| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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COP and Congressional Democrats' opposition strategy. | |
| Then public historian and author Jason Steinhauer on comparisons between President Trump and former Republican President William McKinley in office from 1897 to 1901. | ||
| Washington Journal, join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
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| Today, the first 100 days of Ulysses Grant's presidency. | ||
| Grant was a famous Civil War general who won the White House in 1868. | ||
| His campaign slogan was, Let us have peace. | ||
| Issues during Grant's first 100 days included reconstruction, the payment of Civil War debt, voting rights, and the fight against the KKK. | ||
| Watch American History TV's series, First 100 Days, today at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| On Capitol Hill, the Senate gavels in Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Senators will vote to confirm Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick to be Commerce Secretary and later in the week, Kash Patel to serve as FBI Director. | ||
| The U.S. House continues its recess over the President's Day holiday. | ||
| Members will return for votes on Monday, February 24th. | ||
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| The Trump administration is continuing its review of federal agencies laying off thousands of civil servants this week, even as legal challenges over the actions and authority of Elon Musk and his Doge team continue to work through the courts. | ||
| And in international news, the Munich Security Conference is ongoing in Germany with Russia's war in Ukraine dominating the discussion. | ||
| This morning, we want to hear your top news story of the week. | ||
| Our phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
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| Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from. | ||
| And on social media, we're at facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Now, turning to that Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance addressed the crowd yesterday as reported here in the Washington Post. | ||
| Vance exports MAGA message. | ||
| Chides audience of European leaders. | ||
| He finds common cause with anti-migrant parties. | ||
| JD Vance made his vice presidential debut on the global security stage Friday in a scolding speech here, pressing Europe's centrist leaders to move over to accommodate the rising anti-migration nationalist voices they have at times sought to block from power. | ||
| In his speech, Vance fully waded into nationalist politics, blasting an audience of European prime ministers and presidents for failing to listen to their own voters. | ||
| That speech was on Friday. | ||
| Today, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky addressed the crowd in Munich, and among the points he made, he said the time has come for a European army, as reported there in Politico. | ||
| Let's listen to a clip of the Ukrainian president. | ||
| Yesterday here in Munich, the U.S. Vice President made it clear. | ||
| Decades, he said, decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending. | ||
| From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in Europe and I'm sure you believe too. | ||
| And I urge you to act for your own sake and for the sake of Europe, people of Europe, your nations, your houses, your children, and our shared future. | ||
| For this, Europe has to become self-sufficient, united by common strengths, Ukrainian and European. | ||
| Right now, Ukraine's army, supported by global aid, thank you so much, is holding back Russia. | ||
| But if not us, then who will stop them? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Let's be honest, now we can't rule out the possibility that America might say no to Europe on issues that threaten it. | ||
| Many, many leaders have talked about Europe that needs its own military, an army, an army of Europe. | ||
| And I and I really, I really believe that time has come. | ||
| The armed forces of Europe must be created. | ||
| Turning to domestic news and the ongoing legal challenges against Elon Musk's efforts to reduce the size of the federal government. | ||
| As reported here on Fox News, a judge has extended an order blocking Musk's Doge team from the Treasury payment system. | ||
| A federal judge on Friday extended a temporary order that blocks Elon Musk's Department of Government efficiency team from accessing payment systems within the Treasury Department. | ||
| The extension comes after 19 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over Doge's access to the payment system, which has information about American Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits, tax refund information, and much more. | ||
| The lawsuit claims the Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department's central payment system at the Trump administration's behest. | ||
| Now, we're looking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| We will start with Darrell in Columbus, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Daryl. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Kimberly, how are you doing? | |
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good, good. | |
| Yeah, my top news story. | ||
| Well, I got a couple of them. | ||
| First of all, overseas with JD Vance, if you heard the whole clip with his speech, he did not rule out troops on the ground over in Ukraine to protect minerals. | ||
| I mean, this is crazy. | ||
| And also, the Treasury Secretary trying to get Zelinsky to sign some paperwork for some of the minerals as well. | ||
| Trump has put a cabinet in there that is just like him. | ||
| Crazy as a bat. | ||
| And let me jump off to another. | ||
| Before you do that, Daryl, I just want to give our audience a bit more information about what you're referencing in terms of minerals. | ||
| Here's a story here in NPR: Access to Ukraine's rare earths may help keep U.S. aid flowing. | ||
| As the Trump administration publicly hammers out its plans on ending Russia's war on Ukraine, it's also pressing Ukraine for deals in exchange for more aid. | ||
| One deal in the works would hand the U.S. the right to mine critical minerals, including rare earth metals, which are used in a variety of products, including laptops, electric vehicle batteries, and cancer treatment drugs. | ||
| So I just wanted to give folks some context for what you're talking about there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| And let me jump off to another topic. | ||
| Let me come over here in the United States. | ||
| Eric Adams. | ||
| Governor Kathy Hokkel, she should have removed him. | ||
| Eric Adams has really got himself caught up in a real bad situation because he's really on a pretzel now, dealing with Trump, Pam Bundy, and Tom Holman. | ||
| These guys are going to use him to go against his own city. | ||
| And Kathy Hokle should go ahead and do it now. | ||
| Go ahead and remove him because this thing has become something like the Manchurian candidate or something like the Godfather. | ||
| This is just crazy. | ||
| And then my last thing before I land my plane, but poor lady is over to agriculture. | ||
| She's going to have these farmers in a mess. | ||
| They already got stuff that's rotting on the ground and all that kind of thing because of the USAID situation. | ||
| And these folks that's going to be in a bad situation I tell all of us in this country, buckle up, get ready, because we gave this man this power, and he's really giving it to us now. | ||
| Thank you so much, Kimley. | ||
| You look pretty today, too. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Vincent is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Vincent is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. | ||
| And actually, I've lost Vincent. | ||
| Let's go to Paul in Boston, Massachusetts on our line for independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Paul. | |
| Yes, hi. | ||
| The headline of the week that most captured me was the 12 o'clock ultimatum that Donald Trump, President Trump suggested, suggested that he was in favor of the 12 o'clock to release the remainder of the hostages by Hamas. | ||
| And a bunch of UN leaders, they got together and they came out and they seemed to be against that. | ||
| I realized that was tied to him a suggestion about maybe the Arab countries in America should get together and try to constructively clear out Gaza and redevelop it, maybe get back to the bargaining table and talk about it. | ||
| But I was wondering about, you know, to me, that sounded like a good idea. | ||
| Just release all the hostages. | ||
| I mean, that's a good start. | ||
| That's an act of faith. | ||
| And that was pretty much the headlines that captured my attention all week. | ||
| I will point out that this morning, among the hostages, there were three additional hostages released by Hamas in Gaza, including, as reported here in the Washington Post, an American hostage freed by Hamas in the latest exchange amid the tense ceasefire. | ||
| And going on, it says, Hamas on Saturday handed over three hostages, among them an American citizen, and Israel began releasing Palestinian prisoners in a highly scrutinized six exchange days after the tenuous one-month ceasefire appeared on the brink of collapse. | ||
| Herbert is in Michigan on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Herbert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd just like to talk about NATO here. | |
| I think most Americans do not realize why NATO was formed to begin with. | ||
| What is happening right now is Donald Trump is one of the ignorantest men that ever ran this country. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Bottom line, Russia and China, Iran, Iraq, and all these countries that hate the U.S., most of them because of our own doing, are banding together to push the United States off to itself. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And if Donald Trump abandons NATO, we are on our own. | ||
| This is what's happening. | ||
| And the American people are so stupid they're going along. | ||
| But that's the bottom line. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And when it comes to this Gaza strip, people need to realize Netanyahu is a very evil man. | ||
| I believe he planned this attack on his own country for this very reason. | ||
| He's been trying to take over Gaza for years. | ||
| And this is a perfect example. | ||
| They need to do a little research here on this and find out why that attack actually happened. | ||
| Israel and the United States are not innocent. | ||
| So I haven't seen any validated reporting that Netanyahu was responsible for Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. | ||
| Where are you seeing that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, actually, I mean, ask yourself, you know, I live in Michigan. | |
| But okay, if Canada attacked the United States, Suffrage Air National Base would be here in five minutes. | ||
| Why did it take 12 hours for the military to respond? | ||
| Something stinks the high heaven here. | ||
| This man is involved. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Melvin is in Richmond, Virginia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Melvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| How are you today? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
| What's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as always, Kimberly, last time I called 30 days ago, I think I mentioned to you about my thoughts that Elon Musk used his computer knowledge to fix this election. | |
| Okay? | ||
| And of course, we know that there is really no proof of that. | ||
| But at the least, he spent $250 million to get Trump elected. | ||
| And of course, so my top story, as always, is Elon Musk and his appearance in the White House this week with his little son running around acting crazy and how Trump reacted to that. | ||
| But Elon is a dangerous man. | ||
| He is basically the man that is going to be, and a lot of people already call him the shadow president of the United States because Trump has put the power in his hands to go out and disrupt all of these departments in our government for money's sake. | ||
| You know, everything that Trump does is about money. | ||
| You know, save a dollar here, save a dollar there. | ||
| But the idea always is to save this money so he can give tax cuts to the rich. | ||
| No one ever mentions what they're going to do with all this money that they're going to supposed to save by cutting all these jobs. | ||
| But the real idea, of course, is to line their pockets with the money, the quote-unquote money that they save from shutting this country down governmental-wise. | ||
| And I feel that Elon Musk is going to take this same playbook that he used to get Trump elected, and he's going to get other right-wing candidates elected all around the world. | ||
| So in essence, he will be the de facto, not only the richest man in the world, but the most powerful man in the world. | ||
| If you noticed this week, and maybe you can bring the crowd up on the story about him over in Germany using his influence to get the right-wing people, I think they were even, quote-unquote, they have some Nazi ties, you know, to get them elected. | ||
| And he's going to take that same playbook, use it in France, use it in Canada, and use it in England, and NATO will no longer exist. | ||
| Your thoughts, please? | ||
| Well, I will bring up an article related to what you were just mentioning about Elon Musk in Germany. | ||
| Here's a story in Politico. | ||
| Musk will face consequences for interfering in the German election, says the frontrunner Mertz. | ||
| The next German government's response could be political, legal, or possibly target Musk's gigafactory in Berlin, the center-right leader said in an interview. | ||
| And let's go down into that article. | ||
| Tesla Chief Musk caused an outcry in Germany by throwing his weight behind the far-right alternative for Germany in the run-up to next week's vote. | ||
| He first endorsed the AFD in a post on X, the social media platform he owns, last December. | ||
| It was followed by a live stream chat with party leader Alice Whedle and a virtual appearance at a party conference. | ||
| So that is Musk's actions internationally, raising some pushback. | ||
| But here in the United States, as our caller mentioned, Musk appeared in the White House this week with President Trump and was asked by reporters about the actions of the Doge team. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone's very quiet, brother. | |
| Your detractors, Mr. Musk. | ||
| I have to what? | ||
| Including a lot of Democrats. | ||
| I have detractors? | ||
| You do, sir. | ||
| I don't believe it. | ||
| Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a non-transparent way. | ||
| What's your response to that criticism? | ||
| Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. | ||
| The public voted to have a majority of the public vote voting for President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We won the House. | |
| We won the Senate. | ||
| The people voted for major government reform. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There should be no doubt about that. | |
| That was on the campaign. | ||
| The president spoke about that at every rally. | ||
| The people voted for major government reform, and that's what people are going to get. | ||
| They're going to get what they voted for. | ||
| And a lot of times, you know, people that don't get what they voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's what democracy is all about. | |
| Back to your calls for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Sean is in Stacy, Minnesota, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Sean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to mention something that probably a lot of people haven't heard of, and that is targeted individuals and targeted justice, known as the Havana syndrome, or known as anonymous health incidents. | |
| People need to take this serious. | ||
| 100%, this is happening. | ||
| Targeted individuals. | ||
| It needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed immediately. | ||
| So that's just what I wanted to say. | ||
| People need to take this story serious. | ||
| I know where a lot of this corrupt money that they're not spending, they're spending on this program. | ||
| So, anyways, that's it. | ||
| Targeted individuals. | ||
| It is happening, and it is absolutely a horrendous program. | ||
| It's happening to innocent American citizens. | ||
| Sean, I just want to be clear. | ||
| So, when you mentioned the Havana syndrome, I'm going to read a little bit of an AP article, and then I just want to make sure that I understand your point. | ||
| So, it says, the U.S. finds no Havana syndrome linked to foreign powers, but two spy agencies say it's possible. | ||
| And it goes on to say, U.S. intelligence has found no evidence linking a foreign power to the mysterious Havana syndrome injuries reported by some U.S. diplomats and other government personnel. | ||
| Though two agencies now say it's possible a foreign adversary may have developed or even deployed a weapon responsible for the injuries. | ||
| The conclusion, which echoes early investigations, follows a review conducted by seven intelligence agencies or departments that examined cases of brain injuries and other symptoms reported by American diplomats and other military and government staffers who have raised questions about the involvement of a foreign adversary. | ||
| This is the Havana syndrome that you're referencing, Sean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep, and I'm just your average everyday American citizen. | |
| I'm nobody. | ||
| I'm not, you know, I'm not in the military or nothing. | ||
| But this stuff started happening to me. | ||
| And it's 1 million percent, 1 million percent, it's happening to me. | ||
| I've looked it up, and it's happening all the same things that they talk about, but it's considered targeted individuals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And can we really trust a lot of our agencies right now? | |
| Can you really trust the facts and the findings that they come out with right now? | ||
| I don't believe so, but I'm telling you, it is happening 100%. | ||
| It's happening to me, and I bet you millions of other people. | ||
| I've read a lot of stories about it, and there's a lot about it, but it gets silenced just like everything else. | ||
| So, hopefully, people take this serious and look into it because it's happening, and it's absolutely horrendous. | ||
| So, that's all I can say about it. | ||
| Mike is in Rockford, Illinois, and our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| five things I've noticed in hearings in the last week that the media has not picked up on in the Kennedy hearing they he wants to switch talking about the confirmation hearing for RFK jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services Yes, that one. | ||
| He was Saying that he wanted to switch insurance companies from the pay-as-you-go or the customer goes to a value-based system where the health care determines if it's valuable or not for the customer to get the help. | ||
| At the same time, Marjorie Taylor Green's hearing had to do with laws under corporate is much easier to go around than the agencies the way they sit now. | ||
| So if they were under corporate hashtag privatized, things would be much easier to do. | ||
| Sorry, Mike, I don't want to keep interrupting you, but I just want to help our audience. | ||
| There was a hearing this week for the House subcommittee related to the Doge team, and that's the Marjorie Taylor Greene committee meeting that you're referencing, correct? | ||
| And no media picked up on the points that they kept going towards as the laws under corporate is much easier to go around than the agencies the way they sit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Basically, what they were saying is privatize. | |
| And anybody could go back and watch it and see if I'm right or wrong. | ||
| And another point I wanted to make was the AI air traffic control has been under AI for a minute, and people don't know. | ||
| We just passed $3 billion for smaller airports like the one in Rockford that replaced their air traffic control tower with the AI model. | ||
| That's why one guy was in an air tower the other day when it crashed because it's run by AI and people don't know that. | ||
| The other point I wanted to make was the mission creep of ICE. | ||
| They went from the black coats saying police ICE that was basically FBI DEA and others that were part-timing for ICE. | ||
| Now they're bringing in the military part of it, which is basically Mexican military that's in their camel. | ||
| Their faces are covered and now they're going door to door. | ||
| This is a mission creep with no exit plan. | ||
| And I think someone needs to look at that also. | ||
| And the last point I wanted to make was a hearing where a congressman mentioned the black and white new hires are at a 50-year low. | ||
| Even though the government's doing two-thirds of all the hires, it's not the black and whites. | ||
| And what that's telling me is those just uncovered these colleges that were getting millions for leadership roles. | ||
| So I feel not just our government's coddling these immigrants, but they're training to replace us. | ||
| There were several things that the caller mentioned there, but he did mention the House Subcommittee hearing on government efficiency that was run by Representative Marjorie Taylor Green. | ||
| And you can find that entire hearing on our website, cspan.org, if you'd like to go back and watch that. | ||
| Thomas is in Bennington, Vermont on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Thomas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Love the journal. | ||
| I'd like to talk about the naming of the Gulf of Mexico. | ||
| I think it should be called for a constellation, the Gulf of Cancer. | ||
| And that's a constellation in the Northern Hemisphere. | ||
| Because we have Cancer Alley. | ||
| It's very famous for a couple of decades. | ||
| We have Lake Okebachobe with the waste from the into the Fort Myers area. | ||
| We have offshore drilling. | ||
| You know, the Gulf of Mexico is getting cancer. | ||
| We're destroying it. | ||
| And also that dang JD Vance Disparging Gretza. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| So, Thomas mentioned the ongoing controversy over the executive order that the president issued renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. | ||
| The Associated Press, an international news organization, elected not to change it in certain parts of its coverage. | ||
| And therefore, the White House, as reported here in CNN, has banned the AP indefinitely over the use of Gulf of Mexico. | ||
| The Trump White House said Friday that the Associated Press is banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely. | ||
| The AP, one of the world's biggest news outlets, was singled out by the White House earlier this week over three words: Gulf of Mexico. | ||
| President Donald Trump said that the U.S. government would rename the body of water Gulf of America. | ||
| The change has taken effect at government agencies, but other countries do not recognize the new name, and the AP has customers around the world, so it still refers to the Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging Trump's decree. | ||
| Other global news outlets have made similar decisions, but this week the White House singled out the AP and barred its reporters from presidential events. | ||
| Rodney is in Mulberry, Indiana, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rodney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to have to say my top news story of the week is the USAID and all the funding that was going out worldwide for just crazy things. | |
| While here on our homeland, we still have New Palestine, Ohio, struggling to recover. | ||
| We have North Carolina and struggling to recover. | ||
| We have the Burns in California, the decimated Palisades. | ||
| And I know it's awful to area, but it's still needing funding. | ||
| And the money's gone because the Biden administration had just peddled it away to these just like $7 million to Uganda for condoms, $20 million for a Sesame Street show and Somalia or Iraq or something crazy. | ||
| It's just, and the far left is just having a meltdown over this whole dozed findings. | ||
| And it's really needed, I believe, to get our country back on track. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Michael in Essex, Connecticut on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi, you guys. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| And thank you for playing that tape of Vladimir Zelensky speaking to European leaders. | ||
| That's a huge story that's not getting enough attention. | ||
| I think it's going to be a growing story in the future. | ||
| I wasn't even aware of it until you played it this morning. | ||
| So again, it only happened a few hours ago, so that's probably why you haven't seen it much yet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, but I think it's important to note that he's calling on European nations, saying that it may be time to form a European army that clearly we can no longer count on the United States of America. | |
| That's massive. | ||
| And it's becoming clear to everyone that the United States could no longer be trusted. | ||
| The United States, and think about this, with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, he's so willing with ease to make Canada an enemy, to make Mexico an enemy. | ||
| I mean, to want to consume other lands like Greenland and want it to take over Gaza. | ||
| I don't think there's a nation in this country that could no longer count on the United States of America. | ||
| And I think when Zelensky brought that out with clarity, he is not only saying we need a European army to protect ourselves from Russia, but I think he's hinting we need a European army to perhaps protect ourselves from the United States of America. | ||
| And he would not be wrong at that. | ||
| I mean, I'm a proud American, and I want to believe we'll always be on the side of democracy. | ||
| But clearly, that's no longer guaranteed with this Donald Trump living in the Oval Office. | ||
| It's something to think about. | ||
| It's a massive story. | ||
| And in the days ahead, I think we're going to realize how big that is. | ||
| But thank you for listening to me. | ||
| A bit more information on that story that Michael just mentioned. | ||
| Here's some coverage from the BBC of Zelensky's speech earlier today at the Munich Security Conference. | ||
| Zelensky calls for the creation of an Army of Europe. | ||
| Ukraine's President Vlodymir Zelensky has called for the creation of an Army of Europe to guard against Russia as he suggested the U.S. may no longer come to the continent's aid. | ||
| Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, he also said that Ukraine would never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement after U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to start peace talks. | ||
| In a speech Friday, in which he attacked European democracies, U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned that Europe needed to step up in a big way on defense. | ||
| And Zelensky said, I really believe the time has come. | ||
| The armed forces of Europe must be created. | ||
| That was coverage from the BBC. | ||
| Let's go to John in Brooklyn on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How you doing? | |
| I'm John Falter from Brooklyn Democrat. | ||
| And it amazes me why nobody asks Trump when he dismantled these programs, where's the replacement? | ||
| I haven't heard one person ask him, what are your plans to replace this? | ||
| What do you have in mind? | ||
| Do you have anything ready? | ||
| I notice when he says something, nobody follows up on it. | ||
| He said that the black people caused the crisis D.C. the other day. | ||
| Nobody questioned him about when they find out it's not true. | ||
| I don't believe the president said that black people caused the crash. | ||
| Are you talking about the plane crash? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I didn't see where the president said that. | ||
| Where did you hear that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He said. | |
| He said the D what? | ||
| You're saying that the DEI. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I'll find that information. | ||
| Go ahead and finish your point, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't like fraud myself. | |
| I'm glad that he's doing that. | ||
| But do it the right way. | ||
| There's a right way and a wrong thing to do something. | ||
| When you just go and dismantle and fall all these people, and you don't have no plan in mind, now if we get attacked, we need the FBI and CIA, people with experience that know how to go and use their information, their contacts, without exposing our, you know, our people that's getting information for us. | ||
| It's just a lot of things that I'm surprised. | ||
| Then I asked him, what are you going to place it with? | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| So that's my opinion. | ||
| I just wish somebody would ask him, show us your replacement. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So related to what John was saying about the president's statements about that plane crash, he's referencing that Trump blames DEI and Biden for the crash under his watch. | ||
| President Trump's remarks suggesting that diversity in hiring and other Biden administration policies somehow caused the disaster reflected his instinct to immediately frame events through his political and ideological lens. | ||
| This is reporting in the New York Times. | ||
| President Trump blamed diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration and his two Democratic predecessors for the mid-air collision over the Potomac River, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax. | ||
| Mr. Trump cited no evidence that diversity programs had anything to do with the fatal accident which killed 67 people and even admitted when pressed that the investigation had only just begun. | ||
| And then there was additional coverage today in the Washington Post as that investigation continues, finding that the Black Hawk crew may not have heard crucial tower instructions. | ||
| According to the NTSB, the crew of an Army Black Hawk helicopter might not have heard key instructions from air traffic control before a collision with a passenger jet over the Potomac River on January 29th. | ||
| The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday in its most detailed account of the moments before the crash that killed 67 people. | ||
| About 17 seconds before the helicopter and plane collided, air traffic control had directed the Black Hawks crew to pass behind the CRJ, referring to the type of American Airlines regional jet that was approaching Reagan National Airport. | ||
| Jennifer Homendeen, NTSB's chairman, said Friday that pass behind the may not have been received by the crew based on its review of the Black Hawks cockpit voice recorder, which did not capture those words. | ||
| The helicopter crew had activated its microphone at that moment to communicate with air traffic control. | ||
| Larry is in Columbus, Ohio, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a lifelong Republican. | |
| Of course, I'm an old school Republican, Reagan Republican, and I did not support Donald Trump. | ||
| I do support my senators and my congressmen that are Republicans, but him abandoning Ukraine goes against everything that this country stands for. | ||
| And to kiss up to Vladimir Putin and North Korea and all that stuff, and abandon our allies in Europe that have stood with us and that we've stood with since World War I is ridiculous, and he should be tried for being a traitor. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Larry was mentioning President Trump's stance on Ukraine, and on Wednesday, President Trump answered reporters' questions about a conversation he had with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. | ||
| Here's that exchange. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When and where are G plan on meeting with Vladimir Putin? | |
| And were there any precondition meeting? | ||
| No, we had a great call, and it lasted for a long time, over an hour, this morning. | ||
| I also had with President Zelensky a very good call after that. | ||
| And I think we're on the way to getting peace. | ||
| I think President Putin wants peace, and President Zelensky wants peace, and I want peace. | ||
| I just want to see people stop getting killed. | ||
| We're very far away from that particular war, but that's a vicious war. | ||
| Probably a million and a half soldiers killed in a short period of time. | ||
| I've never said anything. | ||
| I have pictures that are, you wouldn't believe it. | ||
| You wouldn't believe what you have to look at. | ||
| Young, beautiful soldiers that are just being decimated. | ||
| And it would be nice to end it immediately. | ||
| But we had a very good talk with people who didn't really know what President Putin's thoughts were, but I think I can say with great confidence he wants to see it ended also. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Again, we're looking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Some answers we've received via text message. | ||
| Eddie in Birmingham, Alabama says, my top issue is the government cutbacks and Elon Musk. | ||
| I agree the spending needs to be controlled better, but I find it very odd that there isn't any bipartisan agreement to vet Elon Musk. | ||
| No one has asked the question, does Elon Musk have an administration password to access government systems? | ||
| Because it appears that he does. | ||
| Barb in Long Grove, Illinois says the top news story of the week is Vice President Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. | ||
| He was critical of European nations and made no mention of attempts to end the war in Ukraine. | ||
| And Dean from Muncie, Indiana says, my top news story is that we are finally exposing the waste, fraud, and theft of our tax dollars and our need to shrink the size of the federal government. | ||
| You can text us as well at 202-748-8003. | ||
| You can also send us your comments on social media at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Jennifer is in District Heights, Maryland, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jennifer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, C-SPAN. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My top story is this man who's taking over our country, Musk. | ||
| And the person who called in who mentioned that he thinks that he may have had a hand in interfering with our elections makes perfect sense because Trump has yielded to this man and let this man into the Oval Office with his kid, and the kid insulted him. | ||
| And I suppose I kind of feel sorry for Trump because he is so power hungry. | ||
| And here he is letting this man control him. | ||
| And it's sad. | ||
| So I don't know if Trump has really lost his mind completely or if he just got caught up and didn't know that this man was going to take over the whole country, including him, because Trump is just like a little child underneath Musk's thumb. | ||
| It's like Musk is the president and Trump is his queen. | ||
| And that doesn't sit right. | ||
| There is something seriously wrong with that picture. | ||
| And it is Musk's plan to take over the whole world because he has no alliance in any country. | ||
| He's a citizen of three countries. | ||
| So where does his alliance lie? | ||
| He has no loyalty to anyone but himself. | ||
| And he's not transparent because he, and when they dismiss all of these government employees, we're going to have homelessness. | ||
| These people are not going to be able to pay their bills. | ||
| They're going to be all these people and we're not going to get services. | ||
| So we are going to be just like these countries. | ||
| And Trump has already banned the AP from the White House. | ||
| So he is already controlling what the news can tell us, just like Russia and other communist countries. | ||
| So people need to wake up because we're going to wake up and we're going to have no control over our country. | ||
| And I don't understand what's going on with the Supreme Court. | ||
| And And they've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| Michael is in New Kensington, Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| And I wanted to comment on my new story of the week is the fact that I'm glad that Doge and some of these other agencies and the Trump administration is looking into our government spending. | ||
| I think that we've been on autopilot for a long time. | ||
| And even Ronald Reagan only tackled a couple of different couple of different things. | ||
| Whereas Trump is really looking at the entirety of the government system that has been invoked upon us. | ||
| We are, I remember seeing a C-SPAN or C-SPAN interview with a lot of these Russians after the Berlin Wall came down. | ||
| And they were saying that Russia was bankrupt back in 1950. | ||
| And here we looked at them as such a great threat. | ||
| And meanwhile, that they had so many internal problems that they knew even back then that they were unable to continue. | ||
| And Reagan finally put the screws to them and said, you know, pony up. | ||
| Anyways, what Trump is doing is tremendous. | ||
| And I think that we're dismantling this entire governmental system whereby the bureaucracy is running the wheels of power and spending in this country. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Linda in Orange, Connecticut on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Linda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My top story of the week is Donald Trump is absolutely shut down the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. | ||
| This bureau has literally recovered billions of dollars for the American taxpayers, bipartisan, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, whatever, and he has shut it down. | ||
| He's also shut down the funding for the United States farmers, and farmers are now caught in a mine where they've laid out the money based on the promise that the money was coming to them. | ||
| Of course, they had to front it to grow the crops and get the equipment they needed, and they've frozen those funds. | ||
| So the caller before me was very supportive at saying, wake up. | ||
| Well, I'm saying wake up because there's a lot of innocent Americans who are going to lose access to things like Navi IIM, a college loan company who literally had to refund millions of dollars to college students in unnecessary interest payments on loans. | ||
| Our farmers are stuck. | ||
| They're about to lose their farms. | ||
| So yes, wake up. | ||
| Wake up. | ||
| There's a lot going on here. | ||
| We're all focused on a press conference with Elon Musk and his children, this people. | ||
| He's trolling us. | ||
| We have to look at what's actually happening. | ||
| And what's happening is hurting American consumers. | ||
| It's hurting American farmers. | ||
| All of these people are stuck in this unprecedented freeze of the government working on behalf of its people. | ||
| So, yes, wake up, people. | ||
| Linda referenced the efforts to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reporting in Axios from a couple days ago, or four days ago, five days ago, February 10th. | ||
| Union sues the Trump administration over the CFPB shutdown attempt and Doge access. | ||
| Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vollett was hit with two union lawsuits on Sunday, this is last Sunday, after he issued directives freezing much of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's work. | ||
| The CFPB has become the latest target of President Trump's Elon Musk-led Department of Government efficiency, threatening a critical oversight agency that safeguards consumers from unfair business practices. | ||
| Employees were informed the agency's headquarters would be closed this week, a move that mirrors how Does shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development headquarters last week. | ||
| CFPB employed some 1,600 people in the fiscal year 2023. | ||
| Jimmy is in Hollis Center, Maine, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jimmy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I hope you let me ramble on a little bit here. | ||
| Everybody keeps saying, wake up, wake up. | ||
| Well, we're $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| We just had a President of the United States, Joe Biden, that told Vladimir Putin, you can, it depends how far he goes into Ukraine, just like the last time they took over Crimea. | ||
| We're paying, I hope you look this up too. | ||
| We're paying their salaries and their pensions. | ||
| And the people, the Democrats keep calling them. | ||
| Sorry, Jimmy, we're paying whose salaries and pension? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The people in Ukraine. | |
| We're paying their pensions. | ||
| And all of a sudden, the money dries up. | ||
| And he starts to, now we're going to have to build our little army. | ||
| Now that we've given them all the weapons and everything they want, now let me just say one more thing and I'll hang out because this gets in my skin. | ||
| America, we are broke. | ||
| We have only one country. | ||
| These foreigners come to this country. | ||
| Not all of them. | ||
| There are a lot of good people that come here to work. | ||
| They come in, they break our laws. | ||
| They have another country to go back to. | ||
| Where is the black kid that's locked up in jail? | ||
| Where's the white kid, the Asian kid, the Mexican, American kids that are in prison? | ||
| When they pull them out, where do they get to go? | ||
| They have nowhere else to go because they get to go back to Honduras. | ||
| They get to go back to El Salvador. | ||
| And God knows, God knows what's happening to those people once they get back there. | ||
| They come back, they change their name, and they come right back across this country with fake identification, and we've got to deal with it all over again. | ||
| Thank God for Donald J. Trump. | ||
| Somebody trying to do something for this country. | ||
| Everybody keeps saying, wake up. | ||
| Really, look in the mirror. | ||
| We're going broke. | ||
| $37 trillion, and we're paying other people's countries' pensions. | ||
| God bless Donald J. Trump. | ||
| So, Jimmy, I wasn't able to find the reference to the pensions, but I did see a story from CBS News in 2023 about the various ways that U.S. aid to Ukraine was being used. | ||
| And among the points, they mentioned that the U.S. government is subsidizing small businesses in Ukraine, including Tatiana Abramova's knitwear company as an example to help keep them afloat. | ||
| American officials from U.S. AID helped her find new customers overseas. | ||
| In the midst of the war, her company is supporting over 70 families. | ||
| The U.S. government has also bought seeds and fertilizer for Ukrainian farmers. | ||
| America is covering the salaries of Ukraine's first responders, all 57,000 of them. | ||
| The U.S. funds divers who clear unexploded ammunition from the country's rivers to make them safe again for swimming and fishing. | ||
| Now, this was back in 2023, and this article referenced that these funds were from USAID, and much of the foreign aid through USAID is on hold right now, so it's unclear if these programs are still ongoing. | ||
| Ken is in Green Cove Springs, Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I have an idea that we're always trying to fix Social Security. | ||
| I'm wanting somebody to look at maybe all the people that take Social Security that do not need their money could write it off and it would stay in the Social Security fund, and then it would be more money in there that we wouldn't have to worry about the seniors on the Social Security because they could write it off at the end of the year. | ||
| If they didn't take it, they could write it off at the end of the year, and it would really help the rich and the other people to help us keep Social Security money in the fund. | ||
| And this is something that hadn't been looked at, and I would like somebody to look at it and see if they could possibly do this for Social Security. | ||
| And no more IOUs to the government, no more IOUs out of Social Security. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That is an idea I haven't heard before, Ken. | ||
| Really interesting. | ||
| Karma is in Zephyr Hills, Florida, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Karma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to say that after the fall of Russia and Ukraine became their own independent country, they were the third largest nuclear armed country in the world. | ||
| The United States went to them, made a treaty with them if they gave up their nuclear arms, that we would protect them. | ||
| And now we're saying we won't. | ||
| We're giving them excess military supplies. | ||
| And I would like to say that in the last 50 years, President Clinton was the only president who balanced the budget every year, cut waste and fraud from all agencies, fired over 200,000 people without taking over agencies and just shutting them down. | ||
| He did it legally through to Congress and was able to achieve what no other president has ever achieved. | ||
| So I don't understand how people can be happy with a president that's just shutting things down when everything they're doing is not legal, just like with the USAID. | ||
| I want to say there's sugars, waste, and fraud, but every president sets the mandates and programs that they want in the USAID. | ||
| And if they were going to shut them down, they should have let the people know that work for them what was going to happen. | ||
| But they go on the news and call them gangsters and fraudsters. | ||
| And now those people, American patriots with no bipartisan, with no partisanship, who work for our country are being attacked in the countries that they're in and barely escaping with their lives. | ||
| So, Karma, at Wednesday's White House press briefing, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt addressed questions related to the idea that many of Trump's actions might be causing a constitutional crisis. | ||
| Here was her response to reporters. | ||
| Now, before I take questions, I would like to address an extremely dishonest narrative that we've seen emerging over the past few days. | ||
| Many outlets in this room have been fear-mongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House. | ||
| I've been hearing those words a lot lately. | ||
| But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority. | ||
| We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law. | ||
| And they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. | ||
| This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump. | ||
| Quick news flash to these liberal judges who are supporting their obstructionist efforts. | ||
| 77 million Americans voted to elect this president. | ||
| And each injunction is an abuse of the rule of law and an attempt to thwart the will of the people. | ||
| As the president clearly stated in the Oval Office yesterday, we will comply with the law in the courts, but we will also continue to seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions and ensure President Trump's policies can be enacted. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Tom is in Newark, Ohio on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you for taking my call, darling. | |
| My top story right now, and I'm confused, but I know what it is. | ||
| Mitch McConnell refuses to back Trump. | ||
| Peter Schweitzer, a known author, has repeatedly warned about McConnell being dangerously compromised by China because his in-laws make container ships for China. | ||
| Our DOJ must investigate his support of China and prove his dereliction of his sworn duty to all Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is both outrageous and unacceptable. | |
| Kentucky, wake up and recall frog face. | ||
| Thank you, darling. | ||
| Marty is in Golden, Colorado on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Marty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello there. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| The most interesting news story from the last week has gotten pretty much no coverage. | ||
| It was Ashley St. Clair's Friday, Valentine's Day, announcement that five months ago she gave birth to Elon Musk's latest child. | ||
| Now that's interesting. | ||
| Politics has never been more interesting, but it's still dreadfully boring. | ||
| So I was just looking this up. | ||
| People magazine has an article about this. | ||
| Author Ashley St. Clair says she gave birth to Elon Musk's 13th child five months ago. | ||
| Was there another point you wanted to make beyond that, Marty? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I think that covers it. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Angela is in Dumfries, Virginia, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just, my top story is I think it is high time that Europe paid for that war in Ukraine. | ||
| I don't even know why we were sending our money over there in the first place. | ||
| And then for the media, mainstream media, to superimpose Putin as Trump was the only way that they could get support from the left was to pretend somehow that Putin was Trump and he must be defeated by sending billions of dollars to Ukraine. | ||
| And why, Angela, I can just pause you for a moment. | ||
| I want you to finish your point, but you mentioned Europeans should pay for the war in Ukraine. | ||
| This is from one of the European Union's websites, and it lays out EU assistance to Ukraine in U.S. dollars. | ||
| This is from January 15th. | ||
| The European Union and our 27 member states remain united and determined in our unprecedented support of Ukraine. | ||
| Since the start of the war, the EU and our member states have made available close to $145 billion in financial, military, humanitarian, and refugee assistance. | ||
| In addition, in February of 2024, European leaders agreed to commit up to $54 billion until 2027 for the Ukraine facility to support Ukraine's recovery. | ||
| This will bring our commitments to the date to over $174 billion, and then it goes on to lay out other contributions. | ||
| But that's Europe's contribution to Ukraine thus far related to the war. | ||
| Go ahead, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, you know, and I think that that's exactly how it should go. | |
| So why in the world, with all the problems that we're having here, especially with the emergencies that we're having here, that we're even involved in that in the first place? | ||
| Why did our name, why did the United States even, why did our name come up in the first place in this nonsense? | ||
| And, you know, war is not nonsense. | ||
| And I misstated, misstated, but I'm just saying that that's Europe's problem, and they should definitely take care of it. | ||
| And that's all I have to say about that. | ||
| Thank you very much, dear. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| Clyde is in Lawton, Oklahoma on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Clyde. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what's going in the world right now? | |
| What they want to have next is a deadly wound. | ||
| Keep an eye out. | ||
| It's coming. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Joanne is in Yakima, Washington on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joanne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm concerned about the Congress and the Senate concerning their voting. | ||
| It seems like Republicans and Democrats are handcuffed and they have to stay with their party's ideals. | ||
| I think it should be changed. | ||
| I think it should go to a secret ballot so individuals that are in Congress can vote the way they can without being told exactly if you don't, something's going to happen to you. | ||
| And I've been noticing that's been going on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, that's all the time we have for calls on the top news story of the week for now. | ||
| Coming up next on Washington Journal, David Daoud of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies will join us to discuss the latest on the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and President Trump's plans for Gaza. | ||
| And later, Peter Shin and Joe Dunn of the National Association of Community Health Centers will join us to discuss how the government funding freeze is impacting community health centers. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, we'll look at American presidents and the U.S. Navy with Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro discussing the naval careers of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. | ||
| A discussion on the life and legacy of civil rights icon and Georgia Democratic Representative John Lewis with author David Greenberg, former Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson, and current and former members of Congress. | ||
| Watch American History TV's series First 100 Days as we look at the start of presidential terms. | ||
| This week, we focus on the early months of President Ulysses Grant's first term in 1869, including the treatment of Native Americans and freed slaves. | ||
| On Lectures in History, Indiana University History Professor Juan Mora talks about the U.S. Border Patrol and how 20th century immigration laws shape the creation and development of immigration agencies. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| Starting next week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | ||
| On Monday, at 9:30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, the first African-American ever elected to Congress from Oregon. | ||
| My mother graduated in 1970 from one of the last segregated high schools in the state and the country, rather, in South Carolina. | ||
| And I think about all of the opportunities that weren't afforded her, you know, coming out of segregation. | ||
| And I bring that perspective to Oregon, saying, you know, my mom was a rural kid that didn't have a lot of opportunities, but I'm going to make sure that I bring that forth for all of the kids in Oregon. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all next week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by David Daoud, who is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, here to talk to us about what's been going on in the latest in the Mideast conflict. | ||
| So good morning. | ||
| Thanks for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| It's a pleasure to be here. | ||
| Can you first describe what the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is, what you all do, and how you're funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| We're a nonpartisan think tank. | ||
| We're Washington, D.C. based. | ||
| We focus on foreign policy. | ||
| Our guiding star is the U.S. national interest. | ||
| We are funded by American donors exclusively. | ||
| We don't take any government funding either from foreign governments nor from the United States government. | ||
| So we are entirely independent and bipartisan. | ||
| It's pretty unusual for a think tank to not have any foreign funding at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's something we pride ourselves on. | |
| So there was news this morning that three more of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas were released in exchange for some Palestinian prisoners as well. | ||
| What do you see at this moment as the status of the ceasefire agreement? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's still in phase one. | |
| I think January 19th was the start date of the phase one of the ceasefire agreement. | ||
| We're looking at 42 days until the start of phase two. | ||
| So now there are, I think, another two or three batches of hostages that have to be released in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners. | ||
| Right now it's holding. | ||
| There was a holdup. | ||
| There was a hiccup earlier this week that President Trump had commented on where Hamas had claimed that the Israelis weren't holding up their end of the bargain and therefore tried to stop the release of the hostages that were released today. | ||
| President Trump, as we know, threatened that I think it was all hell would break loose if the not just a small batch of hostages, but that all hostages would be released. | ||
| Hamas obviously backed off from its position and resumed the normal course of the ceasefire. | ||
| President Trump had initially called for the release of all hostages by today, not just the trickle. | ||
| He criticized that. | ||
| He said it didn't make sense. | ||
| But it seemed like the Israeli government wasn't, he went a little bit further than where the Israeli government wanted to be. | ||
| So it seems like we're back to the normal course of the ceasefire, the ceasefire agreement. | ||
| Now, there's been fears this week that the ceasefire deal, as you just mentioned, could fall apart. | ||
| Do you see it as in good shape right now, like it's moving along? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there are several factors that would keep it on track. | |
| First of all, there's tremendous domestic Israeli pressure for the release of these hostages, not least of all humanitarian conditions, right, among some of the people that are still being held in Gaza. | ||
| Most famously, at least in Israel, the poster children, if you will, of the hostage deal have been physical children, Kfir Bibas and Ariel Bibas, infants that were kidnapped on October 7th. | ||
| I think this is a strong image that resonates among Israeli society. | ||
| They want to see these people released. | ||
| We still don't know the condition of the Bibas children and their mother. | ||
| They're also loved ones of people who are still held in Gaza, and there's tremendous domestic pressure to keep this on track. | ||
| Now, what happens if the Bibas children are revealed to have been murdered? | ||
| What happens if Hamas tries to pull out of the agreement under whatever excuses it pulls up again? | ||
| That remains to be seen. | ||
| We know that President Trump, again, put on Truth Social today that he's putting a, I guess, a 7 p.m. Israel noon our time deadline for the release of all hostages, but he's putting the ball in Israel's court to see what the Israelis are going to do, and he's going to back that. | ||
| Now, it seems like, like I said, the Israeli government is sticking to the deal as is rather than trying to shift to where President Trump was last week or to say, release all of our hostages now or the deal is off. | ||
| There's a Time magazine article saying Trump bets he can threaten his way to ending the Israel-Hamas war, making references to these demands that you're laying out. | ||
| What is your take on the president's overall strategy to ending this conflict? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, he came in prior to even coming in. | |
| He said he wanted this thing done. | ||
| He wants to get back to the business of making peace deals in the Middle East. | ||
| We remember the Abraham Accords that he shepherded during his first term as president. | ||
| I think that's where he prefers to be. | ||
| He came in on a very anti-war message, be it with Ukraine and Russia or in the Middle East. | ||
| He wants to make deals. | ||
| Now, part of what President Trump likes to do is he likes to raise the bar a little bit with negotiations, right? | ||
| So I think what we saw was an attempt to pressure Hamas, which really has very few bargaining chips now besides the hostages that it's holding. | ||
| We're talking about the state of Israel, which is a significant military power, a first-rate military power on its own, backed by the United States, saying, get this done, keep this on track, or there's going to be, again, hell to pay. | ||
| So I think this creates leverage for the Israelis, having that overt backing to keep Hamas on track, to keep the deal on track, and for President Trump to get what he wants out of this, which I think ultimately is a certain degree of peace and quiet in the region. | ||
| Speaking of what President Trump wants, as reported here in the Associated Press, Trump doubled down on his plan to empty Gaza. | ||
| He has said that he vows to empty Gaza permanently of its more than 2 million Palestinians, saying they would not be allowed to return and suggesting at one point that he might force Egypt and Jordan to take them in by threatening to cut off U.S. aid. | ||
| He has vowed to turn Gaza into what he's called a Riviera of the Middle East and to forcibly drive the Palestinians from its land, or at least that's the assessment of several rights groups. | ||
| What authority, if any, does he have to do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a good question. | |
| Look, I think where President Trump is right now is he's not seeing, with something we talked about even under the previous Biden administration, what's the day after for Gaza? | ||
| And not only have the Israelis not offered a clear vision for the day after for Gaza, neither have the Palestinians' Arab brethren, be it Egypt or Jordan. | ||
| And I think Trump is trying to, President Trump is trying to push the envelope here. | ||
| Look, I think the Arab states are in a tough position. | ||
| They probably want to take over Gaza in some way, or at least assist Gaza. | ||
| The issue is optics. | ||
| Everything with the Palestinian cause is an issue of optics. | ||
| How are you perceived if you send in Arab troops, be it Jordanians, Egyptians, some combination, and you take over Gaza and you fight groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? | ||
| How are you perceived on the Arab street? | ||
| How are you perceived among your own population? | ||
| Are you perceived as policing Gaza, policing the Palestinian cause to protect Israel, especially if you have to clash with Palestinian militant groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? | ||
| Are you looked at as if you're protecting the Israelis? | ||
| Now, what happens when the President of the United States says, I want to expel all Palestinians from Gaza? | ||
| Then that same move of entering Gaza and taking it over suddenly looks like you're saving the Palestinians, keeping them on their land, rather than entering to protect Israel from Palestinians. | ||
| So it kind of shifts the dynamic. | ||
| And we saw in the meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan that the President had, the king said, we have a plan that's being put together with Egypt and Jordan, and we're formulating a plan for Gaza. | ||
| So suddenly we're seeing movement from the Arab side of the equation to say, no, no, no, we don't need this. | ||
| We don't need to expel these two million Palestinians. | ||
| We don't need to turn it into a Riviera. | ||
| There's an Arab plan on the table. | ||
| Give us some time. | ||
| Let's actually look at a clip of that Oval Office meeting at the White House on Tuesday where King Abdullah of Jordan was reiterating Reiterating his desire for a plan for Gaza that satisfies all the parties involved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have to keep in mind that there is a plan from Egypt and the Arab countries. | |
| We're being invited by Mohammed bin Salman to discuss in Riyadh. | ||
| I think the point is how do we make this work in a way that is good for everybody? | ||
| Obviously, we have to look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region, especially to my people of Jordan. | ||
| And we're going to have some interesting discussions today. | ||
| I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children that are either cancer children or in a very ill state to Jordan as quickly as possible and then wait for, I think, the Egyptians to present their plan on how we can work with the President to work on the Gaza challenges. | ||
| So you're going to have to be able to tell you. | ||
| Excuse me, Wade, just please. | ||
| I didn't know that what you just said, 2,000 children with cancer or other problems. | ||
| And that's really a beautiful gesture. | ||
| That's really good, and we appreciate it. | ||
| And we'll be working on the rest with Egypt. | ||
| I think you're going to see some great progress. | ||
| I think with Jordan, you're going to see some great progress. | ||
| Three of us will have some others helping, and we're going to have some others at a very high level helping, and the whole thing will come. | ||
| It's not a complex thing to do. | ||
| And with the United States being in control of that piece of land, a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time. | ||
| And the Palestinians or the people that live now in Gaza will be living beautifully in another location. | ||
| They're going to be living safely. | ||
| They're not going to be killed, murdered, and having to leave every 10 years. | ||
| Because I've been watching this for so many years. | ||
| It's nothing but trouble. | ||
| Everyone's being killed. | ||
| They're being robbed. | ||
| It's like living in hell. | ||
| And they're going to end up having a great home, great families that don't have to get mugged and killed and beaten up and harassed by Hamas and everybody else. | ||
| And I know we'll be able to work something. | ||
| And what you just said about the 2,000 is fantastic. | ||
| It's so beautiful. | ||
| It's music to my ears. | ||
| But we're going to be able to work something. | ||
| And I know we'll be able to work something also with, I believe, not 100%, but 99% we're going to work out something with Egypt. | ||
| American presidents have been trying for generations to resolve this conflict. | ||
| Do you have a sense that something will be different this time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, clearly something will be different. | |
| I think President Trump is all about different. | ||
| He's broken the mold on the Israeli-Arab peace process, even in his first term. | ||
| Kind of the orthodoxy was that you start with the Israeli-Palestinian peace and that spreads out to the rest of the Arab world. | ||
| The Abraham Accords were the inversion of that, obviously. | ||
| You start with the Gulf states and you start to move with these moderates Arab states towards a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. | ||
| I think here also this proposal of taking over Gaza. | ||
| Look, Gaza is not a sovereign territory. | ||
| Its legal status is probably questionable. | ||
| There's not a sovereign state that can really claim it for certainty. | ||
| There is no Palestinian state really that can claim it for certainty. | ||
| If President Trump exploits that ambiguity to put American troops on the ground, to somehow create an American control over Gaza, that's obviously going to be a game changer. | ||
| But even if we go back to this as just a negotiation tactic, again, this is a game changer. | ||
| He's done, it seems like he's done with the orthodoxy. | ||
| As he just said, I've been watching this conflict for decades and nothing's moved. | ||
| So he's trying to move something by hook or by crook, it would seem. | ||
| Just switching gears a little bit to the West Bank, what have the conditions been like there and also in Lebanon since the ceasefire? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So the West Bank, since the ceasefire, there have been counterterrorism operations. | ||
| And these are ongoing operations, not just since October 7th, but this has been going on for years, even under previous Israeli governments, including the Lapid Bennett government. | ||
| There was the Shovir Ghalim, the wavebreaker operation that was there. | ||
| And now we have subsequent operations. | ||
| We've had warnings from the head of Shin Bet, Onin Bar, who's Israel's FBI, saying even though the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks in the West Bank have decreased, the sophistication has increased and the lethality of each individual attack has increased. | ||
| So that's precipitating the counterterrorism operations that we've been seeing there that are ongoing. | ||
| Shifting to Lebanon, there's been a ceasefire in place since November 27th. | ||
| It's been extended now till February 18th, the deadline for Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon. | ||
| What we've seen is Israel continue clearing operations in the areas under its control, almost daily operations to dismantle and destroy Hezbollah infrastructure, weapons, caches in the areas under Israeli control. | ||
| But we haven't seen movement by the Lebanese government to live up to its end of the ceasefire agreement, which doesn't just require the Lebanese armed forces to take over areas that the Israelis are vacating, but also to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure in those areas and to secure Lebanon's borders against the entry of materiel, weapons, funds that would help Hezbollah regenerate. | ||
| We've seen equivocation from the Lebanese on what they want to do. | ||
| We see statements from unofficial statements in an interview, new Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaz Salam saying the ceasefire agreement applies through all of Lebanon. | ||
| But then he's kind of ambiguous about how that will be done. | ||
| And then we see the Speaker of Parliament, one of Lebanon's probably longest politicians and Hezbollah's political guardian, if you will, Nabi Hibire, saying south of the Litani, south of the Litani River, we'll have the ceasefire agreement applies. | ||
| North of the Litani River, we'll take the matter to internal Lebanese dialogue, which means that, and Hezbollah is part of this dialogue because they have massive support from Lebanon's Shiite population, which means you have to bring them to the table. | ||
| They're a political party in Lebanon. | ||
| They were part of the government. | ||
| They have ministers in the new government that they've approved of in Noah Salem's new government. | ||
| So they're going to be part of the dialogue about what happens to Hezbollah's weapons. | ||
| And, you know, call me skeptical here, but people tend not to sign their own self-destruction. | ||
| I don't think Hezbollah will do that. | ||
| So what we're seeing is a situation where the Israelis are acting in South Lebanon. | ||
| They're asking for an extension because they're not seeing either the Lebanese acting in real time or the willingness to act moving forward. | ||
| More of the same old that we've seen since 2006, where the Lebanese are saying, we'll take care of it. | ||
| Trust us. | ||
| Really, things have changed in Lebanon. | ||
| When you look on facts on the ground, they really haven't. | ||
| Before we go to calls, just could you give us an overview of what you're watching in the coming days and weeks? | ||
| What concerns you have about what's coming next in this conflict? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So my main focus is Hezbollah and Lebanon. | |
| I could talk about that all day. | ||
| So really what I'm focusing on is the timetable for Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, monitoring Lebanese action against either Hezbollah or Hezbollah's financiers and suppliers in real time, namely Iran. | ||
| We've seen the Lebanese, for example, block a Mahan air flight that was landing in Beirut. | ||
| This is an airline that sanctioned, it was known to smuggle weapons and funds to Hezbollah. | ||
| But again, this is a cosmetic action. | ||
| It came the day that the Arabic spokesman for the IDF said that Beirut International Airport is being used to resupply Hezbollah with funds from Iran. | ||
| And so the Lebanese civilian air directorate comes out and says, we're stopping these flights to change security protocols, but only until February 18th. | ||
| The flights are only blocked until February 18th. | ||
| As we mentioned, that's the timetable for Israeli withdrawal. | ||
| So they're just trying to get past the goalpost, right, of getting from ceasefire to a permanent end of hostilities so then Lebanon can go back to its previous equivocation on Hezbollah. | ||
| That's what I'm watching. | ||
| I think that's what we all need to watch because all of this what we're seeing, be it in Gaza, be it with Yemen, Hezbollah is the tip of the spear of this through the Iranian regime. | ||
| If Hezbollah is allowed to regenerate, we're going to end up in this situation. | ||
| Again, not just in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the West Bank in a decade or two. | ||
| We're ready to take your questions for David Daoud of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| Our line for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| We will start with our independent line with Michael in Plainfield, Illinois. | ||
| And good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and I hope that you'll allow me to develop my point because I'm disappointed in C-SPAN. | |
| This problem in Gaza started in 1948. | ||
| It didn't start just last year. | ||
| And this gentleman claims to be an expert. | ||
| Well, you just had a piece on where 2,000 children might be allowed to leave the area because they have cancer. | ||
| Maybe if we intervene sooner and didn't allow Israel to bomb every hospital into dust in Gaza, those children could be treated there. | ||
| If we're going to solve the problem, we have to be realistic. | ||
| The Palestinians deserve a separate, independent state. | ||
| You have to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and actually let these people alone. | ||
| That's going to solve the problem. | ||
| This gentleman, unfortunately, I don't think is aware of the history that this actually started in 1948, not last year. | ||
| Please respond. | ||
| I'm acutely aware of the history. | ||
| In fact, I could probably give a lesson on it. | ||
| In terms of the Gaza hospitals, let's start with talking about that. | ||
| These hospitals were not merely civilian installations. | ||
| Now, normally, I'll put on my lawyer hat here. | ||
| My expertise is in the laws of armed conflict, in fact. | ||
| Hospitals are normally immune during conflict from being targeted, meaning you have to intentionally deliberately, for no other purpose, hitting the hospital. | ||
| But what happens when a hospital is used for military purposes, as we've seen, as the Israelis have demonstrated through video after video, through uncovering weapons caches and underground tunnels in these hospitals, suddenly they lose their immunity. | ||
| And if these hospitals have been transformed into military installations, then that's on Hamas to do so. | ||
| Who are the authorities in Gaza or the elected authorities in Gaza? | ||
| Now, when it comes to the West Bank, look, what the solution will be to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some say two-state solutions, some say a one-state solution. | ||
| At the end of the day, both sides have to come to an agreement. | ||
| And while the Israelis have made many offers, and we can talk about the sincerity of those offers, but there have been offers on the table. | ||
| We'll take you back to 2000, Camp David, if we want to talk about history. | ||
| The Israelis gave 97% of the West Bank, offered to split Jerusalem. | ||
| Even Arab states, the Saudis, said that this deal was the best probably that the Palestinians could get. | ||
| President Bill Clinton, who sponsored this deal, said this is probably the best that they can get. | ||
| We could have had an end to the conflict 25 years ago. | ||
| And President Arafat at the time said no. | ||
| He couldn't put an end to the conflict. | ||
| That was the condition. | ||
| The Israelis said, we'll give you all this, territorial swaps, for the remaining 3%, splitting Jerusalem, which is anathema almost in Israeli society because of the history, the connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. | ||
| And the Palestinians walked away. | ||
| There was another deal in 2008 that Prime Minister Omert had offered. | ||
| Also, President Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor, didn't even respond to it. | ||
| So there have been milestones along this conflict where there have been offers to say, create a Palestinian state. | ||
| We want to be finished with the conflict. | ||
| And it hasn't been accepted by the other side. | ||
| Meanwhile, on the Israeli side, after the second intifada, so this is between 2000 and 2005, a wave of terrorism that hit Israel, and the lack of movement and the lack of demonstration of a desire for peace on the other side. | ||
| The Israeli will to continue compromising has eroded. | ||
| And October 7th has put, we could say, an end to that, for the time being at least. | ||
| And that's totally natural. | ||
| We can talk about the so-called radicalization of Palestinian society, but we don't talk about the impact of this terrorism on Israelis as well. | ||
| Because the previous caller referenced the expertise of our guest, I'll just give a little bit of our guest's background. | ||
| In addition to right now, as a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, previously he has been a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, the director of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria research at United Against a Nuclear Iran, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, also worked as a staff member on Capitol Hill, providing analysis on matters related to the Middle East, Israel, and Iran. | ||
| He also holds a bachelor's degree in government and history and also a jurisdiction of law degree from Suffolk University. | ||
| So that's some of the background information about our guest today. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Sam is in Hillsdale, Michigan on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm a senior fellow in my living room, and it's my position that Trump wants Gaza to build sandals for the ultra-rich and for down the road, the second Suez Canal, that's the Ben-Gurion Canal. | ||
| And he wants Crimea for the same thing. | ||
| He wants to sell that Ukraine business so that he can build a playground in Crimea. | ||
| So they've got a resort on the Red Sea and one on the Mediterranean. | ||
| And David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Okay. | ||
| I guess there was no question in there. | ||
| Let's go to Earl in Seneca Falls, New York, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Earl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| My question is this. | ||
| Why do people think that a two-state solution is possible? | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Because the rulers in Iran who back the terrorist organizations at Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, why do people think that because of that? | ||
| Why do people think there's a two-state solution possible? | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I think that's a good question. | ||
| I think it's the crux of the problem because of the widespread terrorism in these areas. | ||
| Let's talk about the West Bank specifically, because if we're talking about a two-state solution, it's going to be Israel and the territories it controls, namely the West Bank, Gaza, which it gave up in 2005. | ||
| But that would be the territory of the future Palestinian state. | ||
| If we look at the West Bank, the West Bank is topographically much higher than the center of Israel. | ||
| The center of Israel is basically Israel's seat of government. | ||
| It is basically New York and Washington, D.C., combined in one. | ||
| It is the heart of its population. | ||
| So, if you were to concede this territory, this high ground overlooking Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, you wouldn't need sophisticated weapons to shut down Israeli life, to shut down the Israeli economy. | ||
| You would need some sniper rifles, maybe some mortars. | ||
| This is kind of the crux of the problem: the trepidation that Israelis have about making concessions in the West Bank, because if you were to cede that, either to a Palestinian authority that is not a credible partner for peace, that would then turn that territory against Israel to continue the war through different means against the Israelis, or if that Palestinian authority, as we saw in Gaza, was not able to hold that territory either entirely, losing it to Hamas as they did, | ||
| or if we have a Lebanon situation in the West Bank, this would shut down Israeli life. | ||
| I'll take you to a 2018 paper that was written by Natan Zaks Hadiyamar, who talk about concessions in Israel and concede by Israel in the West Bank and concede that there's a possibility that what could emerge in the West Bank is a situation that resembles South Lebanon, where you may have a Palestinian authority, and then you have all these groups, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, their offshoots, lions den, that the Palestinian Authority is not able to control. | ||
| And from there, you could have a Hezbollah situation in this strategically critical territory for Israel, but it wouldn't be similar to South Lebanon in that South Lebanon overlooks the Galilee, which, yes, it has critical infrastructure, but it's not the heart of Israel. | ||
| It's not the beating pulse. | ||
| It's not the capital, Jerusalem. | ||
| It's not the main city, Tel Aviv. | ||
| It's not the main population center that would be able to be shut down, again, not with sophisticated weapons, with very primitive weapons. | ||
| Tony is in Flowertown, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Tony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm concerned about this guest. | ||
| And in general, the C-SPAN guests that come from think tanks generally say that there are small donations and funding when, in fact, these are sort of billionaire and very wealthy points of view. | ||
| I'm concerned that I haven't heard a Palestinian point of view or perspective. | ||
| I hear lots of guests on the Israel-Hamas conflict, but nothing from an Israeli standpoint, Tom. | ||
| So this guest is sort of going unopposed. | ||
| I think he's cherry-picking facts. | ||
| I think he's manipulating. | ||
| I think largely he's dishonest. | ||
| I mean, the international court, 150 nations, have called what's happening here genocide, and that was under Joe Biden and the Democrats with the media helping. | ||
| And then under Trump, it sounds like we're going to do more ethnic cleansing and we're going to force these people from their land. | ||
| There is no war. | ||
| One side has a military and one side does not. | ||
| One side is people being slaughtered. | ||
| I think it's really important to go back, like the independent caller from earlier said, this didn't begin last year. | ||
| This began in 1948. | ||
| And it has been a steady land grab by Israel. | ||
| The people in Palestine had an organization called the PLO. | ||
| Israel didn't want to work with them, so they undermined, sabotaged, and helped to create Hamas. | ||
| And I think if you don't know the history, and Americans rarely know the history because they listen to people like this on C-SPAN, these think tanks are garbage. | ||
| It's dark money. | ||
| It's lies. | ||
| It's propaganda. | ||
| Tony, you've made quite a few accusations against our guest. | ||
| I'll let him respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I welcome the guest's opinion. | |
| The ICJ has not called what's happening in genocide a genocide in Gaza. | ||
| In fact, you can listen to the former president of the ICJ giving an interview, I think it was on BBC, saying they didn't say that what was happening in Gaza was plausible genocide. | ||
| They said there are plausible rights that are potentially being affected. | ||
| So that's a very different question. | ||
| If we want to go back to the history, the PLO was a terrorist organization for most of its history. | ||
| That's why the Israelis refused to deal with it. | ||
| The Israelis set the bar for not negotiating with terrorists. | ||
| And the PLO's objective formed in 1964, prior to the onset of the Israeli control of the West Bank in Gaza up until 2005. | ||
| Its objective was the elimination of the state of Israel. | ||
| Its objective was not compromise. | ||
| So if we're talking about the history, if we want to go back to 1948, Israel was founded with the impremature of the international community. | ||
| There was the League of Nations mandate for Palestine that was given to the British, that was given to the British with the express creation of a Jewish national home, which British officials have said was for the express purpose of creating a Jewish state in the territory that was known as Palestine. | ||
| And the territory was demarcated and delineated for the express purpose of creating that Jewish state. | ||
| Now, there's an ethnic conflict that's going on. | ||
| There's obviously two peoples in that land. | ||
| And how you divide that territory, yes, requires compromise because neither side is going anywhere. | ||
| What doesn't help actually are opinions from this caller that delegitimize one side's rights to that land, rights to national self-determination in that land, and simply take the narrative of the other side, hook, line, and sinker, without actually providing any nuance or any facts, slogans like genocide and ethnic cleansing, when the facts on the ground do not necessarily support that. | ||
| Christopher is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Christopher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I'd like to thank Brian Lamb and Mrs. Swain and all the great host at C-SPAN. | ||
| You all do such a wonderful job. | ||
| As it relates to the topic at hand, I don't know really if decades matter in terms of the history. | ||
| When you consider the millennia of concerns and problems that this area has brought, I mean, you go back to the Old Testament, Esau and Jacob, and Cain and Abel. | ||
| So, Christopher, I would like to keep it to the modern conflict. | ||
| Did you have a question for David? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's more of a statement. | |
| I'm concerned about the floor, meaning President Trump has the floor now, and he's rendered an idea out of the box. | ||
| No matter, I'm a Democrat, and as much as I may dislike the 91-count felon, you know, indicted person, the thoughts of rapist and all this other kind of stuff that Trump is accused of. | ||
| This idea is out-of-the-box thinking, and that's what has to be done now. | ||
| I believe the two-state solution wasn't a solution now. | ||
| It wasn't. | ||
| They just will not get along. | ||
| So something else has to be done. | ||
| We have heard some Trump administration officials saying that the idea of a two-state solution is no longer realistic. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I think what President Trump said during his first term still holds, that it's up to the parties to decide. | |
| If one party wants the two-state solution, or if one party wants any solution and the other doesn't, then we don't have a solution. | ||
| So, that, given that we're at a state where the Israeli appetite now for concession, for territorial concession, simply isn't there anymore. | ||
| We've seen the slow death of the Israeli left under waves of successive waves of Palestinian terrorism. | ||
| Again, going back to 2000 with the second Intifada. | ||
| If you go from the euphoria of the 1990s, the Oslo Accords, when you talk to the average Israeli, they thought they were going to be eating homeless in Beirut within months, that this was done. | ||
| They were finally done. | ||
| So, that euphoria translates into the suicide bombings of the 2000s. | ||
| And then kind of the end was with October 7th. | ||
| And the Israeli left and the center, which are pro-to-state solutions, have not offered a vision for peace and achieving a two-state solution that is caught up with the times. | ||
| And on the other hand, a Palestinian unwillingness to call a final end to the conflict, either through a two-state solution or otherwise, where we've seen deals that would either require no end to the conflict, it would be kind of a staging point, or one that would require the return of millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to Israel, which would demographically change Israel from a Jewish state, its express purpose, into a state with a Palestinian majority. | ||
| This is not a solution. | ||
| So, we haven't seen this kind of two states for two peoples side and on the one side, and then the erosion of that on the other side to the point where right now I think talk of a solution is perhaps premature. | ||
| I do want to make a point about, I think you notice, going back to ancient history, going back into history, as our last two callers have talked about, one wants to go back to 1948, the other wants to go back to the Hebrew Bible. | ||
| This doesn't help us. | ||
| We are here in October, or sorry, February of 2025. | ||
| Let's start looking forward about what's realistic. | ||
| Instead of sinking these two peoples in the grievances of the past, look, everyone can sit there and debate who's right till the end of time. | ||
| And in the meantime, you have innocents on both sides that are suffering and that will continue to suffer in this endless war if all that's done moving forward is to sit there and try to justify who's better based on the past 100 years, 76 years, 1,000 years. | ||
| It's just not a productive way to move forward. | ||
| John is in Louisiana on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the thing to me on this is not hostages have to be released. | |
| Not anything else can get done until that happens. | ||
| And this dribbling and dribbling and dribbling along, it's just prolonging something. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| It just they need to just, okay, they will release all the Israeli hostages, which they are. | ||
| Now, the Hamas, do the same thing. | ||
| You're going to have to, even though they're not really hostages. | ||
| A lot of them are criminal elements. | ||
| And until that happens, so it should be just, I don't know. | ||
| It's driving me crazy that it's gone this long. | ||
| Any follow-up points to what John was saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he's echoing President Trump's sentiment that this dribble doesn't make sense. | |
| At the same time, what makes sense and what's realistic are two separate things. | ||
| I think if there were a kind of a magic wand or a magic solution to solving the conflict, to ending this war permanently, I would assume that I would hope that responsible leadership would take it. | ||
| Unfortunately, there isn't. | ||
| You have to deal with what's realistic. | ||
| And what's realistic is unfortunately this trickle of three hostages a week, four hostages a week, with the release of, I think today was 369 Palestinian security prisoners, 36 of whom were convicted to life sentences for several murders. | ||
| That's not an ideal situation where you release innocent people in exchange for people with blood on their hands either, but it's what's unfortunately the only thing that's realistically possible at this moment. | ||
| Kathleen is in Dayton, Ohio on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kathleen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and so appreciate Washington Journal. | |
| Mr. Dayoud, you said history is not important, but history is incredibly important. | ||
| No, he didn't say history was not important. | ||
| He said going so far back into history wasn't productive for the modern day conversation. | ||
| But go ahead, Kathleen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hope you object to when others are making, your objection is a really odd timing, quite frankly. | |
| But Mr. Dayude, understanding history is really critical in regard to this circumstance and how we got where we're at. | ||
| And also the history of the U.S. Any country's history is really important to understand. | ||
| So I really disagree with you. | ||
| And in regard to moving forward, you know, the Arab League, people can go watch Amanpour and Company, who she's been doing the best coverage. | ||
| I'm a media junkie, quite frankly, in my 70s. | ||
| And so Amanpour, BBC, PBS, Washington Journal, you are not having guests from the other perspective, like Norman Finkelstein or Nora Arakot or Barghouti or Rula Jabriel. | ||
| So in regard to the ICJ's rulings in regard to determining that this indeed has been a genocide and we have been able to see it with our eyes. | ||
| And so what do you think about the ICJ's ruling? | ||
| People should go watch that. | ||
| They can Google it, the International Criminal Court of Justice, as well as ICC's rulings on Galat and Netanyahu, who being war criminals in regard to starving people. | ||
| And I mean, we've been able to see this genocide in front of our eyes. | ||
| Talk about those things as well as the endless theft of internationally recognized Palestinian land in the West Bank. | ||
| Israel has been incredibly aggressive, and they do have the weapons. | ||
| So talk about that issue as well, as well as the Arab League. | ||
| All the Arab leaders are saying no way are Palestinians going to be removed. | ||
| They won't go along with it. | ||
| So talk about that as well, please. | ||
| I'm not sure if there was a question in that. | ||
| I never said that history wasn't relevant. | ||
| I said focusing obsessively on history is not productive. | ||
| We can go into history endlessly. | ||
| And the point that I was trying to make is to score historical points at the expense of moving forward is not what's productive. | ||
| The ICJ and the ICC have not ruled anything, in fact. | ||
| The ICC has issued arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yov Galant. | ||
| This isn't the same as a conviction, by the way. | ||
| Even however you view those arrest warrants, the ICJ is similar. | ||
| There has been no final ruling on that. | ||
| If we're talking about the Arab League. | ||
| Let's just pause for a moment there about the ICJ ruling, which was from January of last year. | ||
| I'm going to read a story here from NPR. | ||
| A top UN court says the Gaza genocide is plausible but does not order a ceasefire. | ||
| The International Court of Justice has found it plausible that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention. | ||
| In a provisional order delivered by the court's president, Joan Donahue, the court said Israel must ensure with immediate effect that its forces do not commit any of the acts prohibited by the Convention. | ||
| Donahue said the court cannot make a final determination right now on whether Israel is guilty of genocide, but she said that given the deteriorating situation in Gaza, the court has jurisdiction to order measures to protect Gaza's population from further risk of genocide, and that was in January of last year. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, Joan Donahue actually gave a subsequent interview in which she said that those media headlines were misquoting her. | |
| This is in her own words. | ||
| She wasn't saying there's a plausible risk of genocide there. | ||
| And this is in her own words. | ||
| You can go view the interview subsequently that she gave. | ||
| So, what's happened there is there's been this hearing that's been brought to the ICJ, and these processes take years. | ||
| So, there's been no definitive determination or final ruling that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. | ||
| And to say we're seeing it in real time, I think, is unrealistic, because most people who think that what is a war crime is a war crime don't understand how the laws of armed conflict work and what they permit and what they don't permit. | ||
| All right, let's go to John in Atlantic, Iowa, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, David. | |
| I just had a question-well, two questions, but I just wanted your thought on whether the Palestinians have a right to sovereign citizenship. | ||
| And the second question is whether you agree with this statement that there has never been a sovereign Palestinian authority that explicitly defined who is a Palestinian. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Whether, let's start with, let's break that down. | ||
| So, the question of whether Palestinians have a right to sovereignty. | ||
| All peoples, this is international law, have a right to self-determination. | ||
| And so far as the Palestinians are a people under the criteria that qualify for self-determination, then they require, then they are entitled to self-determination. | ||
| The question is whether self-determination necessarily equals independence. | ||
| Now, if we look at the Quebec case from Canada, again, putting on my lawyer hat, self-determination does not always necessarily need to equal independence. | ||
| In that case, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec, because the Quebecois rights were guaranteed through the mechanisms of state of Canada, through the Constitution of Canada, that self-determination was already fulfilled through the context of the Canadian state. | ||
| International law has a preference for maintaining the existing borders of states in the interest of stability. | ||
| Imagine if everyday peoples arise all the time, you started shifting borders as peoples arose. | ||
| So, there's an interest and a preference for maintaining the existing borders of states. | ||
| If you can fulfill your right to self-determination from within those existing borders and within that existing state, then you're not entitled to self-determination as independence, as cession from the existing state. | ||
| Now, whether there has ever been a sovereign Palestinian entity, I think that's what our caller was asking. | ||
| There hasn't been to date. | ||
| The question is: I go back to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2000, who was the first Likud prime minister to break from Likud orthodoxy and adopt a two-state solution. | ||
| This is at a teachers' conference in 2000, where he said, 2001, rather, where he said, I'm going to give the Palestinians what neither the Arabs nor the Turks nor the British ever gave them, a sovereign state. | ||
| I mean, this statement is, as a matter of history, true. | ||
| There has never been a sovereign state of Palestine in the borders that are claimed either by the pro-Palestine movement or in the smaller borders that have been delineated in a potential two-state solution. | ||
| There has been a British mandate for Palestine, which existed in the defined borders of Palestine, which includes Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, but that was not a sovereign state. | ||
| That was a mandatory territory that the British were given by the League of Nations for the purpose of turning that territory into a Jewish national home. | ||
| All right, well, that is all the time that we have today. | ||
| Thank you so much to David Daoud, who's a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| Really appreciate your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My pleasure. | |
| And so, coming up next on the Washington Journal, we're going to hear from Peter Shin and Joe Dunn of the National Association of Community Health Centers. | ||
| And they're going to join us to discuss how the government funding freeze is impacting community health centers. | ||
| But first, starting on Monday, you'll be able to watch our new series with new members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, speaking about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all week beginning Monday at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Here's a preview. | ||
| I grew up on a thousand-acre cattle ranch in West Texas outside of Abilene. | ||
| We raised Angus and Braangus beef cows. | ||
| So I've been ever since I can remember working cows, building fences, driving tractors and backhoes, doing everything you would expect to do on a thousand-acre cattle ranch. | ||
| I really can't remember a time in my life when I didn't have a job growing up. | ||
| So I grew up in a very different environment, very unique environment, I think, in rural West Texas, but it's God's country out there. | ||
|
unidentified
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What did those experiences teach you? | |
| You know, you learn the value of a dollar immediately. | ||
| You know, like I said, I was getting paid $6 an hour in kindergarten whenever I was working on the ranch, and I was helping my dad do whatever he needed to do on the ranch. | ||
| But you learn the value of a dollar, you learn how to work hard and work long. | ||
| You know, the fact that I was one of the first two women, Claire Wilson and I, were elected the same year, you know, I think is a testament to the fact that there were some gaps in knowledge among the caucus before we joined. | ||
| You know, not folks had had a lot of different experiences in the caucus, but they hadn't, you know, grown up as a queer woman in Washington State. | ||
| And, you know, it matters that we bring our voices and our neighbors' voices with us into the halls of power because, you know, we get to shape legislation, whether through amendment or just educating our colleagues about the way we talk about community that makes folks in community feel more seen and heard and respected. | ||
| You know, we've passed a lot of LGBTQ protections in the legislature in Washington during the first Trump administration in advance of this one. | ||
| And now I'm bringing those neighbors' voices with me, those experiences, to keep fighting for all of our communities. | ||
|
unidentified
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And that big family is a huge advantage to covering a big state because I have siblings living in pretty much all corners of the state. | |
| So everywhere I go, I have a free place to stay. | ||
| So that's a huge advantage. | ||
| But I really am a product of my state. | ||
| I was born in the western part of North Dakota. | ||
| My parents were children of the Great Depression. | ||
| They nearly starved to death out in the prairies of western North Dakota in the dirty 30s when there was literally no rain for a decade. | ||
| And as farmers, that's a tough thing to get through, but they did. | ||
| Their persistence, their families persisted and they got through that and got educated and resettled in that area after college. | ||
| My mom and dad back in Willison, North Dakota, which is in the far western part of the state, had their eight kids all in that part of the state and then started to raise them there. | ||
| Then when I was fairly young, I was well five. | ||
| We moved all the way across the state to the eastern part of the state in Fargo. | ||
| And I spent my formative years there and lived there until I got into high school when we moved and planted right in the middle of the state. | ||
| And so I literally have covered all parts of the state just in growing up. | ||
| And being one of eight kids, it's pretty tough to spoil that many kids. | ||
| We had a lot of expectations for us brought on by my parents, who again were very conservative-minded folks. | ||
| As the first Latina woman ever elected in the state of New Jersey to represent a congressional district, I'm truly proud. | ||
| I'm truly proud not only of my roots and where I come from, but I'm also proud to be able to be a voice for those that really didn't have a voice. | ||
| So I'm happy to be able to represent. | ||
| But it also comes with a huge amount of responsibility because I want to make sure that when you use your voice, you're using it to ensure that it is one that helps to create the opportunity for so many people. | ||
| I do not just believe that any one person represents any one group. | ||
| I represent the entire New Jersey 9th congressional district. | ||
| But I am truly proud of my roots and my upbringing and being a Latina, being Puerto Rican is something that I'm very proud of. | ||
| The most formative experience in my own life was serving as the caregiver to the person who would become my husband, Andy, during his battle with cancer. | ||
| And for anyone who's been diagnosed with cancer, particularly if you've been diagnosed in your 20s, as Andy was, you know it is like a punch in the gut unlike anything you've ever experienced. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You never expect to hear that word at such a young age. | |
| But from those first moments after his diagnosis, Andy and I knew how lucky we were. | ||
| We knew how lucky Andy was to have health insurance that would allow him to get care that would hopefully save his life. | ||
| And we both knew how lucky we were to have flexibility with our jobs that allowed him to focus on the full-time job of trying to get better and me to focus on the full-time job of caring for him, of loving him, of marrying him. | ||
| And eventually when he found out that his cancer was terminal, to walk him to his passing, and I decided to run for office because I do not believe that in Delaware, our state of neighbors, or here in the United States in the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth at that time and that ability to get care should be a matter of luck. | ||
|
unidentified
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I believe it should be the law of the land. | |
| Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are joined by two guests from the National Association of Community Health Centers. | ||
| Peter Shin is the Chief Science Officer. | ||
| Good morning and welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
| And Joe Dunn is the chief policy officer. | ||
| Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us. | ||
| And you're here to talk to us about community health centers. | ||
| But first of all, talk about the National Association of Community Health Centers, your mission, how you're funded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so thank you so much for having us on the program today. | |
| We are both at the National Association of Community Health Centers, as you said. | ||
| That is the trade association for community health centers across the country for over 50 years. | ||
| NAC has been in the DC area for a variety of reasons, mainly for policy and advocacy on behalf of health centers, but also ensuring that they have the services that they need in terms of training and technical assistance to be the best providers in the communities for the patients. | ||
| And right now, it's grown to over 32.5 million patients across the country rely on community health centers. | ||
| So, Peter, for people who don't know, what is a community health center? | ||
| How is it different from any other kind of medical facility? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Excuse me. | ||
| The community health centers are private nonprofit clinical practices. | ||
| We are not a free clinic. | ||
| We are not a federal program, for example. | ||
| We are spread largely in 15,000 communities. | ||
| So we're almost in every congressional district. | ||
| There's about 1,500 organizations that manage those sites. | ||
| As Joe had mentioned, we serve one in 10 Americans right now. | ||
| But really our signature spot is really being in federally designated underserved communities where poverty is very high. | ||
| And because of poverty is being high, we have high needs. | ||
| Patients that have very complex medical, behavioral, dental vision, as well as social needs. | ||
| So one of the conditions for receiving what we call the federal health center grant program is being in those areas. | ||
| Also, we're required to see all patients regardless of their ability to pay. | ||
| And, you know, as I mentioned before, you know, we're not a free clinic. | ||
| We do charge a sliding fee, but it's basically based on what they're able to pay. | ||
| And probably one of the biggest innovations about the health centers is that it's patient-run. | ||
| Our governing boards are 51% patients themselves, and so we're very much held accountable to the patient experience, the patient outcomes, and just making sure that all the resources that are available to us are really meant for the community and for the patients. | ||
| How might a regular patient know if they're walking into a clinic or a hospital if it's a community health center? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's not always obvious. | |
| We don't necessarily have a community health center in the name. | ||
| For example, like in DC, we have Unity Health Care, which is a health center and probably the largest health center in DC. | ||
| But you can go to their HERSA website, which the HERSA is the Health Resources Services Administration that oversees the 330 or the Health Center grant program. | ||
| I think it's called the, this website is findahealth center.hearsa.gov. | ||
| I'll look that up. | ||
| But in the meantime, Joe, he's mentioned twice these grants. | ||
| Can you talk about how federal funding relates to community health centers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so federal funding is so critical. | |
| We see, as Peter mentioned, all patients. | ||
| And so that can be roughly 20% of our patients are uninsured. | ||
| So the grant goes to help support that. | ||
| About 50% of our patients are on Medicaid, 10% on Medicare, right? | ||
| So it really is a one-stop shop for a full spectrum of a family, multi-generation, so everything from births to elderly patients. | ||
| This primary care model, along with the behavioral health and oral health and other kind of support services like transportation, really has demonstrated over time that it saves the federal government money through reducing utilization or use of emergency departments and hospitalizations by preventing and managing chronic disease in such a better way. | ||
| Is all of the funding coming from the federal government? | ||
| Like what are the other funding streams that support a community health center? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so there are some other federal grants besides the ones that Peter mentioned, and then they get reimbursement from federal programs. | |
| But then we also have about 20% of the patient population is commercial or employer-sponsored health care. | ||
| So that is through the private insurance market. | ||
| Just to go back to that website that you were referencing, Find a Health Center, it is indeed findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov, and it allows you to enter your location to find a community health center. | ||
| And so that is available. | ||
| Now then, last month the Trump administration issued and then rescinded a spending freeze that included many federal loans and grants. | ||
| What impact has that had on community health centers? | ||
| And I'll let either one of you answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I'll start. | |
| You know, there was initially a lot of concern around that. | ||
| There was in the news there was some articles around potential layoffs or closures. | ||
| I think while that has been resolved and the funding is now available, it really demonstrated that there's a lack of cushion in the system, that health centers operate on razor-thin margins. | ||
| And so they really need the federal dollars and the certainty of those federal dollars. | ||
| And it really kind of underscores a larger point. | ||
| We have two big deadlines coming up in March, mid of March and end of March for our federal funding. | ||
| Health centers get about $6 billion a year through the federal government through this grant program. | ||
| And as of right now, it's unclear what's going to happen with that money. | ||
| The fortunate thing is we have deep and widespread bipartisan support. | ||
| So that funding has been continued and expanded regardless of the administration. | ||
| In the first Trump administration, it grew under previous administrations too. | ||
| It's grown in terms of patients and number of patients served. | ||
| And so we really believe that we're well positioned to serve and be a solution for this current administration. | ||
| We hope that Congress will move on this quickly. | ||
| There's a story here from Vermont Public Media from February 4th. | ||
| So this was when that freeze was still effect. | ||
| In effect, Virginia Community Health Centers close over federal funding access. | ||
| And that was even despite the pause of the federal funding freeze. | ||
| At that point, it says half of Virginia's community health centers were cut off from federal grant money, forcing some to stop providing certain services and others to close branches. | ||
| So that was even after the funding freeze was paused. | ||
| And since then, there have been court orders. | ||
| This week, a judge found that the Trump administration violated that court order to pause the funding freeze and has continued to improperly freeze some federal funds and is refusing disbursement of some federal appropriated funds. | ||
| I wonder if you can talk about what impact you heard from your members about what this funding freeze actually did in real time and what the long-term implications of these disruptions in payments might be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, I think, just to be frank, it caused panic for a lot of the health centers. | |
| As Joe had mentioned, you know, they are operating on very thin margins. | ||
| Last year, it was about 2 percent. | ||
| This year, most of the health centers on average will be in the negative. | ||
| About two in five health centers only have 90 days of cash on hand. | ||
| So they are really operating in terms of high anxiety and high uncertainty, especially as we're thinking about, you know, how do we prepare for what may be coming down in terms of the federal funding. | ||
| And I think sort of plans to expand care. | ||
| You know, as I mentioned before, we're serving one in 10 right now. | ||
| We have been thinking about really how the health centers will grow to serving one in three. | ||
| Health centers, as we know, has been growing since the 1960s when the first two health centers were established. | ||
| And right now, what we are trying to think about is how do we get to the places where there's high need. | ||
| And our growth has sort of followed that trajectory. | ||
| With 100 million Americans without access to care, I mean, we are trying to get to that one in three across the country. | ||
| There's a story here in the Hill, and it's been widely reported elsewhere, that the GOP plan for reconciliation, which would be their effort to pass funding as well as some other pieces of legislation, includes potential cuts to Medicaid. | ||
| Here in the Story in the Hill, the GOP leaders have downplayed the Medicaid cuts as they seek $2 trillion in savings. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise sought to reassure the public and potential jittery members of their own caucuses that the Medicaid changes under discussion include work requirements and fraud reduction, not drastic cuts such as lowering the federal match for Medicaid expansion in states or instituting a per capita cap. | ||
| How worried are you about potential cuts to Medicaid and how much might that affect community health centers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so fortunately we had 2,000 people just last week in DC for our national conference. | |
| We really wanted to focus in on educating members of Congress on the value and impact of Medicaid to the health centers and their patients. | ||
| It is 50% of the patients that we see. | ||
| It's about 40% of the revenue. | ||
| So it's a significant concern as we think of this. | ||
| But at the same time, it's very early on the process and we have strong support on both sides of the aisle and we want to continue to work with folks and policymakers to just articulate how any policy changes would impact communities across the country. | ||
| As Peter mentioned, we serve one in 10 across the country, but it's even higher in rural America. | ||
| So one in five Americans in rural America get access to care at a community health center. | ||
| In some states, Vermont and West Virginia, it's one in three individuals, right? | ||
| So any kind of substantial changes would have an impact, but we believe that because of our deep and widespread support and then along with the understanding that the members of Congress have about the important role health centers play, that we'll be able to talk to them and engage throughout this process. | ||
| And actually, can I just add that we find the health centers, and the research has also shown this, is health centers are highly effective and highly efficient. | ||
| So as they're looking for cuts and they're thinking about what kind of ramifications that might have, I mean, the health centers themselves, as Joe mentioned, is critical in terms of addressing the high needs in rural America. | ||
| But we also are relatively cheap compared to other settings. | ||
| I mean, we tend to be 24% cheaper and less costly compared to outpatient clinics, for example. | ||
| We save about $40 billion in Medicaid, about $60 billion across the health care system. | ||
| So, you know, for how the ramifications for Medicaid cuts and how it filters down to health centers and how that will impact efficiency and making sure that the taxpayers are getting what they need out of this program and out of what we do, I think is going to be a critical consideration that they should have in their calculations. | ||
| In the midst of many of the kind of rapid-fire activities of the Trump administration the first 100 days, one of the things that's happened is that many health agency reports and online posts seem to have gone offline. | ||
| He was reporting on that in the Associated Press, saying the Trump administration has put a freeze on many federal health agency communications with the public. | ||
| This was through the end of January, and that was, some of those have gone back up, I should say, since then. | ||
| But there was an immediate pause on quite a few pieces of data. | ||
| Some of that still hasn't come back online. | ||
| I wonder if that has affected you all at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things about the health center program and for health centers who receive those grants is that as part of the eligibility for those grants, you have to report annually on all the expenditures, on all the number of patients we serve, so that the program itself finds the grant program to be effective in its use. | |
| So when we're going after grants and we're trying to show the case for advocacy, for example, we rely on getting that data. | ||
| And then of course for patients who are trying to find a health center, I think for a while the Find a Health Center site was also down. | ||
| So how do they also find access to those clinic sites as well? | ||
| Yeah, and I would just add that health centers are compliant with the federal grant that they get. | ||
| And so we understand that there's going to be a transition with the administration and review of some of the communications and things like that. | ||
| And thankfully, a lot of that is back up. | ||
| But they want to just understand what the kind of rules of the road are. | ||
| And that's the important thing as we think of communications with the agency, the regulator who oversees the grant to understand what their expectations are. | ||
| And that's where the health centers really just have that bi-directional communication. | ||
| That's why it's so important. | ||
| All right, let's get to some questions from callers. | ||
| Our number for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| And we have a special line for health care workers. | ||
| If you are a health care worker, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's start with Nelson in Pembroke Pines, Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nelson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you all hear me okay? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, great. | |
| Gentlemen, I support the concept of community health centers. | ||
| They're very important. | ||
| I think the problem, however, is the dependency that community health centers have taken with the federal government. | ||
| The fraud and mismanagement of funds that comes from Washington is pretty clear as to what's going on. | ||
| I'm a retired firefighter paramedic, and in the 80s, I dealt quite a bit with community, private community health centers started by immigrant organizations, mostly Cuban Americans. | ||
| And the members would pay, the population that were members of it would pay a monthly fee for their entire family, and they were taken pretty well care of. | ||
| All of those facilities have now disappeared because the federal government has come in, and all of those former organizations have now transferred to Medicare Advantage programs only. | ||
| So the families are now left out, and only the elderly are participating in that. | ||
| So your thoughts on whatever happened to federalism and the states taking up responsibility to assist organizations like yours. | ||
| Thank you, gentlemen. | ||
| Well, thank you so much, Nelson. | ||
| Really interesting question there. | ||
| I wasn't familiar with some of the work that maybe you were talking about down in Florida with the private kind of health clinics. | ||
| But I will say that health centers do get state dollars and are supported by the states. | ||
| They really meet a need. | ||
| And as my colleague mentioned, you know, they're really locally driven and locally governed, right? | ||
| So these are patients who are serving on the board and really are directing what the focus is. | ||
| And so if there's a specific need for behavioral health in the community, that's where they bring the direction towards or something around oral health, maybe on dental, if there's a particular need there. | ||
| So while we understand there are many players in the healthcare system, we really believe that health centers are an incredibly efficient program that has seen incredible results in terms of reducing those longer-term costs of Medicaid and Medicare by having that primary care focus. | ||
| Let's hear from Jeff in Crofton, Nebraska on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks. | |
| Listen, I got to do you all cover abortions and do you cover illegal immigrants? | ||
| If they come in, do they see illegal immigrants? | ||
| Are they paying for all that? | ||
| And if you're spending $30 billion a year on health care coverage, is that all? | ||
| Or do we need to look for hidden money like we are everywhere else? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Jeff. | ||
| So health centers do not provide abortion with federal abortion services with federal funding per the federal law, so they're very compliant on that. | ||
| And in terms of immigration, health centers are really focused around treating the patients. | ||
| And so they're not required, not allowed to ask about immigration status. | ||
| It's something that we are focusing in on the importance of what the patient needs. | ||
| And really, again, as you kind of mentioned, the funding, we are so efficient, right? | ||
| So if you think of 1% of federal health care spend goes to health centers, but we serve 10% of the nation's population and have this strong track record of reducing costs over time, that's where we really believe that we're a part of the solution. | ||
| As this new focus and new administration is coming in looking for efficiencies, we believe that we're very well positioned to be, again, part of a solution there. | ||
| Just for some additional information, Jeff, it doesn't quite answer your question about immigration, but KFF, which is a health policy research and polling and news site, does have some data about the race and ethnicity of health center patients in both urban and rural settings. | ||
| This is based on 2023 numbers. | ||
| 37% of the patients seen nationally by these health centers are white, 40% are Hispanic, 17% black, and then 4% Asian, 3% other. | ||
| That looks very different in urban versus rural areas, particularly bigger gaps in rural settings where 61% of the folks seen in these health centers are white versus 24% Hispanic and 10% black. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, that's right. | |
| I mean, two-thirds of our health center patients are racially ethnically diverse. | ||
| And as Joe mentioned, you know, by law, we are, as I mentioned at the top of the show, is that we have to serve everyone regardless of their ability to pay. | ||
| So as they come in, that's really our job. | ||
| And so regardless of their status, regardless of their insurance card, we have to see the patients as they come in. | ||
| And just on that point, as Peter mentioned, there's a very large health center here in the district called Unity, right? | ||
| So we're in big cities, small towns. | ||
| Over last summer, I went to Alaska, I went to Bethel, Alaska, and saw that the mobile unit that the health center uses is a snow machine because literally the patients that they care for are in small villages that are only accessible by snow machine. | ||
| So this is just the diversity of the country is reflected in our patients. | ||
| And ultimately, the end result is we save money and we save lives through this unique primary care model. | ||
| Michael is in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is a health care worker. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| First, I want to compliment the community health centers for the work they've done. | ||
| I'm a retired otolaryngologist. | ||
| I've done it for 35 years, and they do great work. | ||
| But I think looking at the big picture, our federal government has $36, almost $37 trillion of debt. | ||
| We run a $2 trillion annual deficit. | ||
| I think the problems that we have with supporting community health centers at a federal level are that we're going to go bankrupt at the federal government level. | ||
| What programs do they think they can move to states successfully going forward so that we do not have to deal with our whole country in debt ruining our country going forward? | ||
| And maybe I'll just jump in. | ||
| So thank you, Michael, for your service in the healthcare field and for the compliment there. | ||
| You know, one of the things that the Congressional Budget Office just last year came up with was investments in health centers do save money over the long term. | ||
| And again, as you would know, by reducing the use of emergency departments and hospitalization, so there's some great statistics that we have on our website about managing that diabetes. | ||
| So to avoid dialysis later on or a kidney transplant or dealing with hypertension to avoid that major cardiac event. | ||
| So it's very similar kind of data that has been shown out by researchers and then through the federal government with the Congressional Budget Office that investments in health centers do save the federal taxpayer over time. | ||
| And I'll just add in terms of the overall health care pie, I mean, you know, Secretary Kennedy has also talked about really shifting more in terms of primary care. | ||
| I mean, you can't bend the cost curve without primary care. | ||
| I mean, we are really focused in terms of preventive medicine, meaning that we are trying to offset those high-cost chronic illnesses, poor outcomes downstream. | ||
| So I think in terms of how we shift toward greater investments, as Joe had mentioned, that primary care represents, or at least health center spending only represents 1% of that whole total spend. | ||
| Primary care only represents about 5%. | ||
| So if we can increase that, double that, triple that, I think that gets us to where we really need to go in terms of bending the cost curve. | ||
| George is in Tennessee on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd like to ask both gentlemen, the old memorial hospitals, funded, I'm assuming, by grants and donations, and they're being bought up by for-profit. | ||
| What affect does the for-profit, and in this area, we have a huge one that out of a five-star rating, it's rated minus one with the agreement that supposedly they're supposed to furnish a million dollars a year or whatever in free health care. | ||
| Why, in your opinion, if you can say this, why do you think our politicians in both parties are allowing hospitals to be bought up in a monopoly by for-profits? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'll hang up and listen to your answer. | ||
| Yeah, so thank you, George, for that question. | ||
| I know that there's definitely a shift towards for-profit hospitals for some communities, and that may be what's right for those communities. | ||
| It's hard to say without knowing more of the details specifically. | ||
| But I will say there's not a shift to for-profit for health centers. | ||
| The health centers are locally controlled nonprofits. | ||
| And because of the requirements around the local boards, they do need to stay that way. | ||
| So we're insulated from that phenomenon, but definitely would love to maybe understand that, you know, how that for-profit shift in medicine could be impacting communities like yours. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think that sort of a slight different perspective is, you know, if they're in rural communities and these are rural community hospitals, we know that there is some of them are closing down and that health centers are trying to step in and try to create different kinds of services that's really needed for those communities, | ||
| like whether it's prenatal care, maternity care, addressing some of the cervical and breast cancer screenings, as Joe mentioned, in terms of really thinking about how do we really go after the leading causes of death, hypertension and diabetes, and still trying to maintain those services in those communities as larger systems sort of fail to struggle in this current environment. | ||
| We have seen so many hospitals closing around the country, particularly in rural areas. | ||
| What does it actually take to set up a community health center in the places where maybe they don't have good access to a hospital or other medical facilities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and a lot of that access need is in rural America. | |
| We did a study, as Peter mentioned, 100 million Americans that need better access to primary care. | ||
| And a lot of the communities were in rural America. | ||
| There's a process to start a community health center and to get that funding through the Health Resources and Services Administration where you need to establish a track record that you can have a grant and you have the community input and buy-in, but also the funding that's necessary. | ||
| The last time that there was one of these rounds of funding, it was in 2019. | ||
| There were 77 applications that were funded, but only that was out of over 500 that were actually filed. | ||
| So there's an incredible need out there to do this, and especially in rural, as there's been this shift away from community hospitals in rural America. | ||
| So it's something that we really try to work with. | ||
| The individuals and our state affiliates, the state primary care associations, work with people on the ground to guide them as they look to develop a health center. | ||
| Just to be clear, so you're saying that in order to set up one of these community health centers, you have to apply for these federal grants. | ||
| And the last time that option was open was in 2019. | ||
| Do you happen to know if there's another one scheduled or what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's been projected if there, but it's pending new resources, new funding. | |
| And so the HERSA, the agency, got about 600 applications now. | ||
| And so we know that there's still that incredible need out there. | ||
| And that's something that we're trying to push for Congress to provide additional resources. | ||
| So we just had our conference last week. | ||
| As I mentioned, we're trying to push for an increase commensurate with the opportunities around the Make America Healthy Again agenda that the administration has and to meet some of the needs around these new communities that would need to be funded. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Patricia is in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Patricia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have an 82-year-old mother that goes to the community health center in Erie, Pennsylvania. | ||
| And it is, when we go there, it is so packed. | ||
| There are actually people sitting on the stairs. | ||
| It's so busy there. | ||
| My question is: what is the doctor per patient in ratio? | ||
| In the city like that, because it just seems like there's so many patients and there's not a whole lot of doctors. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, in general, it just sort of speaks to the primary care workforce shortage. | ||
| I think every health center, depending on where you go, will see sort of long waits or maybe more thinner lines. | ||
| But in general, I think it just speaks to the lack of primary care in the system. | ||
| But one of the things about health centers is that we really do try to figure out how to create greater access points. | ||
| We do have a large aging population. | ||
| I think we have about eight, nine million 55-plus adults that we know we are going to have to think about how to create different kinds of open access for that population also. | ||
| Going back to that KFF data on community health centers, some of the data they have, roughly eight in 10 patients reported that they were able to get appointments as soon as they needed at health centers in 2022. | ||
| And that was in the past 12 months for checkup or routine care. | ||
| 60% said they were always able to get an appointment at their health center as soon as they wanted. | ||
| For immediate care that they needed right away, 54% said that they were able to do that compared to 21% saying usually and even less saying sometimes or never. | ||
| And then across racial and ethnic group, most health center patients reported positive experiences interacting with health center doctors and other professionals. | ||
| But black and Hispanic patients were less likely than white patients to say that doctors or health professionals explain things in a way that was easy to understand. | ||
| That was a different set of data there. | ||
| Let's go to Amy in La Plata, Maryland on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Amy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Jesus. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to advocate for community health centers because I feel that it should be a bipartisan issue. | ||
| All Americans need to have these community health centers, whether it be for themselves or their family. | ||
| I mean, no one can go through the entire trajectory of life and guarantee that their financial situation or that their health care situation won't change. | ||
| I know personally in my family, I've had several family members who had to use community health care centers because they were living in rural areas and this was their choice, but it's primarily also financial. | ||
| So I just wanted to urge the public that this is a critical issue and that we definitely have enough federal funding for this matter and this is something that directly serves all Americans. | ||
| Well, thank you so much, Amy, for that support and appreciation. | ||
| We definitely agree with you that while health centers are nonpartisan, they're fortunate to get bipartisan support because of the impact that they have in communities. | ||
| And that can be, like I said, big cities, small towns, rural frontier island communities. | ||
| Kind of often in those rural communities, they may be the only primary care option for the constituents and for the individuals. | ||
| And so we've talked to multiple health centers. | ||
| There's one that I'm thinking of in South Dakota. | ||
| They have sites of, you know, in towns of 300, 400, 500 people. | ||
| And if not for them, it would be hours and hours of driving to get to the next hospital or health care system. | ||
| Shirley is in Jackson, Tennessee on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Shirley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is, the community health centers in my area, I have concerns that there's not enough oversight. | ||
| And the gentleman, both gentlemen talked about the savings. | ||
| I'd like to know, are they sacrificing quality to create these savings? | ||
| Because what I'm finding in our community centers is that we're being provided with sub-quality equipment, sub-quality medicine, even the food for the feeding tubes. | ||
| People are allergic to soy, for example, and they're forced to still use that, knowing that they're allergic to it. | ||
| Then we have the other situation. | ||
| My other question is, when you create these savings, does those savings, those funds, find their way back into the community health program? | ||
| Because if you have savings, who is the savings for? | ||
| It doesn't seem that, doesn't appear that it's necessarily for the community when we are forced to use sub-quality equipment and medicine. | ||
| We're forced into using generic, and sometimes generic doesn't always fit everyone. | ||
| Everyone doesn't fit into that box. | ||
| So what are you doing to service those people who do not fit into those boxes? | ||
| All right, Shannon, we're running low on time, so I want to give them a chance to respond to your question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, great question, Shirley. | |
| And I'm sorry that you're experiencing that what you think is a perceived lower quality. | ||
| But as nonprofits, most nonprofits in general, but all health centers as nonprofits, reinvest all the revenue that they gain in terms of the service lines. | ||
| The research has shown that health centers, their quality of care often exceeds even the industry benchmarks. | ||
| And I think in terms of what we're seeing for them, I mean, if you visit most health centers, they're very sophisticated, but have very diverse service lines. | ||
| As I mentioned, that they are very patient-oriented and patient-centered, which means they are not only looking at the medical service that they need, they're also having to meet the needs for substance use disorders, mental health, social needs, vision health, oral health. | ||
| So it's a lot of different kinds of needs that they're trying to think about as they pull in these resources. | ||
| And I love the point that you're making that, you know, if we, if there are savings in the system that health centers are generating, it should definitely be coming back for us to think about how we can better advance the care that we're providing. | ||
| And just to maybe underscore one point there. | ||
| So thank you, Shirley, for raising that. | ||
| As we've talked about, right, 51% of the board of a health center is patients, right? | ||
| And so unlike another type of healthcare setting where the decision makers may be in some far-off state or far-off community, these are people that are in the community that are seeking care and getting care right there. | ||
| And so if there are issues, they are immediately addressed because they're bringing them up through the board and creating change. | ||
| And so that, I think, has led to the strong record around quality for health centers because of this unique part of our health care model. | ||
| James is in Harlem Springs, Ohio on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I'm concerned about our tax dollars. | ||
| I voted, I've been a lifelong Democrat, but I don't think I'll be doing that again this year. | ||
| Yes, thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm a lifelong Democrat. | ||
| But James, did you have a question for them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Are you funding our health centers with taxpayer money? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So, James, thank you for the question. | ||
| The health centers do get federal funding to support their operations and care for the uninsured. | ||
| And so that's really important to, but it's also, you know, in context, only about 12 or 14 percent of the, you know, total revenue that the health center gets. | ||
| So it's, you know, really supported by other kind of reimbursement through coverage like Medicare, Medicaid. | ||
| But, you know, again, we have a very significant return on investment because of the focus around primary care and keeping people out of more high-cost settings like an emergency department. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for a model that saves costs, saves lives, save livelihoods, I mean, health centers are that solution. | ||
| We know that health centers are the solution to making America healthy. | ||
| We are, as I mentioned before, we are, our growth is really dependent on where the needs are. | ||
| And the needs are huge still, $100 million without access to care. | ||
| So when you go visit a healthcare for the homeless program, we're probably running it or likely affiliated with it. | ||
| School-based health centers, migrant health centers, public housing clinics. | ||
| So, you know, we are really going to places where it may not necessarily be sort of what be attractive for for-profit hospitals or for-profit entities. | ||
| But, you know, our mission is to serve all the people in need. | ||
| Well, thank you both very much for your time. | ||
| That was Joe Dunn, who is the chief policy officer at the National Association of Community Health Centers, and Peter Shin, who is the chief science officer. | ||
| Thank you both so much for joining us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| Well, coming up, we're going to hear from you. | ||
| We're going to have open forum, and you can start calling in now. | ||
| The numbers are up on the screen. | ||
| We will be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 12:20 p.m., Tamara Lanier, author of From These Roots, traces her family's bloodline to an enslaved man, Papa Renti, who's in one of the first ever photos of enslaved people from Africa. | ||
| She also speaks about her lawsuit against Harvard University to reclaim the 19th century daguerreotype of him. | ||
| And at 2.30 p.m. Eastern, in honor of President's Day weekend, we'll look back at presidents as authors. | ||
| You'll hear from Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. | ||
| At 8 p.m., Bill Gates discusses his life and career and early influences in his memoir, Source Code. | ||
| Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on afterwards, former president of Anheuser-Busch Sales and Distribution Company, Anson Freerichs, offers his insight to the Bud Light controversy, declining sales, and its future in his book, Last Call for Bud Light. | ||
| He's interviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Richard Morrison. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Starting next week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | ||
| On Monday at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, the first African-American ever elected to Congress from Oregon. | ||
| My mother graduated in 1970 from one of the last segregated high schools in the state and the country rather in South Carolina. | ||
| And I think about all of the opportunities that weren't afforded her, you know, coming out of segregation. | ||
| And I bring that perspective to Oregon, saying, you know, my mom was a rural kid that didn't have a lot of opportunities, but I'm going to make sure that I bring that forth for all of the kids in Oregon. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all next week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in an open forum, ready to take your calls with your thoughts and comments about policy, news, whatever's on your mind. | ||
| Our number for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll start with Leah in Anderson, South Carolina on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Leah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Well, my first question was, did the gentleman say that some of the funding, the tax dollars, do go to assist migrants or immigrants here in some of the medical centers? | ||
| Did he say that? | ||
| He did mention migrant health centers, migrant health care among the services that some community health centers provide. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I understand. | |
| What my comment is, is I'm in my late 60s and used to, and I know things are different. | ||
| We had one health department in our each city or county, and folks that were low income would go there and they were able to see any type of medical or dental help. | ||
| My concern lies within our hospital systems. | ||
| If you have insurance, if you have to go there to the ER, you have to sit there like all night until the next day almost to get to see a doctor. | ||
| And that, to me, that's where things need to be cleaned up first, you know, as opposed to giving a lot of our tax dollars to folks that are coming in from other countries. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Lisa in Utica, Michigan on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Lisa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for having this wonderful conversation this morning. | ||
| The thing I'm calling about this morning is welfare reform. | ||
| There seems to be a lot of kerfluffle going on with people who are losing benefits. | ||
| They're getting letters in the mail. | ||
| Their TANF is being reduced. | ||
| Their food stamps, their SNAP program benefits. | ||
| They're also discussing how they receive the unearned income tax credit. | ||
| And I just want to call in to remind people that these were not meant to be programs to sustain you for life. | ||
| And so for people that are having additional kids to get additional benefits, that they are putting the children at risk by doing this, and that they indeed may not be able to afford their children, which is very troubling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I just wanted to call and throw my comment in. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Donald is in Richland, Michigan, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Donald. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling just for some quick words. | ||
| I was listening to a politician yesterday, and he was talking about God this and God that and God the other. | ||
| Then, how can that be when he's a Democrat and is for abortion? | ||
| How can God isn't on both sides of this thing? | ||
| So that's just kind of a problem for me. | ||
| And where did the global warming go in the last week or so? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't heard anybody mention global warming in several days now. | |
| I guess it's not here anymore. | ||
| It's a little confusing. | ||
| You cannot fix today's problems when you're worried about yesterday's problems. | ||
| That's all the time you hear in the Middle East there. | ||
| We're no longer fighting war with Japan and Germany. | ||
| That's been over a long time. | ||
| We're friends now. | ||
| Why can't those people over there become friends after the war? | ||
| They have a complete different way of life, and we will never change them to be like we are. | ||
| We can do whatever we want to, and they will not change. | ||
| That's just how it is. | ||
| It's just too bad. | ||
| It's a bad way to have population control. | ||
| But all you've got to do is look around there and see they've got no way to grow enough food feed of people. | ||
| So one way to get rid of the people is have a war. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Sean in East St. Louis, Illinois, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm calling about the education. | ||
| I was born in 1972. | ||
| For schooling, when I went to school, we had books. | ||
| We studied American history, math, all kinds of stuff. | ||
| My thing is, we had books. | ||
| We were able to take our books home. | ||
| We had our homework. | ||
| When I came home, me and my friends, we would get together and we would sit around the table to one that did not, you know, was a little bit slower than others. | ||
| We helped them. | ||
| My mom would be cooking. | ||
| When we got the loot, we ate of air books. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| James is in Grand Canyon, Arizona on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| How are we doing this morning? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| So I'm a former federal worker as of yesterday night. | ||
| A lot of us at this national park here were let go. | ||
| And I just wanted to call in and talk about the particular issues that face national parks and our public lands in northern Arizona and across the country right now. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, great. | |
| So as you know, like the administration is making large cuts to the federal programs and everything like that. | ||
| They say they're going after corruption, the deep state, all this sort of thing. | ||
| But really what that's affecting are the custodians, the maintenance people, the landscapers, the ecologists, the restoration people. | ||
| That's the people that keep your national parks and your public lands beautiful. | ||
| And that's on the chopping block as of yesterday. | ||
| So when they tell you they're going after all these big funding cuts, it's these federal workers and the public servants, it's a working class of people that work hard and work two, three jobs each. | ||
| And we're working hard up here to keep your national parks in your America beautiful. | ||
| So the most American thing and the most American landscapes are at risk right now. | ||
| James, if you don't mind sharing, what kind of work did you used to do for the National Park Service? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Vegetation restoration work. | |
| So every time construction comes through the national park, they're building a large water pipeline right now that provides water to the people up here from the north rim to the south rim. | ||
| Whenever there's construction through there, we come in and we work to restore that land and we grow plants in our nursery. | ||
| Our greenhouse and nursery is totally understaffed right now. | ||
| No one's working there. | ||
| And this landscape doesn't just happen. | ||
| There's people and there's been people for thousands of years working to keep these lands beautiful. | ||
| So who's managing those nurseries and the effort right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been a collective effort. | |
| We've been understaffed for years and right now it's all in question. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| This all happened yesterday. | ||
| So many federal workers received notices within the last week or so that they would be laid off, especially newer employees. | ||
| How are you thinking about what comes next, James? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right now, I'm not planning on leaving Northern Arizona. | |
| This place is extremely important to me, and the Grand Canyon is bigger than just a job. | ||
| So whatever way I can serve the resources here, the Colorado River, there's uranium mines that they're trying to open up all around Northern Arizona again that directly affects the people. | ||
| And those things are really important issues. | ||
| I plan on staying here and working towards those issues no matter what. | ||
| Well, good luck in your job search, James. | ||
| Let's now hear from Lee in Grand George, New York on our line for Republican, Grand Gorge, New York, excuse me, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The speakers at the recent Consumer Financial Protection Rally falsely accused the president of several violations. | ||
| And just one accusation, they said he wanted to increase credit card interest rates to reward his billionaire friends and big banks. | ||
| In fact, he said the current credit card interest rates as high as 35% punishes the American people, and he will bring them down to 20% across the board. | ||
| It's always the same fraudulent politicians who deceive and inflame the public and should be prosecuted for lying. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Crystal is in Wilkes-Barr, Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Crystal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I have two concerns. | ||
| One of them is a question for you. | ||
| Can you tell me why you don't have sort of like an interactive site on Blue Ski for people to interact with you like you do on Twitter? | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Can you interact with me? | ||
| Do you mean Blue Sky, the social media platform? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I do have an account on Blue Sky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have an account, but we can't interact like you do on Twitter. | |
| We can't do the same thing, and you know it. | ||
| It's not the same. | ||
| And so we, as cable people who pay our cable bill, we're not allowed to do the same thing as we do on Twitter. | ||
| That's number one, and you know that. | ||
| Number two, the guest you had on about the Israel-Palestine conflict, to me, it's just one-sided any. | ||
| And I thought that C-SPAN would at least have somebody on the other side, and you never do. | ||
| And I think that this is what the news has done for this whole conflict, and that's why the people are kind of fed up with Israel. | ||
| You guys don't show both sides of it. | ||
| And I wish as C-SPAN support, a C-SPAN supporter, you would do that sometimes. | ||
| And I can't understand why you don't do it. | ||
| Do you think that you're going to be hurt or you're going to get off the air? | ||
| I don't know why you don't do it. | ||
| So that's one concern that I have as well. | ||
| But please have an interactive site on Blue Sky so we can do the same thing so we don't have to go on go onto that nasty Twitter. | ||
| I appreciate you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Grant is in Perrysburg, Ohio, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Grant. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I just wanted to make an observation that I've been observing over the last few years. | ||
| And one of them is advertising for dogs and dog foods and all of that. | ||
| And the thing that goes along with that is the lack of young couples having children. | ||
| They seem to be having dogs and want to have dogs instead of having young families. | ||
| It's just something, and I have talked to some younger people about that, and they concur with that. | ||
| So it's just, I think, an unusual thing happening in our society at this time. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Scott in Los Angeles on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello there to everybody out there. | |
| And we think you do a tremendous job, ma'am. | ||
| We'd like to see C-SPAN give you a little more action. | ||
| Just a couple of quick things. | ||
| Now, it's a big thank you to C-SPAN once again for showing us the Sunday before the Super Bowl, the DNC. | ||
| They had a little gathering there. | ||
| Folks were trying to maybe be the leader now at the DNC. | ||
| And just thank you guys so much because I found it extremely interesting. | ||
| It starts with Jonathan Capard asking a question. | ||
| And I mean, this is right at the beginning. | ||
| He wants a show of hands of how many folks think that racism and sexism cost Mrs. Harris the election. | ||
| And I mean, every hand went up, but then he says that's the right answer. | ||
| And anyway, I just found it just very, very interesting. | ||
| But my more important point, I'd like to just speak to the reporters out there. | ||
| You know, you have a couple stories that you just show no interest in. | ||
| One is the Epstein files. | ||
| Now, I heard Donald Trump start to talk about this a while back. | ||
| And as he was speaking, he got very wishy-washy about it. | ||
| Immediately, he was going to, you know, unclassify these files with everything else. | ||
| And where are you reporters? | ||
| This is the only thing that could have prevented Donald Trump from ever running or staying in office. | ||
| All this other stuff, trying to keep him off the ballot, you know, making cases against him. | ||
|
unidentified
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Where are you reporters on behalf of us American people? | |
| You're supposed to be doing the job for us to be looking into all these things. | ||
| It's just extremely sad to me. | ||
| The next time I see reporters in the room at the White House, would somebody please be kind enough to ask when they are going to declassify the Epstein files, you guys. | ||
| So please, let's start working on behalf of the American people. | ||
| And just God bless everybody at C-SPAN. | ||
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| Everyone have a great day. | ||
| Alan is in North Carolina on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Just want to say thank you to C-SPAN for being on there. | ||
| We love you. | ||
| Watch you all the time. | ||
| I've got three different things that I want to make comment about. | ||
| Going back to the Palestinian issue, the Palestinians are a people. | ||
| And just like black people in this country are people, and white people are people, and Hispanics, we've learned to overcome our differences and live in harmony. | ||
| The Palestinian people had the opportunity to have a state in 1948, if you want to go back to history. | ||
| They rejected that plan. | ||
| They've rejected several plans since then. | ||
| And all they've shown that they want to do is destroy the state of Israel. | ||
| Same as Iran. | ||
| They want to drive it into the sea. | ||
| They don't want peace. | ||
| They don't want two states. | ||
| From the river to the sea means Palestine and no Israel. | ||
| But they're not interested in two states either. | ||
| Every time a plan for two states has been put on the table, they reject it. | ||
| Now the whole populace has been radicalized. | ||
| Their children from the time they're born are taught to hate Israel. | ||
| You can never have a state side by side where all they want to do is destroy each other. | ||
| What President Trump wants to do is clear the slate, move those people out, separate them some from all the radicalize them, try to de-radicalize them in a nice environment, and then rebuild the whole thing, which is going to take 20 years, get Saudi Arabia, get all the other people to invest in the region and make it a nice place. | ||
| And then the Palestinians that want to come back, that don't want to be radicalized and want to live in harmony and peace can do so. | ||
| It's a great solution. | ||
| The second thing was about the medical things in the hospitals. | ||
| It's just like the schools and everything. | ||
| The stuff, the Federalist guy was right. | ||
| Stuff needs to be sent back to the states. | ||
| We are $37 trillion in debt. | ||
| You can't say that enough. | ||
| All these people are like, well, the parts aren't going to be trimmed up in the bushes, and this ain't going to get their money. | ||
| And listen, $37 trillion. | ||
| To solve that, we need to send a lot of this back to the states. | ||
| And the last thing, the third thing is about Canada and the Picture Burst State and Greenland. | ||
| And I would say, I wish somebody that talks to the president would tell him this, we don't need to be ashamed of American, somewhat of American expansionism. | ||
| Democracy is good for civilization. | ||
| India wouldn't be where it was if it wasn't for the British Empire. | ||
| You know, the Britons did have slave and colonialism, but then they went against slavery. | ||
| Not only did they go against it, but they blockaded slave trade. | ||
| Democracy and freedom are great for the world. | ||
| I would say call Mexico a failed state. | ||
| I would say we should annex the whole thing to Panama and triple the size of the Coast Guard and defend the 100-mile border instead of a 2,000-mile border through the middle of the desert. | ||
| Everybody's here anyway. | ||
| As far as that goes, go ahead and take Cuba. | ||
| That's a failed state, too. | ||
| And what happened to the Monroe Doctrine? | ||
| I mean, just take it, and then the Gulf of America will be accurate. | ||
| And Canada do right. | ||
| We subsidize them $220 billion a year. | ||
| We don't mind doing that. | ||
| If that's a state, we can use the resources and all. | ||
| But why should we do that for another country? | ||
| And why should we continue? | ||
| I mean, there are Mexicans in California. | ||
| You know, California used to be part of Mexico. | ||
| Well, just annex the whole thing and say, welcome to America. | ||
| We don't have no more immigration problem. | ||
| We solved the labor problem. | ||
| And, you know, just, God bless y'all. | ||
| Thank you for being on there and thank you for letting me say all that. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| Lawrence is in New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lawrence. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, hi, how are you doing? | |
| I just want to make a comment. | ||
| I looked up last year, $376 billion was used to lobby Congress. | ||
| That's three-quarters of a million per congressman. | ||
| So you got to give congressmen a break. | ||
| If you had that money coming after you, it's going to affect how you vote. | ||
| And the other thing, the total income for the United States in 2023 was $105 trillion. | ||
| And that income is every year. | ||
| And the debt is $35 trillion. | ||
| And that's over 250 years. | ||
| So there is a way to pay the debt. | ||
| And all you got to do is just do it systematically without hurting the American people. | ||
| And government is not the problem. | ||
| Have a great day, America. | ||
| Lawrence mentioned the amount of money spent lobbying the federal government. | ||
| Open Secrets tracks this data and put out a report a couple of days ago finding that federal lobbying set a new record in 2024. | ||
| Business associations, corporations, labor unions, and other organizations are spending more than ever to influence policy decisions at the federal level. | ||
| In 2024, lobbying spending reached a record-breaking $4.4 billion, according to a new analysis by Open Secrets. | ||
| The $150 million increase in lobbying continues an upward trend that began in 2016. | ||
| Lobbying spending has increased by more than $1 billion over the past decade, totaling almost $37 billion since 2015. | ||
| In each quarter of both 2023 and 2024, federal lobbying spending surpassed $1 billion. | ||
| Biggest spenders include the National Association of Realtors, who has spent $86.3 million on lobbying, then the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Advocacy Group, which has spent over $746 million. | ||
| Herb is in High Point, North Carolina, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Herb. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, thank you. | |
| Hope everybody's doing well and happy Valentine's Day to all the ladies. | ||
| I just want to say something about this Vladimir Putin guy. | ||
| He's running a nuclear facility that can create radiation to move, you know, way out all over the world. | ||
| And so we need to think about what we can do about him. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you much. | ||
| Amy is in Leesburg, Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Amy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I want to address something that someone said earlier on your very first segment. | |
| They said that Elon Musk contributed $250 million to Trump's campaign, basically suggesting that Trump bought the presidency. | ||
| Well, I read where Mark Zuckerberg and his wife contributed $400 million to Biden's campaign in 2020. | ||
| And also, he squashed the story about the laptop Hunter Biden's laptop. | ||
| Now that Trump got elected, he's saying, oh my gosh, Biden's administration made us do this. | ||
| They called up and screamed at our employees. | ||
| Really, Trump is not thinking straight if he trusts Mark Zuckerberg, because I wouldn't trust him at all. | ||
| And also, there was more people that died in the pandemic under Biden's presidency than Trump. | ||
| And they always try to blame Trump for everything. | ||
| And even I spoke with you on October 18th and brought up the Hunter Biden laptop, and the FBI said that it was misinformation when they knew it was true. | ||
| When you started talking about the Arizona recount, that had nothing to do with the fact that that race was rigged with the CIA people saying that the Hunter Biden laptop wasn't true, the FBI saying it wasn't true. | ||
| They all lied through the election to Biden. | ||
| So that's what I have to say. | ||
| Well, that's all the time that we have for Open Forum and for Washington Journal today. | ||
| Thanks to everyone who called in to share their thoughts and questions. | ||
| We're going to be back with another edition of Washington Journal tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Everyone have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
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C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | |
| Coming up Sunday morning. | ||
| Washington Examiner Executive Editor James Antel discusses President Trump's legislative agenda, divisions within the GOP, and Congressional Democrats' opposition strategy. | ||
| Then public historian and author Jason Steinhauer on comparisons between President Trump and former Republican President William McKinley in office from 1897 to 1901. | ||
| Washington Journal, join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, we'll look at American presidents and the U.S. Navy with Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro discussing the naval careers of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. |