| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Ellie Mistal Mistal. | ||
| He is a justice correspondent and columnist for the nation. | ||
| Ellie, welcome to the program. | ||
| Hey, thank you so much for having me. | ||
| I want to start with this Associated Press article with the headline, Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to let the firing of whistleblower agency head proceed. | ||
| Could you get us up to speed on what that court case is about and what the issue is there? | ||
| Yeah, so Trump likes to fire people and he thinks that because he is the president, he can fire anybody he wants for any reason, whether or not they were appointed or not, for just because he feels like it and he remembers it from his TV days, right? | ||
| There are laws regarding how you can fire people when they work for the federal government, who you can fire, what the proper process is, and all that sort of thing. | ||
| Trump wants to ignore those laws, ignore people who have their positions that are authorized by Congress and fire people willingly nilly. | ||
| And he's hoping for the Supreme Court to let him do that. | ||
| There are specifically laws in place to protect whistleblowers from retaliatory firings. | ||
| One of the reasons why we have whistleblowers is because we have these laws. | ||
| But Trump, because he has that kind of mobster mentality, he wants people to have Omerta and never say anything against him. | ||
| And so he thinks that a whistleblower law is completely ridiculous and he should never be bound by it. | ||
| And so we have our classic setup of Trump versus American law. | ||
| And he is once again hoping the Supreme Court allows him to escape the realities of American law. | ||
| And quite frankly, the Supreme Court has done that for him before and might well do that for him again. | ||
| So when do you think the Supreme Court would rule on this? | ||
| Yeah, the timing on the court right now, I can't quite know. | ||
| There is so much percolating up through the lower courts to the Supreme Court. | ||
| We have seen in the past that the Supreme Court can move very, very quickly, especially when it wants to help Trump. | ||
| We've seen in the past that this court can move very slowly when it wants, when extending the timeframe is in Trump's benefit. | ||
| And I don't know how they'll play this one. | ||
| What I do know is that the Supreme Court has the conservatives on the Supreme Court, the Republican justices, the most extremist ones, believe in this very impactful theory called unitary executive theory, which basically holds that the executive branch of government, Article 1, Article 2, sorry, of the Constitution, is the president of the United States and nobody else, that he is the entire executive branch. | ||
| And everybody in the executive branch, from a whistleblower, from the head of the EPA, from the Department of Justice, everybody serves at his pleasure or whim. | ||
| That is something that they have been trying to push over the years. | ||
| Trump is going to give them many opportunities to push that theory, to stretch that theory even further and make him an even more powerful president. | ||
| And people often wonder, like, well, why would the Supreme Court give Trump so much power? | ||
| Aren't they concerned about their own power? | ||
| And of course, they are, but the idea here is that if you make the president kind of the very most powerful person in the world, then the only person that can tell the president no is the Supreme Court. | ||
| Because the Supreme Court then becomes the only body that's able to say, put like this, if they make up the theory, right, then they're the only people who can tell you if somebody has gone too far against their made-up theory, right? | ||
| It's not Congress. | ||
| It's not the people, voters elected that can restrain the president. | ||
| It's the court and only the Supreme Court. | ||
| And so that's why giving the executive more power actually rebounds to give the Supreme Court itself even more power. | ||
| And that is what Roberts has always been about. | ||
| Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court has always been about of arrogating as much power to himself and his court as he possibly can. | ||
| Now, you had said that the president does not have the legal authority to fire whoever he wants whenever he wants. | ||
| But he and Elon Musk have been making the argument that this is, you know, the people that are being fired in the federal government are an unelected bureaucracy, that we are trying to restore democracy by getting rid of these people. | ||
| And that, yes, the president should have the right to fire people that are not on board with his policies. | ||
| Okay, first of all, I don't want to hear anything from Elon Musk, right? | ||
| You can't be an unelected bureaucrat talking about the dangers of unelected bureaucrats, right? | ||
| I voted many times in my life, and never once have I seen Elon Musk's name on a ballot. | ||
| I don't know anybody who's pulled a lever for him, so he needs to shut the hell up if he's going to talk about unelected bureaucrats running America. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, of course, the president has the power and should have the power to assign people to work with him and advance his agenda. | ||
| We have an entire process for this. | ||
| It's called the cabinet. | ||
| And if you think about the cabinet, so if you think about this idea that the president can just fire or hire anybody he wants at every time, we know that's not true because we know that even for his own cabinet, even for the people that he puts in charge of executive agencies, they have to go through a Senate confirmation process. | ||
| That has happened throughout American history. | ||
| The Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, now the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, all of these people have to be confirmed by the Senate. | ||
| And the Senate doesn't want to confirm somebody, then the President can't have that person in that position. | ||
| Hello, Mr. Matt Gates. | ||
| I hope you are well wherever you are in Florida. | ||
| But, Ellie. | ||
| We know, just from a basic understanding of American civics, that what Trump and Musk are arguing for is provably wrong and inconsistent with American law. | ||
| I just like to say that, I mean, Elon Musk right now is a special advisor to the president, and the president can have whoever advising him as he likes, and they are not Senate confirmed. | ||
| Yes, Elon Musk is an advisor, so that's why I'm saying he cannot talk to me about being an unelected official holding power. | ||
| And sure, the president can have advisors. | ||
| The president can talk to whoever he wants. | ||
| And if he wants to put his buddy Musk on the payroll, if he wants to put, I don't know, his daughter Ivanka on the payroll or his son-in-law, Jared, on the payroll, that's fine. | ||
| He can talk to whoever he wants. | ||
| But there's an entire government that he represents, right? | ||
| There's an entire government that he works for, and he does not have unassailable, unaccountable power to hire and fire every single person in the federal government. | ||
| He just doesn't. | ||
| And I just proved to you why he doesn't, right? | ||
| Like the idea that just because you're the president, you can reach all the way down into a lowly civil service person working in the GAO and fire them because they happen to be black, that is insane. | ||
| And that is, again, against the entire thrust of American civics, not even law, just the civic structure of how the country works. | ||
| This isn't how it's supposed to work. | ||
| Trump is claiming an authority that no other president has had. | ||
| And you know that he's asking for something that no other president has had because he has to ask for it. | ||
| If this is how we always did it, then Trump wouldn't have to ask the Supreme Court to let him do it because it would just be the thing that is always done. | ||
| It's not always done. | ||
| This isn't how it's supposed to work. | ||
| And there's a really good reason for why it's not supposed to work because we like to think of the president as one official among many. | ||
| He has a specific job. | ||
| He has a unique job. | ||
| He has an important job. | ||
| But he's not the only person who has authority in the federal government. | ||
| Ellie Mistall is our guest. | ||
| He's a justice correspondent and columnist with the nation. | ||
| If you'd like to join the conversation, you can. | ||
| The numbers are Republicans. | ||
| 202748-8001. | ||
| Democrats call us on 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| President Trump, Ellie, has said that he will abide by court orders that block parts of his agenda. | ||
| Do you see that as likely? | ||
| And what happens if that doesn't happen? | ||
| He's already lying. | ||
| He's already lying. | ||
| He's not abiding by court orders against him right now. | ||
| The federal funding freeze, the pause that he put on has already been blocked by multiple courts through temporary restraining orders around the country. | ||
| And yet, the money is not back on. | ||
| ProPublico last week did an excellent report on this. | ||
| If you go to organizations that are expecting federal checks, they will tell you, in many cases, the money has not been turned back on. | ||
| So that is a clear example of Trump lying to everybody's face. | ||
| And all of us are pretending like it's normal. | ||
| It's not normal. | ||
| He said he will abide by court orders. | ||
| This is a court order against him. | ||
| He is not abiding by it. | ||
| ABC, right? | ||
| So do I think he will abide by future court orders? | ||
| Well, hell, I don't know. | ||
| He's not abiding by this one. | ||
| Maybe he'll abide by some other one that he finds more amenable to him. | ||
| But here's the rub, Mimi. | ||
| Here's the real, here's my real problem. | ||
| Here's my real issue. | ||
| Whatever Trump says he is going to abide by, there has so far been no at all indication that he will enforce court orders, court orders against his owner, Elon Musk. | ||
| We haven't seen any indication of that at all. | ||
| There's no suggestion at all that Trump will impose a court order against Elon Musk, telling him to rein in it. | ||
| And so that's, I think, what I'm most worried about. | ||
| But that's because I already know that Trump is lying about whether or not he himself will follow court orders, because he's not following a court order right now. | ||
| Ellie, I want to play for you, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, when she was responding to people who say that Trump's actions are causing a constitutional crisis. | ||
| And then I'll get your response. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Your reaction to that, Ellie Mistal. | ||
| If I may translate that gobbledygook, it's basically, oh my God, every judge that I don't like is a constitutional crisis. | ||
| That's what she said. | ||
| She's obviously wrong. | ||
| It's a well-established part of American law that when you do something, you can be sued. | ||
| And that lawsuit will go to a judge. | ||
| And that judge will make a ruling. | ||
| And that ruling will be appealed. | ||
| And once you get to a final ruling, that ruling is final. | ||
| That's just how it works. | ||
| There is no constitutional crisis with judges imposing the law. | ||
| There is one with presidents ignoring the law, right? | ||
| That's the inversion that Levitt is trying to gaslight people and confuse people about. | ||
| It is very simple to have a court order and follow it. | ||
| That's normal. | ||
| That's easy. | ||
| It's Trump who doesn't want to do the normal, easy thing. | ||
| And he's trying to say that these judges doing their job is somehow a constitutional problem. | ||
| But there's another thing that she said that I want people to notice and pick up on and realize how insane it is, right? | ||
| She's basically saying, and Republicans have been saying this for weeks now, that Trump was elected with 77 million people and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And so that somehow means that because he won a majority of the vote, he gets to do whatever he wants. | ||
| And again, that's just not how it works. | ||
| That's not how law works. | ||
| That's not how Civic works. | ||
| Yes, the president was elected fairly. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Congratulations on all your success, Donald Trump. | ||
| But he is still part of a system. | ||
| He is still part of a legal structure. | ||
| He is not above that legal structure. | ||
| And there are therefore limitations on what he can do, no matter how many people want him to do it. | ||
| There are things that he can do. | ||
| There are things that he can't do. | ||
| The judges are saying that in many cases, he is exceeding his constitutional and legal authority. | ||
| Just because 77 million people ostensibly want him to exceed his constitutional and legal authority doesn't mean he can. | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| Let's go back to the Supreme Court. | ||
| Your cover article for the nation says this, how Trump could remake the Supreme Court for a generation with the subheading, Donald Trump is poised to become the first president since FDR to have appointed the majority of high court justices. | ||
| His potential picks are terrifying. | ||
| Yeah, so my so liberals generally think that the Supreme Court can't get any worse because it's already stacked six to three with Republican appointees over Democratic appointees. | ||
| And so I wrote that to remind people that, of course, it can get worse. | ||
| It can always get worse. | ||
| And worse right now is taking that Republican six-stream majority and making it permanent for the lifetime of my natural life and everybody who is viewing this program's natural life, right? | ||
| And that's because the two oldest justices on the Supreme Court are both Republican. | ||
| Clarence Thomas, he's 76. | ||
| Samuel Alito, he's 74. | ||
| If both of those two men retire in the next four years, Trump will have the opportunity to replace them with those men but 30 years younger. | ||
| Thus, at some level, I can't say permanent, but like giving him control of the Supreme Court long after Trump's life, right? | ||
| These are justices that are going to outlive Trump. | ||
| These are justices that are going to impose the MAG legacy on the rest of us through unelected means for the next 30 or 40 years. | ||
| And Trump is in position, if Alito and Thomas retire, to become the first president since FDR to appoint not just Supreme Court justices, but a majority of the Supreme Court, if these two men retire, will be appointed by Trump. | ||
| And that is, you know, what keeps me up at night. | ||
| Ellie, there's a question for you on text from David Elmira, New York, regarding not following court orders. | ||
| He says, if I'm not mistaken, Biden did not follow court orders either, giving forgiveness of millions of dollars in school loans. | ||
| What's your response to that? | ||
| So David Elmira, you're just wrong. | ||
| Biden did follow the court order. | ||
| They said he couldn't do the program. | ||
| He said, okay, I can't do it that way. | ||
| I'm going to try it some other way. | ||
| So he followed the letter of the law. | ||
| He followed the spirit of the law. | ||
| But just because he got an adverse court order didn't mean that he gave up on the program. | ||
| He tried to find another legal way to achieve his end. | ||
| Trump did that last time. | ||
| The first Muslim ban overruled by the court. | ||
| The second Muslim ban overruled by the court. | ||
| Did Trump say, no, I'm just going to stop banning Muslims? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, Trump did not just say I'm going to stop banning Muslims. | ||
| He tried again and again and again until he got a Muslim ban that the Supreme Court was willing to uphold. | ||
| Now, I think that was a horrible decision by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii, but that is a problem with the Supreme Court, not with Donald Trump. | ||
| Donald Trump, when he was trying to immorally ban Muslims from coming into the country, did it the right way. | ||
| Joe Biden, when he was trying to relieve student debt relief, did it the right way. | ||
| What Trump is doing now by ignoring the court orders, ordering him to restore the funding that he illegally unconstitutionally took away, that is different in kind than anything that Biden did, than anything that Trump did the first time. | ||
| And frankly, than anything that any other American president has done until we have to go all the way back to Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln to find somebody who so openly defined a court order. | ||
| All right, let's talk to the callers and start with Maria in Atlanta, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Maria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, She family. | |
| Good morning, Mia. | ||
| And good morning, Eli. | ||
| Was wondering will they ever bring you back again? | ||
| I have a question for you. | ||
| I'm glad to see you. | ||
| I'm a big time follower. | ||
| But nevertheless, I want to ask you, Trump get on TV and say all kinds of stuff. | ||
| And a while back, he got on TV and he talked about how Elon Musk helped him and his swing states and how he went over there and worked on his computer. | ||
| And he said he's awfully good at computers. | ||
| Do you actually think, because I never heard none of the media ever, ever pick this up again and comment it. | ||
| You think he was trying to say that the election was stolen? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| And Maria, just I want to thank you for the love. | ||
| I just want to say for your own mental health, try very hard to stop watching Trump on TV. | ||
| It's not good for you, right? | ||
| He's going to say the same thing. | ||
| It's like, you know, once you see a dog bark at the dog run, like you don't need to hear it for the rest of your afternoon. | ||
| Like go out, touch grass, man, because it will get into your soul if you listen to that man too much. | ||
| As opposed to the specific allegation, no, I don't think that Trump would, Trump is not the most rhetorically cautious individual. | ||
| I do not think that he was trying to say that Elon Musk helped him steal the election. | ||
| And I do not think that Elon Musk helped Trump steal the election. | ||
| I actually think that Democrats and liberals sometimes roll into or protect themselves with feelings that maybe something fishy, something untoward happened because that's easier to believe than it is that 77 million Americans voted for a convicted felon, crazy person, right? | ||
| It's just easier to believe that we live in a place where, well, something had to be fishy there than no. | ||
| People knew who Trump was and they just wanted this for to do this to the country. | ||
| Like, but the latter is actually true. | ||
| So, no, I don't think Elon Musk helped him steal anything. | ||
| I do think that now that he's in power, Elon Musk is helping him do some serious illegal activity with Musk wielding power that he never should have. | ||
| But that's a different problem. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Mark, a Republican in Clifton Park, New York. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Trump won the election fair and square. | ||
| And he has a mandate to govern conservatively. | ||
| He's allowed to govern conservatively for at least the next two years until the midterms and the next four years until a Republican successor will have to run again. | ||
| So Trump is given the latitude because he won the election by the majority, by the popular vote, and by a landslide electoral vote. | ||
| So Mark, we agree that Trump won the election fairly. | ||
| I don't agree that he has a mandate, but that's a word. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| Trump won the election fairly, and he is allowed to govern as a conservative. | ||
| And conservatives are allowed to like the crazy things that he does. | ||
| What he's not allowed to do is illegal stuff, right? | ||
| Surely, Mark, we can agree that he's not allowed to do illegal things, that he's not allowed to do unconstitutional things. | ||
| Surely we can agree on that. | ||
| And while you and I might disagree on what's legal or constitutional, surely we can agree that a federal judge is the right person, is the person who should be able to tell us what's legal and what's constitutional and what is not. | ||
| So Mark, can we not agree that Trump, while yes, he's allowed to govern conservatively, while yes, he's allowed to do what the people elected him to do, he is not allowed to break the law. | ||
| Mark, you still there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm still here. | |
| What Trump is doing is the right thing. | ||
| He's doing the right thing. | ||
| Is it the legal thing, Mark? | ||
| Is it the legal thing, Mark? | ||
| And then who is supposed to decide whether or not it's the legal thing? | ||
| Is nobody supposed to decide whether or not it's the legal thing? | ||
| Is anything that Trump says legal? | ||
| Is that how we're, are we back to Nixon now? | ||
| When the president does it, it's not illegal. | ||
| Is that literally the best that you can get to, Mark? | ||
| Or do you think that maybe somebody who is not the president should have a say in whether or not what the president is doing is legal or illegal? | ||
| All right, Ellie, let's give Mark a chance. | ||
| Go ahead, Mark. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think what Trump's doing is great right now. | |
| He's cutting waste. | ||
| He's going out. | ||
| No, no, no, but that's not the question, Mark. | ||
| As far as legality. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that he has a large latitude, and we're going to have to find out because obviously these court orders and judges blocking things, I think they will eventually work their way through the problem. | |
| I suppose. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Ellie Mistall, there is a posting here on X that I'm sure you're aware of by Vice President Vance who said this. | ||
| If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. | ||
| If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. | ||
| Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. | ||
| What's your response to that? | ||
| Well, I went to Harvard and JD Vance went to Yale, and I'm feeling really good about my choices if that's the best that JD Vance can do right now. | ||
| Look, if JD Vance was right, then the Dobbs decision canceling the right to abortion was illegitimate and illegal on its face. | ||
| And Joe Biden should have personally performed abortions for the last four years, if JD Vance was right. | ||
| Of course, JD Vance is not right. | ||
| JD Vance sounds like an idiot when he says that, because the idea that judges, that the third branch of government doesn't have a legitimate check on the power of the other two branches, the legislative branch and the executive branch, again, flies in the face of basic American civics. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Now, I have many problems with the Supreme Court and how it wields power. | ||
| And I can argue that the Supreme Court has too much power. | ||
| I've argued that in the past. | ||
| I'm in favor of what the scholars call jurisdiction stripping, which is kind of a way for Congress to limit the power that the Supreme Court has on constitutional issues. | ||
| I'm all for reform of the Supreme Court. | ||
| I do not think that it is the greatest body on earth, but it is a legitimate part of American government. | ||
| And acting like it cannot say what is illegal or not, what is constitutional or not, is just not something that we do in this country, right? | ||
| We understand that the judges have a role and that the rest of us have to follow the judge's role. | ||
| If you don't like it, there are many opportunities to reform the Supreme Court that I have listed in many articles in the nation that JD Vance is welcome to read. | ||
| But the idea that the Supreme Court has no authority on Trump just because he's the president, again, flies in the face of basic American law and basic American civics. | ||
| And JD Vance knows that. | ||
| JD Vance knows that he's saying what he's saying because it is in his best political interest to lick Trump's boots, even if it flies in the face of all law and reason and civics. | ||
| Here's Lewis in Pennsaukin, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Lewis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, sir. | ||
| This reminds me of when Trump was in his first term and we had all these judges blocking him from building the wall. | ||
| It's just politics and judges shouldn't be involved in politics and that's what's going on here. | ||
| And another thing, he's the executive. | ||
| He can fire anybody he wants. | ||
| Okay, Lewis. | ||
| So let's start at the end. | ||
| Again, he can't. | ||
| Like, I know maybe you want him to be able to, right? | ||
| Maybe because you watched The Apprentice, you just want him to say, I'm fired. | ||
| You're fired. | ||
| And it just makes it just feels good inside to know there's a strong daddy figure firing people. | ||
| Maybe that's what you want, Lewis, but that's not how the country works. | ||
| He doesn't actually have the power to fire anybody he wants, no matter how many times he beats his chest and says, I'm the president, I'm the executive. | ||
| It just doesn't work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't lick anybody's boots, okay? | |
| You don't lick anybody's boots, but you want him to fire people. | ||
| Lewis, why can't he fire people the right way? | ||
| There's a process for firing people. | ||
| Why can't he use that process, Lewis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree with you there, okay? | |
| So to your second point about the judges playing politics. | ||
| Lewis, let him address your second point about the judges. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You were saying that the judges were playing politics with the wall, just like it was in the first Trump administration. | ||
| Have you forgotten what happened during the Biden years? | ||
| Because there were a lot of decisions from these exact same judges that were adverse to Biden's agenda and policies. | ||
| One of the other callers earlier brought up the student debt relief as just one. | ||
| So if you think the judges are playing politics, do you think it's politics that hurts Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Because I seem to recall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm according to what they did to Biden, too, sir. | |
| I agree with you there, too. | ||
| So you think judges just shouldn't have as much power as they do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's politics, okay? | |
| It's politics. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And I want to ask you about an article that you wrote, Ellie, for the nation with the headline, Trump's attacks on DEI are a green light for the government to discriminate. | ||
| I want you to explain that because critics of DEI say that it is discrimination because it's preferring people of diverse races, women over men, that kind of thing. | ||
| So what's your response to that? | ||
| Yeah, so DEI was invented by white people. | ||
| DEI was invented by white men. | ||
| DEI was invented by white men to try to comply with the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, right? | ||
| DEI was their white male creation to comply with constitutional law. | ||
| What diverse people, if that's what we're calling us today, what women have been asking for, has not been DEI. | ||
| They've been asking for fair and equal employment opportunities. | ||
| They've been asking for the application of the equality clause in the 14th Amendment and the application of the Civil Rights Act in hiring. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| It was white guys who were just like, well, we don't know how to hire all these people. | ||
| So we're just going to do some DEI. | ||
| That makes sure that we have to hire black people and women and Latinos and whatever, ever. | ||
| That was their solution. | ||
| So now that they don't like that solution anymore, that's fine. | ||
| It is constitutional. | ||
| DEI is a policy. | ||
| It is constitutional and legal to change policy. | ||
| Trump has every authority that he might need to change the policy of the United States. | ||
| But my question is always, well, what are you going to do instead? | ||
| Because you still have to comply with the Civil Rights Act and you still have to comply with the 14th Amendment. | ||
| So what are you going to do instead, Trump, instead, Musk, instead, white tech bros? | ||
| What are you going to do instead, Meta, to make sure that you are still in compliance with the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment? | ||
| And there, they never have an answer. | ||
| And so it goes back. | ||
| I think what they would say is we're just going to hire the most qualified person for each job. | ||
| And therefore, we are in compliance. | ||
| Is that what's happening? | ||
| Because, okay, A, remember, DEI was invented because that wasn't happening. | ||
| For whatever reason, they weren't able to hire the most qualified person for every job. | ||
| They were only able to hire the whitest male person for every job, right? | ||
| So that was what was happening before DEI. | ||
| Now the DEI is ostensibly gone. | ||
| Is that what we see, Mimi? | ||
| Do we see them hiring the most qualified people for every job? | ||
| Heck, do we see them only firing the least qualified people for every job? | ||
| And of course, no, we don't see that. | ||
| In your last segment with Armstrong Williams, there was a caller who specifically asked that man, does he think that every single person who works in the federal government who is of color is a DEI hire and was unqualified for their job? | ||
| And Armstrong women say, no, of course not. | ||
| That would be ridiculous. | ||
| Of course, he said, and I'm quoting him from your last segment, most people, I'm sure, got their job on merit, which is an interesting statement because they're firing everybody. | ||
| They're firing people not based on merit, not based on their qualifications, not based on their actual work history. | ||
| They're firing people because they're black. | ||
| And that is what violates the Constitution. | ||
| And that is what violates the law. | ||
| Nobody has a problem. | ||
| I mean, like, I want to say that way. | ||
| It is legal for you to get rid of DEI policies. | ||
| What's illegal is for you to fire people just because they happen to be black at work. | ||
| It is ridiculous to fire everybody who's been hired under a DEI program without any kind of assessment of their actual work performance, their actual, dare I say, merit for the job. | ||
| But they're not doing it that way. | ||
| They're firing everybody who happens to be black in government. | ||
| That is what's illegal. | ||
| That is what the problem is. | ||
| Let's hear from Jennifer in Midlothian, Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Jennifer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning and good morning, Ellie. | |
| Thank you for taking the time to listen to our calls. | ||
| So my question is sort of piggybacking on what you're talking about with DEI. | ||
| I'm trying to understand, right? | ||
| We know there's no statute for taxation, quote, without representation necessarily. | ||
| But what legal recourse do those of us who fall within these marginalized groups, i.e. African-American, disabled, LGBTQ, all the things that, you know, are labeled as marginalized communities, to push back on everything being dismantled in the name of DEI. | ||
| If we are federal taxpayers, if we're paying our money, but every book that represents us is being banned from schools, every program that potentially may create spaces and access for these individuals, special education, all the things, we're paying our money. | ||
| This is an economic issue. | ||
| So as citizens and as residents of whatever state you're in, Commonwealth of Virginia, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, how can we push back and say, wait, my tax dollars are going to everybody but my community? | ||
| And how is that legal that we don't have any recourse because they're doing it in a discriminatory way, just like you said, under this guise of, well, that's considered DEI, so we just don't want it. | ||
| It's like, no, we also have Title VI, Title VII, and all of these rights that we're supposed to have access to. | ||
| And we're paying our money and we're seeing that we're not getting the services and access and empowerment that we should be getting. | ||
| So can you tell me, do we have this recourse? | ||
| So Jennifer, I would just start with, it is legal. | ||
| I believe it is illegal. | ||
| And you named the statute, right? | ||
| I believe that what they are doing is illegal under the Civil Rights Act. | ||
| And again, that's not because they're changing the DEI policy. | ||
| DEI is not required by the Civil Rights Act, but fairness is, but equality is. | ||
| And so when they willy-nilly fire everybody who's for the crime of being black, fire everybody for the crime of being a woman without any individualized assessment of their merit, then I do believe that that is violating the Civil Rights Act and they should catch a lawsuit. | ||
| Now, unfortunately, once they catch that lawsuit, and I know Lewis is still out there, why are they going to sue the courts? | ||
| But when they do catch that lawsuit, eventually that goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court, my read on the six Republican judges is that they don't think the Civil Rights Act should be constitutional in the first place, right? | ||
| They didn't like the Voting Rights Act. | ||
| Roberts has done everything he can to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, which is my pick for the single most important piece of legislation in American history. | ||
| So they've already gotten through the 1965 Voting Rights Act. | ||
| I believe next on the chopping block for these conservatives is the 1964 Civil Rights Act. | ||
| And so I don't think the lawsuit that Trump deserves to catch because what he is doing and the way he is doing it is illegal. | ||
| I don't know that that's going to work at the Supreme Court. | ||
| So to Jennifer's question, what's the recourse? | ||
| The recourse is the recourse that the people always have, right? | ||
| Trump was elected by a majority of Americans, and the only people who can take that power away are a majority of Americans activating, voting, convincing people. | ||
| I personally have started to boycott Target, right? | ||
| I vote with my wallet as well. | ||
| Target specifically, because Target has spent like a decade telling my community, oh, we like you here. | ||
| Come to Target. | ||
| Put your products on our shelves. | ||
| We love, you know, Target's basically Jerry Maguire, right? | ||
| Tom Cruise and Jerry McGuire. | ||
| We love black people, except for when Trump gets in charge. | ||
| Now we hate black people and now DEI is not a thing that we do at Target anymore, right? | ||
| So Target deserves to not have my dollars at this moment. | ||
| So I'm doing what I can with my wallet. | ||
| I'm doing what I can with my feet. | ||
| I'm doing what I can with my voice. | ||
| We all have to do that, right? | ||
| In the words of Kermit the Frog, man, we need more dogs and chats and dogs and cats and Muppets and chickens and things. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Dania in Butler, Missouri. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| I have a question. | ||
| You know, Biden didn't do nothing except stay on vacation most of the time. | ||
| And I hear people keep calling in bad mouth and Trump and what he's doing and everything. | ||
| And, you know, it's like deja vu. | ||
| Are we going to keep trying to put Trump in the courts again during his presidency? | ||
| Are we going to give him a chance? | ||
| I say give him a chance. | ||
| I think he's the best president we've ever had. | ||
| And whatever he does, he knows right from wrong. | ||
| He ain't going to do anything wrong. | ||
| Look at all the lawsuits they did and all of them dismissed. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| It's just the witch hunt starting all over. | ||
| And this person that you've got on your show this morning, if they are so smart and think that Trump is doing wrong, why ain't they president? | ||
| Why don't they get off their lazy button run together? | ||
| All right, Dania, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Ellie. | ||
| I will fight Trump with everything I have. | ||
| I will fight Trump on the beaches. | ||
| I will fight Trump in the streets. | ||
| I will never yield to this orange menace. | ||
| And if that makes Denier unhappy, then I apologize to her. | ||
| But I will do everything in my small power to fight this man and what he is trying to do to my country. | ||
| But his supporters are saying that that's exactly the problem, that you're just fighting him for no reason. | ||
| So I got a reason. | ||
| I got reasons. | ||
| You want me to start listing the reasons? | ||
| That woman said that he did wrong wrong. | ||
| That man's been convicted on 34 counts of a felony. | ||
| The only reason why those cases have been, the other cases have been dismissed against them is because he has judges in his pocket like Eileen Cannon. | ||
| The Supreme Court gave him absolute immunity for official acts. | ||
| For the first time in American history, a president was placed squarely above the law by his hand-picked Supreme Court justice. | ||
| We've just been talking about his racist actions with DEI. | ||
| He is calling white South Africans to live as refugees in this country while expelling black and brown actual refugees who is living here now. | ||
| He is trying to overturn the 14th Amendment and strip away birthright citizenship from people who have been born Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
those are the reasons that i can think of to oppose him off the top of my head ellie you have a i will keep fighting You have a book coming out next month. | |
| It's called Bad Law, 10 Popular Laws Ruining America. | ||
| Give us one of those. | ||
| Give us a real brief explanation. | ||
| Let's go with voting registration, right? | ||
| All voting registration should be renounced, right? | ||
| Voting registration does not help keep our elections safe. | ||
| All it does is decrease the participation in our elections. | ||
| In the first chapter of the book, I have an argument for how voter eligibility requirements are, in fact, necessary. | ||
| But once you meet those eligibility requirements, you should be automatically registered to vote. | ||
| And that registration should be what's called portable. | ||
| That means that when you move, you are still registered. | ||
| The registration follows you. | ||
| You don't have to chase registration. | ||
| People might think that's kind of a radical idea. | ||
| I like to point out to people, and I do in the first chapter of that book, that that is the way they do it in most of the rest of the functional democracies in the world. | ||
| That's how they do it in England. | ||
| That's how they do it in France. | ||
| That's how they do it in Argentina. | ||
| That's how they do it in Australia. | ||
| That's how they do it everywhere else. | ||
| We're the slow people. | ||
| We're the people who haven't caught up with the 21st century by still doing registration as a case-by-case basis instead of having automatic or mandatory registration for all eligible voters. | ||
| And if we had that, I wonder if Mark's 77 million people who voted for Trump, I wonder if that number would be enough for him to have one election. | ||
| Dave in Lynchburg, Virginia, wants to end us on a positive note. | ||
| He says, you've suggested what keeps you up at night. | ||
| Conversely, what gives you hope? | ||
| I'm sure you can come up with something. | ||
| I got kids. | ||
| I got two kids, 12 and 9. | ||
| They're beautiful little boys. | ||
| And they are not afraid. | ||
| They are not depressed all the time. | ||
| They think that the world is going to get better. | ||
| They understand that we've got serious problems. | ||
| But, you know, my kids think that they're going to be the people who come up with a solution for climate change, right? | ||
| They think they're going to be the people who come up with solutions for our problems. | ||
| And so I take a lot of strength and hope from them. | ||
| I do think generally, and I know it's kind of trite to say, I do generally think the kids are right. | ||
| I think the kids are seeing how our generation, my generation, Gen X, is screwing up and they're kind of committed to doing better. | ||
| And I hope that that remains the case. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Justice correspondent and columnist for the nation, Ellie Mistal. | ||
| You can find his work at thenation.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Thanks so much for having me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Trump is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress next month to lay out his priorities and vision for the country during his second term. | |
| We'll have live coverage of the president's speech on Tuesday, March 4th, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, along with a Democratic response and viewer reaction. | ||
| Our coverage will also stream live on our free C-SPAN Now video app and at our website c-span.org. | ||
| Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days. | ||
| We'll explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians, authors, and through the C-SPAN archives. | ||
| We learn about accomplishments and setbacks and how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to the present day. | ||
| Saturday, the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. | ||
| At the height of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt defeated President Herbert Hoover in a landslide. | ||
| In his inaugural speech, he said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. | ||
| Early in his term, the president called for a special session of Congress to tackle the economic crisis. | ||
| Dozens of bills were passed to put people back to work and improve living conditions. | ||
| It was Franklin Roosevelt who later coined the phrase, First 100 Days. | ||
| Watch American History TV's series, First 100 Days, Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| You think this is just a community censor? | ||
| No, it's way more than that. | ||
| Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lifts so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Coming up next, conversations with new members of Congress, talking about their early lives, previous careers, their families, and what drove their interest in running for office. | ||
| We spoke with Representatives Eugene Vinman of Virginia, Bob Ander of Missouri, Wesley Bell of Missouri, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, and Emily Randall of Washington. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Democrat Eugene Vinman. | ||
| He was born in Ukraine and after a career in the U.S. military and government service, holds elective office for the first time. | ||
| He's also the brother of Alexander Vinman, who came to national attention in 2019 when he testified before Congress on President Donald Trump's relationship with Ukraine. | ||
| I decided to run because I spent 25 years in the military serving this country and even after I retired, I continued serving in a different capacity investigating war crimes in Ukraine. | ||
| And after our fantastic representative, Abigail Spanberger retired, there was an opportunity to continue to serve. | ||
| During a time period where I thought the election coming up was critical, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and things worked out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So like your brother, Alexander, who made so much news in recent years, you were born in Ukraine. | |
| Tell us the story of how you all came to America. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So Alex and I are identical twins. | ||
| We have an older brother. | ||
| The five of us, my dad, my two brothers, and my grandma, came to the United States in 1979 with less than $800 between us. | ||
| We didn't speak a lick of English. | ||
| And we moved into, we were actually former Soviet refugees from Soviet Ukraine. | ||
| We moved to New York City, an ethnic neighborhood in Brighton Beach, and grew up there. | ||
| Really a working class family. | ||
| My dad, for the first eight months, didn't speak any English. | ||
| He hauled furniture for $20 a day. | ||
| And he still has this little notebook where he learned 10 English words a day until he learned enough to pass a technical civil engineering exam and began to work for the city of New York. | ||
| We grew up, went to public schools, went to public university, and the first chance we got, all three of us served in the military to return the favor and gratitude this country. | ||
| We all served in uniform. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What did all those experiences teach you? | |
| Hard work, the value of patriotism and love of country. | ||
| I worked with people from all walks of life. | ||
| It didn't matter whether you're a Democrat or Republican, Independent, black, white, Hispanic. | ||
| We all serve. | ||
| We all put on the cloth of this nation because we love this country. | ||
| And frankly, some of the most patriotic people that I worked with were immigrants that had the opportunity to come here, whether as refugees or as immigrants. | ||
| And it was a wonderful experience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's talk about 2019. | |
| The name Vinman, of course, is often connected with that phone call between President Trump and Ukraine's President Zelensky. | ||
| What was your particular role in that story? | ||
| Where were you at the time? | ||
| What happened? | ||
| And then connect the story to your brother and what happened after. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So I was a deputy legal advisor. | ||
| I was a lieutenant colonel assigned to the White House on a detail. | ||
| Deputy Legal Advisor on National Security Council staff. | ||
| The chief ethics official on the National Security Council staff. | ||
| And so I worked right across the hall from my twin brother. | ||
| And he had the portfolio of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova. | ||
| He listened to the phone call. | ||
| He heard the president's attempt at extortion and he reported it directly to me. | ||
| We talked about it briefly, and we knew we had a duty to report that call. | ||
| We reported it up the chain, and the rest is history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What did that episode teach you and especially teach you about Washington? | |
| I think there are some lessons still to be learned. | ||
| But, you know, for us, that phone call, the report of that phone call was performing our duty. | ||
| Had we not reported the phone call, I think we would have been derelict in our duty. | ||
| What it taught me is that there is no place in Washington that even if it's national security, that politics has not come into play. | ||
| And so that's what I learned from that episode. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That long experience in the Army and at the Trump White House for a time, how did all of that prepare you for this particular new role? | |
| Well, the experience in the Army actually was the best preparation probably because every two, three years you have a new assignment and so you're thrown into a pot where you may not have done the job ever before. | ||
| I had the privilege of being a prosecutor as a JAG officer, deploying to Iraq, advising commanders in the field on national security, law of war issues, working at the White House on the National Security Council. | ||
| So being resilient, adaptable, doing your homework, putting in the hard work to understand an issue, and struggling through what the right answer is. | ||
| I think all of those experiences prepared me. | ||
| Leading troops, stepping out and leading, all those were great experiences. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Politically speaking, were you always a Democrat, and what does that affiliation mean to you? | |
| Look, I came from a working class family. | ||
| My dad was in a union. | ||
| Those union benefits were critical to making sure that our family, our immigrant family, three boys, our stepmom joined, and we actually had a stepbrother as well. | ||
| So there are four of us that we had the benefits we needed in order to survive the cut scrapes and broken bones that we had. | ||
| And so that opportunity that we had to enter the middle class is the type of opportunity I want to provide to my family and every American family and every family in Virginia's 7th Congressional District. | ||
| And so I would say I have a certain set of values that our group grew up with. | ||
| And I talked about education and integrity and hard work. | ||
| But for my time in the military, politics was not a huge factor. | ||
| We're apolitical. | ||
| I worked for Democratic and Republican administrations. | ||
| And I care deeply about this country, about our national security, and that's what I'm focused on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tell us about your family now and what they think of this new job. | |
| So I've got a 14-year-old daughter, and she told me that I should not have like skibbety-ris. | ||
| And if you have teenagers, they can tell you what that is, that I should be more of a sigma. | ||
| This is some of the slang that kids use these days. | ||
| So she's a middle schooler. | ||
| I'm very proud of her. | ||
| She's fantastic. | ||
| I've got a 20-year-old son also who's in his third year at William and Mary. | ||
| And he's doing great. | ||
| I've married my wife at 26 years. | ||
| She's been with me every step of the way. | ||
| We're college sweethearts. | ||
| And after decades of moving around, we've made Northern Virginia and Northern Central Virginia our home. | ||
| Our kids have gone to school there. | ||
| And we love the region. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you like to do in your spare time? | |
| I love to spend time with the family, and so right now it'd be maybe skiing, but hiking, and binge-watching TV shows, but things like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Republican Bob Ander of Missouri is one of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House. | |
| He has a varied background as a doctor who also holds a law degree, a legislator in his home state, and as a licensed pilot. | ||
| He talks here about why he ran for a seat in Congress. | ||
| This country has been so good to me and to my family. | ||
| I wanted my kids and my grandkids to have the same opportunities I did. | ||
| And I really saw our country threatened by a lot of different issues. | ||
| The invasion of our southern border, rising crime, the economic catastrophes of the last four years, rampant wokeness, poor energy policy. | ||
| And I really thought I needed to step forward and do something about it. | ||
| What's it like being here so far? | ||
| Well, it's exciting. | ||
| It's really an honor and a privilege to be sent by the people of my district to represent them in Washington. | ||
| Yesterday was a really exciting day certifying the election of Donald Trump as the 47th president. | ||
| So we're excited to get to work. | ||
| Today we passed the Lake and Riley bill to push back and protect Americans against criminal illegal aliens. | ||
| But I'm just very excited to be getting to work. | ||
| Let's learn more about you. | ||
| Where did you grow up and what kind of experiences do you best remember? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I grew up in South St. Louis County. | ||
| I'm a lifelong Missouian. | ||
| My family goes back several generations in Missouri. | ||
| My father was an accountant. | ||
| My mom ran our tax and bookkeeping service. | ||
| I had one brother and one sister. | ||
| And I grew up in South St. Louis City and then South St. Louis County. | ||
| And we were very close-knit family. | ||
| My parents worked extremely hard and set a great example, valued education, stayed together. | ||
| They've been married over 60 years. | ||
| And it really was a close community in South St. Louis County back then. | ||
| You could leave your doors open. | ||
| The kids played in the church parking lot after school. | ||
| And really, we benefited from that American dream of solid families, home ownership, parents who worked hard, valued education, stayed together. | ||
| You know, something that too often is missing from society nowadays. | ||
| When did you first become politically aware? | ||
| You know, I became politically aware a long time ago. | ||
| I'm dating myself now in junior high during Watergate. | ||
| I watched the Watergate hearings and not sure I really understood exactly what was going on. | ||
| But I started to volunteer in political campaigns and ballot initiatives, but really became much more politically aware, much more politically active in college. | ||
| My first presidential election I was very involved in was Ronald Reagan's. | ||
| Now you have a law degree and a medical degree. | ||
| What kind of medicine do you practice? | ||
| So I'm an internist and allergy asthma specialist. | ||
| You still practice? | ||
| You know, kind of a forced retirement because of congressional ethics rules. | ||
| But yeah, I still keep in touch with the folks back home. | ||
| Tell us where all that ambition comes from. | ||
| You know, I think just from the good example of my parents, my parents always worked two or three jobs. | ||
| You know, my sister also got a medical degree. | ||
| My brother's a lawyer. | ||
| And I just think that, I don't know if you call it ambition, just restless, had time on my hands. | ||
| So I went to law school. | ||
| Being interested in politics, public policy, and the law, not 100% sure what I was going to do with it. | ||
| I decided to stay with medicine, but now I practice law by writing laws. | ||
| You've also spent time in the Missouri House and Senate. | ||
| How do you think those experiences there translate into a career in Congress? | ||
| Yeah, I think those experiences translate really well. | ||
| I spent two years in the House, eight years in the Missouri Senate. | ||
| And I'll tell you, some of the issues we tackled back there are very much alive today. | ||
| We tackled the issue of illegal immigration. | ||
| We passed the strongest state law in the country to fight illegal immigration back when I was in the Missouri House. | ||
| We worked on issues like life, the Second Amendment. | ||
| We always, because we were a state, we had a balanced budget amendment, and we always balanced our budget, lived within our means, reformed entitlements. | ||
| I think all of those, the skills of being a legislature, a legislator, but also the background in those issues will serve me well here in Congress. | ||
| And you now represent the 3rd District in Missouri. | ||
| Tell us about the district and the folks back home. | ||
| Yeah, the 3rd Congressional District in Missouri is a really diverse district. | ||
| It goes from suburbs of St. Louis County all the way into central Missouri, a lot of farmland, a lot of ranchers and farmers. | ||
| The flagship University, University of Missouri, Columbia, Go Tigers, all the way down to the seat of government in Jefferson City, and then into the Ozarks with the Lake of the Ozarks. | ||
| So a big, diverse district, 16 counties. | ||
| I'm just really honored to represent such a great district. | ||
| Tell us about your family and what they think of all this now. | ||
| Yeah, my wife and I, Allison, have raised our kids for about 25 years in St. Charles County, Missouri. | ||
| We live on a farm there. | ||
| And we have six children, and they're excited as well. | ||
| Did I read that you own a small business? | ||
| Yes, well, I own several businesses. | ||
| The medical practice, we also do some clinical research, pharmaceutical research, and also a little bit of commercial real estate. | ||
| So I've signed, as they say, the front of a paycheck as well as the back. | ||
| I also read that you have a pilot's license. | ||
| Now, when did that happen? | ||
| How did it come about? | ||
| And what do you fly? | ||
| Yeah, so I learned in a small Cessna 150, a little two-seater. | ||
| It was lucky my instructor was a pretty small guy, otherwise we wanted to fit. | ||
| I got my license about five years ago and then got my instrument rating. | ||
| Have about 700 hours flying. | ||
| I fly a Cirrus SR-22, known as the plane with the parachute. | ||
| That was the only plane my wife would let me get. | ||
| How else do you like to spend your time when you're not working? | ||
| Yeah, I like to spend a lot of time outdoors, hunting, running, bicycling, reading, mostly though, spending time with my family. | ||
| Democrat Wesley Bell of Missouri is one of the more than 60 new members of the U.S. House. | ||
| He's an attorney who became the first African American to hold the position of St. Louis County Prosecutor. | ||
| Congressman Bell talks here about his career, including his first run for elective office. | ||
| He won a seat on the Ferguson, Missouri Town Council after the protests there a decade ago. | ||
| You know, I thought I could help. | ||
| At the time, I taught at the community college in Ferguson, the Floreson Valley campus. | ||
| At the time, I was a municipal court judge. | ||
| I was a former public defender. | ||
| And I thought that my expertise, my skill set could help potentially turn things around. | ||
| And so I put my hat in the ring and was very fortunate to get the opportunity to be on the negotiating team with then President Barack Obama's Department of Justice, helping create and negotiate the Ferguson consent decree, bringing body cameras to every single police officer, increasing pay for our law enforcement officers, and just being a part of the group that helped turn a very tough situation around. | ||
| What did you learn personally and professionally from that experience? | ||
| What I learned is that there's no substitute for listening and building relationships not only with your constituents, most importantly, but also with stakeholders. | ||
| The first time that I ran for city council, I had, you know, typical lawyer. | ||
| I wrote up this platform that I thought was God's gift to politics. | ||
| I got in my first town hall meeting and tore it up after about five seconds because folks started asking me, asking questions. | ||
| They start telling me what their issues were and I was able to create a platform that was based on the folks that I wanted to represent. | ||
| And I've never forgotten that and that's why that community engagement and that outreach piece is so important. | ||
| You grew up in the St. Louis area. | ||
| What was early life like for you? | ||
| What do you remember? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Football and school, my parents were essentially one of those folks who are like, hey, you can do whatever you want within reason as long as the grades are good. | ||
| But if the grades are not good, everything gets shut down. | ||
| And growing up, the youngest of four boys, we played football in the basement when the weather was good. | ||
| We went outside and played football. | ||
| We played organized peewee sports through high school, but also just being a part of a great community and having a great support system. | ||
| So I was fortunate with the support that I've had. | ||
| Now you come to Congress having served as prosecuting attorney in St. Louis County, Missouri for several years. | ||
| What was your approach to the position and what would people remember about your work? | ||
| You know what, our focus was on practical criminal justice reform. | ||
| We recognize that serious and violent offenders have to be held accountable. | ||
| There's no getting around that. | ||
| When you cross the line of harming folks, we're going to hold you accountable. | ||
| But there's also a large bucket of people who are struggling with substance use disorder, opioid abuse, mental health issues that haven't harmed anyone other than the disease that they're struggling with. | ||
| And for those folks, those nonviolent, low-level offenders, we expanded treatment programs by creating a diversion advisory committee, the first of its kind, where we connected our criminal justice system with our health care system. | ||
| I got a good piece of advice a long time ago. | ||
| You want to fix your public safety problem? | ||
| Fix your health care problem. | ||
| Because so many folks that come through the criminal justice system are struggling with medical or diseases, substance use, as I said before, mental health, and we got to address those root causes. | ||
| You were the first African American to serve in that position as prosecuting attorney. | ||
| What did that distinction mean to you and to others? | ||
| You know, it is not lost on me being the first of anything. | ||
| And obviously I recognize the responsibility of that. | ||
| You want to set an example for those who look like me, who may want to come along and do this, you know, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, or however long. | ||
| But also we want to do the work. | ||
| We want to keep our region safe. | ||
| I don't care what letters in front of your name, as Democrats as well as Republicans, everyone cares about the safety of their family and their loved ones. | ||
| And so that job I take very seriously. | ||
| I took very seriously and I'll continue to support our local prosecutors as well as DAs and law enforcement to make certain that they have all the tools they need. | ||
| But some of those tools are about treatment in addition to addressing incarcerating serious and violent offenders. | ||
| Do you remember the moment you decided you wanted to run for this seat and what drives you? | ||
| You know, for me, it was a culmination of events. | ||
| My time in Ferguson opened my eyes to the need not only in Ferguson, but across St. Louis County and across the state and country for practical criminal justice reform. | ||
| And as a former professor, teaching our young people and recognizing that a lot of folks, they want, a lot of young people are looking for opportunities and we want to make certain that we grow this economy so that they have opportunities, hopefully in my district, but also as a former judge. | ||
| You know, I saw folks at their lowest in many cases. | ||
| And what I've seen consistently is whether someone agrees or disagrees, what's more important to them is to be treated fairly. | ||
| And so I bring all those experiences to my role in the House of Representatives. | ||
| It's an honor and a pleasure to serve and I'm looking forward to it. | ||
| How would you describe yourself politically? | ||
| I would consider myself a common sense, common sense public servant, focused, laser focused on getting things done for my constituents. | ||
| And that means I'm going to work with anyone who has the interest of the St. Louis region and this country in mind. | ||
| And so I look forward to working with my fellow Democrats. | ||
| And when possible, we're going to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans because I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree. | ||
| And I think it's time that we focused on those things. | ||
| And finally, back to your family and those brothers of yours. | ||
| What does everyone back home think about all this? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It occurred to me on swearing in, about 50 to 60 people came in town. | ||
| I think they're more excited than I was, than I am, actually. | ||
| And so it's just humbling and also exciting to know that I can serve the folks back at home and what they're going to get from me is someone who's going to put the St. Louis region first. | ||
| We're going to focus on getting things done, creating good jobs, and lowering the costs of food and drug costs, but every day waking up and thinking about what can I do for our region. | ||
| Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania is one of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House. | ||
| The Republican owns a real estate development company and his leadership experience in his family's electrical business dates back to his teenage years. | ||
| It's his first time in elective office. | ||
| Well, I have absolutely no political experience whatsoever. | ||
| Nobody in my family so much has ever ran for dog catcher. | ||
| So I am certainly the first one to come through the political environment to say the least. | ||
| But our family business is and was traffic signals, heavy highway, electrical contracting. | ||
| My grandfather started the company in 1973 with a station wagon and a ladder tied to the roof. | ||
| And he was an IBW electrician and grew the company. | ||
| And in 2008, we got totally clobbered by the financial downturn and with banks and surety and bonding partners looking for a succession plan. | ||
| I was going to go to school in Philadelphia for construction management at Drexel University, but my grandparents said, hey, we will sell you the company after you get a four-year college degree from a university of my acceptance. | ||
| University Scranton checks that box. | ||
| And I always knew I'd be back into the family business. | ||
| I just didn't think it would be at the age of 19 as CFO. | ||
| But to whom much is given, much is required. | ||
| And it's certainly something that I took very seriously. | ||
| And the company grew 400% over a period of 12 years. | ||
| We went from 50 employees to 165, worked in, I think it's 19 different states now. | ||
| And now I'm just so incredibly excited to represent my home, my family's home in Washington, D.C. Right, so now you turn to politics. | ||
| Where did the political bug come from? | ||
| I always tried to help the right people that would run for the right reasons. | ||
| People that didn't have an ulterior motive, that truly wanted to make Northeastern Pennsylvania and represent my home and my values. | ||
| So I've been watching the political landscape and actually came to Washington, D.C. for a legislative fly-in in 2017 with National Electrical Contractors Association. | ||
| And we had done some lobbying on the Hill. | ||
| We were talking about 529s and how imperative it is to create the next generation of worker. | ||
| And I met with a member and I just felt like he wasn't very interested in what we were talking about. | ||
| I remember thinking, I can do that job. | ||
| Never thinking I would actually end up doing it. | ||
| And I had a very successful company. | ||
| I had a girlfriend at the time that tolerated me. | ||
| And throwing myself into a political gauntlet wasn't something that I was looking at doing, especially at this point in my life. | ||
| But like it goes back to the first statement, to who much is given, much is required. | ||
| And that's ultimately why I decided to do this. | ||
| And I wanted to give back to Northeastern Pennsylvania. | ||
| Put the two concepts together. | ||
| What is it about having run a business that lends itself to being a lawmaker here in Washington? | ||
| We're actually a union electrical contractor. | ||
| Come from the IBW background, operating engineer background. | ||
| A big reason why we were able to grow so quickly over a short period of time was because of our relationships with our trade partners. | ||
| But I'm always considered myself a pragmatic, common sense, solution-oriented person. | ||
| You know, I'm not from a, like I said, a lineage of legislators, but I've always looked at situations individually and tried to make the best decision every single day for the company. | ||
| I've always had an entrepreneurial mindset, but I think it comes down to just really being approachable, being accessible, and really listening to people because ultimately, you know, when you're running a company or if you're helping your congressional district, you're thinking about what's best for your employees, or you're thinking about what's best for your district, or you're thinking about what's best for the company. | ||
| And I think being just pragmatic and common sense is a fundamental principle that you need to be able to be here. | ||
| I was going to ask you, how would you describe yourself politically? | ||
| I'm a fiscal conservative, socially more moderate, but I'm pragmatic. | ||
| I look at situations and issues individually. | ||
| I've never been a believer in a one-size-fits-all. | ||
| I'm a common sense conservative, if that makes any sense, because I've always considered myself to be a rational, independent thinker. | ||
| So I don't know where I fall in that landscape on the climate or the temperature, but I'm a regular person that came through and was born in my district, raised in my district, I went to school in my district, I created jobs in my district, I reinvested into my district, and I know I'm going to die and get buried in my district. | ||
| So I think my job and my voting card is owned by only the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania. | ||
| What do you like to do in your spare time? | ||
| I ran two marathons. | ||
| My fiancé and I took place in the New York City Marathon two years ago. | ||
| Honestly, beaches are my worst vacation because I'm not a person to just sit still and sit idle. | ||
| I used to golf once upon a time. | ||
| I think I've only played four rounds of golf in the last 15 months since we've ventured into this into the campaign and now obviously being down here. | ||
| But I love being a part of my community. | ||
| Just over the weekend, we went to a paramedic fundraiser for one of our local emergency responders who fell ill to cancer. | ||
| But just being home. | ||
| I work here, but my heart in my home is Northeastern PA. | ||
| You are 34 years old, correct? | ||
| I am. | ||
| Longer term plans? | ||
| Oh no, no, I'm just so humbled and excited that a kid from Butler Street in Pennsylvania, at Butler Street in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, can be representing his family's home, who we've called Northeastern Pennsylvania home for five generations. | ||
| So now I'm here to focus on the people of PA8. | ||
| Emily Randall of Washington State is one of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House. | ||
| Before her election to Congress, the Democrat served in the Washington Senate. | ||
| She talks here about her career, which also includes work as a community organizer. | ||
| I work mostly in nonprofit health care and education organizations, building community support for expanding healthcare access for kids, for women, for LGBTQ folks. | ||
| I worked at Children's Hospital Boston, at my alma mater, Wellesley College. | ||
| I worked for Planned Parenthood and San Francisco AIDS Foundation and ran for office in 2018. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were born in the Seattle area? | |
| In Bremerton, in the 6th Congressional District. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow, what was it like growing up there? | |
| Who were your key influences growing up? | ||
| Yeah, so I grew up in the house my mom grew up in and really close to my dad's parents. | ||
| I'm the first in my family to go to college, so my role models were, you know, my family that worked in, you know, the trades. | ||
| They were my educators, they were my faith leaders, they were my neighbors. | ||
| You know, my grandma was a hospital housekeeper at the hospital where I was born, and she also sort of moonlighted as a translator because at that time interpreter services weren't insured to patients, and so she spoke Spanish and would pop into people's rooms to make sure that they knew what they needed to know from the doctor. | ||
| And, you know, that sort of ethos of taking care of your neighbors no matter what is what inspired me to go into public service. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you hear politics being discussed growing up? | |
| Some. | ||
| My dad was a Republican, my mom's a Democrat, so we had sort of vibrant kitchen table conversations as a kid. | ||
| But, you know, I didn't really know my, you know, elected leaders. | ||
| I didn't really think that I was going to run for office someday. | ||
| I knew that I wanted to give back to community, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Were you always a Democrat? | |
| No. | ||
| So I had a sister who was born with really complex disabilities when I was seven. | ||
| And we were a religious family. | ||
| My mom jokes now that her third pregnancy was the only one she planned. | ||
| And when we found out that Olivia halfway through the pregnancy had really, you know, that would be born with severe disabilities. | ||
| The other twin died halfway through the pregnancy. | ||
| My mom's doctor encouraged her to have an abortion. | ||
| And it wasn't the right choice for her. | ||
| And it made me, as a young person, I was, didn't identify as pro-choice. | ||
| I felt like my sister's life was just as important as anyone's life. | ||
| But as I got older and I met peers who became pregnant, you know, unexpectedly, unplanned, you know, knew more stories about the things that folks were faced with, the challenges, I realized that what bothered me as a young person was that someone was trying to impress their idea on my mom about what was the right path. | ||
| And for her, it was to remain pregnant and to have my sister. | ||
| And so now, you know, I've worked at Planned Parenthood and I've worked on really strong abortion protections in the state of Washington. | ||
| And, you know, that was a journey for me to understand the challenges women face in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to ask you about your experience in the state Senate. | |
| Was there a moment though, specific moment that you remember where you said, I'm going to run for office? | ||
| Oh, the first time? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was at my college campus at Wellesley College after doing some GO TV in Nashua, New Hampshire with Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and we were watching, waiting for the election results 2016. | ||
| And it was like 1.30 in the morning East Coast time, and I knew that the candidate I had fought for had lost and knew that the Trump administration was going to come for Medicaid. | ||
| They were going to come for the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| They were going to come for LGBTQ rights and the Pell Grant and education support that had made the difference for me and the people that I care about. | ||
| And I knew that I had to do more. | ||
| And that night is when I decided to run for the state Senate in my home community. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How many years did you serve in the state Senate? | |
| Six years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are your major accomplishments, do you think? | |
| Yeah, I worked a lot on health care access, on abortion protections, on Medicaid expansion for postpartum parents and for immigrants. | ||
| I also worked a lot on education and opportunity. | ||
| As a first-generation college grad, I chaired the higher ed committee and worked on expanding access to career and technical college, to affordable four-year degrees. | ||
| And then spent a lot of time also working on transportation and infrastructure, which was new for me. | ||
| I took a bus sometimes and I drove my car, but I wasn't an expert in transportation and then got the chance to negotiate Washington's greenest transportation package that invests in ferries and roads and bridges and all sorts of things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You started making news back home by being one of the two openly LGBTQ women in the state Senate. | |
| How, broadly speaking, how does that identification inform you as a public servant? | ||
| Yeah, well, 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, 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
|
When you ran for the House seat that you now occupy, you did receive a number of high-profile endorsements in Washington. | |
| What was it like campaigning for the House? | ||
| Yeah, was a different adventure, I gotta say. | ||
| I had run two of the toughest legislative races in the state for my first Senate race and then the re-election. | ||
| So I thought I knew what tough campaigning was like. | ||
| But, you know, the congressional district is much bigger. | ||
| Running in the Democratic primary was new for me. | ||
| But, you know, what I did is went out and talked to my neighbors the same way I had before. | ||
| Showed up at their front doors and asked them what they were concerned about, what they hoped for, and tried to bring those stories along with me. | ||
| I think that's part of why, you know, Senator Patty Murray endorsed me, because she saw me doing the work and she knew that I'd be a good colleague to fight for our neighbors together. | ||
| And that's what I'm here to do, to make sure folks feel like they've got real representation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I always like to ask our cross-country folks how often they plan to get home and back to the district. | |
| What are you thinking? | ||
| Most weekends, yeah. | ||
| You know, it is a big geographic district, so I can't just, you know, go home one weekend a month and be in every corner of it. | ||
| So, you know, and I also have a family that I want to spend time with. | ||
| I have a baby nephew who's almost one, my wife, my brother, and sister-in-law, my mom. | ||
| So I'll take those cross-country commutes with my little dog and get rack up the airline miles and come back here and get to work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you see as the toughest part of navigating Washington, D.C. as a newcomer here? | |
| Yeah, well, this is my first time in a minority. | ||
| I, you know, have always served in a Democratic trifecta my time in the state Senate. | ||
| But even when I was a member of the governing majority, I knew that bipartisan relationships made my policy better. | ||
| And so I'm going to draw on those experiences to try and build relationships with folks from all corners of the country, both sides of the aisle, to make sure that the policy that we pass reflects the needs of all Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to give remarks on Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. | |
| Watch live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Looking to contact your members of Congress? | ||
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to pre-order your copy today. | ||
| Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA. | ||
| Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Several Democratic members of Congress spoke at a rally against cuts to the Health and Human Services Department outside of the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters. | |
| Key speakers included Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and Maryland Representatives Jamie Raskin and Glenn Ivey. | ||
| This runs about 30 minutes. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hey, I brought you guys a chance because back when I was in school, I wasn't very good at making posters because they were illegible. | ||
| But I became the chant master. | ||
| So I'm going to try out a new chant for you, all right? | ||
| How about this one? | ||
| Hey, hey, RFK, hands off the FDA. |