CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/08/2025

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March 8, 2025 07:00-10:02 - CSPAN

03:01:56

Washington Journal 03/08/2025

Participants

Main

tammy thueringer

cspan 33:24

Appearances

brian lamb

cspan 00:41

donald j trump

admin 01:42

howard lutnick

admin 00:34

james comer

rep/r 00:40

jerome powell

01:31

jonathan ferro

00:56

scott bessent

admin 02:51

willie nelson

00:52

Clips

anthony j hilder

00:13

bill nye

00:18

jim marrs

00:08

patrice oneal

00:22

randy weaver

00:09

Callers

bill in new york

callers 00:12

mike-2 in tennessee

callers 00:12

mike in washington

callers 00:22

odin in michigan

callers 00:15

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		And comments live.
		And then Washington Examiner Homeland Security and Immigration Reporter Anna Giaratelli discusses the drop in illegal crossings at the southern border and immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.
		And Sarah Overmall, Staten News Washington correspondent, will join us to talk about the federal government's approach to the measles outbreak in Texas and some other key public health issues.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal starts now.
		Join the conversation.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Washington Journal for Saturday, January or March 8th.
		And we are talking about President Trump and the economy.
		This morning, we want to know your interest or your confidence in the Trump administration's handling of the economy.
		And it comes as a poll shows more people are finding that they're saying it's heading in the wrong direction instead of the right direction.
		To start today's program, we are asking you, what's your confidence in the Trump administration's handling of the economy?
		The lines there on your screen, if you're a Democrat, 202748-8000, Republicans, 202748-8001, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can also text your comments to 202-748-8003.
		Be sure to include your name and your city.
		You can also post a question or comment on Facebook.
		That's at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Good morning, and thank you for being with us.
		We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few moments, but want to show you more from a poll.
		It's from Ipsos.
		It was done just earlier this week and it detailed findings.
		It shows 34% of Americans say the country is heading in the right direction compared to 49% who say it's off on the wrong track.
		When it comes to several specific issues, Americans are more likely to say things are off on the wrong track than going in the right direction.
		That includes cost of living.
		22% say it is heading in the right direction compared to 60% saying the wrong track.
		When it comes to the national economy, the respondents said there were 31% of respondents saying the right direction, with 51 saying the wrong track, and unemployment and jobs.
		That's 33% saying the right direction and 47% saying the wrong track.
		A headline from the Associated Press: it is, U.S. economic worries mount as Trump implements tariffs, cuts workforce, and freezes spending.
		From that article, it says with his flurry of tariffs, government layoffs, and spending freezes, there are growing worries.
		President Donald Trump may be doing more harm to the U.S. economy than to fix it.
		The labor market remains healthy with the 4.1 unemployment rate and 151,000 jobs added in February.
		And Trump likes to point to investment commitments by Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to show he's delivering results.
		The Friday's employment report also found that a number of people stuck working part-time because of economic circumstances jumped by 460,000 last month.
		In the leisure and hospitality sector, that reflects consumers having extra money to spend, 116,000 jobs were lost.
		And the federal government reduced its payroll by 10,000 and a potential harbinger of alarm of the alarm being sounded by the stock market, consumer confidence, and other measures where the economy is headed.
		It was yesterday in the Oval Office President Trump spoke to reporters about the job report, the February jobs report.
		Here are some of his remarks.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		We have many, many companies that are moving into our country.
		As you probably know, it's a statistic that everyone talks about, but nobody seems to have done much about.
		Since the beginning of NAFTA, there's been 90,000 plants and factories closed in this country.
		Think of that.
		90,000 plants and factories have been closed in this country.
		Many of them have been car manufacturing plants.
		And that's a terrible statistic, and we'll be turning that around.
		You're going to see it already.
		We already have numerous that are being built or starting to be built, and numerous that were being built in other countries, and they stopped, and they're coming here now because of the tariffs.
		And that's a big deal.
		That's what you want to hear.
		During the last year, the Biden administration saw a loss of more than 110,000 manufacturing jobs or 9,000 manufacturing jobs every single month.
		It averaged about 9,000 a month, 110,000 manufacturing jobs.
		During the first full month in office, we've not only stopped that manufacturing collapse, but we've begun to rapidly reverse it and get major gains.
		We created 10,000 manufacturing jobs in February alone.
		That hasn't happened in a long time.
		And these aren't government jobs, which actually we cut.
		These are private sector manufacturing jobs.
		So we gained all of those jobs, 10,000 jobs, and we've barely started yet.
		That's a very unusual number.
		People are surprised by it.
		I'm even a little surprised.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was President Trump yesterday in the Oval Office talking to reporters, responding to the February jobs report, one of the indicators that came out this week on the economy.
		And for this first hour, we're asking your confidence in the Trump administration's handling of the economy.
		Again, the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		And you can also text us at 202-748-8003.
		We will start this morning with David in Bear Lake, Michigan, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, David.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, David.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I have some questions about Trump and the starlink with the, you know, everything with Elon Musk.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What's your thought on his administration's handling of the economy?
unidentified		He's doing really good.
unidentified		You know, I have a feeling that here within the next six to 18 months, that thing, inflation is going to start going back down, and then the stock markets and stuff are going to open back up and hit better.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you follow the markets?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you follow inflation, the numbers?
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		Here and there.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What is it?
		How is inflation still impacting you where you are?
		Where's Bear Lake, Michigan?
unidentified		Well, I'm about 45 minutes south of Traverse City, Michigan, and two and a half hours north of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
unidentified		I'm kind of in the center.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And what's inflation look like there?
unidentified		What does your grocery shopping look like?
		Right now, our taxes are at 6%.
		And when I was up here during Trump's last term, taxes were only at 3%.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was David in Michigan.
		We'll go to Bruce in Edinburgh, Texas, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Bruce.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi there.
unidentified		I watch your program pretty much every morning.
		Before Trump took office, I had to pull my, well, in order to make a judgment, you have to have money in the stock market.
		Okay, so I pulled most of my investments out prior to him taking office because of the performance of the last administration back in 2016.
		I've been watching a long time.
		And as you notice, the markets took a hit this week, as expected.
		Chaos in the White House, as expected.
		Chaos overseas, as expected.
		You know, what can I say?
		You know, people talk about it when they don't have anything invested.
		See, but when you're an investor, you pay attention.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Bruce, what did you do with the money you pulled out of the market?
unidentified		What I did is I have some money still in the money market account, okay?
unidentified		But I put it in the bank and just locked it down.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Bruce in Texas.
		Ed, Ocean City, New Jersey, line for independence.
		Good morning, Ed.
unidentified		Ed O'Donnell, the main cause of the economic problems is CEO salaries, obscene, too large CEO salaries.
		And not just the CEOs, but a lot of the vice presidents, a lot of the other people at the top of these corporations are taking too much money.
		But the other side of the coin, it would be good to get the low-income people a stimulus check.
		Those two things could change things.
		But you've got to stop this obscene CEO salary structure.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ed, tell me, talk a little bit more about that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What impact do you think that would have?
unidentified		Lowering the CEO salaries.
		Well, it's a good question because the point is you have to take the savings and get it to the low-income people in a big stimulus check.
		And small businesses, my charity helps the very small businesses.
		The government is giving more help to the Fortune 500 companies than it's giving to the corner grocery store.
		So those are the changes.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Ed in New Jersey, Matthew, and Level Maine, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Matthew.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I'm pretty happy with the way things are going with the economy.
		It's going to take some more sacrifice on all of our parts.
		It's not going to turn around overnight, but I think we're heading definitely in the right direction.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Matthew, what are you watching right now?
		Are you invested in the market?
		Are you concerned about inflation, grocery prices?
unidentified		I am.
		I have a 401k.
		I have a small amount invested in crypto.
		And, yeah, so I'm Along with quite a few percentage of Americans doing the same thing.
		So I think, yeah, I think that things are looking up.
		It's not going to happen overnight.
		Again, it's going to take some more time.
		It's probably going to take eight months to a year before we st start seeing some real positive turnarounds here.
		But we're off to a really good start and keep the faith.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Matthew in Maine.
		Will in Baltimore, Maryland, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Will.
unidentified		Good morning, C-SFAN.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		The economy is going in the wrong direction.
		Turbs being implemented, implemented, on again and off again is an exercise of folly.
		And now we hear there's infighting within the cabinet and Elon Musk.
		We knew this was coming.
patrice oneal ▲ ● ▼		Elon Musk waving a chainsaw is going to make a great ad for Democrats during the midterm elections.
unidentified		And I have a message for working class Americans.
unidentified		Stop voting against your own best interests.
patrice oneal ▲ ● ▼		Republicans always push for tax cuts for the wealthy, while Trump is not paying taxes for over 20 years and firing fellow workers that may have even voted for him.
unidentified		Stop voting against your own interests.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Will in Maryland.
		Margaret, also in Maryland, line for independence.
		Good morning, Margaret.
unidentified		Yes, I do believe that some of these measures that he takes will create jobs.
		And I personally don't have any money in the stock market at this point because it does make me nervous.
		But you know what I'm wondering is, and this is something that kind of concerns me, is the world listens to the United States to everything that President Trump says and does.
		And the message that's being sent to the world is in regards to Canada, cutting up Gaza, Greenland, that we're trying to set an example here that anything goes in a way.
		You know, what is if other countries like China and Russia say, okay, if it's okay to just go after certain countries and grab land and take over other nations, what message does that send?
		And I'll give you an example of what I mean.
		What is if Mexico says, Mexico first, we want to get our southern borders back that we lost to the United States during the Spanish or to the Mexican-American war.
		Or what is if Russia says, hey, Russia first, Alaska was not a good deal for us when that was sold to the United States, and we want that back.
		And my last example would be China.
		China will probably go and get Taiwan.
		And then we have an island group called Hawaii in the middle of Pacific that was basically run over by American businessmen that illegitimately overthrew Queen Lilio Kolani.
		And what is if other nations say, hey, that piece of land in the middle of the Pacific, that's not really America.
		That is also up for grab.
		And when you have this kind of instability with nations going around because they're powerful and their military might allows them to do that, I'm not sure how that is going to benefit all of us in the long term in regards to jobs, security, and all of that.
		That's basically my comment.
		These are the things that I kind of think about because we are setting an example to the rest of the world.
		And trust me, the world is listening, including Putin and China.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Margaret in Maryland.
		This headline in today's morning New York Times for Fed Delicate Balancing Act with Trump.
		The article says the Fed is expected to hold interest rates steady at 4.25% to 2.5% to 4.5% when officials gather March 18th and 19th, extending a pause that has been in place since January.
		But its decision after that point may get even more fraught, especially if the economy weakens and price pressures rise to the extent that economists fear.
		How significantly Mr. Trump's tariffs will impact the economy is not yet known.
		The President has already flip-flopped on levies he placed on Mexico and Canada this week, but has kept the threat alive by issuing only a short reprieve.
		Sweeping retaliatory tariffs are also still on the table, as are other penalties on aluminum, steel, and other products.
		The size of the potential impact depends not only on the duration of the policies, but also how fervently other countries protect themselves with retaliatory measures and how businesses and consumers adapt to higher costs.
		It was yesterday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke about the state of the economy.
		Here are his remarks.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼		We pay close attention to a broad range of measures of inflation expectations, and some near-term measures have recently moved up.
		We see this in both market and survey-based measures, and survey respondents, both consumers and businesses, are mentioning tariffs as a driving factor.
		Beyond the next year or so, however, most measures of longer-term expectations remain stable and consistent with our 2% inflation goal.
		Looking ahead, the new administration is in the process of implementing significant policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulation.
		It is the net effect of these policy changes that will matter for the economy and for the path of monetary policy.
		While there have been recent developments in some of these areas, especially trade policy, uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high.
		As we parse the incoming information, we are focused on separating the signal from the noise as the outlook evolves.
		We do not need to be in a hurry, and we are well positioned to wait for greater clarity.
		Policy is not on a preset course.
		If the economy remains strong but inflation does not continue to move sustainably toward 2 percent, we can maintain policy restraint for longer.
		If the labor market were to weaken unexpectedly or inflation were to fall more quickly than anticipated, we can ease policy accordingly.
		Our current policy stance is well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face in pursuing both sides of our mandate.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our question this morning to you is your confidence in the Trump administration's handling of the economy.
		We'll hear from Steve in Indiana, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Steve.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I think that the biggest factor in this economy is the oil.
		We got more money right here in the United States than almost any country in the world.
		And once, like right here where I'm at, I was paying $3.50 a gallon for regular gas.
		Now I'm paying like $2.70.
		And in just a short period of time here, and It's once once our price is getting it back down to where they were when Trump was in office, all our prices will go down on everything because it won't cost as much to transport it.
		It's just common sense policies that Trump's bringing back into focus on everything.
		I don't believe anybody's got anything to worry about.
		The Democrats want to scare everybody about all this everything that's going on with Musk and all that.
		We're just trying to get rid of the fraud that's been taking place.
		Everybody can see the fraud, but I can see it right here where I live in a small town here and get our jobs back.
		We used to have 27 factories here where I'm at.
		Guide Lamp, Del Cole Remy.
		We had all kind of work.
		We had and they were slowly were transported down to Shreport, Louisiana, then over to Mexico, just out of town.
		And we're like a ghost town here.
		We haven't grown at all.
		Our town hasn't since all our factories have left.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Steve, Nethan's taken the place of those companies that have left?
unidentified		Well, we've got a few companies that's come back in.
		We've got a Nestle factory that came in.
		And we have a few small factories that's come in.
		And it's helped out quite a bit around here.
		We've got a few jobs, but it's still, our town didn't grow.
		All the towns around us, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Indianapolis, we're kind of caught in the middle, both towns.
		And they've grown quite a bit, especially Fort Wayne.
		Had a big factory, truck factory go in in Fort Wayne that helped out quite a bit.
		But we were until we get this oil straightened out, start transporting our oil to other countries, that'll be a big market for the United States.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Steve in Indiana, we'll go to Tyrone in New York line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Tyrone.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		Republican, the conservative Republicans have been calling for the destruction of our federal government since one of them was talking about making our government small enough to drown in the bathtub.
		This financial crisis that's coming up, I believe, is just going to be another part of what they do.
		And the Democratic Party is going to have to come in and try to clean up this mess, as usual.
		The other problem that I see is that when they call for the destruction of our government and make it small enough again to drown it in the bathtub, that they don't recognize the fact that other people need the government to help them do what they need to accomplish in this country.
		Our government is an important entity inside our country to keep us functioning.
		Now the economic problem, the economic problem that we're going towards, that this tariff situation is going to develop for us, and we believe that we can go it alone.
		We're making our friends our enemy and making our enemies our friend.
		That's not, I don't think that's the best way to go.
		You know, we've had Canada or Mexico working with us for eons, and now we want to make Russia our best pile and do everything that they want us to do.
		I don't think that's a good thing.
		Hopefully, we see the light and realize that we need to work together as a country, as a country, to be able to move forward as opposed to tearing each other down with GEI and all the rest of this other made-up differences.
		We need to work together.
		That's the way I see it.
		If we don't, we're going to fall.
		We're going to fall.
		And maybe we need to because this is a country that if we don't stand together and we fall, maybe then we'll see how badly we need each other.
		Hopefully, you know, I don't know how far we ought to fall, but hopefully, eventually we'll see it.
		And, you know, that's the way I see it because we are definitely at odds with each other.
		We're not together at all.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Got your point, Tyrone.
		I wanted to show this opinion written by Representative Chris DeLuzio.
		He is a Democrat from Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district.
		It's in this morning's New York Times: Voters like tariffs.
		Why don't the Democrats?
		Again, Chris DeLuzio is a Democrat.
		It says Democrats have wasted no time rejecting President Trump's tariffs as damaging and unnecessary.
		My colleagues have lampooned them as irresponsible, bad economics, and purely attacks on consumers.
		This anti-tariff absolutism is a mistake.
		I'm a restbelt Democrat from a swing district in western Pennsylvania where lousy trade deals like NAFTA stripped us for parts.
		Many of my constituents support smart tariffs, particularly ones that target China, and so do I. Watching my colleagues on the Hill, it's clear we're missing the mark.
		Democrats need to break free from the wrong for decades zombie horde of neoliberalism economics who thinks who think tariffs are always bad.
		Mr. Trump's tariff approach has been chaotic and inconsistent.
		There's no doubt about that.
		But the answer isn't to condemn tariffs across the board.
		That risks putting the Democrats even further out of touch with the hardworking people who used to be the lifeblood of the party, like people like my constituents.
		Instead, Democrats should embrace tariffs as one component of a broader industrial strategy to revitalize American manufacturing and make whole communities that have been hollowed out by decades of bad trade policy.
		This isn't just about making the economy work for more Americans.
		It's about earning back the trust and faith of the people we need to win elections and who ought to be at the heart of the Democratic Party.
		Back to your calls.
		We'll hear from Richard in Nashville, Tennessee, Line for Independence.
		Good morning, Richard.
unidentified		Good morning.
		First off, let me state this.
		I'm 68 years old and I'm still working, and the economy has been great for me until we got to Biden.
		I work in the grocery business.
		I work for the second largest grocery chain in America.
		And we all know who that is.
		And we all know who number one is.
		And I'll tell you: do you know what the gross margin of profit is for a major grocery supplier in this country is?
		I'll tell you, it's 4% margin across the board.
		So that means when the CEOs get their money and the store managers of a certain grocery store get their income and it trickles on down, it's not much left because there's a 4% gross margin.
		When you raise gas prices, which every one of the everything that comes to your grocery store does not come on an electric vehicle.
		It comes on a gas-powered diesel truck, a 18-wheeler, which means you have regulations on those 18-wheelers for the driver, for their truck, for the particular state in which it drives in.
		So if you've got a load of produce coming out of Central Valley in California coming across this country, and when we had COVID, it messed up the supply chain.
		Then we started seeing problems with aluminum.
		That meant Coke, Pepsi, all these major vendors that used aluminum KS.
		We had no problem, we couldn't get the product.
		But that gross 4% gross margin, when you stretch that across the board to all people concerned, these people were investors into the food industry in this country from farm to table.
		When you cut them out of their margin, they quit investing in that business.
		When they quit investing, then you have nobody.
		The small boy on the corner with a grocery chain, he cannot compete with the big boys.
		And when he has to, he goes broke because they force him out.
		It's a game.
		So if you want to have the things that you want and you want to have it at a price that Americans want, we want the best pay when it comes to being paid, but we want the cheapest prices.
		You can't have it both ways.
		So if you're going to keep on handling this industry, you're going to find out that you're going to find less and less.
		Eggs and milk in a dairy department at a grocery store, it's just a, it's like the things that they register when you check out.
		It's that thing that impulse buy.
		The only reason you have eggs at a price, I've been in the grocery business for over 20 years now, and eggs and milk were just a half a gallon of milk was $1.89.
		Now it's over $2.39 to $2.40 a half a gallon.
		Eggs were 89 cents to $1.99.
		Now they're up to $5, $7, $8.
		And you know why?
		Because that stuff there, they make no money in that.
		In the dairy department, they make no money.
		Where a grocery store makes their biggest profits is in the frozen food section.
		And you've got to understand that if you want this food to get to your table and you want cheaper prices, you've got to lower the cost of fuel because you cannot transition.
		If the Biden administration had said we're going to have all energy, we would have had electric, but done it in a smart way.
		But they tried to transition from one to the other and they screwed this economy up.
		So all I got to say to the good old Americans, if you want cheap prices, then you need to pay attention to what's going on.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		It's all point, Richard.
		We appreciate the insight, your expertise in the area.
		We'll show this headline from the Wall Street Journal, Richard mentioning eggs.
		DOJ opens a probe of surge in egg prices.
		It says the probe comes after prices have doubled over the past year and eggs are sometimes entirely absent from grocery store shelves.
		Grocers say eggs are one of the leading drivers of food inflation over the past few months.
		President Trump vowed to bring down inflation once he entered office.
		The investigation is in its early stages.
		The department sent a letter to some egg companies that instructed them to preserve documents about their pricing conversations with customers and competitors, as well as communications with Erner Berry, which is now called Expana, and tracks wholesale egg prices information.
		Some of the people familiar with the matter said, it also says the Justice Department, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.
		The United Egg Producers, a trade group for the industry, said egg farmers are doing everything they can to fight back against the deadly bird flu outbreak.
		The egg industry, grocers, and analysts have attributed high egg prices to the worst outbreak of avian flu in American history.
		It has resulted in the deaths of more than 150 million U.S. chickens, turkeys, and egg-laying hens since 2022, according to the Agriculture Department.
		Let's hear from Tony in Buffalo, New York, Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Tony.
unidentified		Good morning, ma'am.
		Good morning, ma'am.
		I just like to mention, you know, I'd like to reiterate what a lot of people have been saying.
		You know, it's all common sense.
		It's all common sense.
		I have big confidence now that President Trump has taken over and he has found all this fraud and waste.
		I think it's very important.
		And, you know, I compare it to even a local here, the town of Amherst.
		There's been a Democratic board, okay, including a Democratic town supervisor, for example, okay, it has put us $200 million.
		They've been in charge for eight years, and he has put us $200 million in the hole.
		Okay, now a local business owner, Dan Gagliardo, is running for town supervisor.
		He's a local business owner.
		Okay, again, back to common sense.
		He couldn't run his business this way.
		He owns Davolio restaurants here in Amherst, New York.
		And, you know, he couldn't run his business this way with a fraud and waste.
		And he's running for town supervisor.
		Does he need it?
		No.
		But what he's doing, just like President Trump didn't need this, like Doge, you know, like Elon Musk.
		He didn't need this.
		You know, but what he's they're doing, they're peaches.
		They're true patriots.
		Dan Gagliardo is a local business owner here running for town of supervisor, town of Amherst, town supervisor position, along with Mary Dormer and John Traeber, who was a police officer for 30 years and on the Republican line, trying to turn this around because it's just back to common sense.
		Let's make it make sense.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Tony in New York, Bob in Cypress, California, line for Democrats.
unidentified		Hi, Bob.
		Hey, how are you?
		Good morning.
		A little before I get into the topic at hand, I was wondering why you aren't speaking about the three military officers that were arrested for the espionage.
		They just found out they just got arrested.
		That's pretty big news.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're talking about the economy, Bob.
unidentified		The inflation.
		It basically, I'm a lifelong Democrat and I'm seeing what's going on.
		I'm opening my eyes wider every day.
		And I got to tell you, after that address, presidential address, I think I'm done with the Democrats because it's all about common sense.
		This inflation, think about it.
		I mean, we had the orange man in there for four years, and we had what?
		He left inflation at 1.9%.
		Then we had Biden come in, and I guess we had an economy that was pretty, pretty in the tank, going up to 9% inflation at some times.
		And remember the baby formula?
		There was baby formula.
		There was a shortage of baby formula.
		They're all talking about eggs right now.
		But when the baby formula was out of commission or whatever, they didn't say a word.
		They weren't panicking like that.
		And that's baby formula.
		But with the tariffs and all, they just got to let him do his thing.
		He's a businessman.
		Apparently, They've been through this before.
		This whole Doge thing.
		If you want to go back to the first Trump administration, he had a whole room full of regulations cut.
		Remember the stacks of papers on there were stacks in the whole room, and they were all regulations that were cut from waste and all that mismanagement.
		This is actual fact.
		We have to actually look at the facts without going crazy and starting singing weeds shall overcome and all that.
		You got to look at the facts.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Bob in California.
		It was on Bloomberg television this week that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick responded to questions about the recent economic data.
		Here's a clip from that interview.
jonathan ferro ▲ ● ▼		The data over the last few weeks hasn't been great.
		The survey data has been softer.
		And a lot of these companies in these surveys have pointed to tariff uncertainty.
		Do you accept that the business community needs some clarity or whether it's 25, 15, 10, whatever the number is going to be, that the volatility around the trade story, the cumulative effect of persistent uncertainty, is starting to weaken to this economy a little bit?
unidentified		No way.
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the president spoke about it last night.
unidentified		He said Biden left him a pile of poop, okay?
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼		He left him a lousy economy that he's trying to fix.
unidentified		You're looking at data that's Biden data.
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼		Do not try to besmirch my President Trump with Biden's nonsense.
jonathan ferro ▲ ● ▼		You think the ISM manufacturing number is Biden data?
		I just want to be very clear.
		That's your opinion.
		You're entitled to it.
		You think that's his data at non-what possible could change?
unidentified		Seriously, we are in early March.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		My president took over January 20th.
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼		You think economic data coming out in early March is Donald Trump-related data?
jonathan ferro ▲ ● ▼		Monthly surveys are not.
		Mr. Secretary, you stop it.
		Okay, are you suggesting that when bond yields drop in a market that's worth trillions of dollars and investors place bets off the back of that economic data, that that data doesn't count for anything?
		That that data's somehow misleading?
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼		I think that data is leading you to understand if Joe Biden was still in charge, you'd be in trouble.
howard lutnick ▲ ● ▼		But you have a new president, there's a new sheriff in town, and I would bet, I would bet on the economic growth that is coming from Donald Trump.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Just a little over 20 minutes left in this first hour of today's program, asking your confidence in the Trump administration's handling of the economy.
		We'll hear next from John in Claredon, New York, Line for Independence.
		Hi, John.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I've been listening to callers, but they pretty much kind of stole the things I was comments I was going to make.
		But, you know, Donald Trump's been in office for two months, and then Biden, you know, he was there for four years.
		And Donald Trump, you know, he's going to try to upgrade our energy supply.
		And, you know, that'll help out, lower prices.
		The inflation, you can't turn our nation's inflation rate down within six weeks or two months.
		And the price of eggs, when Biden was in office, that's when this thing hit with the chicken populations, and they had to destroy numerous chickens.
		And that was before Trump came into office.
		So you can't blame that on them.
		The price of groceries have been up high during the entire Biden administration.
		I just, I wish that somehow I know your news reference sources are the New York Times and you just have Bloomberg, but you have to be a little more you have to bring in some other news sources that give other opinions.
		The New York Times, like they're saying this report about what took place with the administration's president's staff there.
		He had a closed door meeting.
		It included, what's his name, Musk.
		And they had, I guess they reported that there was a big argument between him and the Secretary of State, Arubio.
		And this was a closed door meeting.
		It was confidential.
		There was no New York Times reporters in there.
		And they had this whole article that you've been relying on that says, oh, there was a big argument.
		This broke out.
		But today I was watching.
		They interviewed somebody that was actually in the meeting that was part of the staff or whatever, his leaders of these departments.
		And they said, there was a discussion.
		It wasn't a big argument.
		But that's how you make progress.
		But the New York Times, they blow this out of proportion.
		And guess what?
		You never ask who your sources are.
		Is there a videotape, an audio tape that you can prove that what you're writing about is true?
		And what happens is you get these New York far-left journalists that get to post their stories in the New York Times and they present this stuff with no factual evidence.
		Basically, they're spreading rumors, and the rumor spreads from one liberal media outlet to another, like MSIBC, it'll be on CNN, and all this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Got your point, John.
		We'll go to Ed in Lawrenceville, Georgia line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Ed.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		One thing I want to do is talk about a part of the economy that the Democrats don't understand.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		Their representatives are always talking about billionaires and that they're not paying their fair share.
unidentified		Now, we have two different documents when you fill out your taxes.
		You're either married or the other document is you're single.
		If you're a billionaire, you pay 37%.
		That's the highest rank.
		They didn't design it.
		The Congress designed it.
		37% is what the billionaires pay.
		Well, 37% of a billion dollars is a lot of jingo.
		Anyway, what I'm trying to get to is it's the billionaires, not the government, that pays to build hospitals.
		They build clinics.
		They build bridges.
		They build roads.
		They build hotels.
		The billionaires are the ones that help make the economy grow.
		When you treat, like the Democrats treat billionaires like they're doing something evil, when the truth of the matter is, they're the ones that actually help the economy.
		So, Democrats, your leaders are leading you down the wrong road.
		Thank God for billionaires.
		Goodbye.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Greg in Champaign, Illinois.
		Line four Democrats.
		Good morning, Greg.
unidentified		Morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I have complete confidence in Trump's handling of the economy.
		I'm 100% confident he's driving us over off a cliff.
		In fact, I think we've already gone off it.
		We just don't know it yet.
		By a month from now, we're going to know it.
		And I just challenge your Republican callers to give me even one example of any enterprise, public or private, that has succeeded with this kind of chaotic leadership.
		Come up with even one in human history.
		But at least when the first hurricane hits the Gulf Coast in the spring, it will have come from the Gulf of America.
		Thank you very much.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Another Greg, this one in Corning, Ohio, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Greg.
unidentified		How are you doing?
		Why are we even having this conversation today?
		He's only been in there, what, six weeks?
		You expect him to click a mouse button or whatever, and everything's going to go fine.
		There is more important stories out there.
		You people are going down that road with CNN and MSBS.
		I'm surprised you don't have Jim Acosta sitting there in that anchor desk.
		I mean, this is ridiculous.
		You people are gone.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Greg in Ohio.
		We'll go to David in Denison, Texas, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, David.
unidentified		Good morning.
		It's too much to say.
		I'll try to talk slowly, and you cut me off where you cut me off.
		For one thing, businesses do not pay taxes.
		They collect them, and they do pay them, but what they pay are counted as business expenses to be covered by increasing prices.
		This has been known as far back and written about since 1817.
		Premier economist of his time, David Ricardo, in a book on political economy, was very clear about that.
		They had a lot of debates about that.
		But just think about it.
		You pay sales tax when you buy something.
		The business collects it and pays it and pays it.
		It costs him to collect it.
		Again, it's just something that increases its cost, but he didn't get the money.
		Same with income tax.
		It's an expense to the business.
		They pass it along through the cost.
		That's all a business can do or they would not be in business.
		As far as the tariffs are concerned, we've had a lot of success report in documentation through history.
		Trump's absolutely right about McKinley, speaking about the 1880s, 1890s, and so on.
		There's a lot of little things out there that have made what's going on now go on now.
		For example, in the Clinton administration, business finally got, or banks finally got the Clinton administration to get rid of this thing called the Glass-Steagall Act.
		This is a monstrous effect on the economy.
		That was passed in 1933.
		It said that banks could, they could choose to either be a commercial bank, which means loaning money to businesses and getting deposits from people, or they could be an investment bank that would be allowed to participate in speculation and stocks and all this.
		That was repealed in 1999.
		It only took from 1999 to 2005 fixed.
		Where you want to put the bullet point that says this is when we went over the edge from the housing thing that caused the Great Depression, Great Recession.
		That's what caused it.
		And that's what's also causing the increase.
		It's one of the major factors in causing the increase in the wealth gap that's been growing since then.
		It was closing.
		It's been growing because it's taken money out of local economies.
		Banks, you used to have a much more robust local banking scenario, regional, local banking.
		Thousands, over half of the local and regional banks have been bought by the majors.
		In 2008, when we had the...
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hey, David.
		David, bring it back to the Trump administration and their handling of the economy.
		Tie those together for me.
unidentified		That's it.
		Guys, he's got the greatest cabinet ever.
		And his guys, they understand all his economic stuff.
		Bethany the other day was talking about how we're reprivatizing the economy.
		The jobs report, they were saying, oh, it was only $150,000.
		There were 10,000 more manufacturing jobs.
		It was the first positive manufacturing job report in like 15 months.
		What was down was government jobs.
		The economy under Biden has been powered by government spending, not private spending.
		And what Besson is talking about is how they're reprivatizing the economy.
		There's going to be a transition required, but that's what they're working on.
		It's all related to that glass eagle thing.
		There are these things that happen, like where they say Trump isn't doing anything to reduce costs and all.
		The price of oil has gone down about 15% since he was inaugurated.
		It was like $67 a barrel now.
		The Saudis are finally cooperating again in producing more oil as well.
		This stuff takes time, but doing away with DEI, billions of dollars in reporting, and companies had to take part in it because Biden on his first day required every government agency to implement DEI policies.
		They implemented it in the contracts that were written.
		That's why the Biden administration, when they passed in the infrastructure bill, they allowed $42 billion for high-speed internet in the rural areas.
		They didn't get one person connected.
		Not one.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Got your point, David.
		It was Scott, our caller mentioned Treasury Secretary Scott Bissent.
		He spoke at the Economic Club of New York yesterday about President Trump's economic plans.
		Here's a clip from that interview.
scott bessent ▲ ● ▼		On the international economic system, President Trump's bold international economic agenda will also provide the backdrop for his domestic economic policies to succeed.
		The president has already begun a campaign to rebalance the international economic system.
		Perhaps we're seeing an early big win with Germany's discussions to dramatically boost its military spending.
		The international trading system consists of a web of relationships, military, economic, political.
		One cannot take a single aspect in isolation.
		This is how President Trump sees the world, not as a zero-sum game, but as interlinkages that can be reordered to advance the interest of the American people.
		This is contrary to the last several decades when other countries acted to advance their own interest, while our policymakers largely forgot about the trade-offs of unconstrained trade misalignment.
		The result was the United States provided a source of massive demand, acted as arbiter of global peace, but did not receive adequate compensation.
		For today, the United States finds itself subsidizing the rest of the world's underspending in defense.
		This is not just a security issue.
		The United States also provides reserve assets, serves as a consumer of first and last resort, and absorbs excess supply in the face of insufficient demand in other countries' domestic models.
		This system is not sustainable.
		Access to cheap goods is not the asset, is not the essence of the American dream.
		The American dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security.
		For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this.
		International economic relations that do not work for the American people must be re-examined.
		This is what tariffs are designed to address: leveling the playing field such that the international trading system begins to reward ingenuity, security, rule of law, and stability, not wage suppression, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, non-tariff barriers, and draconian regulations.
		To the extent that another country's practices harm our own economy and people, the United States will respond.
		This is the America First Trade Policy.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Back to your calls.
		We'll hear from Jeffrey and Michigan Line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Jeffrey.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I would just like to give some free information to my Republican friends.
		The first four years when Trump was in office, I was on a tight, tight budget.
		I'm retired.
		I'm 70 years old.
		We were in a recession.
		When Sleepy Joe got in there, it was the best four years of my life.
bill in new york ▲ ● ▼		The SP broke 50 records, and I was scraping the cream off the top on my 401k and living like gang.
unidentified		Just, it was great.
		And now I'm back on a budget again.
		And since Trump's been in office, I lost $100,000 on my IRA.
		And Republicans keep on saying, give it time, give it time.
		We shouldn't give it time because Trump should have been just going with Biden and the market should have been going up and up.
		But Trump and Musk are making millions of dollars off this market.
		They're buying stock right now.
		The stock is dropping and they're buying tens of thousands of dollars a share.
		And when it goes back up, they're making millions.
		And the banks are making millions because when the market was doing good under Sleepy Joe, people were paying cash for their vehicles.
anthony j hilder ▲ ● ▼		They were paying off their mortgages, bank loans, car loans, everything.
unidentified		And now people can't pull their money out of their IRAs because the market is down so far and they're going to lose a ton of money.
anthony j hilder ▲ ● ▼		The rich keep getting richer, and that's a fact.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Jeffrey in Michigan.
		Jeffrey talking about the markets.
		This is from the Washington Post editorial board.
		In this morning's paper, the headline, Why the Market Dislikes Tariff Shenanigans?
		It says, The best argument for protectionist trade policy is that manufacturing know-how takes years to develop, and it cannot be rebuilt in a hurry when the things you've been buying from abroad are suddenly hard to come by because there is a pandemic or war.
		But manufacturers seem to think abrupt changes to a trade policy are bad for business.
		A recent survey for the Institute for Supply Management shows customers are pausing on new orders as a result of uncertainty regarding tariffs.
		A transportation equipment company reported the incoming tariffs are causing our products to increase in price.
		A machinery manufacturer said the maker of electrical equipment added, the uncertainty about tariffs keep us cautious on spending despite the strong sales right now.
		Regime uncertainty is the economic term for worries like these.
		Investment takes time to pay off, and when government policies consistently shift, companies have a hard time telling whether an investment will be worth it.
		It says, in theory, once tariffs are imposed, regime uncertainty might ease.
		In practice, however, the president's frequent shift in policy stance to have a chilling effect.
		It says, adding to the unease will be the administration's attack on the justice system, which foreign investors, especially, are bound to be watching.
		To repeat, there is a reason that so much foreign debt is structured to be governed by U.S. law, signaling that America's trade policies could change at any time and that its justice system is vulnerable to political influence, risks the country's position as a global destination for securities, issuance, and investment capital.
		Just a few minutes left.
		We'll hear from Mark in Manhattan, New York, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Mark.
unidentified		Good morning.
		The TDS, I want to know, how do we know that the 2 million chickens, because they always care about the eggs, how do we know 2 million chickens called were sick, right?
		But there's a lot of construction going on.
		I see the workers early in the morning, right?
		The usual demographics, like from a month ago, I saw the same workers until a few days ago.
		I saw eight or ten new manned crew of African Americans among the crew, not from the islands either.
		So these are the jobs for the second and third class citizens.
		Thank you very much for taking my call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Mark in New York.
		Frenzel in Los Angeles, California, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Frenzel.
unidentified		Good morning, C-SPAN.
		Thank you so much for taking my call.
		You guys are a blessing to the nation, and I pray that you guys stay on.
		And any way that I can support and help, I'm going to continue to do so.
		I just want to comment on the last caller that he just said about people obtaining jobs.
		And I refer him to look to what's happening in Nebraska now.
		And that goes for everyone as well.
		Because as you see, these policies that have been initiated, what's happening with him seeing people getting hired and people building things, and that's because of the last infrastructure bill that was passed.
		And those funds are still going out, even though Trump is trying to stop as much of that from going out as possible.
		But the real issue we have going on right now, like what's happening in Nebraska, is that our workforce that works to get our crops and to get our things to the table is drying up.
		And we have people that are not willing to go out there and do the work.
		So we're having cattle ranchers and lots of people that are crying that they need help and they need assistance.
		And so this is going to be a real troubling issue.
		And so I'm really praying that people really wake up and understand that they were voting against their own self-interest instead of looking for a way to help out people who are here on a pathway to citizenship.
		And yes, we could stop people from coming into the water.
		That's perfectly fine.
		But what about the people who are here and the people who have been here for decades paying into this society, paying taxes through sales tax and income taxes?
		They are just being neglected in this whole conversation.
		And everyone loves to point the fingers at what other people are doing, but not take a point a finger at themselves and what they're doing.
		And so I just challenge everybody right now to really step up to the plate and fight back against all these veterans getting laid off and all of these people who are getting taken out of positions with no notice.
		And this is not a way to operate a business.
		You're at least allowed two weeks' notice or some type of information before you just get let go.
		So it's inhumane of what's going on right now.
		And I'm praying for the people in Gaza as well.
		This is.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Frenzel in California and our last call for this hour.
		Barbara in Oklahoma Line for Independence.
		Good morning, Barbara.
unidentified		Hi.
		I don't even know where to start.
		I don't understand why you let them call in and lie all the time.
		They just got through saying, oh, it was a dollar something a gallon when Trump was in.
		No, it was not.
		Only the lowest it got for him, he was handed $2.17 from Obama.
		And he left it to something because we were in COVID and we weren't driving.
		But it went up to, y'all know what it went up to.
		And by the time Biden got it, it was up to $7 or $8 a gallon.
		And he handed him a 9.3 inflation.
		He says he didn't have any inflation.
		He had the highest inflation ever, ever.
		And everything that, why I don't understand, oh, he's not going to touch Social Security.
		He took a trillion out for his to give to the swamp.
		He's taken two trillion, they say, this time, but I know he'll take one.
		Every single one since Reagan, the Republicans has stolen a trillion out of every single one of them.
		Why do you not stop them when they call in and say, oh, it was a dollar inflation, one inflation and a dollar a gallon?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Barbara, we're going to leave it there.
		That was our last call for this first hour.
		But next on Washington Journal, Washington Examiner Homeland Security reporter Anna Giaratelli will join us to discuss the latest on the Trump administration's immigration enforcement actions.
		And later, Stats Washington correspondent Sarah Overmaul will discuss the Trump administration's approach to the measles outbreak in Texas and other key public health issues.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
		This weekend, historian Rebecca Brenner Graham talks about America's first female presidential cabinet member, Labor Secretary Francis Perkins, who worked to aid refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
		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 Gerald Ford's term in 1974, including his pardon of former President Richard Nixon, who resigned from office during the Watergate investigation.
		On lectures in history, Georgetown University history professor Derek Gannon on the Irish diaspora and the role of the United States during the Troubles and in the Northern Ireland peace process.
		And on the presidency, James Bradley, co-editor of the Martin Van Buren papers, talks about his biography of our eighth president, the first in-depth look at the Van Buren presidency in decades.
		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.
		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 8 p.m. Eastern, Reason Magazine senior editor Brian Dougherty talks about the modern libertarian movement led by thinkers like F.A. Hayek, I. Brand, and Barry Goldwater in his book, Modern Libertarianism.
		And at 9 p.m. Eastern, Pacific Research Institute president and CEO Sally Pipes, author of The World's Medicine Chest, talks about the rise of the American pharmaceutical industry and warns against enacting European-style prescription drug controls.
		Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, journalist Omar L. Akkad questions if the U.S. is forsaking its core values after 20 years of covering wars around the globe and social unrest in his book, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
		He's interviewed by author and University of Oxford modern Middle Eastern history professor Eugene Rogan.
		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.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss the Trump administration's enforcement efforts at the U.S. Southern Border is Anna Giaratelli.
		She is a Homeland Security reporter with the Washington Examiner.
		Anna, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We will start with a tweet that Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam put out last month.
		It says February was the lowest month in recorded history for encounters at our border.
		The world is hearing our message.
		Do not come to our country illegally.
		If you do, we will find you.
		We will arrest you.
		We will send you back.
		Thank you to President Trump for your strong leadership and to our brave CBP officers and agents for keeping America safe.
		We are just getting started.
		Anna, the administration touting that record low number, you've visited the border several times, including this week.
		Is that in line with what you're seeing there?
unidentified		Yeah, I've been to the border 60 times in the last seven years.
		And this last trip I took, or I should say two trips ago, last month, when I went, it was the first time in all those trips that I was with Border Patrol five hours on the river and on land.
		We did not see a single migrant attempt to cross the river.
		We've never seen that in all my visits before, not a single person.
		The 8,000 figure that DHS Secretary Christy Noam toted, or touted rather, that is the lowest figure since 1967.
		There's been some dispute this week as to whether it's the lowest in recorded history.
		Democrats will tell you, no, 1967 actually was a lower year, or average monthly number was lower per year.
		But it's certainly, I don't want to take away from the Trump administration, to do that in a month called the Trump effect.
		But whether he can continue to do that for the next four years remains, you know, the question to be seen.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Anna, the CDP's figures showed the decline in encounters started before President Trump took office.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		To what extent has President Trump's policies been the impact of what's happening?
unidentified		Yeah, so historically, before President Biden, we'd see about 30 to 50,000 people arrested by the Border Patrol at the southern border every month.
		Under Biden, that number got up to 250,000 in December 2023 for context.
		Last June, right before the election, the Biden administration put forward some executive orders that really got those numbers under control, got them down to 60,000 a month by the election, and Trump has reduced those further to 8,000.
		I think, you know, a lot of not just President Trump's actual executive orders have had an effect, but just him coming in in the same way at the beginning of the Biden administration, we saw people coming over the border with t-shirts that had President Biden's face on them, the U.S. flag.
		They realized they were welcomed.
		It's the same non-policy sort of effect that Trump's arrival on scene has had on migrants in other countries or who are already on their way to the United States.
		They realize this just isn't a welcome environment.
		This isn't the right time to come with President Trump in office.
		And I think that's also, it's hard to quantify the impact of that, but I think it's certainly one of the reasons we're seeing numbers go down so significantly.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Anna, one of your headlines from just a few days ago, Vance wants Trump to build the entire border wall by 2029.
		You were on the border this week, as was Vice President Vance.
		Tell us about his tour, where he went and why.
unidentified		So Vice President Vance went to Del Rio and Eagle Pass, Texas.
		Both have been hot spots for people crossing the border under the Biden administration.
		1,500, 2,000 people arrested per day in each town under the Biden administration at different points.
		And so Vice President Vance flew into Del Rio, Texas, and then took a Blackhawk to Eagle Pass, where he met with Governor Greg Abbott.
		He met with Attorney General Ken Paxton, the mayor of Eagle Pass, the head of the Border Patrol, Mike Banks, and spoke with them about the issues that they're having in the state with the border.
		Really, not a lot of issues right now.
		The state wants the federal government to take over a lot of its border enforcement activity and let the state focus on interior immigration.
		But Vice President Vance was on the border.
		He did see the wall.
		He told pool reporters he was very surprised by the wall.
		He was surprised, just kind of at the he marveled over it.
		And so it is an 18 to 30 foot seal-bollered wall.
		It is pretty, you know, significant to get there and see it for yourself.
		And so he's now pushing for, he's hopeful, he said, that President Trump will get the rest of the wall done by 2029 before Trump leaves office.
		That would be a major feat.
		Trump put up 450 miles of wall.
		He had over 700 miles funded through Congress and funds he directed, redirected from the Treasury and Defense Department.
		But he only got 450 miles done.
		This is a 2,000-mile border.
		You have about 700 miles of wall across the entire border.
		So he'd have to put up another 1,300 miles.
		And those remaining 1,300 miles include some of the most difficult terrains to put up a wall in.
		And so, you know, Vance didn't make a promise.
		So he protected himself from saying he broke a promise.
		But it is a very lot of wishful thinking, I think you could say, about what Vice President Vance said about the wall this week.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest, Anna Giaratelli, she is a Homeland Security reporter with the Washington Examiner.
		She'll be with us for the next 35 minutes or so.
		If you have a question or comment for her, you can start calling in now.
		The lines, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		We also have a line.
		If you are a border state resident, that's 202-748-8003.
		And Anna, I want to ask you about some other actions that have happened down at the border.
		DHS deputized members of the Texas National Guard so that they can help process migrants.
		The Texas National Guard has had soldiers at the border since Governor Abbott launched Operation Lone Star back in 2021.
		So what is different this time?
unidentified		This is really significant.
		It's nothing that we know a state has ever done before.
		He's turned the state's National Guard.
		These aren't Federal National Guard.
		These are just the state soldiers sent to the border under the governor's direction into immigration officers.
		So these are people who can do Border Patrol's job.
		There's several hundred National Guard soldiers took the oath and were deputized several weeks ago.
		And so if they see immigrants crossing the river illegally, they can now apprehend those people.
		They can detain them.
		They can arrest them and take them into custody.
		And they also have the authority to remove them from the country.
		So if they're Mexican citizens, they might send them back across a port of entry bridge back into Mexico.
		And this is something that's never been done before.
		We know that the soldiers have been deputized.
		We have yet to see them carrying out this enforcement action.
		I think they're still in their training and trying to learn.
		I mean, Border Patrol's training normally is five or six months long at an academy.
		And when they're there, they're learning, you know, how to identify somebody as, you know, what is their immigration status, which is harder than you would think.
		And so the soldiers are doing a quick onboarding, trying to learn that.
		And really, we have yet to see what that's going to look like, but it is a really significant move, just one of many by the state of Texas to turn, you know, to take care of its own 1,250-mile border with Mexico.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have callers waiting to talk with you.
		We'll start with Susan in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Lineford Democrats.
		Good morning, Susan.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, Tammy.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead, Susan.
unidentified		Okay.
		Yeah, earlier you showed a graph of the number of people coming into the country over the last, you know, four years with Biden.
		And just looking at it real quick, I wish you would show that again so people could read it better, but it looked like there was like about 10 million people came across the border, even though Trump supporters say 20 million.
		And Christy Noam kind of gave up the ghost there.
		The part that you read, that Christy Noam said, the world has heard our message.
		Trump is in office and the world has heard that the border is closed.
		So she's admitting that what the world hears affects immigration.
		Well, let's not forget that for three years of the Biden administration, Republicans were shouting to the world that our border was wide open.
		They were shouting to the world that millions of people are streaming into the country unchecked.
		Our borders are wide open.
		So did they think that that was going to deter immigration?
		And to your guest, I would like her to answer if she can, over the last 20 years, which president had the highest annual average deportation rate over the last 20 years.
		And last, on deportations, Donald Trump said he was going to go after the worst of the worst.
		Well, you don't find the worst and the worst in churches and schools.
		I don't understand why ICE agents aren't working with drug enforcement agents.
		We have undercover agents in the drug cartels and drug gangs.
		So why aren't ICE agents working with DEA agents to round up the worst of the worst and deport them?
		Thank you.
		Bye.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna.
unidentified		Yeah, so the administration with the most deportations was easily the Obama administration across two terms.
		We did a story several weeks ago looking at arrests and removals, which are different figures.
		But President Trump is struggling to hit those numbers that President Obama hit in his first term.
		He then faced a lot of pressure from the left saying, why are you deporting people?
		This doesn't go along with our platform.
		And so he reeled that back in the second term.
		But to the second question, this administration did early on, like she said, lift a block that had been to not make arrests in schools, churches, and hospitals.
		We have yet to see, we looked into this and spoke with education and school leaders this week, even Los Angeles School Department, the National Education Association, and asked them, are you seeing kids get arrested in schools?
		ICE did not respond to our requests, but all these organizations and school districts said we have not had a single student arrested in our schools.
		And the only thing we have seen is a parent who is dropping children off at school arrested by ICE.
		And ICE is posting on its Twitter account, its X account, some of the higher profile people that it's arresting.
		Someone who had committed homicide, who was in the United States, someone who had committed another crime who was arrested by ICE.
		So, you know, I think the change in policy in who ICE was, where ICE was allowed to arrest people has really confused some, looking like schools and churches were going to be targeted by ICE.
		ICE makes arrests one by one unless it's at a work site.
		And so typically they are just arresting one person.
		They're not there doing raids or so-called types of things.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And wanted to let our audience know, Anna mentioned one of her stories recently talking about what she just mentioned.
		It's from January 30th.
		You can find her work and the work of her colleagues online at Washingtonexaminer.com.
		Let's hear from Thomas in Abilene, Texas, line for border residents.
		Good morning, Thomas.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, I was wondering, does the president have the right to ask the U.S. Customs to refuse entry of non-U.S. citizens that are pregnant?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna, did you catch that?
unidentified		I did catch that.
		Hi, Thomas.
		I've been to Abilene.
		Love Abilene.
		And, you know, off the top of my head, I'm not sure.
		I know it probably gets to the birthright citizenship issue that President Trump has tried to undo.
		He's been blocked four times now by federal judges who will not let him move forward on that.
		And so the House and Senate are trying to work on legislation to get around that.
		But off the top of my head, I cannot give you an answer to that.
		I believe, no, they cannot refuse someone who is pregnant.
		We see people come across all the time.
		If there was a will to refuse them, I'm not sure that they legally would be on solid ground.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from James in Chicksaw, Oklahoma, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, James.
unidentified		Morning.
		What I was going to say was, you know, we're building a wall down there along the Texas border, and Ukraine and Russia had a wall between them.
		And Gorbachev and Reagan had it tore down.
		And that's what they're fighting over.
		Their land of their free country.
		They're not even, they're not, they're not acknowledging that they were one country to start with and they just got together.
		See, Reagan and Gorbachev tore down that wall.
		So, what are we doing to Mexico whenever we're not allowing them to come forth of any of the stuff that they want to come over here and be free, but they don't want to go through the paperwork?
		And from what I understand, it doesn't take 30 minutes to fill out the paperwork to come into America to get a green card.
		So, that's all they have to do to be legal.
		And they ain't even got to do what they're doing.
		They can go and just fill out paperwork and come across.
		So, why are they fighting something?
		Won't they make it legal for them to do that down there in Mexico?
		Because Mexico is some of our biggest workers in America.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna, a response for James?
unidentified		Yeah, thanks, James, for the question.
		So, the green card process does, it's a 10-year wait.
		You have to be in the United States in order to get a green card.
		That is the equivalent of legal permanent status.
		And then, after five years after that, you can apply to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
		But for certain documents to get into the United States from Mexico, it's a lot easier than entering from other countries.
		But it is certainly, I've heard a lot of horror stories from people trying to get those documents.
		There's only so many available in the country for people to get those.
		And so, it is a very difficult process to legally immigrate to the United States, something that the Biden administration has blamed the first-term Trump administration for making that process a lot more difficult, for clearing out U.S. citizenship and immigration services, the agency at the Department of Homeland Security that reviews applications and makes those decisions.
		And so, I hope that's somewhat of an answer to your question.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And, Anna, along those same lines, Trump immigration officials got rid of the CBP's One app, which allowed migrants to schedule asylum appointments at ports of entry.
		It sounds like that tool would have helped organize the flow of immigrants.
		Why was it viewed negatively by the Trump administration?
		And has there been any impact from it?
unidentified		Yeah, so the Trump, the CBP1 app, that's customs and border protection, that app had been used for years for truckers, commercial trucks, to send in their manifests ahead of time to help the screening process.
		What CBP did under Biden was added in a function at the administration's request for people who are in Mexico to be able to request an appointment with a CBP officer at a port of entry to see if they could be paroled into the United States.
		The idea was that people, instead of crossing illegally and coming across, we don't know where or when you're coming.
		We hope we arrest you and find you, and you don't get into the country without being arrested.
		By going to a port of entry, they could then review that and release you into the country.
		The other function of the app Was that people in four countries, countries that were not taking their citizens back, but were having a lot of people immigrate over the border illegally, could also do the same from afar and then pay out of their own pocket to fly on a commercial flight into the United States and at that airport be reviewed by a customs officer and possibly be paroled in.
		And under the Biden administration, we saw 700,000 people enter into the country through this app.
		So while the Biden administration said this is helping make things more, you know, streamlining things, Republicans and Donald Trump before he was president the second time had said that this was a backdoor to get people into the country to make it look legal, but really these people would have entered illegally probably.
		And so now that that platform is gone, to your second question, we're seeing the number of people applying for visas in Mexico and permits to remain in Mexico and seeking asylum.
		People who have been waiting in Mexico for months to get an appointment at the U.S. border now applying for asylum in Mexico at three to four times the rate seen last year.
		And so people realize they're sort of stuck in Mexico.
		They might have traveled from Russia.
		They might have traveled from Venezuela.
		And now the CBP1 app is gone and they're trying to figure out, you know, it's not going to be coming back anytime under the Trump administration.
		So what is their next move?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Roger in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Roger.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Thanks, C-SPAN, for taking my call.
		I was calling to see if your guests here can explain to me the bipartisan border bill that the Congress came up with, I think, like close to the end of last year, the security that would have placed at the southern border.
		Which can she explain to me which one is like the better, the bipartisan border bill or what the Trump administration is doing now?
		Because to my understanding, the bipartisan border bill would have beefed up more security on tracking fentanyl.
		And if I'm not mistaken, it even touched in the area of trying to speed up the immigration process or whatever.
		Could she help me understand if the bipartisan border bill would have done a better, gotten the same results as what Trump is getting and secured the border more, or is what Trump doing actually better for the southern border than even what the bipartisan border bill would have done?
		And I take my answer off.
		Thank you.
		Thank you, C-SPAN.
		Love you guys.
		Yeah, thanks for the question.
		That was a great question.
		I think, you know, this bipartisan border bill was brought by Chris Murphy, James Langford, and Kirsten Sinema, three senators, Democrat, Independent, Republican, as he said a year and a half ago or so, a year ago.
		And that bill was ultimately, President or Donald Trump at the time before he was president had said, don't vote for this bill.
		He told the Senate not to move forward on it.
		And it was seen as the strongest border security legislation that the Senate had produced.
		There was also HR2 in the House, which was, I would say, goes a lot further to really clench down on the border that was brought by only Republicans, but never made it to the president's desk where Biden would have vetoed it anyway.
		I think what President Trump has done has certainly brought about results.
		Something that Trump has touted, Republicans have touted this week, is that Biden had said he couldn't stop the border crisis on its own.
		And yet, when he took executive action, we saw 250,000 arrests of the month in December 2023 go down to 60,000 arrests per month.
		We saw numbers decrease significantly.
		And so the Trump administration is saying now that Biden had the tools all along.
		He didn't need a bill to do anything.
		You know, one thing that we are going to be looking at, it gets to your question too: is the amount of fentanyl being seized at the southern border at the ports of entry, where 90% of seizures of fentanyl occur at the ports of entry at the southern border, as opposed to between the ports of entry where immigrants cross.
		Is that number going to go up?
		Because during COVID, when the number of people coming across the border illegally, you know, greatly decreased, customs officers who don't arrest immigrants, but they're at the ports of entry, there was also less traffic coming through.
		And so they were able to really focus more on contraband coming through the ports of entry.
		So now that even though the travel at the ports is not down, the number of people coming between the ports is down.
		That might impact customs officers in one way to be able to find more fentanyl.
		So I'm interested to see if those seizures are going up, which could be, you know, it wasn't put through in legislation like the Senate bill you mentioned, but it's still an effect of the President Trump's policies and being able to address both immigration and what's going on with the drug smuggling at the southern border.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with William in Tucson, Arizona, line for border residents.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, William.
unidentified		Hi.
		You know, we get a lot of, you get a lot of calls in, folks calling in saying, well, I got a message for Democrats or Republicans.
		Well, I have here in Arizona, I have a message for Senator Gallego, Senator Kelly, and Governor Hobbs.
		Get off your rears and do something about the border.
		Right now, I know some of you listen to this, and so you need to pay attention to what I'm saying to you.
		The people of Arizona are getting real tired.
		And as Joe Biden said, we're losing our patience.
		And we are losing our patience.
		We don't mind having you up there, but you're going to represent all of the people of Arizona, not just your Democrat buddies.
		We always talk about the billionaire buddies.
		Well, you got billionaire buddies too.
		So pay attention.
		There's going to be an accounting.
		And if you want to stay a U.S. Senator or a governor, then you better get off your backside and do something about this border.
		Thank you.
		Have a good day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna, any response for William?
unidentified		Yeah, I just came back from Tucson a few months ago.
		It's one of my favorite spots to visit on the southern border.
		It's not on the border, but it is certainly impacted heavily by border illegal immigration, drug smuggling.
		Towns like Sierra Vista, Bisbee, Nogales, Naco, places like that, Douglas, and southeast Arizona is where he's, you know, we've seen a lot of illegal immigration, not just recently, but through the years.
		Those are places where further from the border, 20, 50 miles north, Sierra Vista specifically, if you look at the town, has had a lot of high-speed chases of people smuggling other people as well as people smuggling drugs, leading police on high-speed chases through towns.
		We've had a number of fatalities.
		The Sierra Vista mayor has, you know, said himself that he's scared to let his grandmother and his daughter out outside during the day and night, just because you never know when a car is going to come speeding through town.
		So this is the way that there's something very, you know, not next door.
		They're not on the border, but it really impacts communities away from the border.
		And Congressman Juan Siscamani, he's a second-term Republican for the Tucson area going down to the border.
		He's been very vocal on this issue, very, very active, and continues to be in his second term.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Greg Arlington, Texas, border resident.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Greg.
unidentified		Yes, thank you for C-SPAN.
		I'd like to ask the guest about the H-1B visa program and what changes are being made there, if any.
		I mean, I really see that program as being one in which a lot of good paying American jobs are being stolen by large companies and others, in effect, importing labor and robbing good paying jobs from American citizens.
		So what is the president doing about restricting that H-1B visa program?
		Thank you.
		Yeah.
		Hello, hello to Dallas-Fort Worth.
		We have not seen any action really yet on the H-1B visa program.
		President Trump is really focused on the border.
		He certainly wants legal immigration to be merit-focused, skills-focused, skills-based.
		So people who meet certain quotas and changing those quotas within the U.S., because that program is based on much older quotas for what we needed in different industries, it doesn't meet the moment now.
		But I think in the next couple of months, maybe the next year or so, we could see President Trump really move on the H-1B program, overhauling that.
		Something that they've also wanted to get at, he tried in his first term, was chain migration.
		So just because you're related to someone doesn't mean you get easier access to enter the United States as well.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And I wanted to ask you about something that came up last month.
		There were reports that the Trump administration was planning to revive a Title 42 policy to expel migrants.
		Remind us what Title 42 is and how that could change the picture at the border if it is enforced again.
unidentified		Yeah, that was a CBS news report, I recall.
		And Title 42 was a CDC action that allowed customs and border protection to immediately turn away someone at the border.
		So it was implemented during the COVID pandemic under the pretense that people coming over the border illegally might have COVID and could be bringing it into the country and spreading it, even though it was already here.
		And so border patrol agents would simply take those people into their vehicle, take them to the port of entry, and push them out the door, say, go back across the bridge.
		Normally, border patrol agents would apprehend someone on the border, take them to a station, process them.
		They might be released into the country with a court date, or they might be returned to their home country.
		And so we have yet to see any proof or truth to that report that the Trump administration is looking to move on that.
		On day one of the Trump administration, he signed, he took over a dozen executive actions through a number of immigration executive orders.
		And one of them was declaring anyone associated with the quote invasion, unquote, as inadmissible into the United States.
		And so under that pretense, they've been able to return a lot of people coming over the border immediately back by walking them back across the port of entry to Mexico, flying them into the interior of Mexico, so much further south of the border, or returning them to other countries, sometimes countries they're not even originally from because their countries won't take them back.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Carol in Minnesota, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Carol.
unidentified		Good morning, ladies.
		Yeah, I just I don't understand why the Democrats are so against sending the people from all these countries back.
		I think if something were to happen to one of their children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, I think they'd see it a little bit different.
		I haven't been out after dark for five years, and I'm just getting sick of being scared to be in my own town even.
		I just don't understand the Democrats and some independents, and I'm sure there's some Republicans too that believe it.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna, any response for Carol?
unidentified		Yeah, Carol, I'm really sorry you have to live with that fear.
		That's a terrible thing.
		I'm a survivor of violent crime in Washington, D.C.
		And so I understand it's a horrible thing to have to live with that.
		And I hope you find peace.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna, you mentioned deporting or having migrants walk back across the border, maybe go someplace else.
		There was from the Wall Street Journal a story, U.S. suspends costly deportation flights using military aircraft.
		We saw this for a little while.
		The Trump administration was sending migrants back to various countries.
		Remind us where they were going and what's happening to migrants now.
		Where are they going?
unidentified		So the early on, so we were the first out at the Washington Examiner to report before Trump took office that they were looking at using and they were planning to use military planes to remove people from the country.
		ICE charters flights on 13 aircraft.
		So it doesn't own the aircraft.
		It uses them to fly around the country, to pick people up at different immigration facilities and then remove them from the country.
		But Trump added in the military cargo aircraft.
		They were going to different countries around Latin America primarily, also going to places like India.
		Those flights cost, I just looked at SMS yesterday, $3 million for those flights.
		People on these flights, even to Guantanamo Bay, where they were moving predominantly Venezuelan men to hold them because Venezuela would not take their citizens back.
		It since has decided to take them back.
		$20,000 to $26,000 per person to get a person on that flight to Guantanamo Bay on those military aircraft.
		So the military aircraft were significantly a higher dollar for the U.S. taxpayer to fund.
		And now that arrests within the interior, they're at that point where we don't entirely need the military aircraft.
		We still have with the resources available enough.
		We're waiting to see right now Congress is, or I should say, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, both under DHS.
		They are operating out of their 2024 budgets, which under the Biden administration, arrests and removals of illegal immigrants were significantly lower than they were at the rate that President Trump is going.
		And so ICE can only do so much with the money it has left in its pocket, which isn't much.
		And so right now they're in the process of scaling back those flights, which could affect the arrests within the country if they're going to be detaining people longer because they don't have the flights to remove them from the country.
		We're working on that 2025 budget in Congress.
		I should say Congress is working on that.
		I'm not working on it.
		Right now in the next few weeks.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Dennis in Alexandria, Indiana.
		Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Dennis.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, when Biden and Harrison come into office even before they was in the office, they was over in these other countries putting flowers out that the border was going to be open, come on over.
		And it's it thousands of them was down coming through.
		And it was it was all the Harrison, she was going over there and then they were having going into these while the election was going on.
		She was also going to these motels and having seminars and teaching these people how to to cheat in the election process during while the the the Democrats was just doing all kind of different things.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Dennis, we'll have we'll have Anna respond to your comments.
unidentified		Yeah, thanks, Dennis.
		I haven't seen those reports.
		I cannot corroborate them about what Vice President Harris was doing in motels advising migrants.
		Haven't seen anything to confirm that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Willie and Little Rock, Arkansas, line for independence.
		Hi, Willie.
		We'll have Anna respond to here.
		Willie, are you there?
unidentified		Yeah, thanks, Dennis.
unidentified		I haven't seen those reports.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I think Willie walked away from his phone.
		We'll go to Ralph and Georgia aligned for Democrats.
		Hi, Ralph.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I guess three things that's on my mind.
		I know that I live in El Paso for 32 years after retired from the military.
		And if I'm not mistaken, the people would come across, go to our schools, flash a card, go to our schools, grade schools, all the way up to Iowa High University.
		They come over and work in our hotels.
		They were set up downtown and did different jobs.
		And then they were supposed to go back.
		I wonder if that's still happening now.
		The other thing is, these people that's flown to the sanctuary cities from Texas and Florida, are they vetted before they are sent there to see their status?
		One other quick thing, the people that come that helped us that was interpreters when we were in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all those areas, they had to wait up to 18 months before they could come to the United States, go to another country.
		Now I hear that they are going to be exiled and sent back to their countries.
		That's what I have.
		But thank you for my time.
		Interesting topic.
		Yeah, first of all, thank you for your service for our country.
		I'm going to get at your second question primarily.
		So under the Biden administration, we had millions of people at the last count by House Republicans.
		It was five to six million people released into the country.
		I know President Trump and others have touted 20 million.
		They include the Gotaway numbers, but the number that I'm going by is from Congress, and that's based off customs and border protection numbers.
		Of those five to six million released people that were who illegally entered the country between the ports of entry and were released and given a day in court, hundreds of thousands were given notices to report.
		That just means it's a document.
		And then, normally, when you're released from ICE and border patrol custody at the border, you're given a document, they've put you in the court system so that the government knows: okay, you know, such and such person needs to show up in the New York Immigration Court on this day in the future to see if they are allowed to remain in the country or they're going to be ordered to be removed.
		In this case, the notices to report was simply telling them, We don't have time to put you into the country.
		We also don't have time to do full vetting of you, which is supposed to occur.
		So, we're giving you a document asking you to report to an ICE office once you get to the city that you're going to.
		At that point, we're hoping, you know, by a good faith system, you will report to them, then we'll place you in the immigration court system and we'll know be able to track you and such.
		And so, it actually just came out in the past, I believe, two weeks.
		It was a congressional report saying that in these cases, people were not being thoroughly vetted.
		And, you know, in some cases, I just want to give you an example that one person that might be included in this.
		Kayla Hamilton was a 20-year-old woman, autistic woman, living in Aberdeen, Maryland.
		I've worked with her mother, Tammy Nobles, through a number of years now since Kayla was murdered in her home by an MS-13 gang member who came into the country during the Biden administration, was not vetted, was an MS-13 gang member, and yet slipped through border patrol and ICE and was not, somehow, they didn't catch that.
		So it looks like he was not vetted.
		He was probably given a notice to report.
		He claimed to be a minor and was released into the country and ended up committing this heinous crime.
		And so, you know, that's just one example of sort of Kayla's mother, Tammy, has been trying to get answers for years as to how the federal government didn't screen him, didn't vet him, didn't know his background when he was arrested in Maryland.
		It was very easy for local police to determine he had a significant flag in his background that should have been stopped, you know, notice at the border and stopped.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		One last call for you, Anna.
		We'll talk with Clara in Tennessee, Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Clara.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question is about the protest and to what degree can Homeland Security become involved.
		I fully support everyone's right to be able to protest legitimate concerns and grievances, but I don't think that you should be allowed to wear a mask.
		We're free to protest in this country, and you should exercise that right and not wear a mask.
		I also don't think that you should be able to get to bring a sign to a protest that has a stick attached to it, which can be used as a weapon.
		Hold your sign with your hands, and I don't think that children should be allowed at a protest.
		The other concern that I have is: can Homeland Security investigate to what degree people like George Soros might be involved in employing these people as protesters?
		They don't really have a legitimate grievance.
		They're just employees of someone like George Soros who pays them to come and protest.
		Thank you.
		Yeah, thanks for the question, Clara.
		And, you know, I can't speak to what the Department of Homeland Security is investigating as far as protests and who is protesting and whether they are being paid by groups on either side to be out there.
		The Department of Homeland Security will get involved in certain protests for security, especially if they've already detected oftentimes unbeknownst to the public, right?
		They're not going to announce, you know, there's a terror threat associated with this protest.
		Somebody who might be affiliated with a terror group might be planning to attend or something.
		So they're tracking it and they might have agents or officers present at that event.
		But the department's participation in these protests, I should say, for safety reasons, varies.
		We haven't really seen a lot of Homeland Security involvement, you know, protecting the peace at protests since the riots in 2020, when I think kind of, you know, infamously, President Trump in his first term sent DHS personnel to Portland, Oregon to deal with protesters, not just protesters, but rioters who are trying to burn down the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anna Giaratelli is a Homeland Security reporter for the Washington Examiner.
		You can find her work online at Washingtonexaminer.com.
		Anna, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Thank you, Tammy.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Next, on Washington Journal Stat News's Washington correspondent Sarah Overmall will join us to discuss the Trump administration's approach to the measles outbreak in Texas and other key public health issues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		But first, yesterday, scientists, public officials, and activists spoke at the Stand Up for Science rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Here is Bill Nye, the science guy's remarks.
unidentified		We are gathered to insist that our lawmakers stand up for science.
		The framers of the U.S. Constitution made sure to include Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8.
		Congress is to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
		Useful arts would be an 18th-century expression for what nowadays we would call engineering.
		Using science to solve problems and make things.
		These constitutional ideas have helped make this country great, a world leader in innovation as well as in the rule of law.
		The process of science, along with our hard-won scientific body of knowledge, has enabled us to feed and care for the world's billions, build great cities, cure diseases, create global transportation and communication systems, and even know our place among the stars.
		My friends, science is part of the American story.
		If the United States is to lead the world, science cannot be suppressed.
		And so today, my friends, we demand that scientists not be censored, that there be legal safeguards to prevent political interference in their research, and that they be enabled to communicate their findings freely.
		Furthermore, we demand that all of us, the public, have access to scientific information.
bill nye ▲ ● ▼		All the data, reports, and resources that were available before this president swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution in January of this year.
unidentified		This is our right.
		We paid for this science with our tax dollars.
		As we stand here today, certain elements in our own government have suppressed references to climate change, have advocated against life-saving vaccines, and have ordered an automatic review of papers for the purpose of censorship.
		Papers female there my friends is the u.s. Capitol To the other side, to the other side, the side restricting access to scientific reports, scientific data, and resources.
		We ask, what are you afraid of?
		What is it about the process of science, modern medicine, caring for our neighbors, or Woman's History Month that you all find so scary?
		My friends, science is in the national interest.
		Censoring science is not.
		I encourage those on the other side to break ranks, become leaders.
		Oppose this suppression of science.
		The founders embrace the idea that by promoting science and engineering, our citizens would be free to do research and to innovate, which would in turn stimulate the economy, Help us compete in the world stage and keep us safe, ultimately improving the lives of all of us.
bill nye ▲ ● ▼		Every citizen, each of us, wants a better future for ourselves and for our families.
unidentified		Together we can and we must stand up for science.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss the Trump administration's response to the measles outbreak in Texas and other key public health issues is Sat News Washington correspondent Sarah Overmaul.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sarah, thank you so much for being with us.
unidentified		Thank you for having me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So we will start with the latest on the measles outbreak.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Remind us where it is, how many people are affected right now, and who's being infected.
unidentified		So it's primarily in Texas right now, although now there's cases just over the border in New Mexico.
		As of the latest, there's more than 220 cases, many of them among children, and the reports that we have are many unvaccinated.
		And so there's been two deaths so far.
		I apologize.
		One was in a child in Texas who was unvaccinated and who had no known underlying conditions.
		The latest report is an adult in New Mexico died that was reported this week.
		We don't have more details right now on that person if they had known underlying conditions, but the CDC is monitoring the situation.
		Texas, at least, has asked the CDC to assist them in that.
		And so it's still an ongoing situation where they're urging people to get vaccinated and to, you know, take precautions.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		There are those measures happening at the state level.
		The Trump administration, still fairly new, RFK Jr. HHS secretary was just sworn in not too long ago.
		How is the federal government, the Trump administration, responding?
		What are they recommending?
unidentified		Right, so Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has in the past been skeptical of vaccine safety.
		And so when he has been talking this week in particular about what to do about the measles outbreak, he had an op-ed recently and some comments on Fox News where he said, you know, while vaccines can be important and they can prevent measles, it also is a personal choice.
		And that is in line with how he has campaigned, how he's talked about vaccines in the past, but it did earn some criticism and alarm from public health experts, even from some Republicans themselves who wanted to hear him say vaccines are a very important part of this.
		He's also talked about, for instance, vitamin A being something that can help people out.
		That also got some criticism because vitamin A can be helpful when, particularly when someone's malnourished.
		We know, for instance, in developing countries that can be important for a child, but it does not prevent measles and it is not actually going to help save you if you're in a very severe condition.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also said that measles outbreaks are not unusual in the United States.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How is what we're currently seeing compared to those maybe typical outbreaks?
unidentified		Right.
		So we have seen measles outbreaks in past years.
		He's talked about even there being some, I think it was 16 last year.
		The difference is that these are the first two deaths that we've had from measles since 2015.
		And we're seeing this in, for instance, with the child.
		They did not have underlying conditions.
		That's alarming, to say the least, because we know this is a preventable disease.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest for the next 35 minutes or so is Sarah Overmaul.
		She's Washington correspondent for Staten News.
		If you have a question or comment for her, you can start calling in now.
		The lines, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We also have a line set aside.
		If you are a medical professional, you can call in at 202-748-8003.
		Sarah, you talked about it a little bit when we talk about the Trump administration's response, but what is the medical community saying about the response so far?
		What are their concerns?
unidentified		There's been a lot of concern about this idea that while, of course, personal choice is important in medicine, this idea that could further erode confidence in vaccines, especially when we talk about something like the measles mumps rubella vaccine or the MMR vaccine.
		This has been around for many, many years.
		We have a lot of safety data.
		Millions and millions of people have gotten this vaccine.
		And we're talking about now an unprecedented measles outbreak and deaths.
		And so it's not just about measles.
		So when people talk about this, particularly medical experts, they say, is this the start of more?
		Are we going to see more preventable deaths, more disease outbreaks, because more people are questioning the safety of vaccines?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		When we talk about vaccines, some people may be not vaccinated at all.
		Others, perhaps, depending on how old they are, may have only gotten one shot.
		What is happening right now in terms of vaccination drives or the availability of the vaccine?
unidentified		Well, with the MMR vaccine, definitely available.
		There's no shortage issue or anything like that.
		There have been efforts, of course, on the ground in Texas and New Mexico to get people vaccinated.
		And, you know, this is all part of, as you said, that the Trump administration is still in early days.
		We're still figuring out kind of what this will look like under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and particularly under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
		We're still trying to see what kind of level of communication they're going to be allowed to have with the public.
		We've seen in the past with the COVID-19 pandemic or other public health concerns.
		CDC has been very communicative about vaccine drives, about public health officials' messaging.
		We haven't seen that yet with the Trump administration.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have some callers waiting to talk with you.
		We'll start with Bill in Georgia, line for medical professionals.
		Good morning, Bill.
unidentified		Oh, hi.
		Good morning.
		I'm a pediatrician, now retired, and basically the measles vaccine is very effective.
		Unfortunately, what happened the last few years in the COVID epidemic, the mandate pushing COVID vaccines on children caused basically families to no longer trust the public health system.
		A lot of families, because COVID vaccine being pushed on the children and causing damage to the myocardio, for instance, the myocarditis.
		Mothers, fathers, parents no longer had confidence in vaccines, and this caused not just parents to not give their children a COVID vaccine, but all vaccines, including the measles vaccine.
		So this public health crisis was caused, this outbreak of measles, in some ways, and it's much more extensive than it has in previous years, is caused by those who pushed the COVID vaccine, specifically the American Academy of Pediatrics and the centers and the CDC.
		And everyone knows that just people are afraid to be open about it and say this is the truth.
		We reaped the whirlwind, and this is, we have now reaped the whirlwind.
		We deserve what happened to us and what's happening.
		I feel sorry for the child who died, but this is what we deserved for what we did to our children.
		And you know it, I know it.
		And Dr. Martin Mackery, the new head of the FDA, knows it too.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thank you very much.
		Good day.
		No, thank you.
		You bring up a really good point about the COVID-19 vaccine.
		I agree that that eroded a lot of trust with the public because it was a very different vaccine, like you said, from the measles vaccine and others that we have years of safety data on.
		And it's interesting how the COVID-19 vaccines, you know, it started out as a huge medical achievement to have these record-breaking development of vaccines.
		But then these requirements, particularly for younger children when we didn't have much data, did raise questions for people.
		And I think that we are in this reckoning now with public health agencies about how we're going to go forward from that.
		And if the officials that are coming in, like you said, the new FDA commissioner, if he is confirmed, will have to reckon with that and where they go from here.
		And if we have another situation like COVID, hopefully not, how we're going to handle that in the future.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We talked about the newness of the current Trump administration.
		RFK Jr. recently confirmed there were a couple other hearings on the Hill this week.
		One for NIH director nominee, Jay Bhattachara.
		What was the Senate's reaction to him?
		First, tell us who he is.
		What do you know about him?
		And then how did the Senate react to his testimony?
unidentified		Right.
		So he is a longtime health economist and a professor of medicine at Stanford University.
		I think most people would have known his name in the past few years for one thing in particular.
		He became very prominent for opposing broad COVID lockdowns, mask mandates.
		He was one of the authors of something known as the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for removing lockdowns and having more of a herd immunity approach or letting us all get out there and maybe get sick, but then build up our immunity that way.
		He got a lot of criticism in the medical community for that.
		In recent years, as the last caller was saying, we know that, for instance, there was lower risk to children, but of course, there's higher risk to anyone who's immunocompromised, anyone who's older.
		That would have been risky for public health as a whole.
		But coming into this hearing, I think what was notable is that he was largely respected by senators on both sides.
		They had a lot of questions about what he would do in terms of what's been happening lately with layoffs or with potential funding cuts.
		That was a lot of what people wanted to talk to him about.
		Of course, they also wanted his views on vaccines.
		But I think we can expect that he will get confirmed into this position.
		And so, what's going to be in front of him is, like we're just talking about, how they approach vaccines, vaccine studies, and then also what he does with what the administration is saying about funding cuts, layoffs, et cetera.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And then, as the caller brought up, it was also Dr. Marty McCary, the FDA commissioner nominee who was on the Hill for his hearing, for his confirmation hearing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Tell us, remind us who he is and the takeaways from that, from his testimony.
unidentified		So, he's a Johns Hopkins professor, sorry, and an author and a pancreatic surgeon.
		I think what most people would know him for is that he has written books about sort of how we can improve the healthcare system, how we can humanize it, how we can, you know, end high costs and inefficiencies.
		That's kind of what he made his name on.
		But then he also, during the COVID-19 pandemic, was critical of the response and the requirements.
		And so, that's another way that they are parallel.
		And I would say that his hearing ran parallel in a few other ways as well.
		He was asked a lot about layoffs at the FDA, what potential impacts they could have, how he feels about vaccines.
		They had similar answers.
		They both said that they believe in vaccines and that they save lives, but that they would not discourage more research, which is in line with how RFK Jr. has talked about it.
		But McCarry also had, I think, a largely positive sort of back and forth with both sides of the dais.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And are we expectation that he will also be confirmed?
unidentified		I think so.
		I think, you know, there's been talk about all of the health care nominees that the Trump administration has made, and he has been talked about, at least in the healthcare community, as being somewhat of the least controversial of them.
		And that has to do with his background, his experience, but also with the Food and Drug Administration.
		He's going to oversee just such a wide range of issues from vaccines to drugs to medical devices to food policy.
		And we know that food policy is a very big priority for RFK and for Republicans, really everybody, to be honest.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Ellen in Massachusetts, Lineford Democrats.
		Good morning, Ellen.
		Ellen, are you there?
unidentified		Hi, I'm right here.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Ellen.
unidentified		Can you?
		Okay.
		One of the things that's consistently mentioned is the use of vitamins.
		And I think a lot of people think, oh, a vitamin is natural.
		Well, you can overdose on natural things.
		And when you are particularly dosing children, you need to be very, very, very careful.
		And many of the places where people do buy vitamins, there is really not that much control as to what you have in there, you know, the milligrams and so on.
		So it's really important to realize that a solution is not to go out and get your vitamin A and superdose your child because you may end up with a problem besides the measles or your fear of measles.
		Yeah, no, that's a very good point.
		And it goes back to just the data and what we know about a measles vaccine versus what we know about, like you said, it could be any sort of dosage.
		It could be, you could think that it's organic or it's not.
		And not that you raised this, but since we were just talking about the FDA, another part of the purview of the FDA is dietary supplements, which vitamins fall under.
		And there's been a long, long time drive to have better regulation of dietary supplements.
		So we'll see if that's going to be something that's a priority in this administration as well.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Loda in Washington State line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Loda.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes.
		My concern about the immunizations, I truly, I work in public health, but I truly believe that all children going to public schools have to be vaccinated.
		And all this boils down from the Board of Education that we really need to have parents understand the need to be vaccinated.
		And also to realize that you send your child to school while he's under some kind of medical symptom who knows what it is, spreading it to the other kids in school.
		Therefore, more kids are bringing it home.
		Everybody's getting sick, regardless of what that sickness is.
		I truly believe that kids need to be vaccinated.
		And if not, then maybe the school board of education can find another solution.
		And as far as vitamins, all families have prenatal.
		They're SWIC women, infant, and children.
		As of today, it still exists.
		They get information as to what their child needs, plus their medical provider.
		If a child is lacking in some kind of vitamin, the doctor will tell you by doing blood tests.
		Some children are born with an immune deficiency.
		Therefore, they can also seek medical treatment and get the right treatment for their child at their proper age.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Loda, we'll get a response from Sarah.
unidentified		Yeah.
		No, I think you get at the crux of the issue with the schools because, you know, someone can choose not to vaccinate their child, but then that could affect other children.
		And so, as an earlier caller said, too, there's differences in people's levels of trust.
		I think that's a problem.
		You know, measles vaccines, we didn't think that we would be here so soon with confidence in vaccines across the board lacking.
		But because of the COVID-19 vaccines, there's been more hesitation.
		And that's been buoyed and supported by people like RFK Jr. who have said this is a personal choice and who have questioned whether there is enough safety data, even when we do have years and decades and some examples of safety data, especially around these older vaccines that children tend to get in the early years of their lives.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Lee in New York, New York, Line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Lee.
unidentified		I'm calling about my experience with measles.
		I was born in a very poor rural area in 1949 before the measles vaccine was available.
		And we had no access to doctors nor even to over-counter drugs like aspirin.
		And I developed a very high fever, and I went into a coma.
		And there was a small community hospital about 45 miles away.
		They told my parents that I would die.
		I did come out of the coma, but I feel like it may have affected my immune system.
		I've been pretty frail and not very well my whole life.
		And I'm just curious if you do contract measles, excuse me, does it affect your immune system?
		The other thing I'd like to discuss is COVID-19.
		I've had very severe reactions to being vaccinated just even for the flu.
		And the doctors concluded that I was too immune compromised to be vaccinated.
		What happens when someone like me or Colin Powell, who was, I believe, taking chemotherapy at the time, who died, is that Children go to school, they infect other children, then those children go home, they infect their parents, the parents come to work, and I had a woman next door to me who had three children, and she was always coming to work sick, and then I wound up very ill.
		And we just don't seem to understand me versus we in terms of, I don't feel like we even have a public health system anymore.
		People are just doing what's right for them, but there's nothing that's right for the public.
		So I'd like your comments on any of that.
		Thank you.
		Well, first of all, Lee, that sounds harrowing, your experience with measles, and I'm glad that you're here today.
		And I wish that more people could hear stories like yours because it's a great example of it not being too long ago that this is how serious this was and how it impacted people.
		And I think that we have had some short-term memory about how serious these illnesses are.
		They are not chickenpox, you know.
		I think you asked about whether that can cause immune issues in your future, to have measles and then be immunocompromised in your future.
		I think that there's still an open question with that and with other viral diseases like COVID-19.
		But it really does, you know, highlight how even if we are questioning, or say certain people like this administration could be questioning the safety of vaccines or the long-term impact of vaccines, are we tracking the long-term impact of actually getting these diseases and what's the risk and what's the benefit?
		And when you bring up being in a medical situation like yourself or Colin Powell's and what happens when a healthy child doesn't get vaccinated, but it still spreads because they are not vaccinated.
		That was exactly why there was so much controversy over the Great Barrington Declaration that was signed by the, or co-authored, I should say, by the now potential NIH director.
		Because as we talked about, I mean, it might not be as much of a risk for a child, but a child is in a community, and you don't know who is at home in that community and what medical problems they may have or what risks they may have.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		It was just a few days after President Trump took office for the second time that the administration put a pause on federal health agencies' communications.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Remind us what that did and if the pause is still in effect.
unidentified		What it did was at first cause mass confusion about who could talk, when they could talk, especially with, as we saw, you know, with the measles outbreak, what level of communication the CDC can have with reporters, with the public.
		You know, we would see in past public health emergencies like COVID-19 or even when there was that vaping illness years ago and we couldn't understand why people were getting sick from vapes, they would hold weekly calls with reporters to talk about where they were, how they were tracking cases, and we aren't getting that now.
		Right now, all of the communications seem to have to go through one central locus in HHS, and that obviously stalls when you talk about how vast the healthcare agencies are.
		The level of communication, the rapidity of communication.
		And what's ironic about that is that RFK Jr. has come in primarily preaching what he's called radical transparency.
		He said that a lot, that you will not even have to file a Freedom of Information Act request because we are going to be so radically transparent.
		So there's been a lot of questions about when that happens and who it pertains to and the answers that you can have about communications.
		With regards to where the freezes are now, there is actually still some confusion about that.
		I have been able to speak to people at NIH or CDC or FDA on a limited basis about certain things, but they have not held press conferences and these public meetings that they generally have have been delayed or canceled.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's go back to calls.
		We'll talk with Pat in Baltimore, Maryland, Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Pat.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
		Hi, good.
		How are you?
		I'm good.
		I had a question about how the measles actually start.
		Is it always from a carrier or how does it start?
		And all of the children that have come across the borders, are they carriers?
		Because I'm sure some of those countries don't vaccine.
		Well, thank you.
		So it is generally from another human carrier.
		And it will start.
		One of the things that's dangerous about it is that you can contract it and not show any symptoms for about four days.
		And then you'll start to get a fever.
		And so within those four days, you could be walking around, seeing people, interacting, and then figure out that you may have given other people measles.
		With regards to the border, I mean, Mexico also has vaccine policies and requirements around, particularly when we talk about the measles vaccines.
		Internationally, it's usually required.
		It's usually distributed.
		It's not one of them that's by any means rare.
		So while I don't think we can quantify what level of children at the border are vaccinated or unvaccinated right now, usually we can say that something like the measles vaccine is a very common vaccine globally.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Patrick and Laurel, Maryland, Line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Patrick.
unidentified		Hello.
		Thank you for accepting my call.
		I want America to think outside the box for just one second.
		For my understanding, in the next six months, our kids have to go back to school.
		And in the next six months, our kids need to be vaccinated in order to attend school.
		If that is indeed the case, you know there's going to be representation that's going to say that vaccines are not necessary.
		And that there are going to be those parents that are going to say, put my child in school because it's my right to have my kid not vaccinated.
		What's going to happen with that is you're going to have kids that are not vaccinated and then you're going to have kids that are.
		And all you need is one child to get sick.
		And then all hell, part of my expression, is going to break loose.
		And then it's going to be, oh, why did the school system allow my kid to attend school?
		Why did the government, you know, this is just going to be a storm that's about to happen.
		And unfortunately, we're talking about our kids, not Democrat and Republican kids, our own.
		What is your response to my statement?
		Thank you.
		No, thank you.
		I think that you illustrate what the future risks are.
		If we're already dealing with this now in two states, and we've already seen more than 200 cases of measles, how does this spread?
		And not just when children go back to school, but over the summer as we travel or for the holidays.
		And this echoes where we were with the COVID-19 pandemic before we had the vaccines or even when we were starting to distribute them and there were ongoing lockdowns.
		And of course, there's been a lot of controversy over how long lockdowns had to go, especially for schools.
		But if we get back to a place where there are outbreaks in schools, whether of measles or another disease that is vaccine preventable, are we going to be back in that situation of children can't come to school right now because too many of them are sick?
		I think we have to think about that and we have to think about, you know, what kind of community risk and benefit we are going to have.
		And you're right that, you know, we're going to have to see how the federal government communicates about that.
		We do know that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has talked about wanting to put out vaccine communications that stress what he calls informed consent.
		So, saying that here's the risk, here's the benefits, and it's your choice.
		And so, we're expecting that to be some of the messaging that comes out of CDC on vaccines.
		If that changes as things worsen, that remains to be seen.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Lynn in Oregon, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Lynn.
unidentified		Hi.
		I was born in 53, and I did not have a measles or mumps shot, and I contracted them and was very ill.
		When I began having children, I recognized that my doctor asked me to get my child vaccinated, that that was important, and I did so.
		But now the problem is those were actually vaccines that prevented a disease.
		Now, they're calling vaccine a flu shot or a COVID shot that doesn't actually prevent you from getting the disease.
		And I believe it's a matter of semantics that you should call it a shot, not a vaccine.
		Vaccines prevent it.
		Shots lessen the impact or lessen the probability that you may get it.
		And I believe that's a problem in how it's communicated.
		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		And you are definitely echoing something we were talking about earlier with COVID-19 vaccines.
		And I do think that there was a messaging issue there where at first it was believed that the COVID-19 vaccines would help prevent you getting the virus.
		And now we know that's not the case.
		One important thing with both the COVID and flu shots is you're right that they are different because COVID and flu mutate so quickly.
		There's lots of strains around at any given time.
		And so you can get the vaccine for a strain and then potentially still get a version of that virus that is slightly different.
		The important thing with both of those is that they are designed to make the infection less severe.
		So it can still be a beneficial thing for you to get those shots.
		But you're right that it was communicated differently at first.
		And I think that it's okay to talk about that with more nuance, that it's, you know, it might not prevent you getting the flu or COVID-19, but it will make it less severe for you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Dave in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Dave.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm not too educated on disease and all of that.
		But I do remember the Obama administration.
		This is a question.
		Didn't they implement a disease prevention type of team within the administration?
		And why, or do you consider that if that would have been implemented now, would it change the course of what's happening in Texas, like the measles outbreak?
		So there's.
		Oh, I'm sorry.
		No, go ahead.
		I didn't mean to.
		Well, I was going to ask, with the Obama administration, there could be a few things that you're talking about there.
		He did definitely have a pandemic strategy that was issued by the White House, and it talked about sort of the chain of command around agencies.
		I don't know if that is what you're talking about or if there were other agencies.
		There were some parts of the government that were started under the Bush administration that had to do with pandemic and disaster response.
		And that has also evolved over time, whether it's through the Obama administration or the Trump administration, et cetera.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ken in Golden Valley, Arizona, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Ken.
unidentified		Yeah, I'd like to someone else already brought it up, but the effect having millions of illegal immigrants come into the country in the last four years would have on the spread of disease in the United States.
		I was actually worked on the border for several years in enforcement, and we were required to have different vaccines like for hepatitis and different things because they realized that immigration, not all people that were coming into the U.S. were healthy.
		So myself, I think that could have something to do with what's going on now, especially as kids from other countries are going into our schools and not required to have vaccinations.
		Thank you.
		I will say about the border that we do know that when children are in holding facilities, that they are, as you said, assessed for their health.
		And I know that when in the early days of the pandemic, I had asked around to agencies whether those children were receiving COVID-19 vaccines, and they were.
		And so we can expect that even if they were not vaccinated coming in, that they would get vaccinated at these detention facilities.
		And I think it's also important to note that the child who did die from measles, unfortunately, they were unvaccinated themselves.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We talked about the confirmation hearings for the NIH director nominee and the FDA commissioner nominee.
		There's another hearing next week for the CDC director nominee, Dave Weldon.
		What can you tell us about him and what are you going to be watching during that hearing?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Yeah, a lot of hearings.
		They're moving quickly on all these nominations.
		Dave Weldon is a physician.
		He's been practicing for quite some time, especially since he left Congress.
		So he was a House Representative from Florida for 14 years.
		And while he was in Congress, I think some of his major priorities were actually HIV/AIDS and global health was a big priority of his.
		But then also he was very critical of vaccine safety.
		And he was one of the early proponents of the idea that vaccines could be linked to autism.
		At the time that he was bringing that up in 2000, 2001, there were questions because of a study that has since been retracted about whether vaccines cause autism.
		We know from multiple studies since then that there is not a link.
		He left Congress in 2009.
		And so there's been much of this was about two decades ago that he was talking about that.
		So I think the chief question I'm going to have is whether his vaccine views have evolved.
		What he, if he still has questions, what data would satisfy those questions basically?
		Like what will tell you that vaccines don't cause autism and that the vaccine schedule is safe?
		And so I think that we will be hearing about whether he thinks that children should be getting the range of vaccines that they do or at the age that they do.
		And then as we've been talking about with callers too, just what he thinks is the responsibility of the agency in terms of public messaging on this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You can watch the full confirmation hearings for Dr. Bhattacharya and for Dr. McCary online at c-span.org.
		And you can also follow C-SPAN and our networks for coverage of next week's CDC director nominee hearing.
		Let's talk with Anthony in Ashland, Kentucky, Line for Democrats.
		Hi, Anthony.
unidentified		Hello, how are you?
		Good.
		How are you?
		Well, my question basically is: back in the day, I'm seven years old, but we all had the measles and the mumps and giggle box and just about everything else.
		But it seemed like our kids back then were healthier.
		And it might be what they're eating today.
		I mean, I grew up in a time where there wasn't any peanut butter allergies or peanut allergies or anything.
		And the Kennedy, everybody gets on him, but what his drop was the injections they were giving kids was full of mercury.
		And I think that was part of the problem there with him.
		But I think he'll do a good job.
		I'd like to know if they would do a better job on what we eat.
		I mean, we're eating more junk, and there's stuff in there that's more plastic than it is food.
		And I don't give a cure, but you can't even – I watched – and I tried it myself.
		I cut some Oreos and you can't burn anything.
		I mean, they're letting kids eat cookies.
		They're letting them eat all kinds of junk.
		We grew up, we had stuff, but it was more healthy than it is today.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Anthony, we'll get a response from Sarah.
unidentified		Yeah, no, thank you.
		You bring up a good point about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the momentum that has been around him and the Make America Healthy Again movement, because a very big part of that is food and nutrition policy.
		And the questions around the Make America Healthy Again sort of initiative are, yes, why do we have more chronic illnesses in children?
		Why do we have more childhood obesity, asthma, allergies, and potentially more reports of autism?
		And there's a lot of questions, and there's potentially a lot of answers to that.
		And so it could absolutely be nutrition, it could be lifestyle, it could be environmental factors, toxins.
		It could be all of these factors.
		That's one thing that he has definitely promised to come in and make sort of a laser focus on across agencies.
		And we've seen all these nominees that we've talked about for the Food and Drug Administration, for CDC, for NIH, talk along those lines as well about what kind of research they want to do, what kind of food policies they want to change, and how they're going to come at this from multiple angles, I think.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Time for a couple more calls.
		Randy in Tallahassee, Florida, Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Randy.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Thank you for having me on.
		Good to hear from you.
		I was thinking you guys had stated that there were decades of safe research for some of the older vaccines like measles, mumps, rubella.
		I don't think you guys stated whooping cough, but that may be one of them.
		Why don't you guys require just the ones that there are decades of safety records for for school and not require all the other ones that haven't been proven or that may cause heart problems and such like that?
		Well, I think, you know, it comes down to what has been developed over the years and what the needs are.
		And as we've heard from people, you know, there's this risk-benefit analysis for the community.
		And so, but you're right that there are newer vaccines with fewer years of research.
		There's also been difficulty sometimes tracking over many years what the potential adverse reactions are, but that also doesn't mean that we aren't tracking them.
		So we have the vaccine adverse event reporting system where people can self-report anything from, you know, a relatively minor adverse event like dizziness after the shot to something very serious like myocarditis.
		There has been long-term research on a lot of these things, but if you're talking in terms of more recent vaccines like COVID-19, you know, I think that there's going to be continued research absolutely, and certainly under this administration, on, you know, was there any long-term adverse event, particularly among children?
		So I think we get those answers eventually.
		But it does come back down to risk versus benefit.
		You know, some of these diseases, we know what the harms are of getting that disease, of getting infected, and the potential very serious adverse events that you could have, even if you do survive from a very serious illness.
		And so I think it's about, you know, what the community benefit is there.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		One last call, Alina, in Highland Park, Illinois, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Alina.
unidentified		Hi, yes.
		My point is that, You know, the classical vaccines, the MMR for moms, measles, and rubella, those are classic.
		Those never go away, and they have worked very well.
		It's the newer ones that are causing issues, and there are too many, especially for children.
		And there is no transparency.
		I don't think there's been good transparency on that.
		And so RFK Jr. intends to open all that up and let people know the facts, whether kids need all that nonsense and garbage going into their bodies that may affect their health, like autism or God knows what.
		And also, the question about the COVID vaccine, it's not a true vaccine.
		Okay, it was kind of a gene therapy that was originally made for cancer-causing cells in different organs.
		It's not a true vaccine.
		It's not made as a true vaccine.
		People never ask that question: is it a vaccine?
		Because it's not a vaccine.
		And under the extremely corrupt Biden administration, it was marketed as a vaccine when it wasn't actually.
		It was never tested.
		And COVID was just the flu that people got and got over it.
		Mostly 90% of people would just, they didn't need the vaccine for that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Alina, we'll get a response from Sarah.
unidentified		No, I think you're echoing what we've heard from a lot of other callers today and also from voters who propelled RFK Jr. or wanted to hear from Trump about what he would do in this instance.
		And you're right that I think RFK Jr. is going to want to assess the amount of vaccines that children get, which is called the vaccine schedule.
		And the way that he's talked about doing that is doing long-term safety studies.
		So I think what's going to be a little bit challenging when we look at this question of what the long-term impact of these vaccines are is that's going to take a long time.
		If we, you know, say, okay, we're going to have a group of children who take fewer vaccines and then follow them for 10 years.
		And then that's when we even just start to see the answers to whether the vaccine schedule is better or if there's adverse events we were missing.
		These are not answers, unfortunately, that we're going to get very soon.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest, Sarah Overmaul, Washington correspondent for STAT.
		You can find her work online at statnews.com.
		Sarah, thank you so much for being with us.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		It was great.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We are wrapping up today's program with open form.
		You can start calling in now.
		Here are the lines.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A.
		Kentucky Republican Congressman James Comer, House Oversight Committee Chair and author of All the President's Money, talks about his committee's 15-month investigation into the business practices of then President Joe Biden and members of President Biden's family.
		In this interview, Representative Comer argues that the Bidens have benefited financially from corrupt financial dealings involving Ukraine, China, and other countries.
james comer ▲ ● ▼		Six different banks had filed 175 suspicious activity reports against the Bidens, most of which were while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States.
		And then they were subject to another 50 suspicious activity reports.
		So let me put that in perspective.
		No bank would file a suspicious activity report against the son of a prominent politician unless they were darn sure that a financial crime had been committed.
		Because when you file one of those, the bank examiners roll in your bank and it causes a lot of problems.
		So the banks knew that there was some bad things going on here.
		And that's when the investigation really took off.
unidentified		James Comer with his book, All the President's Money, Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
unidentified		You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		In the years right before World War II started, in 1939, Winston Churchill had been out of government.
		However, even though he was far from power, his country home, Chartwell, became Churchill's headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany.
		Catherine Carter is a curator and historian who has managed the house and collections at Chartwell.
		Her new book is called Churchill's Citadel, Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm.
		Catherine Carter reveals how Churchill used Chartwell, which is 35 miles from London, as his base during the pre-war years to collect key intelligence about Germany's preparations for war.
unidentified		Author Catherine Carter with her book, Churchill's Citadel, Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm.
		On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
		Book Notes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back for the next 25 minutes or so.
		We are in open form.
		We'll start with David, Independence, Louisiana, Line for Independence.
		Hi, David.
unidentified		Good morning, Miss T. Help me with that last name, Stu Ringer, Thurnger.
unidentified		Ma'am?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Thurner.
unidentified		Oh, wow, I can't catch it.
		All right, well, good morning anyway.
		My topic today is about what's going to happen tonight in the middle of the night is daylight savings time.
		I'm getting kind of old, and I've never worked or met anyone in my life who wants to jerk the clock back and forth twice a year.
		I mean, I don't understand why we're subject to this.
		Trump was on there yesterday, I believe, and he was saying that it's a 50-50 situation, and so, you know, half the people want it, half don't.
		Well, a person with low IQ could at least flip a coin and get one or the other and stop this craziness.
		But my suggestion is to split the difference 30 minutes one way or the other and then leave it alone.
		Just leave it alone, man.
		This is like torture.
		And look, while I'm at it, don't you think Trump needs a conservative haircut?
		Thank you, Miss T.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was David in Louisiana, Patrick in South Carolina, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Patrick.
unidentified		Morning.
unidentified		How are you?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You doing well, Patrick.
unidentified		I was wondering if I could share a little American history with your audience.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sure, go ahead, Patrick.
unidentified		In 1920, the politicians in our government weren't allowed to get a salary, believe it or not.
		They were working on a per diem basis.
		When they showed up for work in the government, they got food and lodging and a small stipend for showing up.
		What they did was they asked the American public, voters, if they could have a salary.
		And all the American public said no.
		They voted no to that.
		Well, the politicians didn't like that.
		So back in 1924, they came back again.
		And this time, instead of asking the American public, they just voted among themselves and they voted themselves a salary.
mike-2 in tennessee ▲ ● ▼		And I believe that was pretty much illegal because, you know, voting yourself a salary on the American taxpayer dollar.
unidentified		Well, so for the last 100 years since 1924, our government has basically been getting a salary on our taxpayer dollar.
		And we've had no say about it.
		They give themselves raises.
		They give themselves free medical.
		And that was never the way it was supposed to be.
		They were supposed to be working on a per diem when they showed up for government business.
		And that wasn't supposed to be 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
		That was supposed to be just for short term for working on American business.
		So now they're getting $174,000 salaries on our taxpayer dollars, which adds up to about a trillion dollars a year for the last hundred years.
		Well, we haven't been getting that for the whole time.
		Of course, they keep adding it to it whenever they vote themselves a new salary.
		And basically, American people are just paying for this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Patrick, if you could pick the salary for Congress, how much do you think they should get paid?
unidentified		Well, like I said, they're not supposed to be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
unidentified		So, you know, the government has basically been just ripping off the American people for the last hundred years.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		At any point, Patrick, we'll go to Don, also in Louisiana, Line for Independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Don.
unidentified		Yes, I'm calling from New Orleans.
		And, you know, we have an anchor economy that's basically, in the beginning, was educational institutions and medical institutions, hospitals, and the cuts to the VA employees.
		But the anchor institutions in every region of the United States play a very important role in economic development and all the other economic metrics that we hold dear to our prosperity and civic society.
		But, you know, there's a time value related to money.
		I was studying time value.
		And you know that a million seconds to equate dollars to seconds.
		A million seconds is about rounded up.
		It's 12 days.
		A million seconds.
		So, and a billion seconds is equated to 32 years.
		A million seconds, 12 days.
		A billion seconds, 32 years.
		But when you talk about a trillion seconds, as we are talking about trillions of dollars in assets in the United States and deficit, a trillion dollars, one trillion seconds is equated to 32,000 years.
		So we have more than enough assets in this country with proper stewardship to offset any deficit.
		It is those who refuse to invest in the anchor economy.
		If a yacht, these super yachts that these billionaires have, didn't have a proper and correct anchor, it would drift and be in very desperate needs to the natural occurrences by ways.
		It wouldn't be allowed to it wouldn't be able to moor in these harbors.
		But yet, the same billionaires refuse to put an anchor, invest an anchor, in fair and equitable taxation and contributions to the United States to offset their prosperity.
		They can't go nowhere in the other part of the world to reap the prosperity that they've reached through our laws and our equilibrium of assets and contributions to civic society.
		So we need to invest in our anchor economy and not try to shift it away to billionaires who have no use unless they had an anchor.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Don in Louisiana.
		This headline in today's New York Times: Trump strongly considering Russian sanctions to force ceasefire deal.
		The article says in his announcement, which was posted on his social media site, Truth Social, Mr. Trump said he was strongly considering imposing what he described as large-scale sanctions, including on banks, because of perilous state of war, now in its fourth year.
		Goes on to say, speaking from the Oval Office Friday, Mr. Trump said he believed that Mr. Putin wanted to end the war and would be more generous than he has to be.
		Mr. Trump then suggested it was Ukraine that would be more difficult to work with.
		Says Russian officials met last month with top Trump officials in Saudi Arabia, although Russia has not given any public indication that it would accept any truce, ceasefire, or end to the war it started three years ago.
		Goes on to say, but officials, but U.S. officials have said Russia has shown openness to continuing discussions.
		Let's talk with Rudy in Sun City, California, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Rudy.
unidentified		Good morning, Tammy.
		I would just like to say that I am morbidly giddy about what's going on in Donald's administration.
		And I sure hope he doesn't disappoint me with the terrorists because he's going back and forth on them.
		You know, if Donald would just put the terrorists in, then we're going to see what's going to happen.
		So I'm just hoping for the best.
		I hope he doesn't disappoint me because we'll see what's going to happen in a couple years to this economy in this great country.
		Okay, thank you very much, Tammy.
		Bye-bye.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Rudy in California.
		Stan, Grants Pass, Oregon, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Stan.
unidentified		Yeah, I just.
		Oh, I got my.
		Trying to get my phone.
		Abigail.
		I like to say the people of LA and the foothills, my heart goes out to you guys.
		Fire is a very evil entity.
		I just hope I'm worried about the people in the hills about the other storms.
		Anyways, I'd like to go back to 1953.
		My Uncle Judd was fire chief, Washington, D.C. in Eisenhower's administration, and I believe he was part of his Secret Service guy to watch out for him.
		And first guy to touch him in the meeting.
		Anyways, I'd like to know if Valiant Thor talked to my Uncle Judd and that was Stan in Oregon.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Joe in Maryland, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Joe.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me or no?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead.
unidentified		Oh, yes, ma'am.
		Thank you all for everything.
		Thanks, everybody.
		And that one about the splitting the times, half hour, half hour, I never heard about that.
		That was a neat idea.
		Maybe that's a possibility, right?
		Because we are all tired of the time change, I think.
		But that said, I'm from Washington, D.C., not in the city, but from the surrounding area, Prince George's County, it's called.
		And technically, D.C. is surrounded by Maryland all the way around.
		Never mind the other side is Virginia on the water.
		But I wanted to say a couple things.
mike in washington ▲ ● ▼		We need to do something with Citizen United, that law that made it okay for corporations around the world to get involved in our personal United States of America politics.
willie nelson ▲ ● ▼		And the term America, when politicians use it, everyone thinks they mean the United States of America.
		But the people from Brazil, the people from Mexico, Guatemala, when Trump or anybody, or Biden says, we're going to help all the Americans, that goes from Canada all the way to Brazil.
		When we need to make it to where they reference America, they need to put that U.S. in front of it because we need to make sure who they're really talking about.
unidentified		Because it's real funny how everybody says we're going to help all Americans.
		And we think it's home of the United States of America.
		I'm not being selfish.
		I hope to help all humans.
		I don't like divisiveness.
		But that all said.
willie nelson ▲ ● ▼		And last thing I'd like to say, please, is that a long time ago, when the United States of America or whatever was started and they were doing the colonies, the pilgrims up in Massachusetts didn't want the Maryland colony.
unidentified		They didn't want those pagan Catholics, those Jesuit bad guys, they called them.
		They called them the Black Robes.
		They didn't want them in the Union.
		That's amazing.
		I never knew that the Pilgrims didn't want the Catholic pagans.
		And this is what they called.
		Look this stuff up.
		I've been spending a lot of time.
		And last thing I'd like to say, and thank you for your kindness.
		And this is a big one to me because I'm from Maryland all my life, but my great-grandma grew up on a Mohawk Indian reservation in New York.
		And my great-grandfather died in an Indian hospital where they put Indians that drink too much.
		And in 1905, a white or a black person could say that Indian drinks too much.
		And they would lock them up, it turns out.
		That's in congressional hearings last year.
mike in washington ▲ ● ▼		But this Maryland thing, the Jesuits, last thing right here, the Jesuits supposedly paid the Nanny Coke Indians.
unidentified		This is in Maryland Archives and Vatican Archives.
		They supposedly paid the Indians 666 and two-thirds somethings for all the land.
		Isn't that funny?
		And I don't hate anyone.
		We got to unify and get rid of Citizens United.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Joe and Marilyn.
		Let's hear from James, Cleveland, Ohio, line for Democrats.
		Hi, James.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I can.
unidentified		I'm calling in regards to this Doge cutting off all our services and all the departments.
		I'm wondering if the government is going to reduce our federal income tax that we pay, maybe move some of that percentage over the states since the states are going to have to cover what they're not, you know, what they're not covering anymore.
		I wonder if that's a possibility, if our Democratic senators and congressmen should be thinking about that, or how do we get that accomplished?
		That's all I needed to say.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was James in Ohio William, Fort Myers, Florida, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, William.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just wanted to bring up the fact that several years forced fruit of the loom to move 4,000 jobs in my hometown in Kentucky to Honduras.
		And no one cried about that, the way they're trying to save money for the taxpayers by crying so much about federal jobs being cut.
		I wish someone cared as much about the Americans as they do the bureaucrats.
		Thank you very much for your time.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was William in Florida.
		David in Virginia, line for independence.
		Hi, David.
unidentified		Hey, C-SPAN, thanks for taking my call.
		On the deficits of the United States, the debt and the deficit, there's another alternative that people aren't considering, and that is the assets that the U.S. has.
		The United States government controls 460 million acres of land.
		A lot of that is desert land and unusable in a lot of different ways.
		And if you just took 1% of that, that would be 4.6 million acres.
		That's 10,000 square miles.
		And then you could lease that to companies for energy production, whether it's solar, wind, even fossil fuels or small nuclear, hydroelectric.
		And you could lease that and you could charge a one-time lease fee, plus you could have revenue every month based on the percentage of KW produced.
		And in that way, you would create a tremendous amount of revenue, would not require taxes to go up.
		You would add hundreds to maybe thousands of jobs and utilize an unused asset.
		And so that would be my suggestion.
		And I'd like to see Doge or one of the other, maybe Department of Interior, consider that.
		Just like they lease water and land on the Gulf of Mexico to oil companies, they could do the same thing to unused desert land, mostly in Nevada, California, Alaska, Arizona, out west primarily.
		So it's a suggestion, and I think it would add a lot of revenue to the country.
		And that's it.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was David in Virginia.
		This headline in USA Today, deadline looming for Trump and GOP leaders to avoid a government shutdown.
		It says that there is one week to go until federal funding dries up and the U.S. government shuts down if Congress can't pass legislation by March 14th.
		It says, yes, Americans have seen this show before, particularly during President Donald Trump's first term and most recently right before Christmas last year when the Republican was preparing to take office for a second time.
		It says Americans have felt it too.
		A shutdown would force a majority of federal workers to stop working and go without pay services deemed essential, such as border protections, air traffic control, and power grid maintenance, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, and Medicaid would continue.
		But other services would be interrupted.
		Services at national parks would be closed.
		Environmental and flood inspections would stop.
		Researchers at the National Institute of Health would not be able to admit new patients, and internal revenue service tax help may be interrupted.
		Right now, Republican leaders in both chambers say they want to extend the current funding, known as a continuing resolution or a CR through the end of the fiscal year on September 30th.
		It says that House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Thursday that details of the proposal will be available as soon as Friday.
		A floor vote is expected Tuesday, and the Louisiana lawmaker said he thinks there'll be enough Republicans on board to successfully pass it.
		Just a few minutes left in open form.
		Let's talk with Brenda in Fort Lee, New Jersey, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Brenda.
unidentified		Good morning, America.
		I'm just calling to give my opinion.
		I think the Democrats are doing a very, very, very bad job.
		I've been a Democrat all my life.
odin in michigan ▲ ● ▼		And I'll tell you something, for what I've seen them been doing lately, it's just so uncalled for.
unidentified		I don't understand why they don't give the president a chance.
		Instead, they pull him apart, and it's just not fair.
		He's trying to change America for the better.
odin in michigan ▲ ● ▼		Although I'm still a Democrat, I think I'm switching over to becoming a Republican.
unidentified		What has the Democrats done for me or other people?
		Smarten up, Democrats.
		It's later than you think.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brenda.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brenda, did you vote for President Trump?
unidentified		No, I didn't.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You didn't?
unidentified		I didn't.
		But I see what's going on now and how unfair the Democrats are being to me and other people that they're doing absolutely nothing.
		And it's just not right.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Brenda in New Jersey.
		Gilbert in Birmingham, Alabama, line for independence.
		Hi, Gilbert.
unidentified		Yes, thanks for C-SPAN.
		I'd like to encourage my fellow American citizens to continue with the town hall meetings because they are being very effective.
		With Trump talking about he was going to primary everybody that wouldn't vote his way, it seems as if the people got that strong hand.
		When we think about this Doge thing with Eli Musk, you got rid of all the inspector generals and everybody that checks and balances and government accountability and everywhere.
		Who's going to check out Doge and his group?
		We ain't got no checks, checks, and balances.
		This country can't operate like that.
		But as long as we got these strong output of citizens in these town hall meetings, like they got, some change is going to be made right here.
		Thank you so much.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Gilbert in Alabama.
		Rita in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Rita.
unidentified		Hi, how are you doing?
		I just want to say that I think Donald Trump hasn't been doing anything but using the office of the president to go after his enemies, the people that punished him for crimes that he actually committed.
		He's really done nothing to deal with the main crimes that most people voted for him for, and that's inflation.
		He's been absolutely disgusting to the Ukrainian people.
		And he's making it easier for Putin to do whatever he wants to destroy these people.
		He said that Putin wants to make peace, but how can you say that somebody wants to make peace when he's still bombing people like that, killing innocent children and everything?
		And Trump says that from now on, men should be men and women should be women.
		If that's the case, so the way he's acting towards Putin and always praising love letters from Kim Jong-un, maybe he shouldn't change what he's wearing.
		Maybe he should take off his pants and put on a dress.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Rita in Pennsylvania.
		Cindy, San Francisco, California, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Cindy.
unidentified		Hi, good morning, Tammy.
		I wanted to point out to everyone that over the course of Biden's four years, President Trump was saying that if he had been elected, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine.
		And one time, just one time, President Trump said that Ukraine, that Zelensky invaded Russia.
		And for all this, everybody is just so upset because he said that one time.
		But for years, he has said that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been re-elected.
		And I'm just finding this hysteria over this one time that Trump said this hysteria from the Democrats to be a little bit outlandish.
		And that's all I had to say.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Cindy in San Francisco, California.
		A couple callers bringing up daylight saving time.
		This is from Axios.
		Daylight saving time starts Sunday with spring forward.
		The semi-annual change of the clocks is this Sunday when most of the country will spring forward into daylight saving time after more than four months in standard time.
		It says, why it matters, lawmakers attempt, lawmakers attempt to get rid of the twice-yearly time change and switch to permanent daylight savings time hasn't gained traction.
		As a caller mentioned earlier, President Trump said Thursday that it's hard to get excited about changing daylight savings time and called it a 50-50 issue.
		Senator Rick Scott, a Republican of Florida, reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act in January to lock the clock and make daylight savings time the year-round standard.
		And Representative Vern Buchanan, also a Republican of Florida, introduced a companion legislation in the House.
		And just a reminder that the official time switch is at 2 a.m. local time on Sunday.
		Tomorrow, unfortunately, that means we're losing an hour.
		Sunrise and sunset will be about one hour later on Sunday and on Saturday.
		Just a few calls left.
		Donald in Omaha, Nebraska, line for independence.
		Good morning, Donald.
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
		I believe that Faller was talking about the COVID vaccinations, and she was whining, but Trump took all the credit for that.
		And then as far as this daylight savings time, it's no big deal.
		I'm 78 years old.
		I've been living with it forever.
		As far as Trump stabbing Ukraine in the back, now he's laughing about them people getting killed.
randy weaver ▲ ● ▼		And sooner or later, this Trump's administration is going to implode from the inside because they're all tired of Elon and they're tired of Trump.
unidentified		And I'd like to see Trump put that 250% tariff on Canada.
		I want to see that.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And our last call for today's program, Rich in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Rich.
unidentified		Hey, thank you for taking my call.
		I just wanted a few really quick thoughts here.
		I think people need to take some time out during the day.
		Go to the Genesis song, Land of Confusion, the video.
		Oh, Superman, where are you now when everything's gone wrong somehow?
		You know, I hear all these people complaining and crying, oh, Biden this, Biden that.
		When did you ever see Reagan kiss up to Putin or Gorbachev?
		No, they sat down.
		They had Margaret Thatcher.
		They had the Pope.
		They had the leader of Poland who started it off.
		Let's go back in history and look and see what made our country great, okay?
		It's not cutting off our allies.
		NATO is there for a reason, okay?
		All you Trumpers out there need to wake up and realize that we are living in a land of confusion, and you better wake up before it's too late.
		Before we are, you hear those, the feet are marching in the streets.
		Okay?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's what that was, Rich, our last call for today's program.
		Thank you to our audience and our guests who joined us.
		We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific with another program.
		Until then, enjoy your day.
unidentified		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, the Brookings Institution's Joshua Meltzer and the Heritage Foundation's E.J. Antony discuss new levies on goods imported from Mexico, Canada, and China, and the impact of President Trump's trade policies.
		Then Military Times Deputy Editor Leo Shane on the proposed Trump administration cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
		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.
		Well, Congress returns Monday facing a government funding deadline, which is Friday at midnight.

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