to see if they can have any therapeutic uses. | ||
| You'll just do research on other drugs that you don't have those hassles. | ||
| And for all we know, I mean, we don't know. | ||
| Maybe one of these fentanyl analogs that's now Schedule I might be useful for treating addiction or overdose deaths or overdose prevention or something. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| We will never know because we're not going to, it's going to pretty much be impossible to do studies on it. | ||
| And also the HALT Fentanyl Act extends mandatory minimum sentences to people who are found in possession of these Schedule I fentanyl analogs. | ||
| And, you know, the research has been clear for decades that mandatory minimums do nothing to deter drug use or drug dealing. | ||
| It's so lucrative, the risks involved with dealing drugs are already baked into the decision drug traffickers make to traffic it. | ||
| Plus, none of them ever think they're going to get caught. | ||
| We'll go to Tina in Pennsylvania, line for impacted by fentanyl crisis. | ||
| Good morning, Tina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Not necessarily fentanyl. | ||
| I lost my son pre-fentanyl, lethal dose of oxycontin and some other drug. | ||
| But I am a pain patient. | ||
| I belong to the doctor-patient forum. | ||
| And I want to say that there is such a bad stigma on people such as myself who have to take this stuff. | ||
| I don't take it to get high. | ||
| I take it to take the edge off of my pain. | ||
| I am riddled with metal. | ||
| I've got two bad knees, ankles. | ||
| I've broken my bones. | ||
| I can't tell you how many times. | ||
| The problem that I'm seeing is these unconstitutional pain clinics. | ||
| Like with me, I'm allergic to cortisone. | ||
| I've had, I can't tell you how many shots in my back, neck, and knees for cortisone. | ||
| The doctor made me prove my allergy, which sent me into anaphylactic shock, which sent me to the emergency room, and I almost died. | ||
| The problem is you have these people getting the legal prescriptions, and they're selling them. | ||
| Why aren't we locking them up? | ||
| Because eventually they're going to kill somebody like they killed my kid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm tired of the DEA being in the doctor's office with me. | |
| I've met with the DEA. | ||
| I save everything, every MRI, every CT, everything. | ||
| I cannot go. | ||
| I'm not going to spend the rest of my life laying in a bed because I can't move. | ||
| And it just, it makes me so angry that people that are far worse than me can't get the help that they need because we have idiots on the street that want to get high. | ||
| Put them in rehab. | ||
| There are empty prisons all over Pennsylvania. | ||
| Don't hand them a needle. | ||
| Get them clean. | ||
| Give them something to look forward to. | ||
| I know if I ever run out of my medication, I'm not going on the street to look for any because I'm not an addict. | ||
| I'm physically dependent to them because of my back, my neck, and my knees. | ||
| But I'm not an addict. | ||
| Tina, we'll get a response from Dr. Singer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, I empathize with your problem. | |
| Part of the problem is that we doctors are being pressured by law enforcement, by lawmakers, into treating pain with other means other than opioids. | ||
| And if we start, and every state has these prescription drug databases now, so if we start prescribing opioids that law enforcement thinks is too much, all of a sudden we can get a visit from law enforcement. | ||
| And pharmacies are just as worried. | ||
| So sometimes we doctors will prescribe an opioid and the pharmacist won't fill it because they're worried. | ||
| So I wrote a white paper about this with a colleague from the Cato Institute, Trevor Burris, two years ago, called Cops Practicing Medicine, which I encourage viewers to go. | ||
| You can access it online where we get into this. | ||
| But this basically, like the caller was kind of intimating, this is cops telling doctors how to practice medicine. | ||
| So when you go to see a pain management specialist, the pressure is on them to try everything short of an opioid prescription, which means you get a whole lot of procedures done, which may not be effective. | ||
| And then there are also the financial incentives because each one of those procedures is billable and they get paid for it. | ||
| So that's part of the problem. | ||
| Now, I disagree when you say put them in jail for using drugs illegally on the street. | ||
| That's prohibition. | ||
| That's not going to work. | ||
| Substance use disorder is a behavioral disorder, but some people actually like using drugs. | ||
| In fact, research shows that 80 to 90% of people who engage in the use of illicit substances over the age when they begin using when they're mature already, like in their mid-20s and up, because when you're under 25 or so, your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. | ||
| So you don't have the kind of the executive functions that you have when you're fully adult. | ||
| But 80 to 90% of adults who use illicit drugs don't become addicted and don't even become dependent. | ||
| They just use occasionally, but they like to use. | ||
| And college dorms for years, and even still now, I'm sure, you know, that at certain parties, people would use diverted prescription pain pills like oxycodone or oxycontin. | ||
| So there's no, I don't think it's right morally to put somebody in a cage because they chose to alter their consciousness with something other than alcohol. | ||
| You know, if it's alcohol, they don't go to jail, but if it's oxycodone, they do. | ||
| I don't think that's right. | ||
| Also, the evidence is that if you force somebody to go into treatment, not only is that doing something without their informed consent and therefore immoral, but there's evidence showing that it actually could be counterproductive. | ||
| A significant number of people, if you don't want to go into rehab, then you go through the order, and when you get out, your underlying compulsive disorder hasn't been corrected. | ||
| So you resume using, but you use at the dose level that you remember would used to give you the desired result, but you've lost your tolerance because you haven't used for several weeks. | ||
| So you're more prone to overdose. | ||
| Also, the research shows 80 to 90% of people who have addiction to these drugs began using when they were adolescents, when their brain was not fully matured. | ||
| So we're dealing with two separate issues, adults versus minors. | ||
| And I don't think you should put an adult in a cage because they chose to use something other than alcohol to get a buzz. | ||
| I think that's their personal decision. | ||
| As long as they, just like with alcohol, don't get behind the wheel of a car where you could jeopardize the life of others, especially if you're using it in the privacy of your own home, maybe with some friends. | ||
| That's your business. | ||
| It shouldn't be, they shouldn't be put in a cage for that. | ||
| We only have a couple of minutes left, but we have time for one last quick question. | ||
| We'll go to Mike in Massachusetts, line for impacted by fentanyl crisis. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
| Oh, it looks like we lost Mike. | ||
| Go to Nixon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Nixon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tammy. | |
| Good morning, Doc. | ||
| Doc, my wife has lupus, and she's on oxygen. | ||
| She's on various pain meds, what's not, and the doctor prescribed her fentanyl and she had an allergic reaction that she's basically hallucinated. | ||
| Say, I don't want to take that anymore, Doc. | ||
| So I basically told the doc, all these pain meds you're prescribing, my wife, I don't want my wife addicted to all these medications. | ||
| Is there any way you can get to the root of the problem of what's causing her to have a flare-up? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He looks at me as if he don't know anything about what I'm talking about. | ||
| I asked him, What's your background in studying lupus? | ||
| He said, I have nothing. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Your wife's case is a rare case. | ||
| And I'm basically going back to school dealing with your wife. | ||
| So I basically say, what can we do to take her off all these pain meds? | ||
| Because I don't want my wife addicted to the pain meds. | ||
| And when she does have a flare-up, I rush her to the emergency room and they're looking at her like, okay, here she comes again. | ||
| She wants morphine. | ||
| She wants this, as if she's addicted to these things. | ||
| What's not what advances have we made in lupus? | ||
| I'm not a specialist in rheumatologic diseases. | ||
| I'm a general surgeon. | ||
| And I suggest you get your wife to see a rheumatologist. | ||
| Those are medical specialists who specialize in lupus and other connective tissue diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, Shogun's disease, a host of diseases. | ||
| And that is a person who would know much more about how to treat your wife's problem. | ||
| Regarding her reaction to the fentanyl, you know, every single drug that exists in some people will have, you know, idiosyncratic reactions or side effects. | ||
| So a lot of people, for example, when they take opioids, they find that they get nauseated. | ||
| But then other people, it doesn't nauseate them. | ||
| So there's a lot of, it's important for people to understand, and our lawmakers don't, that one size does not fit all. | ||
| Everybody's got their own physiology, their own liver function, their own kidney function, different medications in their system that interact with opioids and have a lot to do with the effect they have. | ||
| So that for one person, five milligrams may be enough to relieve the pain. | ||
| Another person may need 10 milligrams of oxycodone. | ||
| So I really, I couldn't give you advice regarding lupus, but I could recommend that you get your wife to a specialist, which would be a rheumatologist. | ||
| Our guest is Dr. Jeffrey Singer. | ||
| He's a healthcare policy studies senior fellow at the Cato Institute, also author of the book, Your Body, Your Healthcare, which is coming out in April. | ||
| Dr. Singer, thank you so much for being with us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| That is it for today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We appreciate our guests and our callers. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific, with another program. | ||
| Until then, have a good day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Capitol Hill, the house gavels in later today at noon Eastern. |