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March 15, 2025 10:01-13:07 - CSPAN

03:05:52

Washington This Week

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Main

tammy thueringer

cspan 25:15

Appearances

brooke rollins

admin 01:19

chuck schumer

sen/d 02:07

donald j trump

admin 02:40

hakeem jeffries

rep/d 01:01

rand paul

sen/r 02:00

Clips

meryl gordon

00:17

patty murray

sen/d 00:04

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Speaker	Time	Text
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		With another edition.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Until then, enjoy your Saturday.
unidentified		Coming up Sunday morning, Newsweek's Batya Unger Sargon discusses Trump administration economic policy and its impact on working-class Americans.
		And then Katrina Vandenhoe of The Nation magazine talks about Trump administration efforts to end the Ukraine-Russia war and news of the day.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
		Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, or online at cspan.org.
		All weekend, C-SPAN's Book TV will be live from the Tucson Festival of Books.
		You'll see discussions on a variety of topics, including America's changing political landscape and global competition for natural resources, plus viewer call-ins with some of your favorite authors.
		Beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern, today's highlights include Juan Williams, Jason DeLeon, Kate Conger, and Rosanna Xiao.
		And then on Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern, we'll feature authors Jonathan Turley, Amanda Becker, Clay Risen, and Paola Ramos.
		The Tucson Festival of Books, live all weekend beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2.
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		54.
		The nays are 46.
		The bill is passed.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Washington Journal for Saturday, March 15th.
		That was the Senate floor yesterday after the chamber approved a stopgap spending bill averting a government shutdown just a few hours before the deadline.
		Several Senate Democrats joined with their Republican counterparts to advance the funding bill, drawing criticism from some in the party.
		To start today's program, we want to hear your thoughts on the Senate approving that spending bill and averting a government shutdown.
		Here are the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		You can text your comments to 202-748-8003.
		Be sure to include your name and city.
		You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Good morning, and thank you for being with us.
		We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few moments, but first wanted to give you a little bit more information about our topic this morning.
		From the Associated Press says the essentially party line vote 54 to 46 didn't give the full picture of nine Democratic angst over how to confront the Trump administration as its Department of Government Efficiency fires federal workers and dismantles operations.
		Democrats argued over whether to fight, even risking a shutdown, and fuming that Republicans drafted a measure that included little of their input, short-changing health care, housing, and other priorities.
		It was Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who the day before had come out saying that he would support the funding measure.
		He spoke on the floor ahead of yesterday's vote.
		Here are some of his remarks.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Now, government funding expires at midnight tonight, and the votes before us is a Hobson choice.
		The CR bill is a bad bill, but as bad as the CR is, I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.
		A shutdown would allow Doge to shift into overdrive.
		It would give Donald Trump and Doge the keys to the city, the state, and country.
		And that is a far worse alternative.
		Now, I want to remind everyone that it was Republicans who pushed this false shutdown choice.
		Their inability to govern has led us to this precipice.
		Our caucus members have two bad choices.
		Different senators will come down on different sides of the question, but that does not mean that any Senate Democrat supports a shutdown.
		Whatever the outcome, our caucus will be united in our determination to continue the long-term fight to stop Donald Trump's dangerous war on our democracy and on America's working families.
		And now I want to be clear about what this bill does and does not do.
		The full year CR is a law that sets funding levels for the full year, and the President and Executive Branch have a legal and constitutional duty to faithfully execute the CR.
		The CR does not change the underlying law making the Trump administration's impoundments and mass firings illegal.
		This is true as a matter of law.
		Nothing in the CR changes the Impoundment Control Act, the foundation of Congress's appropriations authority, and the authorization laws that require USAID and other agencies to exist and to operate the programs Congress has assigned to them.
		Nothing changes Title V, governing the Civil Service, the Administrative Procedure Act, and so on.
		One of the reasons I'm voting for cloture is for the very reason that these actions are illegal and no new law is needed to declare that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		More from the Associated Press.
		It says, in the end, enough of the Democratic senators decided a government shutdown would be even worse and backed the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer's strategy to allow the bill to come forward.
		From the Hill, it says 10 Senate Democrats voted to advance that GOP funding bill.
unidentified		Those members, it was joining Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Senator Cortez-Masto of Nevada, Maggie Hassen of New Hampshire, Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Gary Peters of Michigan, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, and Senator Gildebrand of New York, along with Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire and Angus King, an independent from Maine.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We are starting today's program asking your thoughts on the Senate passing the funding bill avoiding a government shutdown.
		Again, the lines, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8,001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8,002.
		We will start with Cal in New York City, Line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Cal.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
		Good morning, all of you watching C-SPAN.
		Good morning to you all working at C-SPAN.
		I really do think that the Democrats, us on the left, have capitulated to the right for a long time.
		And somehow we just got so used to losing that we entered the psychology.
		And I think Schumer personifies the psychology of just you're so exhausted by losing.
		The only thing you can do is spin it into victory in your own head and in the media as best you can.
		And I think he learned this from Harry Reid when he was Democratic leader.
		And I think Harry Reid learned this from Tom Dashel when he was Democratic leader, when we were being bamboozled by Bush in years before and Trump in his first term.
		It's just amazing that we reached this point where all we can do is capitulate to him and spin it into some kind of weird kind of victory just listening to Schumer try to do that on the Senate floor.
		Like somehow the end game, we will beat him if we give in to him now.
		It's what leaves us all scratching our heads.
		Like we have no real plan to oppose Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
		So we devise this strategy in our heads that makes it look like victory so that we can at least joke about him in the late night.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about the actual vote?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that the Democrats should have joined with Republicans to pass it?
unidentified		No, I agree with him in that sense, is that it was like a Hobson's choice that, you know, damned if you do and damned if you don't.
		But the idea is that we put ourselves in this place a long time ago when we failed to develop a strategy of opposition to any of the conservative administrations, whether it was Trump's first term or Bush.
		We just somehow developed this inner bubble where we could make jokes about how dumb they were, even though we lost, and hope that the pendulum would swing back the other way by the time of the next election so that we would win not because we had better ideas, but because there was nobody left.
		And I think what Schumer did yesterday is a personification of that kind of crippling political strategy that leaves us nowhere now.
		That was Cal in New York.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Michael, also in New York, Rochester, line for Republicans.
unidentified		Good morning, Michael.
		Good morning.
		How are you?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Doing well, Michael.
unidentified		You know, people are titled to their own opinions, but unfortunately, they're not titled to their own facts.
		I am very, very outraged of my country, especially the Democrats.
		And I'm African American.
		You know, I'm angry about, they showed footage earlier today on a network that Barack Obama in 2011 was talking about cutting spending.
		And then there was his vice president, Joe Biden, was talking about cutting spending.
		Now, all of a sudden, you know, my grandkids face nearly $40 trillion in debt.
		It's very difficult for me to look at my grandkids in the face and saying, I'm leaving them with a country that's almost bankrupt.
		We gave Ukraine over $350 billion.
		We gave Ukraine more money than the EU gave Ukraine.
		And this negative stuff about Donald Trump and Eli Musk is appalling.
		It's disgusting.
		What Donald Trump did, he's the ally of Putin.
		And why would Donald Trump cancel the North Stream pipeline?
		That's the pipeline from Russia to Europe.
		He canceled that.
		He sanctioned that.
		He told the EU, you're going to buy American oil.
		And this North Stream pipeline was what kept.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Michael, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to keep you on the topic of government spending specifically.
		I wanted to show you in the rest of the audience, everyone watching, what the bill does.
		It funds the federal agencies through September 30th.
		It increases defense spending by $6 billion to $893 billion and decreases domestic spending by $13 billion to $708 billion.
		You were talking about your grandkids and the state of U.S. spending.
		Do you think that the bill did enough?
unidentified		Well, you know what?
		You know, I think the bill is absolutely fantastic.
		The question needs to be asked: why did, and you guys failed to answer this question, you know, and this is the most relevant question that needs to be asked.
		Why did Democrats, all Democrats, and the King Jeffrey didn't support this bill?
		You know, I mean, they're at the verge of we would rather shut the government down, shut it down completely, than support Donald Trump.
		This is nothing but political stuff and geography.
		And the other thing is this right here.
		We're spending too much money.
		I am a taxpayer and I'm sick and tired of how the government here spends my money on foolishness.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We need to do that was Michael in New York.
		We'll go to Guy in Oklahoma, Line for Independence.
		Good morning, Guy.
unidentified		Good morning, Tammy.
		Finally, we have two very intelligent callers.
		Those last two callers were spot-armed.
		And look at that: a Democrat and a Republican, both spot on.
		Anyway, the bill, thank God they posted it on the internet, you know, so people could read it and see that nothing, Medicaid, Medicare, and the word Social Security did not appear anywhere in that bill.
		The Democrats had to vote for it because if it didn't, if they didn't pass that bill, it would have fallen on the shoulders squarely on the Democrats and nobody else.
		And one other thing I'd like to say about this financial crisis that we're in, that the last caller from New York is excited about, and so am I.
		We can actually balance our budget if we could get Elon Musk to find $1.2 trillion because right now we're negative spending $2.2 trillion a year.
		And if we could get Jerome Powell to bring the Fed fund rate back down to zero, that would wipe out the trillion dollars of interest that we're going to pay this year.
		So if they can eliminate the trillion in the interest, and if Musk could find $1.2 trillion, that takes out the negative 2.2 spending.
		We could have a balanced budget.
		Thank God for Trump.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Guy in Oklahoma.
		And it was on the floor also yesterday during debate before the vote that Senator James Langford of Oklahoma spoke out in favor of the bill and urged his colleagues to pass it.
		Here are his remarks.
unidentified		Today, there's still a fight over whether we're going to keep the government open for tomorrow.
		Federal workers that are already dealing with a lot of tension in their life, quite frankly.
		They've gotten emails and messages.
		They're hearing about downsizing in federal agencies.
		They're anxious right now.
		And there are a lot of folks in my state, and quite frankly, around the country, that say we need to reduce the size of the bureaucracy, which we do.
		The last time we had a major reduction in the size of the bureaucracy was under Bill Clinton.
		When Bill Clinton was president, he declared we're going to reinvent government.
		And under Bill Clinton's presidency, they reduced the federal workforce by 400,000 people.
		It was a big reduction in the federal workforce.
		That's the last time that's occurred decades ago.
		We've grown now to a massive size that we've got to reduce again.
		Everybody knows it, but if you're a federal worker or a family member or a next-door neighbor, you go to church together, you know how agonizing this really is.
		The last thing those federal workers need is one more thing hanging over their head of a government shutdown at the same time.
		But it's being debated right now.
		And my Democratic colleagues are trying to determine if we're going to go into shutdown tonight still.
		I would simply say, let's get our work done.
		We disagree on many issues.
		Okay?
		That's what grown-ups have.
		We have disagreements.
		Let's settle our disagreements.
		Let's keep us operating.
		Let's take this off the table for good at some point so we don't have this threat hanging over us and some countdown clock on 24-hour news.
		Here's how many minutes it is until we have a government shutdown.
		Let's take that off the table and let's get our work done.
		We have a giant deficit.
		Giant.
		$2 trillion in overspending this year.
		We should have budget fights.
		We should be more efficient.
		We should allow Doge and some of those folks to be able to go after some of the wasteful spending.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Back to your calls.
		We'll go to Alice in Augusta, Georgia, Line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Alice.
unidentified		Good morning.
		You know, at first, I was going to say, I was going to say no, but I'm saying yes.
		I agree with it because things are going bad right now.
		So, therefore, why would I just shut the government down?
		And we shut the government down.
		You can't continue to find out the lies that Trump and Musk are using.
		Let me ask one question.
		I'm going to ask someone that listening right now: if you go to the store and buy something, okay, you say, I don't want it anymore, you take it back.
		What are they going to ask for?
		Do you have a receipt?
		Musk?
		Trump is saying all these outrageous figures.
		Show me the receipt.
		That's all I want you to do.
		He won't, they won't let him come to Congress to tell the Democrats and the Republicans these receipts.
		Show me the receipts.
		So, one thing I want to say: Trump is a patrological liar.
		But y'all believe anything that that man would say.
		If it's raining outside and you look out there and say it's sunshine, you see it's sunshine because Trump says rainy, you're gonna believe it.
		Look at the figures.
		He lied about the eggs.
		He lied about the groceries and all these things.
		But you still fall behind his man.
		That is completely ludicrous.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Ellis in Augusta, Georgia.
		And this headline from the Hill Senate GOP campaign arm targets Osoff over vote against Bill in a digital ad.
		The article says that the National Republican Senatorial Committee targeted Georgia Senator John Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, in a new digital ad on Friday over his vote against a GOP crafted bill to fund the government through September.
		It says that Osoff is arguably the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection in 2026.
		The ad is the latest example of Republicans seeking to pin the vote on Democrats.
		Let's hear from Bill in Spring Hill, Florida, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Bill.
unidentified		Good morning.
		That gentleman was talking about receipts.
		They have all the receipts from housing illegal aliens in New York.
		That's a fact.
		They've got all the receipts.
		I think Trump is doing a great job.
		The deficit wouldn't be so big if Obama hadn't doubled it while he was in office.
		People don't realize that.
		He's the only president ever to double the debt while he was in eight years he was in office.
		That's why we are in the trouble we're in right now.
		We need to stop all the corruption and all the wasteful spending.
		I definitely believe what Trump is doing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Zema and I'm sorry, Zemay in Maryland, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Zemay.
unidentified		Good morning, Tammy.
		Tammy, with that bill, it was damned if you do and damned if you don't.
		So, now, if the government were to shut down, then the Doge, Trump, Republicans, they would be able to go after those non-essential employees and get rid of them as well as the probationary employees, which would be really devastating to all of these families.
		Now, so far as that budget is concerned, there's spending in their minimum of $38 billion for the safety net funding.
		Of course, they're not going to put in there and say we're going to cut Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, and all that.
		Of course, they're not going to put it.
		It's not in there.
		But what else could it be that they're going to cut that minimum of $38 billion from?
		What they need to be looking at are those contracts and subsidies that Elon Musk has.
		I believe it's about $38 billion worth for his little ventures.
		The oil companies are still being subsidized.
		The thing is, and the last guy, but one of the guys was talking about Republicans, that the Democrats are going to be blamed for the shutdown if there was a shutdown.
		By the time Election Day comes around in 2026, these Republicans that voted for Trump in this catastrophe are going to find out, okay, that they made a big old boo-boo.
		Democrats are going to take over both branches of the government.
		Not say goodbye to democracy, autocracy, and oligarchy will be in full force.
		Then you'll be in the line on Monday, Tammy.
		It'll be your day to go to the government to pick up your foodstuffs and everything for the month.
		On Wednesday of that same month, you can go and get your gas.
		They want us to be dependent upon the government, just like over there in Russia and all these other countries that Trump admires.
		He wants to be a king.
		If you get rid of the free press, you get rid of the judiciary.
		What do you have?
		You have a king.
		People wake up, stop voting against your own interests.
		Let me say one other thing.
		With Obamacare, they want to go after that.
		People that are on Medicaid, Medicare, these prescriptions, Renvogue, Humera, Sky Rizzi, are all covered by those plans.
		You get rid of that, you get, what do these people have left?
		Nothing.
		People, please wake up.
		And I'm going to say this: F-A-A-F-O.
		Figure out what that means.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was May and Marilyn.
		Julian in Connecticut, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Julian.
unidentified		Morning, how are you today?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Doing well, Julian.
unidentified		It's amazing how you let these people ramble on for hours.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		It's hours.
		We're 22 minutes into the show, and it's hours.
unidentified		Come on, Kimberly, please.
unidentified		A couple of things on there.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Julian.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to let you make your comment.
unidentified		You have people calling that Trump lies.
		Just do me a favor, just once.
		Just once.
		Just say, what does he lie about?
		Just once.
		And the last thing I'm going to say, why don't you post all the billions that are wasting our U.S. aid?
		Why don't you post where it's going?
		Maybe they won't say all these stupid things.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Julian in Connecticut.
		Adam in New York, line for independence.
		Good morning, Adam.
unidentified		Good morning, Tammy.
		Thank you.
		I wanted to say I watched your show, and I have a feeling, though, people are out of touch.
		I'm an independent thinker.
		I have common sense, and I want America to understand that this is the way forward.
		If we don't, we will be bankrupt.
		People do not understand we give out handouts.
		Too many handouts, too many drugs we're talking about that don't be, don't help people.
		This is not what we need.
		We need a healthy, smart country.
		We are dependent.
		We need to be independent.
		That's all, Tammy.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Bernice in Detroit, Michigan, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Petrie.
		Bernice?
unidentified		Good morning.
		I try to save my call for when something really is talked about that just frustrating.
		But I guess this was it.
		The lady from Maryland was the closest one to what's going on.
		I don't talk against people.
		I don't have a problem with the Republicans, but they think that if they're not right, there can't be a Democrat that's correct.
		Aside of the majority Democrat, letting the government set down until Truck Schumer explains why he was going to do that vote to keep the government open.
		This funding bill was just to keep the government open.
		There's a bill coming behind this bill where the Republicans will not need the Democrats to help them vote.
		Best to vote that they're going to cut Medicaid.
		They're going to cut Social Security.
		And if the Democrats had not voted for this bill, they was going to be blamed.
		Now, Chuck Schumer has to find a way because the Democrats are not in the majority.
		I don't know why when time come for something to take place, all of a sudden the Democrats, they get lifted up.
		Democrats are not in the majority.
		They can't do anything but what they're doing.
		They're doing the best they can to fight against these crazy things Trump is doing.
		I can name a hundred things that Trump has lied about.
		But this is what I say to the Republican Party that believe everything Donald Trump says.
		Research for yourself.
		Just research for yourself because the media leaves out the most important part of what's going on.
		We're so caught up on following Donald Trump, speaking on what Donald Trump is doing till it's overshadowing everything else in the media.
		You need to do some independent thinking like the man said.
		They're going to cut Medicaid and they're going to cut it in the budget bill.
		Republicans just sit back, stop bragging, wait and watch.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Bernice, let me ask you this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		One of your senators, Gary Peters, voted in favor of the bill yesterday.
unidentified		What's your response?
		My response is I have been writing on social media because I have no other outlet.
		I've worked with politics until I took ill.
		Now I put myself in a position where there's no other outling for me to speak to the public, but you.
		Social media is not getting over for me.
		That's when I said to the Democrats, don't vote.
		I really went out on them.
		Chuck Schumer explained why he was going to vote for that bill night before last.
		I went back on social media and apologized to the public because I made that post.
		I can't hear you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I'm not talking, Bernice.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
		I made that post totally wise.
		I went back and apologized to whatever person heard me and believed me and said that Chuck Schumer is correct in what he's doing.
		The Democrats are just so angry that they're not stopping to use their head and see his point of view.
		That's what they did to Joe Biden when he was so exhausted in that debate and couldn't speak.
		They first jumped up.
		They was the ones who jumped up and said, oh, he have a mental issue and caused the Democrats to lose the election.
		Now they're doing it again.
		They move on emotions.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Bernice in Michigan.
		And this from the Wall Street Journal.
		The decision by Schumer, Chuck Schumer, and the small group of other Democratic senators not to block the Republican proposal came despite heavy pressure from House Democrats and party activists.
		They called the vote a rare moment in the Republican-controlled capital to fight back against Trump and his GOP allies.
		Aides said Democratic Senate offices were being inundated by phone calls with callers overwhelmingly against the Republican bill.
		It was yesterday after returning from the Democratic House retreat that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked about the confidence, his confidence in Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
		Here's his response.
unidentified		You have dodged multiple times questions about whether you have confidence right now in Chuck Schumer.
unidentified		Can I just, to clarify here, none of you are willing to say at this point that you have confidence in Chuck Schumer as the heir?
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		You keep engaging in these parlor games because you want to take the focus off the American people.
		What we're saying is we look forward to continuing to work with our Senate colleagues, all of them, in opposition to the extremism that's being unleashed on the American people.
		But the focus right now is on everyday Americans, on children, on families, on veterans, on the people that we are fighting for, who Donald Trump and House Republicans are intentionally trying to hurt in a moment where Donald Trump and that whole crew are tanking the economy in real time,
unidentified		failing to deliver on their promises to make life better for the American people.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, things are getting worse.
unidentified		That's why Donald Trump's whole numbers aren't going up.
		They're going down, just like the stock market.
		We're asking that because real people are protesting.
		There are 11 people that were arrested today outside of Schumer's office.
		We're not playing any tricks.
		Yeah, I travel the country.
		I represent a district in Brooklyn.
		I'll be in that district in a few days.
		I'll be in church on Sunday.
		I'll be having events on Monday.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		We have a Medicaid Day of Action on Tuesday.
unidentified		I look forward to reporting back to all of you when I've had conversations with those very everyday Americans that you're talking about, that Pete's privileged to represent in the Inland Empire, that Catherine's privileged to represent in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that I'm privileged to represent in Brooklyn.
unidentified		But I know what they say to me about what matters to them, the fact that they have been struggling to get ahead in an America that's the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		It's not acceptable that far too many people are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck, can't get ahead and can barely get by.
unidentified		That's not acceptable.
unidentified		And that's why House Democrats are taking a stand.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Just under 30 minutes left in today's first hour of Washington Journal, getting your reaction to the Senate approving a spending bill, averting a government shutdown up next.
		Mike in Houston, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Mike.
unidentified		Hello, Mimi.
		How are you doing this morning?
		Doing well.
		I was just going to say that if Trump ran again, I would vote for him.
		I sure would.
		I think he's doing a great job.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Mike, that's great.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about the government, the Senate approving a spending bill?
unidentified		I believe that they made the right choice myself.
		Schumer did good.
		I never liked the guy, but he made a good choice there.
		He sure did.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Mike in Houston.
		Alvin in Gardiner, Massachusetts, line for Independence.
		Hi, Alvin.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Alvin.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, ma'am.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Alvin.
unidentified		You're on.
		Okay.
		I'm calling to just say we got to give Trump a shot.
		Now, I'm an independent.
		I will give Trump a shot.
		But so far, Trump is all over the target.
		How long do we supposed to wait for him to be able to shoot straight?
		And isn't that what we're asking from our government is just to shoot straight?
		The only thing that we want in America, because this is America, is a place where the law stands for something, where a convicted felon can't vote in some states.
		He could be president of the United States when he should never have been on balance in most of those states.
		The average felon cannot vote in a certain amount of states.
		But we could have a president that's a felon run for president.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Juanita in Cincinnati, Ohio, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Juanita.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
		How are you?
		Doing well.
		I actually have two things to say.
		First of all, I understand why Senator Schumer took the stance that he did.
		I don't like it.
		I'm a Democrat, you know, move all the way.
		But I understand the strategy.
		And the second thing I want to say to my Republican friends in the middle and down the middle of the main mission line, as a city Democrat, what I've been watching is agriculture.
		Here in Ohio, we export now, we export soybean, we export chickens, we export kids, la la la.
		What I've been watching, especially through the Ohio State Agriculture Service, how our Midwestern farmers in the middle are screaming because they can't sell their grain to the USAID.
		Now, we're talking about billions.
		We're not talking about millions.
		We're talking about billions.
		And their grain is sitting up in these bins rotting because Trump said we're not going to do it anymore.
		That outcome I want to see.
		And finally, a scholar, as illegals are concerned, my question is: who hires them?
		These people aren't coming up here for nothing.
		They're not working for nothing.
		So it sounds like to me, people want their cake and eat it too.
		You want to hire them at substandard rates, but you want to damn them for coming here in the first place.
		Who hires them?
		You have a good day.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Juanita, just to let you know, you've said sounded like you were interested in agriculture issues.
		At about 9:15 this morning, we'll be joined by somebody from the National Farmers Union.
		We'll be talking about President Trump's tariff policy and how it's impacting the nation's farmers.
		Let's hear from Mo in Colorado, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Mo.
unidentified		Hello, this is me.
		I hope you all from Toyota, Colorado.
		I'm there at Harper.
		But, you know, I'm not really a huge Trump supporter.
		But even a Democrat, a Democrat that's serious about helping the American people, you can see that what Donald Trump is doing is the best thing.
		He has the best ideas of anybody.
		And Schumer knows that.
		And any real Democrat would know that too.
		And, you know, I'm an African-American person.
		I'm doing montezuma counting their toyota in a extremely conservative area.
		And this time they got it right.
		They used me wrong, but this time they got it right because Trump is, you know, he's going to make a way for the Americans to get 10.
		We can come back if we want to.
		We can be better if we want to.
		We don't have to be.
		He can't make us.
		It's like you said with the fentanyl.
		You know, he can't just give people the death penalty because they want to get high off of fentanyl.
		But if he had his way, that's what he would do.
		And so I think he's being reasonable.
		And I think he's a Democrat, because I voted for Douglas Crane and Obama.
		I never vote for the government because they're so wrong.
		But President Trump is right.
		He is right.
		And that's why he wanted to get the Democrats because President Trump has a better plan.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Mo in Colorado.
		Mo talking about Chuck Schumer voting in favor of the funding bill.
		It was yesterday that President Trump posted this on Truth Social saying, congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing, took guts, encouraged the big tax cuts, LA Firefix, debt ceiling bill, and so much more is coming.
		We should all work together on that very dangerous situation.
		A non-pass would be a country destroyer.
		Approval will lead us to new heights.
		Again, really good and smart move by Senator Schumer.
		This could lead to something big for the USA, a whole new direction and beginning.
		Signed, DJT.
		Let's hear from Teresa in Wadsworth, Ohio, Line for Independence.
		Hi, Teresa.
unidentified		Good morning.
		And I want to, first of all, thank C-SPAN for the opportunity for Americans across the political spectrum to share their views.
		As we know, people in Russia don't have an opportunity to do this.
		So thank you very much to C-SPAN.
		And number two, I want to thank everybody who calls in and speaks in a very civil and professional way to their fellow Americans, despite what their views might be.
		It's really important now, as always, for us to speak kindly and as we would want to be spoken to, to share differing views.
		And third, I'd like to say that I agree with the Senate Democrats who voted to keep the government open.
		Closing the government is never helpful for anyone at any time.
		And fourth, I'd like to say I'm very troubled by the role that an unelected oligarch has with respect to every aspect of our government.
		Apparently, the Republicans want to cut the size of government, but they don't have the courage to set up some sort of more transparent mechanism to do that.
		So they have put this gentleman in charge, and he is just sort of going willy-nilly through the federal government and slashing and reverses his own decisions when the Republicans say, hey, you've gone too far.
		So I hope those who are not in favor of this method of governance will go to the polls and vote their conscience to get us back on track so that we, the people, can be in charge again rather than the richest man in the world.
		Thank you so much for allowing me to share my views.
		Thank you.
		And to everyone, have a good day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Teresa in Ohio and Teresa talking about Doge efforts.
		It was yesterday during the Senate debate on the spending bill that Kentucky GOP Congressman Rand Paul introduced an amendment codifying Doge actions.
		Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against yesterday's funding bill.
		Here are his remarks.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		What my amendment does is put Doge's findings into action, eliminating much of the funding for an agency that spent its tax hours on woke entertainment and advocacy.
		It sets in law the reductions that the Trump administration has made known to be necessary.
		I applaud Doge's work to uncover these many instances of abuse of taxpayer dollars, and it's now Congress's turn to make the cuts stick.
		If we do not adopt my amendment, then taxpayers will simply continue spending substantial amounts of money to defund components of the government rather than using savings to pay down our mounting debt.
		In other words, you might cut it and think it's cut one day, but what if the courts say you have to spend it somewhere else?
		It never comes back.
		The cuts are never real.
		The only way the cuts the administration are making will ever be real, will ever be counted, and will ever lessen the debt in the country is to vote in Congress.
		That's what this is about.
		It would be the height of hypocrisy for Congress to pay lip service to Doge's exceptional work, support it on the superficial, and then vote against it when you have a chance to vote on it.
		Continuing to spend at this bill's level will add $2 trillion in debt.
		That is a fact.
		All the newspapers reporting yesterday was all over the news.
		Record-setting accumulation of debt.
		We've accumulated over a trillion and we're not halfway through the year.
		It's a record accumulation of debt.
		It only stops when people stand up and say enough is enough.
		The least we can do is make sure that it doesn't include the egregious spending that has come from the foreign aid, the craziness, the sex change operations in Guatemala, trans operas, trans comic books, all of these ludicrous things that no American supports will only go away and will only go away with permanence if we vote for it.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Senator Rand Paul yesterday on the floor.
		And you can watch the entire debate or parts of it.
		You can find it online at c-span.org.
		We'll go next to Cindy in Richmond, Kentucky, Line for Democrats.
		Hi, Cindy.
unidentified		Good morning, America, and thank you for taking my call.
		I'm glad the government didn't shut down.
		But there was a gentleman that came on and said, Where are the lies?
		You know, well, these aren't lies.
		What I'm going to read you two articles, real quick.
		They aren't lies.
		They're not made transparent.
		First one comes from the Kansas City Star.
		Listen up, veterans.
		KC Cerner got a no-bid contract for VA Health Record System.
		There's a better choice.
		City Cerner for a new electronic health record system to replace the VA's long-standing one.
		The contract stipulated a $10 billion ceiling over 10 years.
		No-bid contracts are extremely rare.
		They're undue.
		Use characterized as the essence of corruption.
		Furthermore, there were significant problems with earlier contracts between the company now known as Oracle Cerner and the VA and the Department of Defense.
		Enter Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the Mar-a-Lago group of wealthy insiders with no relevant expertise.
		They justified the rushed no-bid contract because of the urgency and the critical nature of this decision, according to then Secretary of VA Schulkin.
		Five years later.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Cindy, sorry, I appreciate you pointing out an article that you're reading from your local outlet.
		I want to keep us on the topic of the funding from the Senate yesterday passing that spending bill.
		Do you want to make a remark on that?
unidentified		Well, just that I'm glad that it went through, but another thing, real quick, can I say this?
		Go ahead, Cindy.
		Trump bans oil drilling off Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
		He banned oil drilling.
		Why is this not made transparent?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I'm Cindy in Kentucky.
		Kathleen, Los Angeles, California.
		Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Kathleen.
unidentified		Oh, hi.
		Good morning.
		I want to say, OMG, exclamation point.
		For nine years, Trump haters have been calling in, name-calling, character assassinating Trump.
		And yet Trump won.
		So they're not logical enough to realize name-calling is not political analysis.
		They're not analyzing.
		And what are the facts?
		The data.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Kathleen, we're talking about the Senate passing the spending bill yesterday.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Would you like to make a comment on that?
unidentified		Fantastic.
		And just responding to Ron Paul, Ron, not Senator Paul's criticism of the bill, I think that Trump can impound funds.
		He doesn't have to spend all the money that Congress allocates.
		And this will be probably challenged by the courts.
		And once it gets up to the Supreme Court, that issue will be resolved legally.
		But I just want to comment.
		Let me just say this.
		You let other people go on and on and on about non-topic, off-topic.
		Why do black, I'm a black American and I'm an old black American, so I can criticize old black Americans.
		The Democratic Party has been lying to black Americans since the Civil Rights Act, okay?
		And you don't realize it.
		You don't have families anymore.
		You used to have 87% two parent families.
		Now you have 25% two pan families.
		You let other people go on and on and on, off topic.
		So I just want to say, I don't know why these black folks, I'm a black woman, so I can talk about my dreams.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You already said that, Kathleen.
		We'll go on to Connie, Richmond, Virginia, Line for Independence.
		Good morning, Connie.
unidentified		Good morning.
		First time caller.
		I just wanted to say first, I just have to say this, I'm appalled and frankly horrified by the dismantling of our long-standing democracy by this autocrat and his billionaire minion.
		Having said that, I'm not sure I'm fully understanding it.
		The Republicans have all branches of government.
		They have the majority in the House, the Senate.
		They have their person in power.
		Why do they need a Democrat?
		And why are they consistently blaming Democrats?
		They have all the power.
		Can they not utilize the power?
		Do they still need the Democrats?
		That's the piece I'm confused about, the endless blaming of Democrats where the Republicans have all the power.
		That's it.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to John in also in Virginia, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, John.
unidentified		Hi, thanks for taking my call.
		I just want to say about, I think Chuck Schumer is already known that Donald Trump and his cronies, they already tried to investigate him, and he knows that there's an investigation coming from him.
		Having said that, I do not want the government to be shut down, but I want to ask them that the Democrat, what did you get in return?
		When you're making a deal, what deal that you get from, and that you can explain to the Democrat that this is what we're going to get.
		You just don't say that it's not good for the government to shut down.
		We already know that.
		But the point is, you have to get something back.
		But the reality, this shutdown, government is already being shut down.
		People are already being laid off.
		People are already struggling.
		There's nothing new about this thing.
		But I am going to say one more thing: that this Elon Musk, if the Democrats did the same thing, some billionaire brings to the White House and cut all this thing, I can tell you that Republicans will never sleep one night.
		But it's a shame that we have no laws in this country anymore.
		No judges, no one is listening to judges.
		I'm just, I can't even speak because that was John in Virginia.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Don in Salinas, California, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Don.
unidentified		Hi, yeah.
		The reason why Chuck Schumer voted for this bill is because he came to the realization that nobody's buying what the Democrats are selling anymore, them or the so-called free press.
		If you look at the big picture of what's going on out there, the Republicans are actually doing.
		The Democrats are blaming Trump.
		And we live through that.
		We lived through four years of Democratic Party authoritarianism and the free press hiding a guy who couldn't even sign his name to a piece of paper.
		We realize what a fraud we were living for four years.
		And this is why Trump is president right now.
		The free press ain't going to come to this realization, but Chuck Schumer sure did.
		You look at right now, Trump has Ukraine halfway to a ceasefire.
		The Democratic Party and the free press are trying to keep the war going.
		Honestly, it's sickening.
		They're bankrupt.
		All they have is we hate Trump.
		We hate Musk.
		Well, I got news for all you people with your sad excuse of Musk wasn't elected.
		99.9% of the federal government is not elected.
		99% of the people who fire people in the government are not elected.
		So get your heads out of your rear ends.
		Quit listening to the naysayers of the Democratic Party.
		Quit listening to the haters of the so-called free press.
		You've got a guy who's actually doing what you've been screaming at the TV they should do for years.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Don in California.
		Susan in North Carolina, line for independence.
		Good morning, Susan.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I wanted to speak to the gentleman that you played the clip for, the African-American man who was saying that Schumer was doing this for the people of the United States.
		That's not true.
		Schumer is doing this for the people that he's trying to save on a government payroll.
		That's all this is about.
		This doesn't have anything to do with the American people.
		There's a lot of Democrats that cover their you-know-whats, and that's all they're trying to do.
		And for people to present this to us like this is something great for the American people is absurd.
		I really believe that.
		This is just them posturing and saving their own behind.
		Now, Susan in North Carolina.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's see, Lakandu in Chicago, Illinois, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Likandu.
unidentified		Good morning, ma'am.
		Thanks for having me.
		I would just like to say one thing about this whole situation.
		I don't know what the heck these Republicans is talking about, all this crazy stuff.
		They didn't know what happened the last time they voted for Trump and what he did.
		And not only that, I want to speak to all y'all Republicans, all y'all Republicans that voted for these senators in office.
		Remember this.
		Look at this.
		Next time, vote them out.
		Don't put them in.
		They just let us know they don't have a spine to do their job.
		They want it for the rich people.
		This is this whole thing about it's about poor people and rich people.
		They just turned it into some racist stuff.
		So the whole, because you know, America is racist if you want to be real about this thing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Likandu, let me ask you, let me ask you this.
		One of your senators, Dick Durbin, voted in favor of the funding.
		What's your response?
unidentified		I don't have no problem with that because if you really look at it, if the government would have shut down, that would have gave Donald Trump all the power to do everything he wanted to do with no backslash, with nobody to come at him and say nothing.
		So I don't have a problem with that.
		I know he's doing it for the American people.
		He's not doing it just for the Democrats.
		He's doing it for the Republicans who are going through this too.
		So I have no problem with it, ma'am.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Dave in Dana Point, California, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Dave.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Basically, I'm really a Trump again.
		I'm not really a Republican.
		I learned that term from Leo Terrell.
		And I just want to say I'm very upset that the Democrats did pass this.
		I really wanted the government to stop.
		That way they can separate the essential workers from the non-essential.
		Now, when they have to pass this so-called bill again to pay all the bills, so to speak, I prefer they do it like Clinton and Newt Gingrich did.
		Do a separate bill for everything, like one separate bill to pay the military, one separate bill to pay Social Security, one separate bill to pay Medicaid.
		Just do it like that, and then they will be able to balance the budget.
		That's what I feel they should do.
		We all do that if we know how to balance budgets in our own bills at home.
		We do it separate.
		We don't do one big bill.
		We do it separate again, like Clinton did and Newt Gingrich.
		It's a very simple process.
		So I hope the government stops.
		They shut down the government when they have to do that again in September or whenever it is.
		So that's all I have to say.
		I want to thank you again very much for everything that you do for us.
		And oh, one more thing.
		I agree with the caller earlier that when somebody says Trump lies here, Trump lies there, have them ask them.
		Like that one lady said shortly after that, you've said 100 lies.
		Well, just name one.
		So if you could do that one time, that would be highly entertaining.
		I appreciate, again, everything that you do.
		Go USA.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Dave in California, David in Ohio, Line for Independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, David.
unidentified		That's me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, David.
unidentified		Go ahead.
unidentified		My concern has been Social Security, and I wonder why nobody ever tells the truth about what's in the Social Security Trust Fund.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I went to the trouble of- David, we're talking about the Senate passing the government spending bill yesterday.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a comment about that?
unidentified		But I'm looking for a chance to tell the people how much money is in the Social Security Trust fund.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, David.
		That is our last call for this first hour.
		Up next, we'll discuss this week's mass layoffs at the Department of Education and the future of the agency with Jennifer Jenkins from the group Educated We Stand and Michael Petrilli from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
		And then later, we'll have a conversation about how President Trump's tariff policy is impacting the nation's farmers with Mike Strands from the National Farmers Union.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		All weekend, C-SPAN's Book TV will be live from the Tucson Festival of Books.
		You'll see discussions on a variety of topics, including America's changing political landscape and global competition for natural resources, plus viewer call-ins with some of your favorite authors.
		Beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern, today's highlights include Juan Williams, Jason DeLeon, Kate Conger, and Rosanna Xiao.
		And then on Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern, we'll feature authors Jonathan Turley, Amanda Becker, Clay Risen, and Paola Ramos.
		The Tucson Festival of Books, live all weekend beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2.
		If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org.
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		These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos.
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		Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest.
		Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A.
		New York University journalism professor Meryl Gordon with her book The Woman Who Knew Everyone talks about the life of socialite and Democratic fundraiser Pearl Mesta, dubbed the hostess with the mostist.
		She was close to three U.S. presidents during the mid-20th century and was known for throwing parties that brought political elites together.
		Social climbing is a lot easier if you have money.
meryl gordon ▲ ● ▼		And Pearl quickly realized when she went with her husband to Washington, who was an advisor to President Wilson during World War I, Pearl realized there was a huge dichotomy in Washington between people and influential government figures who had no money, but a lot of power.
unidentified		And she discovered if she gave, she bought boxes at charity galas, if she gave debutante parties for the daughters of the underfunded, she could have a lot of really influential friends.
		Merle Gordon, with her book, The Woman Who Knew Everyone, Sunday night at 8 Eastern, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
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		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now for a discussion on the layoffs at the Department of Education and a move that Education Secretary Linda McMahon says is the first step to shuttering the agency is Jennifer Jenkins.
		She's the founder and chair of Educated We Stand, as well as Michael Petrilli.
		He is the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
		Welcome both of you to the program.
unidentified		Great to be here.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, we'll start with you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Remind our audience about your organization, the work that you do, and your mission.
unidentified		I am a mom, an educator, and a former school board member, and I founded Educator We Stand to support pro-public education school board candidates in Battleground States across the United States.
unidentified		And we've been working really, really hard and had some pretty tremendous success.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Michael, you've been with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for 20 years.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Tell us about that organization.
unidentified		Yeah, we are a national education policy think tank here in Washington, D.C.
unidentified		We also do on-the-ground work in Ohio, where we are focused on education reform, and we are also a charter school authorizer in Ohio.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And it was, I mentioned at the top of the segment, the Trump administration announced this week layoffs at the Education Department.
		It was, again, they're saying the first step in a, what could be a total shutdown.
		Michael, what do we know about the staff cuts?
unidentified		Yeah, first of all, 1,300 people laid off.
		That's on top of another 600 people who took buyouts or early retirement.
		You know, I feel really bad for the people affected.
		I know some of them.
		Those of us that live in Washington, you know, this is happening all across the government.
		And, you know, people's lives are turned upside down.
		They've got mortgages.
		And I know people will say, look, this kind of thing has happened in other parts of the country.
		A factory closes down or mass layoffs.
		It's true.
		You know, Washington's been immune to this, but we are now feeling it.
		And it's tough for those people experiencing it.
		You know, that said, we have to keep in mind that this is a tiny number of people compared to the number of people working in our schools.
		Right.
		So we're talking about the federal Department of Education.
		The federal department is pretty small to begin with, and the federal government plays a pretty small role when it comes to our schools.
		We've got something like six or seven million people who work in public schools in this country.
		So even though these are big layoffs here, it's kind of a drop in the bucket compared to the system as a whole.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And do you want to share some statistics about the U.S. Department of Education?
		Began operating in 1980.
		There were 4,400 employees at the beginning of the week, at least.
		That is the smallest of the cabinet agencies.
		And the 2024 budget for that department was $238 billion, which is about $1.8 billion of the fiscal year budget.
		Jennifer, it was Secretary McMahon saying that the staff cuts won't affect educational programs.
		Your reaction.
unidentified		I don't really trust anything that Linda McMahon is saying right now, and you can't blame me.
		You know, she was on Fox News the other day and couldn't answer the most basic fundamental question about IDEA.
		Yet we're supposed to believe that in just a couple of days she had the ability to assess and determine guts to half the Department of Education.
		It's just reckless and it's dangerous.
		You know, cutting half of the staff doesn't just reduce bureaucracy like they claim.
		It's weakening the enforcement of our civil rights protections for our students.
		It's disrupting federal financial aid and it'll make it harder for our schools on the ground and our communities to access critical funding that they need to function every single day.
		I know it's easy for people to say that, you know, these are people far away in DC and they don't affect your community.
		It's just not, it's just not true.
		As an educator myself and a schoolboard member, I know how critical those resources at the Department of Education are.
		I know how critical it is to have somebody watching over states that are making really dangerous decisions for students to ensure that every child has access to a fair and equitable education.
		And parents may not see the impact of these decisions today, but they're going to eventually see their schools struggling to serve every student.
		They're going to see financial aid get delayed and they're going to see protections for their vulnerable disabled kids unfortunately disappear and then they're going to feel it.
		So you know this isn't about efficiency.
		In my true feelings, I really believe that this is simply about undermining public education.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guests for the next 40 minutes or so, Jennifer Jenkins, founder and chair of Educator We Stand, Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, as well as the executive editor of education.
		Next, if you have a question or comment for them, you can start calling in now.
		The lines, if you are a Democrat, it's 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Want to let you know we also have a line set aside.
		If you are an educator or a parent, you can call in at 202-748-8003.
		Michael, it was something that Jennifer just mentioned.
		President Trump hasn't yet signed an executive order to close the department, but it's been reported that his education secretary, now Linda McMahon, would be instructed to submit a proposal to shutter the program, shutter programs that are not protected by law.
		Jennifer just talked about some of the things that could be impacted just by the layoffs itself.
		Talk about some of the programs that could be affected and those that couldn't be impacted both by staff cuts and a closure, complete closure.
unidentified		Yeah, so she has been clear, Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, that she knows she can't close the Department of Education on her own.
		It was created by Congress, and so it's up to Congress to do that.
		Now, we've all watched USAID come under massive cuts, you know, so it's confusing.
		We say, well, is, you know, are they going to actually follow the law?
		I think that's an important question.
		But assuming they follow the law, the Department of Education is going to be here unless Congress decides to get rid of it.
		And that is unlikely.
		You know, the Republicans don't have 60 votes in the Senate to do that.
		So what does that mean?
		Look, they have made it clear that the money is going to keep flowing.
		Title I grants that go to schools serving a lot of disadvantaged kids, IDEA grants that go to schools for kids with disabilities.
		As long as that money keeps flowing, I really think it's going to be hard for people at the local level to notice these changes.
		Now, I know Jennifer's concerned about the bigger picture of what's going on here.
		Look, I have concerns as well, but it's really hard to notice what's happening or not happening at the U.S. Department of Education because it's so far removed from the real world of schools and classrooms.
		You know, you go from the feds to the states to local school districts to schools.
		And so the real action in our education system is local.
		And if the money keeps flowing and by all accounts, it's going to the latest budget plan that just passed, maintains that money.
		I don't think people at the local level are going to see much of a difference.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Jennifer, we're going to start taking calls here in just a moment, but wanted to follow up on something Michael said, is that the money goes to local departments.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Explain the role the department has over what's being taught at the local level, or your for, as a former teacher, at what level it's decided what's what's being taught?
unidentified		So I will absolutely answer that question, but I do have to respond to something that Michael said.
		First and foremost, I appreciate him acknowledging that sometimes all rules are off here with this administration.
		So I appreciate his acknowledgment of that.
		But I think it's important for us to not be so swift to believe that all of these federal funds are going to stay in place.
		I think it's dangerous to assume that that's going to happen, because even before Linda McMahon went into a confirmation hearing, the Trump administration already had made a cut of $900 million to the Department OF Education.
		So right then and there our funds are not the same.
		And when questioned in her Senate hearing, Linda McMahon also refused to guarantee that states who teach things like AP African American history wouldn't be losing federal funds because they're doing so.
		So it is important for us to acknowledge that that is absolutely not a guarantee, and you know they're not afraid of attacking marginalized communities and people that they see as their opponents.
		But to answer your original question, in terms of who makes decisions about curriculum, it's first and foremost the state sets standards.
		It also sets approved textbooks and curriculums that they want to be taught in your school district, and then the local school boards themselves have a little bit of control when it comes to that.
		They can get a little more specific about career and technical education programs, special education programs that they want to offer.
		But ultimately the federal government is just there for oversight, for accountability, to make sure that these are effective programs, that we're doing the best by all of our students and to ensure that the civil rights of our students and their access exists.
		We will bring our audience into the discussion.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll start with Philip in Edison, New Jersey, on the line for parents.
unidentified		Good morning Philip hi, how you doing?
		Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
		Um, I just like to say um.
		Since the Department OF Education has been created, education has went way down.
		You can look at the chart and we spend more money.
		I don't see the problem with just sending it to the states and letting them distribute the money.
		Nothing is going to change.
		My dad was a teacher, went on to be a professor, went on to be a superintendent in school, and I just think that we need to give the teachers more money, because the teachers are amazing people.
		They do great things for our children and I like to ask Jennifer if she thinks that it's dangerous saying to people that they're going to take everything away from them.
		I don't think that's a good idea.
		We should just wait and see what happened before we rile up the uh, you know, the public.
		Thank you for giving me a chance to call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, we'll have you respond and then give Michael a chance.
unidentified		Yeah, I appreciate the acknowledgments to our teachers and increasing their pay.
		It's critically important for them to be tempted to even stay in this job.
		That's what we need most.
		We have vacancies all across this country that are alarming.
		I don't think it's dangerous to tell people to be aware.
		The wait-and-see approach is not a building that we're building.
		These are children's lives.
		These are children who sometimes rely on meals in their schools every single day.
		These are children with disabilities who, quite frankly, aren't even funded enough as it is, who could lose that critical funding.
		There's a potential for students who would have never had access to college opportunities if certain grants didn't exist from the Department of Education.
		So I'm not comfortable waiting to see what happens because I'm not comfortable putting children and families in that position.
		Yeah, look, Philip's making a good point here.
		We spend a lot of money in this system.
		It's close to a trillion dollars a year at this point.
		If you add it up, it's something like two or three or four hundred thousand dollars for every classroom, right?
		And then we turn around and pay teachers $50,000, $60,000, $70,000.
		And you say, where's the rest of that money going?
		And it's a good question.
		There is plenty of waste, fraud, and abuse going on in our school system.
		Now, it's not necessarily in Washington, D.C. Again, it's at the local level.
		That's where the money is.
		That's where the money is spent.
		We do need some serious efforts to try to figure out how we can make this system more efficient, get more of that money into the pockets of teachers, because Jennifer's right.
		You know, we've got big shortages in a lot of places because we're not paying teachers enough.
		We got to ask, where's all that money going?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have an educator on the line, Barbara in Ohio.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Barbara.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just want to make a couple of comments.
		I'm a retired teacher, but I'm still very much into education.
		I have an educational store and I still tutor.
		My comment is this: our schools have been in trouble for many years before the Department of Education was created in 1979.
		But since then, it is a disaster beyond what it was before it was created.
		And we're spending billions, and it's getting worse every year.
		So, common sense tells us the Department of Education is doing nothing.
		So, let's do away with it.
		Take it back to the local level.
		Where, if Ohio, Pennsylvania, whatever state you're in, wants a good school system, then they can make it a good school system.
		One further comment is: because I have an inside of some of the schools, a teacher sent me a picture of a local school of a pallet of books, and we don't use books anymore, sadly.
		But it was pallets of books that had been sitting in a school for years.
		They were still in boxes.
		That's where our money's going.
		It's being wasted.
		Let's rise up as a nation.
		Thank you so much.
		Michael, give me a chance to respond first.
		Yeah, no, I appreciate Barbara's comment.
		Look, things are tough right now.
		I mean, we know that after the pandemic, our kids are still way behind where they should have been.
		Now, that said, I do want people to know that we had a period of time where we were making a lot of progress.
		You know, back in the 90s and 2000s, up until about a decade ago, you saw student achievement going up, up, up, especially for the neediest kids, for the lowest achieving kids.
		So, some of the school reform efforts that were happening were working, and we need to get back to that focus on improving our schools.
		You know, the Department of Education, I don't think it makes a big difference one way or the other.
		I don't think getting rid of it is going to improve our schools.
		I don't think keeping it's going to improve our schools.
		Improving our schools is going to take the hard work of reform at the state and local level.
		Jennifer, do you have a response for Barbara?
		Yeah, you know, the majority of our education decisions are already made at the state level, but there's a danger when we say we're going to shift everything to the states because we set up a system where the rich are going to get richer and the rest of their kids are going to fall behind.
		As a Floridian, I can say I've seen firsthand what happens when a state takes control of education and does everything it can to have full and complete control over that.
		We have the most overcrowded classrooms in the United States.
		We have whitewashed history.
		We teach that slavery was a benefit to enslaved people.
		We have banned the most books in the United States.
		And we have the least paid teachers as well.
		So it's important to remember that when states are in control, it's not always the best thing for your education system.
		Our SAT scores are going down year after year, though DeSantis won't like to lie about a headline of being number one in the country.
		So I think it's important for us to remember there's not always something sunny on the other side.
		Let's hear from Miranda in New Jersey, also an educator.
		Good morning, Miranda.
		Good morning.
		I'm calling because, like you said, I'm an educator.
		I work in the system.
		And it's like, when I hear they say they get rid of the Department of Education, who's to say that in your state, if you have a Republican governor, who's to say they're not going to get rid of the Department of Education in their state?
		Because in New Jersey, we're about to have an election in November for governor.
		And if we get a Republican governor, he may do away with the Department of Education.
		And second of all, I am tired of these charter schools getting public school funding.
		I don't know why they're getting public school funding.
		Give all the money to the traditional public schools because not every kid is going to a charter school.
		So you need to take care of the public school kids, not just only charter schools.
		And it's sad.
		And I worry about my job.
		If I'm going to have a, if my position is going to be saved, that's when I'm trying to retire at 855 because it is ridiculous.
		I don't want to be here for this mess.
		It's ridiculous.
		Okay, Miranda, we'll get a response from our guest.
		Jennifer.
		Oh, you have an advocate in me how dangerous it is for us to continue to expand these voucher programs.
		You know, public schools serve over 90% of our children in America.
		So we should be focusing on strengthening them and not taking funds away from them and giving them to unregulated institutions.
		So often, you know, we hear the phrase that it's school choice, but I like to remind people we should put an apostrophe S at the end of that word because it's really the school's choice.
		So many of our voucher schools are able to reject students based on their disability status, what religion they are, or their identity, and they still get to take our taxpayer money.
	And no other public service works this way, right?
	We don't give police vouchers to people who hire private security or like fire vouchers for gated communities.
	So it's frustrating to see that this is being treated differently for public education.
	So I agree with you.
	School choice and voucher expansions is dangerous.
	It's a scam.
	Parents sometimes are just getting a coupon and our corporations are cashing in.
	Yeah, we're talking about two different things.
	And it's really important to point out.
	You know, the caller, Miranda, mentioned charter schools.
	Jennifer is talking about vouchers.
	Charter schools are public schools.
	They are open to the public.
	They cannot have admissions requirements.
	They take kids with disabilities.
	They have to follow all the civil rights laws.
	They are held accountable.
	They take the same tests.
	They just operate outside of the traditional public school system.
	And by the way, really rigorous research, including from the Federal Department of Education, shows that charter schools, by and large, outperform traditional public schools, particularly in urban areas.
	In some cases, dramatically.
	They're doing a great job.
	Separate issue are private school vouchers, which Jennifer knows is in some states, generally red states like Florida.
	That's a separate issue, and we can have that debate.
	But I do think we want to have a public education system that gives parents choices, both within traditional public school systems and outside of it, so that we can work on improving all of our schools.
	Charter schools are a huge part of the solution.
	They're not the problem.
	Let's hear from Sean in California on the line for parents.
	Hi, Sean.
	Hi, good morning.
	Quickly, since that point came up, charter schools is not public schools.
	Charter schools are put in place for people that want their children to go to another school that do not want their kids to go to school with, I would say, kids of not probably their preference, economics, social economics, or culture.
	So I don't want my taxpayers' money going into charter school.
	I went to public school my entire life and went through all my education and my master's degree in a public institution or public school.
	So if you want your child to go to a charter or private school, you need to pay for it.
	But the reason why I called was the Department of Education do not need to send this back down to the state.
	I grew up in Compton, California, and the Department of Education, when the money was at the state level back in the day, there were a lot of schools that did not get those money.
	They had lead in their schools, mold on their walls.
	It was violence in the schools.
	And all the money went to the rich people.
	We all know, because lottery now supposed money supposed to go to schools, and most of that money is placed towards the rich people.
	Also, I have two grandchildren that are in school, elementary level, college level, and I have a young kid that is going to a junior college, a public junior college, trying to be a nurse right now.
	So do not do away with the public education because if you do, you're going to harm a lot of people.
	I've seen it before.
	I, me, as an adult, have student loans.
	I am paying those student loans and they're starting to come after us now.
	And here it is, you're doing away with the Department of Education.
	So, sir, I think you may want to rethink your thought.
	possibly go live in a neighborhood for about a year to see if your kids would be able to make it in some of these places where the Department of Education need to be forefront.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And parents, Sean, we'll get a response from our guests.
unidentified		Yeah.
		No, look, Sean's right that there are some places in this country where we need dramatic improvements in our public schools.
		My wife actually taught in Compton a long time ago, and she shares a lot of those same kinds of stories.
		Now, look, charter schools, they are public.
		You can look it up.
		They're open to everybody.
		Okay.
		And in places like Compton, charter schools can provide an option when we are struggling to improve traditional public schools.
		I'm sitting here in Washington, D.C. right now.
		This was a school system that was for a long time considered one of the worst in the country.
		But then charter schools came on the scene.
		Now about half of the kids go to charters.
		Overwhelmingly, those are the kids who are the poorest kids in the district that go to charter schools, kids of color, and they are getting great results.
		And the traditional public school system, partly because of that competition from charter schools, started to improve, got better and better.
		And now Washington, D.C.'s public school system is one of the best in the country in terms of urban school systems.
		So this can all work well together.
		We need to focus on making sure the kids are getting the services they need, getting the results that they need.
		And charter schools are a part of that solution.
		Look, I sent my own kids to public schools.
		I went to public schools.
		The public schools are going to be here 100 years from now.
		They're not going away.
		The question is, how do we make them excellent and not just have these pockets of excellence that for the most part rich people buy into, but that we have excellence everywhere.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, do you have any response for Sean in her comments?
unidentified		Yeah, I appreciate the caller.
		You know, I'm well aware that charter schools are supposed to be public schools, but there's also private and for-profit charter schools.
		But again, as a Floridian, I've seen the reality of it.
		You know, there's been inconsistence for performance.
		There is no data that says charter schools are better than public schools.
		It's completely inconsistent.
		Some succeed, but some are underperforming, and some of them close.
		I can tell you right here in our community, it cost our district hundreds of thousands of dollars to close a school that was failing our kids for three years.
		And the reason it took that long and that much money was because our state made the rules for the charter school system different than the public schools.
		So it's really, really important to remember that.
		That's your taxpayer money.
		You know, many of our private and charter schools in the state of Florida aren't even assessed.
		We don't even have data on whether or not they're effective.
		So it's dangerous to just simply assume that they are.
		And unlike our public schools, many of our voucher schools and our charter schools, our quote-unquote public charter schools, pick their students and they are not supposed to, but they absolutely do.
		Our state testing starts at the third grade.
		And I can tell you there are families after families who get a call from administration in those schools in the second grade who face pressure that maybe they're not the best fit for their kids.
		And the state does nothing about it.
		So it's instance like these that reminds me and it makes me worry when there's no federal oversight, who's going to do the right thing, who's going to step in and ensure that these quote-unquote public schools are actually serving the public.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, you're joining us from Florida.
		I'm sitting across the table from Michael.
		He was shaking his head while you were responding.
		So I want to give him a chance to respond to what you just said.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Again, very clear research that urban charter schools outperform traditional public schools.
		Now, where Jennifer's right is on the private school side, there's been some big studies showing that those voucher programs are actually less effective than traditional public schools.
		So that's an important difference.
		In my opinion, that's because we do a good job holding charter schools accountable.
		They can close if they're not getting results.
		And we don't do enough to hold those voucher schools accountable.
		In many cases, we don't even have the test scores to know if they're performing well or not.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Jennifer, I'll also give you a chance to respond to Michael again.
unidentified		Great.
		So one of the really important things that Michael said was he's using examples from urban communities.
		And again, that's not foolproof.
		It's just a specific example.
		But when you look at rural community states like Indiana and Louisiana, those students are falling behind.
		And there's other states who have had voucher expansions, charter school expansions blowing up, like Nebraska and Kentucky and Colorado.
		And those states and those voters have rejected continued expansion because they know it's not working and it's not serving their students.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll hear from Carolyn in Kansas, Line 4 Educators.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Carolyn.
unidentified		Well, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Carolyn.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I was going to comment on several things.
		And I'm a retired teacher and also a mother and a grandmother.
		And also previously, I was a coach.
		And I've served on a lot of different committees in the different school systems.
		Also, I attended both private and public schools.
		I wanted to comment about technology versus textbooks.
		There is a disconnect when the home does not have direct books, like with textbooks, so that they can do help the students when they come home with homework.
		And also, I wanted to talk about community schools that are smaller in size and also classroom size, because as a teacher, we all know that classroom size is a great indicator of how students can perform.
		Small schools do offer opportunities for multi-level classrooms and also multi-level tutoring amongst the students, and there's a greater sense of connection to the community and to the school itself.
		Also, schools are funded in Kansas.
		We have general funds and capital outlays.
		Those communities that have greater funds through property taxes, we have greater capital outlay.
		We do have better structures, technology, et cetera.
		Schools, teachers are paid from the general fund.
		And so when you talk about increasing assets to the classroom, it's not just necessarily teacher income, but also the resources that teachers need, not just technology, because technology comes out of capital outlay.
		So anyways, I want to call and just thank you for your guest and for your show.
		I love it.
		And I really do want to promote small class size and greater pay for teachers.
		Thank you very much.
		Jennifer, we'll have you respond to Carolyn first.
		Yeah, I completely agree with Carolyn.
		You know, as Florida had more and more teacher vacancies, as our class sizes got larger and larger, again, we are number one in the country for overcrowded classrooms.
		That's when we started to see our scores go down.
		And any educator understands that, right?
		You have less time to attend to our students with one-on-one intervention services when your class size gets larger.
		I think it is important for people to remember, you know, we need to ensure that we have teachers in front of our classroom.
		We need to pay them so that they want to stay there, that they've ever tempted to even join this career in this profession.
		And it's not always just about technology, but sometimes that's really critical and important too, right?
		We need to make sure that there aren't these diverse gaps between communities so that every single child has access to an equitable education.
		Yeah, look, totally get it that as a parent, understand the desire for small classes.
		I will say though, in most places, Florida might be an anomaly because it's been growing so fast, but in most parts of the country, class sizes have gotten smaller and smaller over time.
		In fact, if we had kept class sizes where they used to be, say 25, 30 years ago, we would now be able to pay most teachers six-figure salaries, right?
		We keep choosing smaller class sizes over higher teacher pay, and we keep choosing to hire more non-teachers, a lot of staff aides and instructional coaches, instead of paying teachers more.
		So, you know, we've got to decide whether we're making those right decisions or not, especially at a time when student enrollment is declining, the number of kids coming into our school is going down.
		We've got to make good use of the money that we've got from the taxpayers, and that sometimes means making some tough trade-offs.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Mary in Wisconsin, Line for Parents.
unidentified		Hi, Mary.
		Good morning.
		I think we need to change it back to old math, which is repetition, formulas, getting the number at the correct way of going about it, not thinking about it.
		Phonics, they don't teach phonics very long in schools.
		And I don't know if some of the schools don't teach it at all.
		They need to take away computers because kids don't work as a group.
		They don't have a common goal anymore.
		And it's also less work for the teachers to work, have kids work on a computer so they don't have to discuss things.
		And also, kids don't work in a group because, like I said, it's work.
		And also, they're going to say, this one boy is being bullied.
		Those kids that worked in that group with that one boy said, well, say, stay away from him.
		He's a good kid.
		They don't have kids working together.
		And then they don't, in first grade, it's crazy that they were having my one-year-old teach kids to read in school.
		We had to pull her out.
		We moved her to a different school.
		And then my other child, my middle child, they were having her try.
		They tried to have her teach kids how to do math because she, well, she's a physician now, but she's bright.
		But you know what?
		It's repetition.
		And Rebecca said to her, wait a minute, that's your job.
		I'm not the teacher.
		And, you know, really, the teachers do take advantage of kids.
		And it's very scary.
		There's not all good teachers in the world.
		And then also, you know, there's this talk about the teacher's salaries.
		You know, what about what other profession has weekends, holidays, and all summers off?
		Why should they be getting paid someone who's working all year round and on every other weekend?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Mary, we'll get a response from our guest.
unidentified		Yeah, let me start with, you know, the very important point about phonics that Mary said.
		You know, phonics is a part of at the very early stage, you know, kindergarten, first, second grade, teaching kids how to sound out the letters and words.
		We had this crazy period in time in American history where for strange reasons, we decided that kids did not need phonics, even though the evidence was very clear that that's an essential part of learning to read.
		There's now been this movement around what's called the science of reading to try to go back and make sure that we're doing this.
		And the good news is a bunch of states are making progress on that.
		Mississippi, which has been one of the leading states on that front, has seen dramatic gains in student achievement, even though it's the poorest state in the country.
		And so now a bunch of other states are trying to do the same.
		So that's encouraging.
		I agree.
		We need to do something similar in math, that especially in those early, early years, kids need to know their math facts, you know, forwards and backwards.
		And then we can proceed from there and build on those foundations.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, your response for Mary?
unidentified		I have to say, in defense of educators all across America, it is so frustrating.
		Every two to three years, there's a different play that's put in front of us, new training that's put in front of us.
		And it always goes back and forth, back and forth from one idea to the other.
		It is important for us to use data to drive decisions about what programs are effective for our students.
		And unfortunately, with the cuts that we're making at the Department of Education, we're going to be using that really critical information and research and data to decide what's best for our kids.
		So, you know, I agree wholeheartedly it's important.
		I think I also have to be in defense of our teachers.
		You know, the real issue here isn't bad teachers.
		The issue is we have a lack of competitive pay in most of our states across this nation.
		And we won't have talented teachers who want to stay in this profession if that continues.
		We need to invest in our teachers.
		We need to make sure that we're not demonizing them.
		They are our partner for our kids.
		They are one of the most important people when they walk inside of that building.
		And it's also important for us to remember that our schools are also struggling because of systemic changes, right?
		We have poverty.
		We have outdated facilities.
		And privatization of that is not going to fix that problem.
		We need to fully fund our public education system.
		We need to ensure we're providing mental health supports, that we have modernized curriculums, and we have to have high quality learning environments for all.
		So it's important for our kids to be ready for that 21st century, for the, you know, the world economy to be competitive all across globally.
		And so we can't take things like technology out of the picture.
		So we need to make sure that we're using them.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Jeff in Florida, line for parents.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Jeff.
unidentified		Hi, can you guys hear me okay?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead, Jeff.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		I definitely agree with Jennifer.
		I've been in Florida for 25 years, and we have a huge surplus.
		And unfortunately, our police and our teachers, fire departments, we have the money.
		They're just not paying them.
		We have a surplus, and I think the teachers should make more money.
		Some of our schools for years, they don't even have air conditioning here in the free state of Florida.
		It's like a third world country sometimes down here.
		And I see Jennifer nodding her head, and she's agreeing.
		And I wish the other fella did too, but that's what the show is all about.
		But we certainly got some serious problems down here in Florida.
		And we have a tremendous surplus where we could attract people instead of just paying them in sunshine.
		Thank you for your time.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, we'll have you respond to Jeff first.
unidentified		Yeah, thank you so much for bringing up that point.
		When I started as an educator 10 years ago here in the state of Florida, I made $38,000 with a master's degree.
		And the only reason it increased was when our governor made a political play to increase the starting teacher's salary.
		And suddenly educators who were working 10 to 15 years in the state were making the same amount as a brand new college graduate.
		And not much has changed since then.
		So thank you for bringing that up.
		And there's plenty of money to fund our schools and to fund our teachers.
		Again, an example in Florida, we made a huge expansion to vouchers, booming building of charter schools in this state.
		And we gave almost $4 billion last year because of that.
		And that's $4 billion we could have invested in our public schools and our educators.
		Yeah, look, I do agree with Jeff that it's crazy.
		If you've got schools down in Florida without air conditioning, and if you've got the money and you're not paying teachers, this is what we keep coming back to, right?
		We started this conversation with talking about cuts and this effort to try to make the government more efficient.
		We can debate whether we think Elon Musk and Donald Trump are serious about that.
		But I don't think there's any doubt that we need to bring that same mindset into our school system.
		We are spending, again, close to a trillion dollars on our schools.
		That is more than we spend on defense every year, okay?
		And so when you look and you do find places, Jennifer's right, Jeff's right, where teachers aren't getting paid very well, where there's no air conditioning, where there's problems, where there's mold, we've got to ask ourselves, what is going on?
		Where is the money going?
		How can we make it more efficient?
		You know, where my kids go to school, just a few miles from here, Montgomery County, Maryland, there are 2,700 people working in the central office.
		That's more people now than work at the U.S. Department of Education.
		That's one school system, right?
		So that's the kind of place where you might look at that and say, okay, maybe we don't need quite so many administrators and we can drive more of that money into the classroom.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Joan in Atlanta, Georgia, Line for Educators.
unidentified		Hi, Joan.
		Hi, how are you?
		I'm a little concerned about the elimination of the Department of Education.
		More from a civil rights standpoint.
		I'm retired and I went through the school system in the 50s and 60s as well as the 70s and 80s for higher education.
		My greatest concern is the enforcement of, You know, being here in Georgia, what would happen to the minority students that are going to certain schools and how they may be placed in segregation again,
		as opposed to what the federal government enforces right now in terms of equal opportunity for all students, as well as students that have disabilities and emotional challenges.
		Also, I just think that it's important that there be a balance.
		I don't think that anything should be eliminated, but this gentleman who was saying about that we give too much money for all these other things and there should be larger classroom settings so that we can give teachers more money or that we bring in other people who are not educators but that are age.
		All of those things are necessary in this school system.
		But I do believe that there needs to be a balance and right now eliminating everything I don't think is the right way to go.
		Yeah, look, I agree with Joan that this is the big question.
		And Jennifer mentioned this earlier as well, is this question around civil rights.
		That is definitely an important federal role.
		Nobody else can play that.
		The U.S. Department of Education has a mission that's Office for Civil Rights to enforce the anti-discrimination laws that are on the books.
		And that does, as Joan said, goes back to the 50s and 60s and the desegregation efforts.
		Now, the problem recently is that both Democratic and Republican administrations have been using the Office for Civil Rights, been weaponizing that office to fight these various culture wars, right?
		And we see the Trump administration trying to do it right now, where they say we're going to use the Office for Civil Rights to try to stamp out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
		I don't think a lot of us think that's a great idea.
		In the same way that the Obama administration, the Biden administration, they were trying to use it on other culture war issues.
		So for example, launching investigations of schools to see whether they were disciplining kids too much, even if there was no evidence that the discipline was being done in a discriminatory way.
		So now the question is, do we have enough civil rights enforcement people to respond to specific complaints?
		If somebody feels like they've been discriminated against, they can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights.
		And this is going to be the question.
		Are there enough people now to respond to those complaints and those concerns?
		I think if we get the Office for Civil Rights back to its mission, which is to respond to those specific concerns about discrimination, we'll be in a better place than we've been recently.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer, would you like to respond?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Oh, I have to push back on the fact that the Obama administration was weaponizing the Office of Civil Rights when they started inquiring about disciplinary disproportions.
		Again, I can speak from example.
		My own district, it is wildly disproportionate the way that we discipline students of color versus our white students.
		And we do absolutely nothing about it.
		I'll give you the most specific data point, and it's really easy to consume, but there's way more and much worse.
		We have alternative learning centers for students who have faced expulsion.
		And our population of African-American students sits at about 13 to 14 percent here in Brevard County.
		And 50% of the students that are in our alternative learning centers are African American, yet they aren't making 50% of the infractions in our district.
		This is happening in communities all across the United States of America, and it is wrong, and it absolutely should be assessed because the reality is, is that the State Department of Education is doing absolutely nothing about it.
		They are okay with segregation.
		And it's uncomfortable to say, and it sounds like an alarmist theory, but it's true.
		And we need to make sure that we're protecting these things because we have states that have history of ignoring the civil rights of our people.
		And that is absolutely going to happen again the more and more we eliminate from the federal department of education.
		We have one last call, time for one more call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		It'll be Drew in Minnesota Line for Educators.
unidentified		Hi, Drew.
		Hey, how's it going?
		I appreciate you, Miss Jennifer and Mr. Michael, and the host, I got your name.
		But I appreciate y'all for having this conversation.
		I just wanted to chime in for some important thing.
		None is more important, obviously, no, than our youth and our kids.
		So there's no greater investment than our children.
		I'm an educator myself.
		I've been working with the babies for the last, what, 16 years as a person who had a very traumatic experience myself as a child.
		So obviously this, when we're talking about education, you know, there is no more important conversation than what we're talking about.
		And so for me, it's a very interesting thing that we're talking about these things.
		So when we're talking about investing and how we look at how kids see themselves in the world, when we're talking about the examples that are set for them in the budget, nothing can be more important.
		And so the money is printed.
		You know, the money is made.
		That's why I tell the kids, the guns are made.
		All the stuff that we do is made.
		The examples that are put in front of them, though, is what Ms. Jennifer's talking about.
		Mr. Mike, you know, I see that he understands that, but I don't think he really understands that in terms of what is happening in terms of the people that are leading these conversations.
		What is Ms. Jennifer is talking about, what I understand is what happened.
		And what many people understand is some people are calling and people are understanding.
		The examples put in front of people in the community, there's no replacement for the examples in your community, in your home, in the lives that we lead.
		And so educators serve a critical part.
		And so what happens in America in regard to is the family ties, as we know, we think they say, what?
		It takes a village to raise a child.
		So we partner with with parents, with brothers and sisters, with uncles and other.
		We have grandparents that come pick up kids.
		We have people in the community.
		We say we do sports teams.
		We come visit.
		I go with the sports games.
		I meet various people to help support to make sure that the education that I give is a wraparound experience.
		So I change the trajectory of these kids because, like Mrs. Jennifer talking about, we live with kids who have the word that many people are not talking about is a traumatic word.
		We talk about poverty, the word that they're trying to take away in terms of the historical.
		Now, once again, I'm African-American word that they don't want us to use.
		All these buzzwords that people don't want us to use, but these are realities that we're talking about.
		And so they don't want us to use these words that are realities that take that are addressing the realities that change the trajectory of people.
		So once again, we can print all the money we want.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Drew, we get your point.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We're a little short on time, so we'll get a response from our guests.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Look, I think what Drew's referring to is some of the Trump administration's efforts to stamp out diversity, equity, and inclusion.
		Look, I'm not a fan of that coming from Washington.
		I don't think that's the right role for the federal government.
		I think these sorts of issues about how do we teach about America's history and about race and racism, we should make those decisions locally.
		Those are, you know, those are difficult decisions, and we should allow local communities to figure them out.
		And by the way, I really appreciate Drew's service and all the teachers out there and coaches and other staff.
		I mean, this is hard.
		This is hard work.
		Our kids are really struggling five years after the pandemic.
		And I know people are working hard out there.
		And I think we should do more to appreciate them.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Jennifer, give you the last minute or so.
unidentified		Yeah, civil rights are not local decisions.
		History is not a local decision.
		Public schools are meant to teach facts.
		And, you know, there are plenty of states that have been using materials that say the most egregious things.
		In Florida, we have schools that say things like dinosaurs live with humans.
		We teach that slavery was a benefit to enslaved people, that it wasn't that bad.
		States like Texas have removed Martin Luther King Jr. from history lessons, yet they also have schools that are teaching that the KKK was a morally necessary entity.
		This is real stuff that's happening here.
		This cannot be a conversation that the states can make decisions about.
		These are facts.
		And if we really cared about things like parental choice about where their kids can go and freedom, then we shouldn't be banning books and censoring our teachers and forcing our kids to learn fake history because we want it to be a local decision.
		That's not freedom.
		That is the opposite.
		It's government overreach.
		And quite frankly, it's taxpayer-funded indoctrination and discrimination.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest, Jennifer Jenkins, founder and chair of Educated We Stand.
		You can find their work online at educatedwestand.com and Michael Petrilli.
		He is the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
		You can find them online at FordhamInstitute.org.
		Jennifer and Michael, thank you both for being here today.
unidentified		Great.
unidentified		Thanks for having us.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Still ahead on Washington Journal: a conversation about how President Trump's tariffs policy is impacting the nation's farmers with Mike Strands from the National Farmers Union.
		But first, it's open form.
		You can start calling in now the lines: Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
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		the tucson festival of books live all weekend beginning at 1 p.m eastern on c-span 2.
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		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We are in open forum for the next 25 minutes or so.
		If there's a public policy or topic you'd like to talk about, you can go ahead and call in the lines again.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We will start with Robert in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, line for independence.
		Hi, Robert.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Robert.
unidentified		Hey, thank you very much.
		You know, I've been on hold for some time, and I gotta tell you, it's a little frustrating to listen to another conversation about education in this country that minimizes the role that the federal government plays in what a cabinet little environment provides in terms of a guardrail to ensure people's safety and adherence to the rule of law.
		I find it extremely ironic, you know, to hear somebody talk about things like charter schools and where the money goes, putting things back to the states when we're talking about the person who's in charge of that environment right now being the same person to try to tell us that Hulk Hogan was a real American.
		You know, at this point in time, you know, I find it ironic again that the kind of people who talk about things like voucher programs as if they're an option or talk about charter schools as if they're able to be correctly accessed.
		They're pushing KFAB.
		This is Connie talk.
		It's ironic that Linda McMahon is the person who's in charge right now because their job is to abdicate responsibility that is fully on the federal government.
		It's to confuse people and make them subscribe to an alternate version of reality.
		The simple fact is this gentleman who was on before, Michael, you know, he can say whatever he'd like to, but the reality is that charter schools are not assessed the same way the public schools are.
		And things like school vouchers have frankly blown a huge hole in the education budgets in the state budgets of most places that have enacted them.
		I think Arizona is a fine example.
		But ask yourself this.
		If a state like Arizona, with a conservative governor like Kerry Leake, was able to fully fund the school voucher program that put a hole in the budget to the tune of nearly a billion dollars, then why wasn't that money able to be spent to fully fund the public schools to begin with?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Robert in Pennsylvania.
		Valerie in Florida, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Valerie.
unidentified		Hi.
		Your last guest, Jennifer, really has my feathers ruffled.
		I'm from Florida, and I have never seen such an improvement in the educational system.
		The fact USA had Florida One of the top 10 in the nation as far as education.
		And she was doing nothing but putting down education.
		My two grandsons go to public school in Flagler County.
		They have a wonderful school system.
		They teach civics.
		It's mandatory.
		They also teach personal finance.
		Now, this all has to do with local government.
		And second of all, she was downplaying the fact that there were many shutdowns, the COVID thing going on in Florida and all over the nation.
		But in Florida, we opened our schools almost immediately.
		And therefore, there wasn't any problem with the continuation of education like there is that there was through the nation.
		And that whole remote program was ridiculous.
		It caused so many students to fall way behind.
		And she never mentioned once about the fact that she's probably concerned about unions more than she is anything else.
		And there are opportunities for charter schools here, too.
		But because the public school is so good that my daughter decides to send her kids to any charter school.
		That's Valerie in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Diane in Syracuse, New York, Lion for Independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Diane.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I've got to say that I am finally a proud American.
		But I have my reservations about what's going on because the hatred and conduct and speech unbecoming and people getting after other people.
		My father, Chief Master Sergeant, FAA, Air National Guard Reserve, World War II veteran, Korea veteran, his parents came over from Czechoslovakia, World War I, because his family and his people were being decimated.
		They had a sponsor.
		They had a driving business, and they came here and they were put down because they couldn't speak English.
		When I grew up in Utah, my father Catholic, my mother Mormon, I was put down because my father was Catholic.
		If you don't have a certain standing, or if you say you're one way or another way, you're put down.
		And I am just appalled.
		It's deplorable how people talk about other people.
		And I refuse to let anybody steal my patriotism again.
		If people do not like what's going on, they need to call up and they need to talk with civility.
		And they do not need to blame one person or the other because we're all involved.
		And I'm just disgusted with Democrats.
		I will never forget.
		I will never forgive.
		And I will never vote for them again.
		And people need to know that, you know, you're just spreading hate.
		Who among you decided that you could spread hate?
		Hate, hate, hate?
		I am appalled.
		Thank you.
		That's Diane in New York.
		Deborah in Houston, Texas, Lion for Democrats.
		Hi, Deborah.
		Hello.
		Good morning.
		I just have two things I need to address.
		I see the show and I hear a lot of people who are on Social Security and pensions calling in.
		They're not in the workforce anymore, so I'm not sure if they're even in tune of what's going on.
		I'm 65.
		I take my Social Security.
		However, I still work, so I'm in tune of what's going on.
		These people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s like myself, they need their jobs and to say to take away their jobs and government and all that.
		You know, hey, just back up because you guys are not in the workforce anymore.
		You don't know what's going on.
		And secondly, for those who voted for Trump, this is what's happening.
		I don't want to say this is what you get because he voted.
		I mean, he's recommendations before he was president, he didn't run on anything, only the prices of groceries is going to go down, which haven't, and immigration, which hasn't changed prior to Biden.
		Nothing has changed.
		So it's unfortunate that this is happening, but there was a forewarning, and that's all I have to say.
		I appreciate you.
		That's Deborah in Houston, Texas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Also in Houston, Texas is Brent, line for Republicans.
unidentified		Good morning, Brent.
		Yeah.
		Yeah, hi.
		My thing is, everybody's all over the place with everything.
		The most important thing that I personally think needs to be done is the infrastructure: the roads, the lights, and the water.
		If we don't have those three things, we can't do anything or go anywhere.
		And also, they take too long.
		It's too much bureaucracy.
		We can do all these other things for this country, but if you can't get anywhere, the lights are out and the water's not flowing.
		How is anybody going to do anything?
		So I'm just kind of stuck in this.
		Why are these road projects taking too long?
		Everybody's taking too long.
		It shouldn't take as long.
		But everything that needs to be done, if we do those three things first, everything else will be better.
		That's all.
		That's Brent in Texas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Nelson in Wyoming, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Nelson.
unidentified		Hello.
		I'm an independent voter, and I'm a Vietnam veteran.
		My public school prepared me very well for everything that I was doing.
		Go ahead, Nelson.
		My public school prepared me well to be a soldier in Vietnam, and I was assigned according to the needs of the Army.
		I wanted to be a heavy equipment operator, and they assigned me to Bridge special as a bridge specialist in the Corps of Engineers.
		I think that we'll leave it there, Nelson.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Nelson was calling from Wyoming, also from Wyoming.
		Former Senator Alan K. Simpson from the Washington Post, the Wyoming Republican who served three controversy-rich terms in the U.S. Senate, a tenure animated by a feistiness that was as earthy as it could be intemperate, and who later returned to the national stage as a leading deficit hawk, died March 14th in Cody, Wyoming.
		He was 93 years old.
		The story says that Mr. Simpson had been struggling to recover from a broken hip in December, said a statement from his family, his health problems were complicated by lingering issues from frostbite to his left foot about five years ago.
		The statement added, Mr. Simpson, who was first elected in 1978, served 10 years as the GOP whip, had an unrivaled talent for levying dry policy discussions with evocative aphorisms.
		Don't squat with your spurs on was one favorite pushing in 1986 immigration bill through a reluctant Congress.
		His major legislative accomplishment was like giving dry birth to a porcupine.
		We'll go back to your calls.
		It's Jason in Richmond, Virginia, line four, Democrats.
unidentified		Hi, Jason.
		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just want to kind of highlight a couple things of type hypocrisy.
		First of all, when they were talking about DEI hires, and I'm supportive of, you know, veterans and everything, but if you really look at history, the first original DEI hires were actually veterans because anyone knows if you ever fill out a job application, it always asks if you were a veteran.
		So they kind of give you preferential treatment, whether it's merited or not, just on account if you were a veteran on applications.
		And, you know, that's fine.
		But I know a lot of veterans that are for Trump that hate DEI policies, but they don't realize that, hey, it applies to you too.
		And secondly, the Republicans always play this game of you create a problem, but then you come in to fix it, but people forget that you created it in the first place.
		It all started, you know, 40 years ago or 40-some years ago with Reagan.
		If most people remember, his policies with Wall Street are what's created now to where all the jobs got offshore to China, all the manufacturing jobs and everything.
		So it's like you're not really catering.
		I got this all from a public education that if you remembered all these things, that now they're pretending to be the hero of bringing the jobs back.
		And the only way this works, and this is what all your listeners understand, is if you look up history and look up the Smoot Tariff Act, it didn't work out.
		It caused the depression.
		And so the only way it works, if you bring the jobs back to America, you have to impose a windfall tax on the company so they don't raise the prices so that everything else goes sky high.
		So, and they're not going to do that.
		So they're not telling you the truth.
		Like I said, the Republicans, they created this, and then they're trying to be the hero for some reason.
		And it's not going to work out unless you enact certain things.
		And most educated people know this.
		And they know this too.
		But that's where I want to get at.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Jason in Virginia.
		This headline in Politico, Trump calls his opponent scum and lawbreakers and bellicose speech at the Justice Department.
		It was yesterday that President Trump spoke to employees there.
		Here is some of his remarks.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party.
unidentified		And in my opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		What they do is illegal.
		It makes no difference how big a victory I had.
		I can have the biggest victory in history.
		It makes no difference what kind of a failure the other side has.
		These people are going to go after me.
		And I said it during the other night, during the big speech on Tuesday night.
		I said about Democrats.
		And I don't like that.
		I have great respect, by the way, for what Schumer did today.
		He went out and he said that they have to vote with the Republicans because it's the right thing to do.
		I couldn't believe what I heard.
		But, you know, I think he's going to get some credit for it.
unidentified		I think, let's see what happens tonight with the big vote as he comes.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		But these networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative.
		And it has to stop.
		It has to be illegal.
		It's influencing judges.
unidentified		And it's really changing law.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And it just cannot be legal.
		I don't believe it's legal.
		And they do it in total coordination with each other.
		And everything we do, we're restoring law, restoring order, and restoring public safety in America.
		That's what we want to do.
		And we're bringing honor and integrity and accountability back to the highest levels of the FBI, DOJ, and throughout our government.
		We're bringing our country back faster than anyone ever thought possible.
		We're working so hard at doing it.
		And we want fairness in the courts.
		The courts are a big factor.
		The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor.
		We have to have honest elections.
		We have to have borders.
		And we have to have courts and law that's fair.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Also, yesterday, House Judiciary Ranking Member Jamie Raskin responded to some of President Trump's claims made during his DOJ speech.
		It was at a press conference outside the Department of Justice.
		Here are some of his remarks.
unidentified		The tirade we just witnessed is one more grim landmark in the spreading authoritarianism of this administration, and it is a brand new embarrassment to the once revered Department of Justice.
		It's fascinating that the president used the word BS to describe the case against him, which resulted in dozens of criminal convictions, because that was the same word that his own Attorney General, William Barr, used to describe his deranged claim that he had won the 2020 presidential election when Joe Biden beat him by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.
		That was the word that Attorney General Barr, even one of his greatest defenders, used to describe his delusional claims about how there was election fraud and election irregularities.
		No other president in American history has stood at the Department of Justice to proclaim an agenda of criminal prosecution and retaliation against his political foes.
		This thoroughly partisan and delusional diatribe was a staggering violation of the traditional boundary between independent criminal law enforcement and presidential political power.
		The speak we just witnessed is a desecration of the essential values of the story department in every way.
		It's an insult to the thousands of professional lawyers who go to work at the Department of Justice every day to enforce the rule of law, not the personal vendettas and partisan games of a politician.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You can find both of those events on the C-SPAN website if you'd like to watch them in their entirety.
		We'll go back to your calls.
		Roy in Palm Beach, Florida, Palm Beach, Florida, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Roy.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Hey, good to hear from you all again.
		I watch you guys every boarding.
		And to the completion of what I've been hearing on part of what Trump has to say, and now I'm watching this Jamie Rashkin.
		I'm glad you happened to bring that up right before my call.
		But anyway, I want to go back to public education, you know, without these unruly things that have taken with that peanut farmer when he became president.
		You know, I'm talking about Carter, right?
		What he did, bring him back to the Education Department, the union.
		I mean, people are out of control.
		But my point that I want to make, I'm 70 years old.
		I began the first grade in 1960, okay?
		And by the time I got to the third grade, 1963, I was able to do my multiplication.
		I was reading, actually, because I'm pretty intelligent.
		I'm no genius, but, you know, I was learning to read in the third grade on about a sixth grade level.
		Okay, that's what took place many, many years before that peanut farmer came up with the, you know, Department of Education.
		Them people are radical.
		As I watched them yesterday with Maisie O'Rono getting up there, you know how she is.
		She's a complete communist.
		But anyway, the point I want to get to you is, you know, the way the education system was run during the days I was going to school.
		Thank God I made it through school until Jimmy Carter came along in the 70s to create Department of Education.
		And look where that's gotten us.
		That is totally out of line.
		He's destroyed our education system.
		That was Roy in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Monica, North Carolina, line for Democrats.
unidentified		Hi, Monica.
		Good morning.
		Accolade to the gentleman just before me.
		He is so correct about the Department of Education.
		So I wanted to tell him that I'm a blue-blood Democrat all my life.
		And this is the first time I had to vote for Trump.
		And regretfully, I had to do it because our party has gone so off the rails.
		And he's correct, that gentleman before me about Jamie Raskin.
		Jimmy Raskin says, bow out, lay low, stop his diatribe.
		His wife alone had to step down from running for Treasury Department because she was complicit in, what's it called, the FISA court.
		So she's about, what I'm calling about is I want to apologize for all of our Democrats.
		We're good Democrats.
		We've got good Democrats out there.
		But we're taken over by these fools that say they're about love and they're full of hate.
		The other day, I'm a retired federal worker.
		I know there's a lot of fraud, waste, and thievery in the federal government.
		It needs to be cut back on all these agencies.
		And the other day, my friends, retired, were all unionized, retired federal workers, wanted to go and raise hell at that poor gentleman that represents our district.
		I said, no, I'm not going there.
		And we're all Democrats.
		I'm not going there to raise hell and do all kinds of debate.
		You know, I wanted to cause all kinds of trouble for this man that was having a town hall in Asheville.
		And I saw it the other day on C-SPAN, and it broke my heart.
		Thank you for your time, and you have a blessed day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Monica in North Carolina, and she was talking about the town hall that Representative Edwards had down there.
		You can also find that on our website if you'd like to watch it.
		Our last call for this first segment is Bruce in North Dakota, Line for Independence.
		Hi, Bruce.
		Bruce, are you there?
unidentified		Hello.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Bruce.
		Go ahead.
		You're on.
unidentified		Hey, I'm a long-time caller, first-time caller, you know, huh?
unidentified		I just wanted to say, all right, that is our open forum segment.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Still ahead, we will be joined by Mike Strands from the National Farmers Union to talk about how President Trump's tariff policy is impacting the nation's farmers and agriculture producers.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Next week, C-SPAN continues our new Members of Congress series, where we speak with Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they ran for office.
		On Monday, at 9:30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Arizona Democrat Yasemin Ansari, the Democratic freshman-class president.
		I am the proud daughter of two Iranian immigrants.
		So my parents came here in the 70s.
		My dad came to go study civil engineering at the University of Oregon, always with the intention of going back home.
		My mom has a little bit different of a story.
		When the revolution hit Iran in 1979, they had grown up in a monarchy in Iran, but with more freedoms.
		A theocratic regime, the Islamic Republic, took over, and my mom's family was at risk.
		Her father was imprisoned for supporting the prior government and being anti-the new regime.
		And so she fled Iran by herself and was able to come to the United States.
		Watch new members of Congress all next week, starting at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
		And on Friday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern, join us on C-SPAN 2 for a special 24-hour marathon featuring more than 60 of our exclusive interviews with the newest members of the 119th Congress.
		All weekend, C-SPAN's Book TV will be live from the Tucson Festival of Books.
		You'll see discussions on a variety of topics, including America's changing political landscape and global competition for natural resources, plus viewer call-ins with some of your favorite authors.
		Beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern, today's highlights include Juan Williams, Jason DeLeon, Kate Conger, and Rosanna Xiao.
		And then on Sunday at 1 p.m. Eastern, we'll feature authors Jonathan Turley, Amanda Becker, Clay Risen, and Paola Ramos.
		The Tucson Festival of Books, live all weekend beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2.
		Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you.
		Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA.
		Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen.
		And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics.
		Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss the impact of President Trump's tariffs on farmers and the agriculture industry is Mike Strands.
		He's the Vice President of Advocacy for the National Farmers Union.
		Mike, thank you so much for being here this morning.
unidentified		Glad to be with you, Tammy.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll start with an easy question.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Tell us about your organization, who you represent, and who you work with.
unidentified		Certainly.
		National Farmers Union is an organization of family farmers and ranchers from across the country.
		We've got about 220,000 members, and we represent members who are very much family operations.
		We just had a national convention this last week in Oklahoma City.
		About 500 members attended, and there was a lot of grassroots policy discussion and debate, as there always is at farmers union get-togethers.
		And with a lot of that debate came a lot of uncertainty about what's coming up in the next few weeks and months, and that was reflected in some of the priorities that were adopted.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So on that topic, before we get into tariffs specifically, how would you overall describe the current state of the agricultural industry?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What do your members see as the biggest challenge?
unidentified		Yeah, so the agriculture economy right now is faltering.
		There's some warning signs that are flashing on the farm dashboard, so to speak.
		And we've got a lot of questions about how things are going to go this year.
		Farmers are getting ready in a lot of parts of the country to put crops in the ground.
		And there's some uncertainty about tariffs.
		There's uncertainty about what the next farm bill is going to look like.
		And there's continued pressure from corporate monopolies across the agriculture sector.
		And those priorities were reflected in some of the grassroots debate that took place in Oklahoma City this week.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And when people hear about tariffs and the impact, they may think about the prices that they are seeing at the grocery store, but there is more to it than that.
		When we talk about the agriculture industry, tell our audience what else is involved.
		What other areas and aspects are we talking about?
unidentified		Yeah, the impact of tariffs hits everybody, and we've seen how that's happened for consumers and at the grocery store, but it certainly takes a place with farmers as well.
		Individual farmers are price takers, not price makers.
		They don't have enough individual, independent input into what the market is.
		They can't set their prices more often than not.
		They can't decide how much they're going to sell their commodity crops for.
		They can't decide how much they're going to buy their inputs for.
		So those sorts of market disparities where they don't have enough power in the market to dictate that means they're very susceptible to price changes like we've seen with tariffs.
		And we've seen how this works.
		Tariffs hurt farmers like we saw in 2018 and 2019 during the last go-round on this.
		And $27 billion in losses to agricultural sales because of those disputes with China and other trading partners made a big impact on farmers' livelihoods.
		And things aren't looking any better this year than they were in 2018 or 2019.
		And we've got less room to work with when there's those sorts of disruptions.
		So we feel it on the farm too.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And there has been a lot of talk.
		We're hearing tariffs, and sometimes it goes back and forth in the course of one day on where tariffs stand and who's being involved.
		As of right now, where do things stand?
		Who's being tariffed under the Trump administration and his threats to our trade partners?
unidentified		Yeah, well, just a few weeks ago, I was in Indiana for the Indiana Farmers Union annual meeting, and one of the members there was talking about how he's trying to help some other farmers in his area import fertilizer from Canada.
		Potash is an important input to farming, and he was trying to work on getting some particular potash imports in from Canada, and that was at the same time the U.S. was about to impose some tariffs on Canada.
		on potash imports.
		And since then, we've seen some back and forth on how much that tariff level is.
		I think in the last week that dropped from 25% to 10%.
		Nonetheless, this sort of bouncing around on where the tariffs are going to be hurts a lot, not just on the input side, where it's because of the tariffs that the U.S. is imposing on Canadian imports, but also the reverberations from that when we see retaliatory tariffs from Canada, from Mexico, from China.
		That's what really hurts farmers on the sales side of things when we're trying to sell soybeans to China or other exports across the world.
		So I think there's a lot of those retaliatory tariffs, which are going to be the bounce back from the tariffs that we're putting in place that are really going to hurt farmers.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest for the next 40 minutes or so is Mike Strands.
		He is the Vice President of Advocacy for the National Farmers Union.
		If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the Lines, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		And want to let you know, if you work in the agriculture industry, there's a special line for you.
		It is 202-748-8003.
		There is a lot of back and forth when we hear President Trump talking about tariffs.
		They may be put into place and then pulled back.
		What impact is that some outlets have described it as whiplash?
		What impact is that having on farmers and their ability to farm?
unidentified		Probably the biggest market-based threat to family farmers and ranchers isn't just low prices where you're selling your crops or livestock for, but it's also the volatility of the market.
		That can really hurt farmers because you don't know what you're going to be producing, what you're going to be able to sell it for.
		And when we have these sorts of swings in tariff policy and trade policy, where the market's bouncing around and our trading partners are deciding whether or not to impose retaliatory tariffs, this has a huge impact on the market and market volatility.
		So that sort of swing in price and uncertainty about what we're going to see makes those planting decisions and preparation for this year's growing season that much more difficult.
		So I think that's where we see a lot of the hurt.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		It was Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
		She spoke with reporters outside the White House earlier this week.
		Here is a clip of her remarks, and then we'll get your comments on the other side.
unidentified		Thanks.
brooke rollins ▲ ● ▼		The uncertainty is real, and the farmers and our ranchers are concerned.
		The president has been very clear, whether it was in his joint session of Congress, his State of the Union, just over, well, a week ago last night, whether it's that, whether it's the phone calls he's had with Prime Minister Trudeau, with our counterparts in Mexico, really ensuring that while tariffs are a very important part of his toolkit, he's been very clear about that really since he came down the escalator in 2015.
		They continue to be an important part of his vision and we're effectuating that vision.
		But there's also no doubt, and as I mentioned, as he has said, he always has our ag producers back and the farmers and the ranchers.
		Conversation he had with Justin Trudeau a couple days ago that was reported, where he got very colorful and very feisty with Trudeau about the 250% tariffs that we're putting on our dairy products.
		That's ludicrous and insanity.
		And someone has to right-size the ship.
		And he's been very clear.
		It's going to be a little bit bumpy for, you know, maybe a few weeks or a few months.
		But at the end, his vision, and again, what we're effectuating is that our American farmers and ranchers, but truly all Americans, will be moving into an era of greater prosperity.
		We call it the golden age here at the White House than ever before.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was her message to farmers in the agricultural community.
		What is your organization and your members?
		What are they hearing from the administration?
unidentified		Yeah, the uncertainty is real.
		And back in 2018 and 2019, when we had tariffs and trade wars erupting, the Department of Agriculture put into place the market facilitation program.
		This was to help bridge some of the losses that farmers were feeling because of the retaliatory tariffs from China and other trading partners.
		That amounted to, I think, $27 billion over two years to help farmers recover from those lost markets.
		If there's going to be another trade dispute on the magnitude that we saw in 18 and 19, farmers are going to need some assistance, but we don't know exactly what that is yet.
		And the administration, thinking of what's going to happen next when these tariffs start taking effect and when we start feeling the market effects of retaliatory tariffs, there's going to need to be something to bridge the gap there.
		We don't know what it is yet, and that adds to the uncertainty.
		So hopefully there can be some certainty that emerges from either changes in our approach to trade deals or with having some sort of support ready for when the effects are really felt.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have colors waiting to talk with you.
		We'll start with Eileen in St. Petersburg, Florida, on the line for agriculture workers.
		Hi, Eileen.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My grandparents migrated from Germany, immigrated from Germany, and they ended up in Schleswig, Iowa.
		And as sharecroppers, they ended up with about 300 acres, which we still own.
		We've owned since 1898.
		My grandparents, of course, passed away, but we were dairy farmers and cattle farmers.
		But now we grow soybeans and we have for a long time, organic soybeans specifically.
		And I remember in Trump's first term, you know, when he started the trade war with China, the taxpayers had to bail out, you know, the soybean farmers, and they only bailed out the big soybean farmers.
		You know, like I think Senator Grassley got half a million dollars for his little soybean farm in Kansas, if I'm not mistaken.
		So we didn't get anything, but we've suffered because of it.
		And I happen to be a granddaughter of my grandparents, so I reap the benefits.
		We all split the money a couple times a year when the soybean crops are finished and sold.
		And it's going to affect my income because I'm a senior in Florida, you know, and we're proud of our heritage, but it just seems like we always get battered every time there's a cariff war.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll get a response from Mike, Eileen.
unidentified		Thanks for that question.
		And one of the uncertain parts about the situation we're in is we're not sure what that program, if there is going to be a program, will be structured like.
		In 2018 and 2019, much of the assistance that went out from the Department of Agriculture was on a per bushel or per acre basis.
		And depending on your eligibility standards and requirements that were put in place for each of those years, you may or may not have been able to receive a payment.
		That sort of uncertainty about what the program is going to look like doesn't help the situation right now.
		But again, when those effects were felt in 2018 and 2019, there needed to be something to bridge that gap.
		And yeah, that has a real impact on individual family farmers, landowners, and everybody involved in agriculture.
		So thanks for that point.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll talk with Wayne in Pennsylvania, Line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Wayne.
unidentified		Hey, how y'all doing?
		You know, hey, Mike, good morning, Tammy.
		You know, a lot of things nobody discussed a lot of CME group.
		The middleman.
		And farmers ain't making nothing.
		That's why our beef, that's why our products are so expensive.
		It's just out of hand.
		And it's not one side or the other going to do nothing.
		I'm a Democrat, but that tariffs is ridiculous.
		I don't even want to talk about that.
		But you've got the CME group.
		They've got to be regulated in some regards because the farmer buys everything to do his crops with.
		I mean, this stuff's out of hand and putting tariffs on.
		I don't want to discuss that because it is idiotic to even discuss such soy stuff.
		Right now, the farmer, I mean, you got farmers, little farmers going out.
		Sooner or later, we're going to be importing milk.
		I mean, I hate that that ever happened.
		Oh, yeah.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Wayne, we'll get a response from Mike.
unidentified		Thanks, Wayne.
		And the question and the point you made about the folks in the middle having so much sway over how agriculture is and the agriculture sector is doing is a big priority for Farmers Union.
		So over the last several years in particular, there's been an increase in enforcement of competition laws to make sure that the multinational corporations in the middle of the agriculture sector don't exercise an undue influence on prices that farmers are receiving.
		This, of course, has been going on for decades, but we saw in the last few years a real uptick in enforcement of antitrust laws, enforcement of laws like the Packers and Stockyards Act that protect independent cattle producers and poultry producers.
		And Farmers Union has leaned into this general sentiment that we need to have a more diverse and regionalized marketing system to make sure that individual family farmers and ranchers have more choices about where they're selling their products and not just to the big companies that dominate so much of the market.
		A point that comes up often is that the farmer's share of the food dollar.
		So when you go to the grocery store and buy food there, only about 15 cents of every dollar you spend actually gets back to farmers and ranchers.
		The rest, those other costs that are passed on to the consumer, come at the wholesaling level, at the distribution, at the retail, and at the buying level.
		So those sorts of issues are a big deal for us and really get to the core of the problems in agriculture.
		So thanks, Wayne.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		President Trump, during his address to Congress earlier this month, talked about his trade policies and how they would help the nation's farmer.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Here is a clip.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Our new trade policy will also be great for the American farmer.
		I love the farmer.
		Who will now be selling into our home market, the USA, because nobody is going to be able to compete with you.
		Because those goods that come in from other countries and companies, they're really, really in a bad position in so many different ways.
		They're uninspected.
		They may be very dirty and disgusting, and they come in and they pour in and they hurt our American farmers.
		The tariffs will go on agricultural product coming into America and our farmers starting on April 2nd.
		It may be a little bit of an adjustment period.
		We had that before when I made the deal with China, $50 billion of purchases, and I said, just bear with me, and they did.
		They did.
		Probably have to bear with me again.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And this will be even better than something that President Trump talked about during that speech was suggesting that to compensate for losses, they sell more domestically.
		That's something you mentioned earlier, expanding the market for farmers to sell, is what President Trump is talking about.
		Is that a viable option?
		What are the challenges?
unidentified		There are some sectors of the market where there could be, and a real benefit to having some more domestic consumption of domestically produced agricultural products.
		I think we could stand to benefit from a lot of that.
		That said, there are some crops where there's a huge export market, and a big share of what we produce goes to other countries.
		Soybeans are a good example of that.
		North of more than 25% of our soybean crop goes across the ocean to China.
		And we saw in 2018 and 2019 what happens when that market goes away overnight.
		The market tanks.
		I don't think there's a way to consume enough soybeans in the U.S. market quickly or for us to shift our production methods and our planting decisions in the next few weeks here that could prevent that.
		Or to pick up the slack and keep markets from falling as a result.
		So yes, there could be more domestic consumption, but there's only a little bit of impact or improvement that could be felt as a result.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Jill in Mason City, Illinois, on the line for agriculture worker.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Jill.
unidentified		Hi.
		My husband and I are farmers.
		I'm a retired teacher, but and now on the farm all the time.
		And what I would like for you to discuss is to talk about, so people can see what it's like to be a farmer, that you take out a loan to put your crop in because you don't have that kind of cash on hand.
		That's a small farm.
		You have to do that.
		And then the cost of what it's going to cost us to put it in the ground.
		And we don't know what it's going to cost, what we're going to get back at the end.
		And I know it's a big gamble, and I've lived it my whole life, but I think people need to understand that there's a lot of costs.
		And maybe, I mean, I just want people to understand what it's like in this crazy market and up and down.
		It's not a game.
		It's our livelihood.
		So if you could maybe talk about what it costs a farmer to put it in the ground and what we're getting now when we take it out and how it's not evening out, I would appreciate that.
		Thanks for that question, Jill.
		And yeah, the amount of risk that individual farmers take on every year is a story that we all need to tell in agriculture.
		The point you made about how taking out a loan at the beginning of the year, those operating loans to get through a planting season and harvest, there's a lot of costs that go into that.
		And you don't know or have any sort of certainty oftentimes what that is going to look like, what your costs are going to be to get out there to plant, what fuel costs are going to be, what seed costs are going to be, any sort of inputs along the way, let alone what the market price is going to be at the end of the year.
		Granted, there's a lot of programs and risk management options out there like crop insurance that can help bridge some of that and to make sure that there's some certainty involved there.
		But the individual risks that you all, Jill and farmers union members across the country take on is immense.
		And the other thing that we can't stress enough, and another caller brought this up, is that we're not at a point in, or not at a spot in the market where we can dictate the price if we are individuals.
		If we work together, and oftentimes farmers have done this through forming cooperatives or working together like that, we can get a better foothold in the marketplace to dictate some of those costs and what will actually be paid for our crops.
		So, yeah, there's a lot of risk out there, and I'm glad you brought that up, Jill.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Your organization represents family farms, small farms.
		We've heard from a couple people this morning who have smaller farms.
		What percentage of farmers, small farmers, are producing the products that will be facing tariffs?
unidentified		Yeah, Farmers Union represents farms of all shapes and sizes of production methods, crops, of structure.
		So we've got a wide variety of farms like that.
		And that's what makes the organization strong: we've got such a diverse set of ideas and backgrounds, but we all are united in the idea that family farmers are important and that they should be economically viable and that our communities should thrive.
		As far as production, you know, we've seen this shift in different parts of the industry.
		In, for instance, poultry and pork production, we've seen a huge consolidation in processors out there who are buying and financing providing the inputs and the infrastructure to produce large-scale hogs and poultry operations.
		Those have really skyrocketed in size.
		But there's other sectors where it's not quite as precipitous of a variety.
		That could be in beef, could be in dairy, and on crops and commodities and fruits and vegetables.
		So there's different trends within agriculture, and we try to keep an eye on all that and to make sure that family farms are at the forefront of any improvements or policy changes.
		Let's hear from Bruce in Summitville, Indiana, Line for Independence.
		Hi, Bruce.
		Yes, my dad and grandfather both farmed until they passed away.
		And one of the things that I've noticed is there's only like four major companies that handle all the grain in the United States.
		And then they sell it as exports and make money on it.
		They also have, I don't think the USDA does a lot of help for farmers by constantly every year estimating how much we're going to raise.
		I don't know that they do that for any other industry.
		So that and most of the time they're off on their numbers.
		I would think as long as they've been doing this, they would be a little bit better.
		So Bruce, we'll get a response from Mike.
		Thanks, Bruce.
		You raised the point about four big companies controlling a lot of the middle.
		You mentioned grain, but that's the case in other sectors too.
		So in beef, for instance, it's, I think, about 82% of the beef processing in the U.S. is controlled by four companies.
		There's similarly high numbers, higher than 60%, I believe, for poultry and for hogs.
		Grain is another spot where there's a lot of consolidation.
		A lot of economists say that when you've got four companies controlling more than 40% of a certain sector, that's effectively a monopoly and that competition ceases to really work to drive price discovery in any one sector when you've got more than 40% of a market controlled by four companies.
		And that has a big impact and has had a big impact on farmers and the prices they receive and the prices they pay.
		And that squeeze is what's really damaging.
		And over the last several years, again, the emphasis has been there to make sure that we have competitive markets, to make sure that those companies in the middle are regulated, are to not take advantage of family farmers and ranchers, and to make sure that our markets work the way they're supposed to.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		The caller also mentioned the USDA.
		That's one of the agencies that has seen Doge cuts because of that.
		What are some of the programs that are being impacted and what do the impacts look like?
unidentified		One of the priorities that came up during the Farmers Union Convention in Oklahoma City last week was on our federal government.
		Our federal government belongs to us.
		And members of Farmers Union are very concerned about the state of things.
		Like we talked about, there's a lot of uncertainty in agriculture.
		And as a result, we need to make sure that there's staffing and appropriate resources available to farmers, family farmers, to continue to thrive.
		We saw some cuts and mass layoffs in certain segments of USDA last month with more than 1,000 staffers from the Natural Resources Conservation Service let go in February.
		There were some cuts in staffing and office resources for the Farm Service Agency.
		There were losses or staff losses in the Agricultural Marketing Service and across the agency.
		Now we've heard some court rulings in the last week or so that has directed the Department of Agriculture to rehire or to bring back many of these staffers.
		That's going to be a tall lift.
		We're worried.
		And if nothing else, even if they all came back, we've just lost so much time and precious time and resources to this constant churn and whether or not the department's going to continue to provide these services.
		And that's not even to say anything about the grants and programs that farmers signed up for, entered into contracts with the department, and then were told they weren't going to be honored and that those sort of those federal funds that had been agreed to through contracts, through congressional approval in many cases, just weren't going to be honored.
		And we've felt a chilling effect.
		Even if these all came back and there's going to be, you know, everybody comes back into the same jobs and all the money that was promised goes out, the damage is still done.
		And we're hoping that we can get back on the right track and make sure those are honored and built upon to help strengthen family farmers.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And another priority for the Trump administration is the deportation of undocumented minors, something that could impact the agricultural industry.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How are your members responding to that?
unidentified		That's another big concern for agriculture across the board.
		There's a lot of undocumented employees in agriculture across the U.S.
		And if some of the proposals by the administration came to pass about deporting thousands of workers went into effect, we'd feel it immediately.
		A lot of fruits and vegetables, other crops are extremely reliant upon labor like that.
		The dairy industry certainly is as well.
		And that would not just be a price issue for farmers.
		It would just be a lack of ability to harvest or ability to get food on shelves from the field and beyond.
		So there needs to be some solutions to immigration reform, certainly.
		We've seen some good solutions come up in the past few years.
		But time and time again for agriculture, we've got those ideas lined up and support in Congress ready to go.
		It's been a matter of the larger question about the whole country's immigration policy, not just the agriculture sector.
		So hopefully in the next few years here, we can align, Congress can align and with the administration and making some important improvements to this program.
		But mass deportations are going to have an impact if they're not carefully, very carefully constructed.
		Let's hear from Eva and Georgia, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Eva.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This actually is a very good intersectional topic.
		The $10 billion, sir, I'd like if you could talk to the country about the $10 billion that was just signed in December, that bill that created economic assistance to farmers, particularly that the Secretary of Agriculture had the discretion to determine the variables of price and yields and costs.
		There are about 10 states that will, in fact, receive the bulk of that breakdown of the $10 billion.
		Now, we have the National Black Farmers Association with John Boyd, who was also on this week, speaking to us.
		And I would like to actually see your farm union join with them because this is the crust of the matter.
		We are the United States of America.
		We have black farmers and we also have the farmers union.
		I assume you represent, I guess, the bulk of white farm members.
		You need to join with the black farm union, John Boyd, who is the president of that union.
		But to get to the point that I made that has the crust of this matter about the yield price of the $10 billion that was signed by President Joe Biden in December that gives assistance for disaster and for price yields.
		And the Secretary of Agriculture has that.
		Now, if you could tell us, where is the Trump administration in giving out that money?
		Because we are having foreclosures.
		You just stated that 80% of meat, poultry, hogs, pork.
		You also stated about the immigrant population here in Georgia, South Carolina, the southern states, particularly Texas, where you have up in Nebraska, where you have that immigrant population.
		I don't see black or white people out there at that dairy farm up the road from me, where that gentleman has beautiful Hereford black and those gorgeous orange, almost orange cows.
		I don't see any white or black men at that place, sir.
		And so the impact of that is that you need to unify with all farmers.
		John Boyd, give them a goal.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's a lot for Mike to unpack.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll give him a chance.
unidentified		Well, thanks for the question and the points there, Eva.
		You raised the issue of the $10 billion that was part of a spending package at the end of 2024.
		There was also, there was a $10 billion package and I think a $23 or $21 billion package.
		There is an economic assistance fund that was approved back in the year-end legislation in 2024.
		So on the economic side and also on the disaster side, another about $20 billion, I believe, there in total assistance going out.
		And these sorts of bills come up rather frequently in the last several years where there's been natural disasters, as we saw across many parts of the country in 2023 and 2024, as well as some general market declines.
		And I think that speaks to a larger problem within agriculture, that we've got this uncertain market.
		So there's this chunk of assistance out there that USDA has a lot of wherewithal on how they're going to implement that.
		There's also a deadline for it.
		I believe it's March 21st.
		This week, USDA put out a report or a statement saying that they're ready to get this going.
		They're putting the finishing touches on the application process and that we should expect to see it next week.
		So a lot of folks, not just at Farmers Union, but across agriculture, are looking to the department to get that done as soon as possible.
		Obviously, there's been a lot of turmoil at the department over the last few weeks here with the staffing question.
		So there's even more attention being placed on the agency making sure that they're getting that done and implemented.
		Some of the other points too, Farmers Union represents members of a diverse set of backgrounds across the country and works with other organizations too to help represent family farmers even if they're not farmers union members.
		And some of the other organizations out there are important to work with and we spend a lot of time making sure that farmers, union members or not, are part of the overall effort to make sure farm policy benefits family farmers first.
		And we've got a lot of work to do.
		But thanks for those points.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		When you just mentioned farm policy and legislation, this headline in Politico, Chaos, and Federal Government could stall farm bill.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Klobuchar says, explain what the farm bill is and the current state of it.
unidentified		Yeah, we've got a lot of work to do in the year ahead.
		So the farm bill is a broad piece of legislation that is typically approved every five to six years that handles anything related to food and agriculture.
		There's some bills out there that are food and ag-related that aren't part of the farm bill, but it's like the main event, I guess, when it comes to debating farm policy in Washington.
		The farm bill covers programs that help farmers weather the tough times in price or in weather.
		It helps provide conservation programs.
		It offers credit to farmers.
		It handles and is what authorizes food security programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.
		There's rural development, there's forestry, there's horticulture, there's research, there's crop insurance, there's all sorts of farm policy programs within the farm bill.
		The projections, if there were to be a new 10-year farm bill, it costs probably somewhere in the range of $1.3 trillion over 10 years.
		Farm bills are typically, again, considered on a five or six year basis.
		But the 2018 Farm Bill was the last bill to be signed into law.
		And doing some quick math there, that's seven years ago.
		So there's been two extensions of the Farm Bill since then.
		And each time there's an extension, it kind of comes at a political cost where the opportunity is passed by and we need to regroup.
		So in 2024, for instance, a farm bill got through the House Agriculture Committee.
		It was passed by the committee, but never was taken up by the full House.
		And on the Senate side, the Senate Agriculture Committee didn't consider a bill.
		There were some proposals out there.
		So it stopped well short of being completed.
		There was an effort late in 2024 to make it happen, but that just didn't coalesce.
		So with the tumultuous times we've had in Washington, whether it's debating a CR or responding to Doge cuts or getting ready for tax reform and reconciliation, a lot of that attention has shifted away from the farm bill.
		But Farmers Union and I think a lot of other agriculturists out there want to put the focus on the farm bill.
		That's a spot where we can have real certainty in agriculture policy.
		And it seems like the eyes, people have taken their eyes off the ball.
		We need to get that farm bill done soon and make sure that it's strong.
		And that can help eliminate some of the uncertainty so many are feeling right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You listed some of the programs that fall under the farm bill.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What are some of the priorities for your organization and what are some of the biggest concerns when it comes to the farm bill to the next one passing?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		So some of our priorities are on making sure that supports for farmers, the safety net, so to speak, is strong and that it'll respond at the right times when prices are low or when weather is bad.
		So we want to strengthen farm programs.
		We want to ensure that conservation programs are robust.
		A lot of people in agriculture really want to be the best stewards of the environment that they possibly can, as they should be.
		And there's programs that can help with that.
		A lot of them are oftentimes oversubscribed.
		There's more people who want to sign up than there's actually room for, so we need to boost that.
		We also need to make sure that the Farm Bill Coalition stays together.
		One of the ways to do that is to make sure that nutrition programs are secure.
		Earlier I mentioned that 15% of all the money spent on food at the grocery store gets back to farmers.
		So it doesn't take long to realize that money spent on nutrition programs doesn't just help people who are in need, it also helps farmers.
		And that sort of infusion into the agriculture market helps a lot to make sure that not only people are fed, but that farmers have a good price for what they're producing.
		So there's a lot of priorities for the farm bill, and those are just a few.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Steve in Tampa, Florida, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Steve.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question to my friends is, is there a private research organization that works on developing more products, more variety of products from the American agricultural industry to expand the sales in the United States?
		For example, Ocean Spray developed cranberry sauce.
		Cranberries had been a very small crop, and then they developed cranberry sauce.
		It became a big item throughout the country.
		Same thing with green bean casserole.
		Green beans weren't that in demand, but green bean casserole became part of the holiday tradition.
		Are there separate companies that are working with the union to try and develop more products?
		Thanks for that question.
		I am a fan of green bean casserole or even hot dish sometimes too, so I'm glad you brought that up.
		But yes, there are private efforts to boost research and use of ag products.
		A lot of those companies that are big in the food sector are doing that all the time.
		There's also some public ways to develop this.
		There's programs out there, you hear a lot in ag circles about research and promotion checkoffs, where programs are developed to help find new ways to use different ag commodities.
		And that can help.
		We need to make sure that those are being used properly and that it's used for generic promotion and generic research rather than very specific to brands or any sort of undue influence from companies or lobbying organizations on those.
		So we keep a close eye on that as well.
		But yes, private entities certainly have that.
		And that's a good way for us to help boost our consumption of healthy and nutritious ag products.
		Thanks for that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Just a few minutes left.
		We'll hear from Terrell in Maryland, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Terrell.
unidentified		How you doing?
		What's up?
		I would like to know, during the election, I heard Donald Trump said to the farmers, I gave you 20, in Iowa, I gave you $28 billion and you didn't go out and vote for me.
		That's when he lost in 2020.
		Okay.
		So now I'm asking, does he feel betrayed?
		I mean, do the farmers feel betrayed by Donald Trump now as far as putting the tariffs on?
		And do the farmers trust Donald Trump right now?
		And also, of that $28 billion that he gave to farmers in 2016 during his first term, how much of that money went to black farmers?
		Can you tell me that?
		No, thanks for those questions.
		And the issues about how are the tariffs impacting farmers today, I think there is some frustration out there that we saw what happened in 2018 and 2019.
		There had to be those programs out there in 2018 and 19 to help farmers recover from those losses.
		And the fact that we've been through this before, we saw the losses.
		There were some programs that kind of filled in some of the gaps, but the overall market with China hasn't fully rebounded yet since then.
		And we lost a lot of the work that went into developing the infrastructure and trade networks to export soybeans, for instance, to China.
		And we lost ground to many of our competitors, whether it's Argentina or Brazil exporting soybeans to China.
		They've got a lot more connection now than they did seven or eight years ago.
		To your question about the number of amount of the assistance that went to black farmers, I don't have those numbers, but I know there's been a lot of questions about what the overall impact has been, especially when targeting programs to different parts of the agriculture sector.
		And that's something we definitely need to keep a very close eye on.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our last call, Annie, in Tampa, Florida, Line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Annie.
unidentified		Hi, good morning, C-SPAN.
		I understand that Republicans, most Republicans, not all, absolutely love, love tariffs.
		They love threatening to take our allies or other countries from them.
		Republicans love the stupid Gulf of America.
		And that's all fine.
		That's great.
		But how can you love that Trump is not announcing each day what he is doing with our money?
		And if he doesn't start explaining today, he should be fired tomorrow.
		I'm just wondering if Mike knows anywhere where our money is going, other than to Elon.
		Thank you.
		Yeah, there's the question about where the priorities are, where is the money going right now, I think, is something to think about, especially as we move into a farm bill and where we're going to set our priorities for what policy changes need to be made, whether that's making sure that family farmers are at the forefront of changes to policy, whether that's increasing reference prices so that programs trigger in times of low prices,
		or if it's putting money towards local food promotion and trying to build a better food system.
		Let's put some dollars towards things that directly benefit family farmers, children in schools, and our local communities.
		So putting some priority on investing in strategically and to benefit everybody in our communities, I think, doesn't get enough discussion when we're talking about mass cuts or layoffs or things like that.
		So yeah, we need to think about where the priorities are and how we can support them.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Mike Strand is the Vice President of Advocacy for the National Farmers Union.
		You can find the organization online at nfu.org.
		Mike, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Thanks, Tammy.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That does it for today's Washington Journal.
		We'll be back tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. Pacific, 7 a.m. Eastern with another edition.
		Until then, enjoy your Saturday.
unidentified		Coming up Sunday morning, Newsweek's Batya Unger Sargon discusses Trump administration economic policy and its impact on working-class Americans.
		And then Katrina Vandenhoeff of The Nation magazine talks about Trump administration efforts to end the Ukraine-Russia war and news of the day.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
		Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, or online at cspan.org.
		Both the House and Senate have voted to pass a six-month spending bill funding the federal government until September 30th and averting a shutdown.
		We'll up next debate on that measure in the House.
		And then the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldon, talks about his priorities and the actions of the Trump administration.
		Later, President Trump's nominee to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, at his confirmation hearing.
		Next week, C-SPAN continues our new members of Congress series, where we speak with Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they ran for office.
		On Monday, at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include Arizona Democrat Yasemin Ansari, the Democratic freshman-class president.
		I am the proud daughter of two Iranian immigrants.
		So my parents came here in the 70s.
		My dad came to go study civil engineering at the University of Oregon, always with the intention of going back home.
		My mom has a little bit different of a story.
		When the revolution hit Iran in 1979, they had grown up in a monarchy in Iran, but with more freedoms.
		A theocratic regime, the Islamic Republic, took over, and my mom's family was at risk.
		Her father was imprisoned for supporting the prior government and being anti-the new regime.
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