| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live. | |
| Then Darren Baxt of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Joe Bonfilio of the Environmental Defense Fund discuss the EPA's decision to roll back 31 climate, health, and environmental regulations. | ||
| And Martin Mataszak, senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record, talks about his reporting on the Trump administration's suspension of U.S. offensive cyber operations against Russia. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Wednesday, March 19th. | ||
| President Trump has called for the impeachment of the federal judge who ruled that the government could not use a wartime authority to deport alleged gang members while litigation proceeds. | ||
| This call prompted Chief Justice Roberts to release a statement saying that impeachment is an inappropriate response to disagreement over judicial decisions. | ||
| We're getting your thoughts and comments on that. | ||
| Here are the numbers. | ||
| Democrats 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| You can send a text to 202748-8003, include your first name and your city-state. | ||
| And you can post your comments on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We're glad you're with us. | ||
| Before we get to your calls, here are a few things to show you. | ||
| This is the Truth Social Post in its entirety from President Trump. | ||
| He says this. | ||
| This radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Obama, was not elected president. | ||
| He didn't win the popular vote by a lot. | ||
| He didn't win all seven swing states. | ||
| He didn't win 2,750 to 525 counties. | ||
| He didn't win anything. | ||
| I won for many reasons in an overwhelming mandate, but fighting illegal immigration may have been the number one reason for this historic victory. | ||
| I'm just doing what the voters wanted me to do. | ||
| This judge, like many of the crooked judges I'm forced to appear before, should be impeached. | ||
| We don't want vicious, violent, and demented criminals, many of them deranged murderers, in our country. | ||
|
unidentified
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Make America great again. | |
| That prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a statement, and here's a portion of that where he says this. | ||
| For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. | ||
| The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. | ||
| And President Trump was on Fox News yesterday, and he was asked about Justice Roberts' statement and if he would defy a judicial order. | ||
| What's your reaction to the courts stepping in to make a statement here? | ||
| They didn't make a statement when Joe Biden decided to forgive all those student loans. | ||
| Well, he didn't mention my name in the statement. | ||
| I just saw it quickly. | ||
| He didn't mention my name, but many people have called for his impeachment, the impeachment of this judge. | ||
| I don't know who the judge is, but he's radical left. | ||
| He was Obama appointed. | ||
| And he actually said we shouldn't be able to take criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people, gang members, gang leaders, that we shouldn't be allowed to take them out of our country. | ||
| Well, that's a presidential job. | ||
| That's not for a local judge to be making that determination. | ||
| And I thought it was terrible. | ||
| In fact, he said when they were well on their way, there was an order issued, as I understand it, to bring them back or to not let them go or something. | ||
| And this is not something that the country would stand for. | ||
| These people, they were led in here by an incompetent president who had open borders and anybody throughout the world could come in. | ||
| And we were given murderers. | ||
| We were given people from mental institutions and prisons. | ||
| The judge is essentially saying, excuse me, Mr. President, that there still is a process in place. | ||
| You can read between the lines. | ||
| There hasn't been a full ruling yet. | ||
| I know your Justice Department is appealing this on a couple of different grounds. | ||
| But this is leading people to wonder whether there are court orders that you will defy because you believe that the judge has no jurisdiction or they're political questions and not justiciable at all. | ||
| And what would you say to that? | ||
| Are there circumstances where you would defy a court order? | ||
| Well, I think that, number one, nobody's been through more courts than I have. | ||
| I think nobody knows the courts any better than I have. | ||
| I would say the chief judge does, but nobody knows them better than I have. | ||
| And what they've done to me, I've had the worst judges. | ||
| I've had crooked judges. | ||
| I have judges that valued Mar-a-Lago at $18 million because that benefited his case, because he wanted to see me convicted of something. | ||
| I have judges that had relatives making millions and millions of dollars on the election, ruling on the election. | ||
| Going forward, I had judges. | ||
| Would you defy a court order? | ||
| We all know that was ours. | ||
| I never did defy a court order. | ||
| And you wouldn't in the future? | ||
| No, you can't do that. | ||
| However, we have bad judges. | ||
| We have very bad judges. | ||
| And these are judges that shouldn't be allowed. | ||
| I think at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge. | ||
| That was yesterday evening. | ||
| And we are taking your calls. | ||
| We'll start with Deepak in Bellflower, California, Independent. | ||
| Good morning, Deepak. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, America. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I believe Donald Trump is stepping over the boundary lines of constitutions. | ||
| You know, I voted for him, but this is, you know, when a judge gives an order, you're supposed to obey, you know, not go over the borderline. | ||
| He thinks he's the God of America or the whole world. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| You know, you've got to follow the law, the Constitution. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| This guy's, you know, he should be impeached, not the judges. | ||
| Just because you don't like or we disagree, that doesn't mean you impeach somebody. | ||
| You know, you've got to follow the law. | ||
| And Deepak, you said that you voted for President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
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I voted for him because I thought he would put it, you know, he would do it because of immigration that. | |
| But that doesn't mean you have to over, you know, you've got to follow the law, even if we want to get rid of immigrant illegal and all that. | ||
| We have a process system, do the process. | ||
| We've got to do it properly, not this ridiculous way. | ||
| Why do we have a constitution? | ||
| We don't need a constitution if we do it like this way. | ||
| If we want to run the country, then why do we have laws? | ||
| If you go over 65 miles per hour, if you go over, the cop stops you. | ||
| All right, Deepak. | ||
| And here is Fox News that says this impeachment articles hit judge who ordered Trump to stop Trenda Aragua deportation flights. | ||
| It says that a House GOP lawmaker has filed, that's Brandon Gill of Texas, has filed impeachment articles against the federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to stop deportation flights being conducted under the Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| It says, for the past several weeks, we have seen several rogue activist judges try to impede the president from exercising not only the mandate voters gave him, but his Democratic and constitutional authority to keep the American people safe. | ||
| This is another example of a rogue judge overstepping his authority. | ||
| That was a quote from Brandon Gill, a Republican lawmaker of Texas. | ||
| And this is Melissa in Inverness, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Melissa. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| My thoughts on the issue is that if you have a judge that may possibly be corrupt and is only following the law to his or her own gain, then yeah, they should be torn, you know, impeached or thrown out because there are parts of the government that are corrupt. | ||
| So in this case, do you think that that's the case with this particular judge? | ||
|
unidentified
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I do think that because, you know, obviously I voted for Trump, but he's not popular. | |
| But the reason he's not popular is because he's driving a pathway to where none of the Democrats are having their pockets lined with money anymore. | ||
| They're losing money. | ||
| They're losing kickbacks. | ||
| Sorry, but going back to the judge, Melissa, you said that he was ruling in this case for his own benefit. | ||
| Can you explain why you think that? | ||
|
unidentified
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One second. | |
| I go read it. | ||
| Hang on. | ||
| Margaret in Anderson, South Carolina, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Can you explain why? | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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The only thing that I have to say this morning is Trump is too uneducated to be president. | |
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Margaret, Tom in Leesburg, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning, and thanks for C-SPAN. | |
| I'm so grateful for all you do. | ||
| At least we can try and help people get a little more educated. | ||
| It seems to me like we've got this presidency that they want to destroy everything that's worked for a long time, whether it's international aid or education. | ||
| They want to remove the Department of Education. | ||
| They probably need to quadruple it. | ||
| But above all this, I'm watching a president that has no understanding of the judiciary. | ||
| He has no understanding of how courts work other than he's always on the victim side of everything. | ||
| And he's become just a big whiner. | ||
| And, you know, he didn't run like this. | ||
| And these people, this congressman just said that there was a mandate. | ||
| Well, that's a different definition than my understanding of it. | ||
| So I'm just hoping that maybe he'll, you know, they'll give him some pills and a little breakfast and have him sit down and stare out the window a bit because I think he's just like in over his head. | ||
| He seems to, he reminds me of people I know that used to drink like 10 cups of coffee. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I just, I'm not too thrilled with him. | ||
| I didn't vote for him, but he can't just sit here and start picking off this judge and the other for what their decisions are. | ||
| That's their job. | ||
| Their job is to say, you're out of line. | ||
| This isn't working, or you're not following the law. | ||
| He thinks he's above the law. | ||
| He thinks he's a king. | ||
| He literally thinks he's a king. | ||
| And it's like, you know, I just worry that this country is going to start spinning in some other direction. | ||
| They're talking about now, I saw this thing where the Kennedy Center wants to bring in the choir from the prison for the guys who broke into the Capitol, broke the windows, created mayhem, and now they're pardoned. | ||
| It's like, you know, where do you draw the line on this stuff? | ||
| They're going to start lionizing these people that were basically thugs. | ||
| You know, if this was the banana republic, people were going to be able to do it. | ||
| And here is Trump Border Czar Tom Homan on Fox News. | ||
| This is from Monday on the legal pushback to the administration's agenda. | ||
| Every day, the men and women of ICE are going to be in the neighborhoods of this nation arresting criminal, illegal, alien, public safety threats, and national security threats. | ||
| Lawrence, you're not going to stop us. | ||
| We made a promise to the American people. | ||
| The President Trump has made a promise to the American people. | ||
| We're going to make this country safe again. | ||
| I wake up every morning loving my job because I work for the greatest president in the history of my life, and we're going to make this country safe again. | ||
| I'm proud to be a part of this administration. | ||
| We're not stopping. | ||
| I don't care what the judges think. | ||
| I don't care what the left thinks. | ||
| We're coming. | ||
| There, he was the border czar saying that he doesn't think what he doesn't care what the judges think. | ||
| We want to know what you think about that. | ||
| And this is Carol, a Republican in Massachusetts. | ||
| Hi, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I agree with what the gentleman just said. | |
| And good morning to you and everyone. | ||
| President Trump was overwhelmingly voted into office. | ||
| And the reason I think he was voted into office, as you already know, is to do something about this immigration situation that was caused by the Bidens. | ||
| We now have a number of criminals and illegal aliens in our country. | ||
| I agree with what Trump's doing. | ||
| And all these judges and Democratic judges and people are trying to stop him from doing what he promised to do and what the American people wanted him to do. | ||
| And if you don't agree with what he's doing and think you want these criminals in the country and these illegal aliens in the country and you're paying taxes for them, then I think all these people should be new. | ||
| You should take them into your house and they should live in your neighborhood and you should walk the streets and be threatened by them and put out of their apartment. | ||
| And maybe all the people who are for all this immigration, you pay the taxes to pay for them. | ||
| And we'll divide the country that way. | ||
| If you're for it, you pay the taxes. | ||
| If you're against it, then don't charge my taxes. | ||
| It costs me my money, take my money, to pay for people's apartments and getting back to this particular situation. | ||
| You think that this judge should be impeached because of his ruling on immigration? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think the law can be used however they want to use it. | |
| Whenever a problem comes up, one lawyer or another lawyer will find a reason to either enforce it or find something else for a reason not to enforce it. | ||
| There's thousands of laws on the book. | ||
| The papers are as high as the Empire State Building. | ||
| No matter what comes up, and they oppose it, they'll find a law some way to help oppose it. | ||
| All right, Carol. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Here's Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, who says this on X. | ||
| No matter what you think of the result, Trump's defiance of court orders, as his border czar puts it, quote, I don't care what the judges think, is jaw-droppingly dangerous. | ||
| No matter your party, you need to see how dark and destructive this direction is for our democracy. | ||
| Hopefully, SCOTUS will. | ||
| Here's Anthony, a Democrat in Staten Island, New York. | ||
| Hi, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
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How are you, ma'am? | |
| Listen, you want to start impeaching judges? | ||
| Fine. | ||
| Let's start with the one that is the most corrupt, Clarence Thomas. | ||
| The man is taking trips, taking a lot of things, and Trump loves him. | ||
| So, you know, he should really be impeached. | ||
| He should be disbarred or whatever. | ||
| He doesn't stand for anything America stands for. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And here is Rush in East McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Morning, Mamie. | |
| It's you again. | ||
| Is that a good thing or a bad thing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Time I call it you. | |
| Yeah, I don't think I think Trump's doing the wrong thing there with the judge thing, but you know, in my opinion, judges and lawyers and this and that and the other, when I saw O.J. Simpson walk after he admitted what he did driving down that on that Bronco with his buddy driving it. | ||
| Now, when he walked, because if the glove didn't fit, you must acquit thing. | ||
| That's where I lost the whole judicial system. | ||
| I'm 73 years old. | ||
| So we do have a lot of problems here. | ||
| Now, personally, I have a Haitian girl that lives right next door to me, and she's brought two of her cousins over. | ||
| I get along fine with them, but the neighbors are having some problems. | ||
| I've got to watch what I say to my neighbors now. | ||
| In fact, she called me the other day. | ||
| She works at Amazon as a big place here, and she just had rotor tough surgery. | ||
| She hurt herself at work, and she's almost in tears. | ||
| And we talked for a good while there. | ||
| So, Rush, what do you think should be done about judges that you disagree with? | ||
| Do you just, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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You have to realize Trump says all these things, die in Greenland, changed the Gulf of Mexico. | |
| I don't even know if he changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico Gulf. | ||
| So he has all these big grandiose things that he says, but I don't think, I think most, depending on who they're gathering up, but if we have 10 million illegals, | ||
| and if they're very bad ones that have been doing murder or this or that, I guess you still, if they're not American citizens, I mean, if you cross the border, what type of, does the law still pertain to them? | ||
| I guess it does, probably more so than it does an American. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think he's overstepping his bounds there, but I've even heard him say that he would never go against the law or whatever, but I guess he is. | |
| So I'd impeach him, you know, see how that sticks. | ||
| He seems to get away from that. | ||
| Okay, thanks, maybe. | ||
| All right, Rush. | ||
| Here is Jane on Facebook saying, do it, Congress. | ||
| Corrupt biased judges are the path to becoming a permanently corrupt nation. | ||
| Deporting illegal alien criminals is exactly what President Trump should do, can do, and was elected to do. | ||
| And this is Glenn in Boise, Idaho, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| How are you today? | ||
| Good. | ||
| What do you think of the call for impeaching judges? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Every judge takes an oath to uphold the law, not be biased. | ||
| And clearly, a lot of these judges are biased. | ||
| Now, if there was a Democrat in the White House today deporting illegals, the judges wouldn't say squat. | ||
| So they need to impeach every one of them, regardless of their party affiliation. | ||
| Otherwise, we're going to continue to be a corrupt country. | ||
| So based on what, Glenn, when you say impeach every one of them, everyone that what? | ||
|
unidentified
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Everyone that's violating the law. | |
| Where does the law, where does the judge have the right to say to bring back these illegals? | ||
| Where does he have the authority to say that? | ||
| Like I said, if there was a Democrat in the White House and he sent them to El Salvador, the judge wouldn't say a dang thing. | ||
| So here's what Chief Justice Roberts said. | ||
| He said, when you disagree with a judicial decision, you use the appellate review process, not impeaching them. | ||
| Impeaching them is for crimes. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know. | |
| I'd have to think about it and look into it more. | ||
| I wasn't aware of what you just said. | ||
| I'd have to look into it more. | ||
| But how come these far-left judges are the only ones fighting Trump on everything he wants to do to help make this country better and safer for people? | ||
| And here's Maverick in Las Vegas, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I've been somewhat astounded at listening to these callers who seem to be very ignorant of the law. | ||
| Fact of the matter is, no one has said that these immigrants should at least have some part of a judicial process. | ||
| All of a sudden, ICE can go round up people and export them. | ||
| The major thing that I see in this country is Fox News. | ||
| If you would just watch other things and get a background on what's going on for real, you would find out that Trump has had people in the White House that he liked until he didn't like. | ||
| He has judges that he liked until he doesn't like them. | ||
| He is not a king. | ||
| He cannot have everything his way. | ||
| And if you stop listening to Fox News and stop trying to act like this man is the victim, we'll be a much better country for it. | ||
| Otherwise, we're going to lose it. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And this is what Representative Andre Carson says, a Republican. | ||
| He says, Trump continues to lose in court. | ||
| He's losing in front of Bush judges and Biden judges, Obama judges and Reagan judges. | ||
| He's even losing in front of judges who Trump himself appointed in his first term. | ||
| And that was on X. | ||
| And this is Volcker in Royalton, Minnesota, Independent Line. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, morning. | |
| Yeah, to make a sound opinion, I'd need to know more specifics about those 261 cases. | ||
| How long were they in the United States? | ||
| Did they have a court hearing? | ||
| I mean, just somebody saying, well, there's 261 criminals and they do this and that. | ||
| That's too wishy-washy. | ||
| I'd need the facts to make a sound opinion. | ||
| That's my opinion. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is what Warren Davidson said on X. As Judge Boesberg attempts to cover his crooked tracks, he is proving the folly of his assault on our Constitution. | ||
| I gladly support SWIFT impeachment. | ||
| I hope President Trump continues to expose them all. | ||
| And here is Rick in Ackworth, Georgia, Republican. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| First of all, I'd like to say how disappointed I am. | ||
| This is on subject, just real quick, how disappointed I am, Chief Bon Stan. | ||
| The biggest news story of the year you're not covering is the rescue by space sex of the astronauts. | ||
| And I think you and I and everybody listening knows why you're not covering it. | ||
| And it doesn't need to be said. | ||
| Now, back on the subject. | ||
| This is just a matter of interpretation. | ||
| It will be dealt with through the law. | ||
| And in a month, it'll be old hat. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And Rick, here is the article. | ||
| This is the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Here's the front page. | ||
| After nine months, astronauts return home. | ||
| That is on the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| And this is Hiram in Fayetteville, Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I'm putting for him too. | ||
| Hiram, you got to turn down your TV because we can hear it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, everybody listening. | |
| I'm putting for him to impeach all the judges, even those that he's appointed. | ||
| He is crooked and he's letting the crookie judges getting a lot of trouble, especially that judge. | ||
| Sorry, we're getting a lot of noise. | ||
| You there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm here. | |
| Okay, go ahead. | ||
| You said you want to impeach all the judges? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, all of them, especially the ones he got appointed. | |
| And why is that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Because they're letting him off the hook. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Graham in DeWest, South Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how's it going? | |
| Hi, go right ahead, Graham. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd just like to say that all this talk of impeaching judges, I think there are judges on both sides of the spectrum that deserve being impeached. | |
| But as far as the borders are, saying that he doesn't care what the judges think, well, I've got one comment for him. | ||
| That's what the Second Amendment is for. | ||
| Here is Janice in Chula Vista, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I truly believe that these Democrat-appointed judges have lost their minds. | ||
| They are not the ones who have been appointed or voted to run the country. | ||
| That is the president's job. | ||
| They are not the executive branch. | ||
| They are not to tell the president how to run the country. | ||
| Judge Juan Rashan is one who should be impeached as well. | ||
| And all of these judges have relatives, daughters, sons that are working with the Democrats, NGOs, raising funds for the Democrats. | ||
| I mean, it's a conflict of interest straight off the top. | ||
| And at the end of the day, I don't know where were all of these judges at when Biden was opening our borders and letting in millions of illegals. | ||
| I mean, it's like if they don't like what Trump does, then they run to a judge, an appointed Democrat-appointed judge. | ||
| And then these judges know that they are out of order. | ||
| They're not, they don't even have the jurisdiction to be making all of these rulings. | ||
| You're going to tell a plane to turn around in midair? | ||
| I mean, that is utterly ridiculous. | ||
| And the only reason that this judge is going there like he is, in my opinion, is because he got his face cracked and Trump won. | ||
| Who in the world wants illegal criminals, rapists, and murderers to be returned to the United States of America? | ||
| This makes absolutely no sense. | ||
| All this is about is going there to stop Trump's agenda. | ||
| Nothing more, nothing less. | ||
| It is total idiocracy. | ||
| And in the midterms, I hope everybody remembers that the Democrats support illegal criminal aliens. | ||
| They do not support the American people. | ||
| If it wasn't for their insense hatred about Trump, maybe they would have some common sense because none of this makes any sense. | ||
| I mean, and this is President Trump on Air Force One. | ||
| A reporter asked him about the use of the Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, there's been some criticism that the Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three other times. | |
| They were all during times of war. | ||
| Do you feel that you're using it appropriately right now? | ||
| Well, this is a time of war because Biden allowed millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level. | ||
| They emptied jails out. | ||
| Other nations emptied their jails into the United States. | ||
| It's an invasion. | ||
| And these are criminals, many, many criminals. | ||
| Murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords, and people from mental institutions. | ||
| That's an invasion. | ||
| They invaded our country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this isn't, in that sense, this is war. | |
| And we're taking your calls for the next half hour on this issue of impeaching judges. | ||
| And if you think that's appropriate, this is Basil in Washingtonville, New York, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I don't have no sympathy for a lot of these judges, although I think that the president has no right to attack the judicial system. | ||
| But for many years, the judicial system has worked against black people in this country. | ||
| So now that it's happening to other people, what about the injustice that's been done within the judicial system against black people in this country? | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And this is Joseph in Richmond, Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democrat, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| What do you think, Joseph? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think if you're going to impeach any judges, it should be the Supreme Court judges that Trump appointed because they gave him the thought that he can do absolutely anything he wants to do, and it's okay. | |
| So he's taking that and he's running with it. | ||
| So if any judges need to be impeached, it should be those Supreme Court judges that keep going along with him. | ||
| And here is Kevin in Landa Lakes, Florida, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, I just wanted to make a point with regards to Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| This one says that one. | ||
| This one says that. | ||
| All you need to do, and I'd hope you guys would pull this up. | ||
| It's on CNN, AOC, while Biden was president and the judges were saying that what he was doing was illegal. | ||
| She specifically said that he should ignore the judges. | ||
| And now you guys are making a big fuss about Trump ignoring the judges. | ||
| So what is it? | ||
| Is it okay for the Democrats to ignore the judges or only the Republicans? | ||
| And I wanted to also add to what the woman just said about the judge that just issued the return of the prisoners. | ||
| His daughter works for an NGO, which are the most corrupt pieces of our government. | ||
| I don't know why we even have one of them in our government. | ||
| We should shut off funding to every NGO in the world off today. | ||
| But his daughter specifically represents foreign, illegal, criminal people in the system. | ||
| That's what his sister, his daughter, does for a living and makes money off of it. | ||
| And now he's ruling on a, you can't do that. | ||
| Judges are supposed to recuse themselves for that reason, just like Judge Mershon should have recused himself for his daughter's activities that are closely tied to a decision he would be in. | ||
| So I haven't heard any Republican judges have conflicts of interest like that, where the people of America need to know. | ||
| And that's all I need to really say: we need to be fair and equal, plain and simple. | ||
| You can't have family relatives making millions of dollars off of your decisions as a judge. | ||
| It's totally unacceptable. | ||
| Got it, Kevin. | ||
| And this is in USA Today. | ||
| Bomb threat made against sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Comey Barrett. | ||
| It said this happened in Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend, according to local police. | ||
| The Charleston Police Department responded to a politically charged email regarding the justice's sister, Amanda Coney Williams, on Monday. | ||
| Unnamed writer of the email claimed to have created and placed a pipe bomb inside Williams' mailbox that would detonate if opened, according to a police report. | ||
| And this is Renee in Imlay City, Michigan, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you. | |
| I think that we, as Americans, need to just get back to not looking at things through a Republican or Democratic scope, but just kind of vetting each individual event. | ||
| And I think we've got a lot of things that we can come together on that are problem and problematic in the world. | ||
| And we can all agree that we don't want high crime and we don't want our sons and daughters terrorized and sentinel and drugs and all that. | ||
| We could say that we do, but we also have to remember that there's a process that we just cannot deviate from. | ||
| And we don't know. | ||
| I mean, I'm not definitely a lawyer, so I have no idea really the process that needs to be taken, but we just can agree that following the law and taking the processes that are set in place seriously is kind of what has to happen before we just jump to the solution that we all want, which is a safer environment for our kids and safer America. | ||
| But yeah, that's all I have to say is that I feel like we'd all get along a little bit better if we kind of just looked at, did we follow the process? | ||
| Did we follow what we're supposed to do to reach that common goal? | ||
| Here's Andy, a Democrat in Portland, Oregon. | ||
| Good morning, Andy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| It fascinates me how people who can come up with such simple solutions to every issue that they don't agree with. | ||
| We want to impeach all the judges. | ||
| We want to peach the Democratic judges, the Republican judges. | ||
| There's a whole legal process that's available to everyone. | ||
| And if they don't like the outcome of the judge's decision, they can always appeal. | ||
| I don't get where all these simple solutions come out of these people. | ||
| And the other thing that bothers me is that they generalize everybody brown-skinned or from, you know, they're all rapists. | ||
| They're all murderers. | ||
| I mean, we got to deport all of them because they're all criminals. | ||
| I don't understand what's behind that. | ||
| Thanks for taking my time, Mimi. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| All right, Andy. | ||
| This is Mike in Horseshoe, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Thank you for shaking my call. | ||
| You're welcome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's crazy that, you know, during the Biden years, he wasn't really listening to some of the judges over the student loan things. | |
| And, you know, he was getting away with that. | ||
| And now that Trump's have an issue with some judges, and especially this one over the deportation of some really terrible people, I just think that the judicial system itself should be more in line with the immigration laws that already are on the books of the country and should be upheld. | ||
| And it seems that some of these judges just have pure hatred for Donald Trump. | ||
| And I will say this: Donald Trump is, he's not my biggest fan, but I am a Republican. | ||
| I think this country would do far better if maybe the Democrats kind of came on board and sat at the table and had these discussions. | ||
| Now, I know sometimes officers don't want to sit down and talk, but I think the best thing for this country was that we get back to politics and politicians who do the job for the American people first and get the job done, talk, work things out, come up with plans, disagree, disagree, agree and disagree, and agree to disagree and get something done in this country. | ||
| For the last four years, it seems we've been falling into a rut. | ||
| I mean, the terrible things have been happening. | ||
| And like I said, I'm not a great fan of Trump, but he's getting things done. | ||
| And people don't like that. | ||
| They see the system being taken up. | ||
| All right, Mike. | ||
| You're sounding a little muffled, so I'm going to move on and want to remind everybody that today is actually the 46th anniversary of the founding of C-SPAN. | ||
| And we're going to be celebrating tonight at 8 p.m., where you'll hear C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb, who was joined by our current CEO, Sam Feist, and former co-CEO Susan Swain, talking about the effort it took to bring live gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress to every American home. | ||
| You can listen to all those stories of the earliest days of C-SPAN directly from its founder and learn what went into all that work, uninterrupted coverage of the House, the Senate, the White House, Supreme Court, all that happened over the last five decades. | ||
| Again, that is tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN. | ||
| It's also online at c-span.org. | ||
| And back to our topic of the impeachment of judges. | ||
| Here's Will and Tulsa in Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, we can. | ||
| Go ahead, Will. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fantastic. | |
| I've got a real simple, it's crazy. | ||
| Of the last 17 calls that I've listened to, you know, 15 of them are just, I'll say it, you know, they're lazy or I don't know what the problem is. | ||
| You read the Constitution and it's clear. | ||
| Every president has had a borderline issue of pushing their executive branch to the limit. | ||
| And you can go back to name them, Bush, Obama, Biden, and now Trump. | ||
| It's not uncommon. | ||
| And the reason I suggest people are lazy that are demonstrating their laziness by calling it, it's the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. | ||
| The five articles, six articles of the Constitution, Article 1, Legislative, Article 2, Executive, Article 3, Judiciary. | ||
| Well, the fifth article is for amendments. | ||
| And the Fifth Amendment prohibits people from being tried twice for the same offense. | ||
| It bars people from being compelled to testify against themselves. | ||
| So, Will, how is that related to what we're talking about now? | ||
| Bring us back to this topic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Due process. | ||
| Due process. | ||
| Thank you for asking. | ||
| Due process. | ||
| The people that were kicked out of this country on the airplane, that's not the issue. | ||
| The issue is not: are they criminals? | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| Nobody wants a criminal living in this country. | ||
| Nobody wants a rapist, child molester, drug whoever. | ||
| Nobody wants that. | ||
| That's not the argument here. | ||
| The argument is who's who. | ||
| We vet everybody that wants to be the Secretary of State, Rubio. | ||
| We vet everybody that wants to represent us in our government. | ||
| And of course, we also have to vet the criminals. | ||
| The word is there are five people that are going back to Venezuela, El Salvador, I believe it is. | ||
| Help me, El Salvador, that are not criminal. | ||
| They are families here, and they were swept up in this giant fishing net because the knee-jerk reaction is get rid of the criminals, of course. | ||
| But we've got to do it through a judicious process. | ||
| And that is called the Fifth Amendment, which specifies due process. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| That means who are you? | ||
| What's your name? | ||
| What's your background? | ||
| Are you a criminal? | ||
| And we go from there. | ||
| We don't just carpet expel people based on a rumor or a whim or the tattoos on the face or what we think they are. | ||
| We must vet every person in the criminal procedure to make sure they are law-abiding or not. | ||
| Got it, Will. | ||
| And this is what Representative Andy Ogles, a Republican, said on X. | ||
| He says, President Trump is right. | ||
| Lawfare-loving judges must be removed. | ||
| I encourage my colleagues to join myself, Representative Clyde, Representative Crane, and Representative Gill, as we impeach these radical activists. | ||
| There are plenty of judges to go around. | ||
| And here's Mark Perrysburg, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Mark, what do you think about the call to impeach judges? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's a bad idea. | |
| You know, a judge's job is to enforce the law, interpret the law. | ||
| And Trump's had a pattern of this his whole life where he never agrees with any judges and he always thinks he's over and above the law and his idea is the only idea that counts. | ||
| And I just don't think it's the right thing to do because, you know, judges' job is to interpret the law. | ||
| And the law protects us from people, say, like Trump, who, you know, would like to just take over the whole country and do whatever they want and, you know, just throw people to the side like they're garbage. | ||
| So we need the law to protect us and we need the judges. | ||
| And these are just Trump's judges. | ||
| You know, these are just Democrat judges. | ||
| These are all kinds of judges that have been appointed by everybody. | ||
| And their job is to protect us from tyrants or, you know, whoever. | ||
| So the law is the law, and I just think it should be gone by. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's another Mark in California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Mark, you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you? | |
| I'm good. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Am I talking live right now? | |
| Mark in California, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, ma'am. | |
| I just, I am so over all this activism. | ||
| I am a combat veteran, and I am a retired LA County fireman. | ||
| And you guys, not you, ma'am. | ||
| People need to get their act together, okay? | ||
| Because there's a lot of stuff messed up in this world, and I'm over it. | ||
| You guys. | ||
| I lost my job in 1992 in a riff of California's military. | ||
| Well, there was a town hall that was held by Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska, Republican, and one of his constituents asked him for his reaction to President Trump's call to impeach Judge Boesberg. | ||
| And this is the exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi Congressman, I'm actually from your district. | |
| I appreciate you being here. | ||
| To the students that are here watching. | ||
| Democracy is messy. | ||
| It is messy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Within hours of being notified of a restraining order by the chief U.S. District Judge, James Boesberg, President Trump called James Bozberg a radical left lunatic, a troublemaker, and called for his impeachment. | |
| I want to know I have a two-part question if you, like President Trump, believe that the judiciary must now kowtow to the whims of the executive branch, allowing the executive to take precedence and ruling exclusively in its favor. | ||
| Or if you believe that the judicial, legislative and executive branches are separate but equal, as outlined by our Constitution. | ||
| And if you do believe that the three branches? | ||
| I'm sorry, I have a two-part question. | ||
| If you do believe that the three branches are separate but equal, each with their outlined duties, when do you and your fellow Republican members of Congress intend to take back the power of the purse that you have allowed to be taken over by Elon Musk, Doge and others, who are defunding projects and grants that have been previously approved by Congress, as is its duty, your duty. | ||
| One example would be U.s aid funding, which was impounded even though it had been congressionally appropriated. | ||
| You stranded our own people in other countries because you allowed them to be stranded when Doge, when. | ||
| I don't need you to yell, i'm speaking, thank you. | ||
| This is just one example, and i'm aware that a federal judge, District Court, judge alley, has already ordered the administration to pay bills for existing contracts and grants through february 13th. | ||
| But when are you and Congress going to take back your responsibility? | ||
| Well, you have some good questions there. | ||
| Um, there are three branches of government. | ||
| They are co-equal and they should be respected, and that is the digital branch, the legislative branch, the executive branch, and I am and have practiced in the judicial branch and I have respect for judges, I have respect for the work that the court does and I believe that the court has an important role uh, dealing with the tension that can exist between the three branches of government. | ||
| And so uh, you will not hear me disparage a judge. | ||
| I may disagree with a ruling, but I have tremendous respect for judicial officers and for this country to. | ||
| We need to respect judges. | ||
| The second point. | ||
| The second point I would say. | ||
| Oh, remind me where we're at. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was kind of a long question. | |
| Oh, I think we talked about that earlier. | ||
| I said, and I've said it in a letter to a lot of you: I 100% believe that the power of the purse, it is in Article 1. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It belongs to the United States Congress. | |
| And I will work very hard to make sure that the Appropriations Committee draws the budget up and that the budget is the budget of the United States, and that once approved by the President or overridden, it will be respected. | ||
| That was Republican Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska. | ||
| That entire event is on our website at c-span.org if you'd like to see it. | ||
| And this is Glenn in Roanoke, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Glenn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I do remember Eileen Cannon down in Florida ruling very much in favor of Trump not too long ago. | ||
| I did not hear any calls for impeachment of her. | ||
| I think when you elect a convicted felon to the White House who's also a sex offender, who publicly has announced that the Constitution should be terminated, that he would also publicly publicly declare he'd be a dictator on the first day of resuming the presidency. | ||
| This is what you get. | ||
| He's already defying court orders. | ||
| I think somewhere in his administration, he said if it's not written, if it's only a verbal instruction, they're not going to follow it, something of that nature. | ||
| I think we have a constitutional crisis going on. | ||
| I think the destruction of the federal government is very alarming. | ||
| And no, I don't think we should impeach the judges, is my answer to that question. | ||
| But I think there's a bigger problem going on in the United States. | ||
| I think there are a lot of people who have no idea what's happening to the entire structure of our society. | ||
| When the wealthy get more and more wealth and people down at the bottom get less and less power and influence and wealth, I think the country is in a very sad and very dangerous situation. | ||
| Defying court orders is just one leg of the total destruction of the government to create some sort of autocracy dictatorship. | ||
| Dictator on day one, he said he'd do it, and he's doing it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And this is Perry, a Republican in South Dakota. | ||
| Good morning, Perry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd like to first say that I think C-SPAN is one of the best media happenings we have going on in the United States of America. | |
| Anybody, any system that allows people to call like this, it's great to have something like this. | ||
| But anyway, our judges, I did a little looking it up. | ||
| There's 91 federal district judges in the United States of America. | ||
| And I wish that they would operate close to the written law and not try to go out and do something like this that's happening right now. | ||
| I think President Trump is trying to clean up what he inherited. | ||
| He inherited things. | ||
| Somebody that left the board is wide open. | ||
| We're spending billions of dollars doing this, and we have to reverse it somehow. | ||
| We shouldn't have a value like we had in the last several. | ||
| That doesn't work for anybody. | ||
| Any country, I mean, any other country that were taken criminal hell out of prisons and that are opened up and shoved into our more less tomb. | ||
| I would think they probably was told head north to or head east or west to the United States of America. | ||
| And they did it. | ||
| They came in here by the millions of people. | ||
| All right, Perry. | ||
| And this is on roll call that says, Judges warn against impeachments for rulings against Trump. | ||
| Four resolutions aimed at ousting judges have been filed this year. | ||
| That's at roll call. | ||
| And this is Dave in Las Vegas, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, talking about impeachment, I'm a veteran. | ||
| I took an oath to the Constitution of the United States. | ||
| If I decide I don't want to fight anymore when I was in and everything and walk away, they're going to either shoot me or put me in prison. | ||
| Trump, first of all, you're talking about impeachment of judges, the GLP. | ||
| And when you're talking about impeachment, Trump broke the highest law in the land. | ||
| He got 700, when they starmed the White House on the law, a lie when he said, I need 10,000 votes. | ||
| He needed because he knew he lost. | ||
| And then he had the people staring the White House, got people killed, and not just getting people killed and injured, he pardoned the people that did it. | ||
| This guy is controlled. | ||
| So, Dave, bringing us back to this particular issue of impeaching judges, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you shouldn't impeach judges. | |
| You should impeach Trump. | ||
| He broke the Constitution, the highest law in the land. | ||
| These Republicans aren't Republicans. | ||
| They're sashist faces. | ||
| They want to take everything. | ||
| They're oligarchs. | ||
| They're going to hurt. | ||
| They're hurting. | ||
| Can't you see the news? | ||
| They're breaking every law. | ||
| You know what he did? | ||
| You have all these religious people saying, oh, we're for religion. | ||
| Well, the religion says help the poor in the need. | ||
| He cut off the food where people died. | ||
| Little kids died because him and billionaire must cut off the food to these people. | ||
| They're literally dying. | ||
| Four of them died because they couldn't get their medicine. | ||
| He is a murderer. | ||
| This guy cares nothing. | ||
| We're going to go to a Washington, D.C. Republican line. | ||
| Shay, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Me? | |
| Yes, you're there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Hi. | ||
| Shay, District of Columbia, not Washington State. | ||
| I've been thinking for a long, long time that these judges that sit on the district court circuit, that they need to go. | ||
| I'm 36 years old, and I've lost more friends to gun violence than I can count on two hands since, you know, I was an adolescent. | ||
| And, you know, sometimes these district court judges, they give like five years for homicide, you know. | ||
| And it's really, really sad the light sentencing that they give for homicide. | ||
| And then they turn around and give you 20 years or, you know, 15 to 20 years for armed robbery, you know, where nobody was injured. | ||
| But for homicide in the District of Columbia, you see sentences sometimes between three and five years. | ||
| And I'm sick of these district court judges giving these light sentences for homicide. | ||
| I am all for Donald Trump getting rid of these corrupt pro-criminal judges. | ||
| Get them out, Mr. Trump. | ||
| Have a nice day. | ||
| And here is Aaron in Michigan, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| How are you doing this fine morning? | ||
| Good. | ||
| What's going on, Aaron? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not a whole lot. | |
| Was just calling to say I highly contest Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and I agree with that caller from Virginia. | ||
| I think we as American citizens need to wake up and wonder if he doesn't need impeached and not them district court judges. | ||
| We have laws set up in this country for a reason, and we should abide by those. | ||
| And that's quite honestly all I got to say. | ||
| Have a wonderful day, Amy. | ||
| And here's George in Missouri, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| I'm against the impeaching of the judges. | ||
| You know, strictly against it. | ||
| But on the other hand, they need to impeach the guy in Washington now. | ||
| But before they impeach him, they need to give this guy a psychological evaluation. | ||
| Okay, that's all I've got to say, Mimi. | ||
| All right, George, and here is Sonny in Essexville, Michigan, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow, thank you so much. | |
| I've been trying to get through for a long time. | ||
| And you got through, Sonny. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, listen. | |
| I'm an 83-year-old man. | ||
| I grew up in the 50s and 60s. | ||
| When I left Central High School, I could do almost anything. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Man, I can't hear you saying anything. | ||
| Are you talking? | ||
| I'm not talking. | ||
| Just listen on your phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, don't look at the TV. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| All right. | ||
| Let's start over. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I was raised in the 50s and 60s, graduated from Central High School. | ||
| And what I'm witnessing on TV today, I can't stand it anymore. | ||
| These people that call in and they trash Trump, Trump is the greatest president we've had since Lincoln. | ||
| And he's doing everything possible to bring our get our country together, and he's doing a great job. | ||
| These people. | ||
| And Sonny, coming back to our topic, which is the impeachment of judges, what do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, if they're not following the law, they need to be impeached. | |
| And President Trump is the commander in charge. | ||
| He's head of the executive branch, and he's, and it goes down below him. | ||
| But what he, the judge, okay, here's one thing: the judge that tried to get they're deporting these hardcore illegals, hardcore criminals, and the judge ordered them to turn the plane around. | ||
| It's disgusting. | ||
| All right, Sonny, we got your point. | ||
| And that's it for this segment. | ||
| Up next, we've got Trump EPA officials are signaling a widespread rollback of Biden-era environmental regulations. | ||
| We'll take a closer look with Darren Bax of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Joe Bonfilio of the Environmental Defense Fund. | ||
| And later, a conversation with cybersecurity reporter Martin Matisha Matishak of the news site The Record. | ||
| We'll talk about his reporting on the Trump administration's suspension of U.S. offensive cyber operations against Russia. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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unidentified
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Author Stephen Gillen with his book Presidents at War, How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents from Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and Bush on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined by Darren Baxt remotely. | ||
| He is Center for Energy and Environmental Director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. | ||
| And in the studio is Joe Bonfilio, U.S. Region Executive Director at the Environmental Defense Fund. | ||
| Gentlemen, welcome to both of you. | ||
| Joe, I'm going to start with you. | ||
| Tell me about your background and your organization and your funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi. | |
| Hi, hi, Mimi. | ||
| Hi, all. | ||
| I'm Joe Bonfilio. | ||
| I have been at the Environmental Defense Fund for about 13 years now. | ||
| Prior to that, I spent about a decade on Capitol Hill. | ||
| EDF is guided by science and economics. | ||
| We work to solve some of the biggest environmental challenges across the globe. | ||
| We are funded primarily by philanthropists and donors across the country. | ||
| And did you work with the Biden administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did. | |
| We've worked with every administration for the past 55 years. | ||
| And, Darren, your background, your organization, your funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks. | |
| So I've worked in public policy for a long time before being at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. | ||
| I was at the Heritage Foundation and then the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and then worked at a state think tank called the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina. | ||
| So I've been in public policy and working on the energy and environment for a long time. | ||
| So CEI, where I work now, is a nonprofit think tank. | ||
| We do research and education and our goal is to reform the administrative state to advance liberty, promote freedom. | ||
| And that's really kind of what our focus is and the principles that inform what we do. | ||
| And you mentioned the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| Were you involved in Project 2025? | ||
|
unidentified
|
To some extent, I was, yes. | |
| I didn't do any work on the environmental issues, though. | ||
| Can you talk about what issues you did work on and what impact they might have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know what the impact will be, but I mean, we did it a long time ago and worked on, I don't really want to talk about Project 2025, but I worked on the USDA chapter. | |
| And was the EPA mentioned at all in 2025? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was the EPA? | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, they had a chapter on the EPA in Project 2025, the book. | ||
| And Joe Bonfilio, last week, the EPA administrator, Leed Zeldon, announced a series of major EPA deregulatory moves around water, air, climate. | ||
| Let's take a listen. | ||
| I don't know if we've got it ready from him and what he said if we have that available. | ||
| We might not have that available, but you can talk about what the plans are for the deregulation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| Last week, we had Administrator Zeldon release, I think, 31 policy proposals that would, for the first time, begin to weaken environmental protections across the country. | ||
| These actions will result in more pollution, both making our air dirtier, our water dirtier. | ||
| And it continues what we're seeing in this administration, which is governing by chaos. | ||
| throwing these long-established priorities of Americans to the wind and really sort of starting and setting in motion something we haven't seen in this country for decades, deregulation that will increase pollution and make people less healthy. | ||
| Okay, we have that now. | ||
| Here's the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. | ||
| Today, I'm pleased to make the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history. | ||
| The Environmental Protection Agency is initiating 31 historic actions to fulfill President Trump's promise to unleash American energy, revitalize our auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to the states. | ||
| EPA will be reconsidering many suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our actions include the Biden administration's deeply flawed Clean Power Plan 2.0, mercury and air toxic standards, Quad OBC, Particulate Matter 2.5, light, medium, and heavy car and truck rules, Nishaps, and the so-called social cost of carbon. | |
| To advance cooperative federalism, EPA will partner with states that were universally rejected by the last administration's Good Neighbor rule. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Among many other actions, today's momentous day also includes the 2009 endangerment finding, along with all actions that rely on it. | |
| I've been told the endangerment finding is considered the holy grail of the climate change religion. | ||
| For me, the U.S. Constitution and the laws of this nation will be strictly interpreted and followed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No exceptions. | |
| Today, the Green News scam ends as the EPA does its part to usher in the golden age of American success. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our actions will lower the cost of living by making it more affordable to purchase a car, heat your home, and operate a business. | |
| Jobs will be created, especially in the U.S. auto industry, and our nation will become stronger for it. | ||
| From the campaign trail to day one and beyond, President Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living. | ||
| We at EPA will do our part to power the great American comeback. | ||
| That was Lee Zeldin and Darren Bax, your reaction to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it sounds pretty good. | |
| I think, you know, the challenge for Minister Zeldin is the Biden administration rules. | ||
| And over the last four years, the administration exceeding the authority that it has, ignoring the will of Congress, not taking into account the costs and the trade-offs that exist when it comes to problemating rules. | ||
| We all want clean air, we want clean water, but we also don't want to hurt low-income communities. | ||
| We don't want to hurt people by driving up prices. | ||
| So we have to always be cognizant of the different costs and trade-offs that go into it. | ||
| And we also want sound science to inform the rules. | ||
| And I think in too many instances, the sound science has been ignored. | ||
| So taking these actions make perfect sense. | ||
| It's not uncommon for any new administration to go back and to undo or try to undo the rules of the previous administration. | ||
| That's one of the challenges that does exist, is that we have this unpredictability that happens with the administrative state. | ||
| That's one reason why I think Congress needs to go in and actually reform the environmental statutes to create some predictability and actually some common sense. | ||
| And when you say ignoring the will of Congress, can you elaborate on what you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| So I think if I asked somebody, if I was on this show 10 years ago and talked about the fact that the EPA would try to kill off a gas-powered car, I think people would mock me and say I was crazy. | ||
| Well, here we are. | ||
| The Biden EPA is trying to kill off a gas-powered car. | ||
| By 2032, what they want to do is have a situation where for new car sales, it would almost exclusively be EVs. | ||
| You'd have maybe 30% of the cars be gas-powered cars. | ||
| That's something that Congress never envisioned would happen. | ||
| And if they wanted the EPA to actually make such a radical action, Congress would speak directly to that issue, and they never did. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And Joe Bonfilio, your reaction to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, broadly, I think we are looking at a series of actions that are not going to do what the administration says they will do. | |
| This is being sold as lowering the costs for Americans. | ||
| It will not. | ||
| The administrator laid out a number of sort of Washington speak little wonky jargon, which we love here. | ||
| But they're doing so to confuse people of what the underlying actions really are. | ||
| But in even name-checking some of these things, this means that we're going to see more smog, more pollution, more mercury, things that people know they don't want more of. | ||
| And what we're seeing here is this desire to roll back these regulations and say that they're going to help our economy. | ||
| They won't. | ||
| We are heading in a direction with this administration that will weaken our economy and actually raise prices, energy prices for the American people. | ||
| That's where we're heading. | ||
| So how do you know that this is going to worsen the environment and make air pollution worse and the water unsafe to drink, et cetera? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's fair. | |
| So I've been alive for 45 years. | ||
| The totality of that time, we have managed to grow the economy and make our environment a little bit healthier over time, step by step. | ||
| Every time we have stepped to the plate, if you will, taking the baseball analogy, and said, hey, we want to figure out how we're going to reduce air pollution. | ||
| We're going to do so in ways that still protect the American economy. | ||
| We've done that time and again. | ||
| What the Biden administration did and what we saw over the last four years is the Biden administration said, hey, we're going to go somewhere here. | ||
| We're going to head towards a cleaner economy that is growing jobs and is growing economies here in the United States, which is why when Mr. Baxter referenced the car industry, it's why you're seeing battery plants pop up all over the Southeast. | ||
| Are you seeing this massive supply chain investment in places like Georgia? | ||
| It is not because of anything more than the policy set in place by the Biden administration. | ||
| That's where we were going. | ||
| Now we're going in a different direction. | ||
| Well, let's take a look at a couple of the items on the proposed EPA regulatory changes. | ||
| This isn't an exhaustive list, but this is just a few of them. | ||
| We got this from CBS News. | ||
| Rules governing coal, ash, and coal-fired power plants, national air quality standards for particulate matter, emission standards for industrial air pollutants, rules to reduce air pollution, regulations restricting vehicle emissions. | ||
| And Darren Baxt, I mean, just looking at that list, and again, that's not a comprehensive list, but that would make people think that air pollution and environmental quality is going to get worse without these regulations in place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think a lot of people do think that, actually. | |
| When you have the vehicle emissions rule that you just mentioned, that's the de facto EVA mandate that I was talking about. | ||
| The idea that it won't drive up costs, of course it will. | ||
| If people are forced into EVs that are more expensive, that's going to drive up costs for people. | ||
| They won't even have a car to drive. | ||
| Maybe people will have to choose other options besides even driving a motor vehicle. | ||
| The Clean Power Plan 2.0 that was discussed by Minister Zeldon is a second attempt. | ||
| The first attempt was by Obama, the Clean Power Plan 1.0, that got shot down by the Supreme Court. | ||
| And what the EPA is trying to do is trying to change the way we produce electricity from reliable sources, such as coal and natural gas, and shift it to unreliable sources like wind and solar. | ||
| What's going to happen is there's going to be reliability problems and drive up prices. | ||
| That's why it's going to hurt Americans. | ||
| And I think a lot of Americans recognize that these rules are really not designed necessarily to protect and address the kind of key issues regarding pollutants, but actually to kind of use these rules in a greenhouse gas focus to control major aspects of the American economy. | ||
| What do you think, Joe Bonfilio, as far as impact to the environment on just the list that I mentioned here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you're going to see change right away. | |
| You're going to see change over time that compounds. | ||
| And look, I think most Americans think that they have clean air and clean water. | ||
| I think that they assume that is the case. | ||
| It's sort of baked into the cake. | ||
| Because for the longest time, the EPA doesn't walk around stamping clean air with, hey, brought to you by the Environment Protection Agency. | ||
| But what we know are going to happen is if you live near an industrial facility, if you live near a major highway, if you live anywhere where you are, we're firing up an old coal-fire power plant, like the administration said just yesterday, they intend to do, you're going to see real health impacts. | ||
| And if you are in a compromised way in any way, if you're an older American that has issues breathing, if you're a young kid with asthma, if you are a mother or a mother to be, you are going to have to start worrying about these things more and more. | ||
| So those bad air days, those times when you want to go outside or you want to sort of swim or fish in a lake or river, these are things that we're going to start questioning again. | ||
| And for the longest time, we have been moving in exactly the right direction, just making sure that those things were easy for Americans. | ||
| That was for free for them. | ||
| They could go out and have a great time and live their lives. | ||
| We're moving in the wrong direction here. | ||
| We're talking about the EPA's decision to roll back 31 climate, health, and environmental regulations with our guests. | ||
| And you can join us. | ||
| You can call us on our lines. | ||
| Democrats are on 2028-8000. | ||
| Republicans are on 2028-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202748-8002. | ||
| Joe Bonfilio, the administrator mentioned the endangerment finding. | ||
| We'll put that on the screen and then I'll have you explain it. | ||
| It says it found that planet warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. | ||
| It cleared the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and underlies legal arguments for other climate regulations for vehicles and pollution sources. | ||
| What do you think will be the impact if that goes away? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If the endangerment finding goes away, and let's sort of simplify it, it's a fancy term for how the EPA regulates carbon pollution or climate pollution. | |
| If it goes away now and in future administrations, there will be tools to reduce climate pollution will no longer be at the hands of those that want to continue to drive down pollution that's happening everywhere in this country. | ||
| And Aaron Bext, what do you think about what happens if that endangerment finding from 2009 goes away? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, if I could take a step back, just to get back to questions that were asked. | |
| I just want to clarify, there's no backsliding here. | ||
| The EPA is not allowing things to get worse as it relates to air pollutants. | ||
| It's already protected in the law. | ||
| There's no backsliding. | ||
| So you mentioned PM Particulate Matter 2.5. | ||
| We have the best particulate matter almost concentration levels in the world. | ||
| I mean, we'd be the envy of the EU, which is always talking about environmental issues. | ||
| So, you know, it's not really a question of improving the air quality at all. | ||
| And when we talk about CO2, we're not talking about air quality. | ||
| And I would, you know, personally challenge whether or not CO2 or greenhouse gases are an air pollutant. | ||
| Now, the Supreme Court says it is. | ||
| I don't think that common understanding of what an air pollutant is would refer to carbon dioxide. | ||
| It's not something that you breathe in and then start coughing. | ||
| It's an invisible, odorless gas necessary for life. | ||
| But getting to the endangerment finding, what the administrator is doing is reconsidering the 2009 endangerment finding. | ||
| It makes perfect sense and should make perfect sense for anyone to review science at 16 years old on an issue of this magnitude. | ||
| That's what's going on. | ||
| Endangerment finding is an analysis by the EPA, and if they find it the greenhouse gases in danger, public health or welfare, that makes it possible for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. | ||
| But let's look at the science first and figure out whether or not that makes sense. | ||
| That seems like common sense before you decide to regulate. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers now and start with Tom, a Republican in Spring Hill, Florida. | ||
| Hi, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just want to say everybody wants clean air and water. | |
| There are certain things you can monitor, but as far as these nonsense restrictions, especially this climate change hoax, especially you got people like John Kerry who push for this climate change, yet they're flying around in their private jets. | ||
| To reduce coal plants is ridiculous. | ||
| Because even if you were to reduce the coal plants, you reduce these for drilling for fossil fuels, how are you going to drive the cost of energy even more? | ||
| And besides that, you're not helping the environment any. | ||
| All you're doing is driving a price of gas up. | ||
| As long as you keep things monitored, you should be fine. | ||
| But to do away with coal plants and to stop the drilling like Joe Biden is pushing is just totally ridiculous. | ||
| And these leadists that donate, that donate, they're the ones that drive around their private jets. | ||
| They're not too worried about the climate change of the environment. | ||
| All right, Tom. | ||
| Go ahead, Joe Bonfilio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Tom, I appreciate that. | |
| I think you said a lot of things that I think are where most Americans are. | ||
| I would say this. | ||
| When you think about how we try to live in this country, we're a community, right? | ||
| I grew up in North Carolina. | ||
| In North Carolina, for years, we were experiencing downwind pollution from power being produced in Tennessee. | ||
| That's not fair. | ||
| We need a level playing field for how we regulate pollution because pollution doesn't sort of stop where you think it does. | ||
| So what we're seeing now, Tom, is an administration that is that they're pulling the refs off the field, off the court. | ||
| We're in basketball season, Tom, right? | ||
| And a game basketball without refs is a fundamentally different game. | ||
| That's what we're starting to see. | ||
| Darren Baxter, your take on the Good Neighbor Plan that the administrator mentioned, which is the rules for states to protect neighboring states from air pollution that they cause. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are your thoughts on that? | |
| Yeah, it's just the nature of the way the plan was developed. | ||
| I mean, nobody's saying there shouldn't be protections across states, but it was a process of kind of basically rejecting a bunch of state implementation plans all at one time. | ||
| So, you know, that is just the way it was done. | ||
| And it's similar to other things that the administration has done. | ||
| We were talking about PM 2.5, which I want to get back to, because particular matter is a big pollutant that the EPA focuses on. | ||
| In 2020, there was a significant review of particulate matter. | ||
| And we have very strict standards when it comes to particulate matter. | ||
| And the administration, the Trump administration at the time, after significant review by the Science Advisory Board and at least the CASAC, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, decided to maintain the existing standard. | ||
| Just a matter of months later, a few months later, the Biden administration, when they get in office, decides we're going to completely revisit this, even though there's kind of a five-year process to review the PM 2.5 standards. | ||
| And doing so, the Administrator Regan at the time, the EPA administrator, got rid of every member of the Science Advisory Board and the Air Science Advisory Committee. | ||
| That was the first time ever that was done. | ||
| That's basically showing they want the science that meets their policy needs. | ||
| So that's not good. | ||
| That's not helping air pollution. | ||
| And then when it comes to mercury, for example, and the mercury rule, they couldn't identify a single dollar of monetary benefits for reducing mercury with a mercury rule. | ||
| That makes no sense. | ||
| Let's talk to Juliet in Chicago, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Juliet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Oh, right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I'm hand over. | |
| I'm on live now, but on my TV, it's showing the gentleman talking. | ||
| No, don't look at the TV. | ||
| Just listen to your phone. | ||
| Yeah, there's a delay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You'll get distracted by that. | |
| Thank you so very much. | ||
| I'm calling because of all these rollbacks that the Doge and the Trump administration want to do. | ||
| They want to take away every single thing that constitutes our government. | ||
| They want to cut the veterans. | ||
| They want to cut the Social Security. | ||
| They want to cut the EPA. | ||
| They want to cut every single cabinet. | ||
| People have to start to understand who suffers when all of those cabinets are cut next to nothing. | ||
| The American people suffer. | ||
| We're the ones that need what the government is doing for us. | ||
| Without them, we don't have anyone to do anything for us in the government. | ||
| I am 65 years old. | ||
| My husband is 66. | ||
| I am on Social Security now. | ||
| When he is 67, he's going to go on to Social Security. | ||
| Are we still going to have Social Security offices? | ||
| So, Juliet, let's stay on topic and I'll get Darren to respond to Doge cuts and what impact they could have at the EPA. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I can't talk about every different agency, but at least with EPA, we're talking about kind of government spending and government involvement and that we need the government. | |
| Well, the problem is when it comes to the environment, Congress, on a partisan basis, passed something called the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| And we're talking about something over a trillion dollars of money going towards trying to shift our country towards EVs and trying to change the way we live our lives and what kind of appliances we want to buy or how we generate electricity. | ||
| That's not something the government needs to be involved in. | ||
| That's a waste. | ||
| And then the EPA and Administrator Zeldon, there's one program called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. | ||
| It's $27 billion of money. | ||
| That's basically a slush fund at the EPA, just kind of hand out to these nonprofit organizations that are pass-through entities. | ||
| Then these pass-through entities then shell out billions of dollars to other organizations. | ||
| If that sounds pretty possibly corrupt or wasteful, well, it is. | ||
| And that's something that the EPA Administrator Zeldon is trying to go after at least some of the money that's been shelled out the door as part of that program. | ||
| In fact, a Biden administration official later, kind of most recently, recently said, talking about all the money going out at the last second, as part of the Biden administration, talked about $20 billion of bars, the gold bars from Titanic being thrown off the ship. | ||
| Well, that's just waste. | ||
| And we need to address this type of waste. | ||
| And if Doge is going to do that, great. | ||
| And I think Congress needs to do it. | ||
| We've got a text from Dana in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey for you, Joe, who says that you sound like a typical liberal and that anything that President Trump does is the worst possible scenario. | ||
| She calls you another chicken little promoting fear. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thanks, Dana. | |
| I'll take that. | ||
| I think that I'm saying a lot of things that you would expect a guy from an environmental nonprofit to say. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| But I will say that I do try to live my life with intention and be very thoughtful about these things. | ||
| And I wouldn't come here and tell you that I thought we were moving in the wrong direction across a range of things if I didn't truly believe it. | ||
| What we are seeing here is truly a reimagining in the worst possible way of where we're heading as a country. | ||
| If we just use our common sense, if we're thinking about reviewing things that happened 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, just think about what that actually means for the direction we're heading. | ||
| I'm relatively young. | ||
| I have a 15-year-old son. | ||
| I care about what's next here. | ||
| So that's why I look towards the future and I see what is coming and I'm excited for it. | ||
| But not if we are working with a policy that is bringing us backwards. | ||
| And that's what we're seeing right now. | ||
| Here's Randy in Hager City, Wisconsin, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Two things. | ||
| You're talking about these electric cars. | ||
| Electric cars will never make it. | ||
| For one thing, yes and all, you buy an electric car for, what, $50,000, $60,000, and you drive it 10 years. | ||
| Now, you've got to trade that car in. | ||
| A battery shot. | ||
| All right. | ||
| The car is worth, what, maybe $10,000, and then you got to buy a $30,000 battery. | ||
| Well, your car, I mean, you're going backwards. | ||
| And it don't work. | ||
| Electric cars don't work. | ||
| They'll never go. | ||
| They will for some people probably always have them, but that's up to them. | ||
| They want to do it and run them in the ground and keep putting batteries in them. | ||
| That's up to them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Another thing that you talked about is air pollution and all this stuff. | |
| What about the air pollution from all these fires in California, you know, and all these explosions of everything from a plane crash to whatever that pollute our skies and everything as far as pollution? | ||
| Nuclear is the only way to go in my book. | ||
| Okay, let's take that up. | ||
| Joey, you want to take that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure, Randy, great points. | |
| On EVs, you don't have to buy one. | ||
| This is an environmental person saying if you don't want to buy an EV, you shouldn't have to. | ||
| But I will say that for many people, they like them and they're doing, and building them here in this country is growing our economy. | ||
| On wildfires, I think that's an excellent point, but we have to remember that we are seeing more and more wildfires in the last decade because of climate change. | ||
| It is pure science. | ||
| We are seeing that, and they are a travesty. | ||
| What is notable about wildfires is it's when most people realize how much they take clean air for granted when they can't breathe. | ||
| That was on the East Coast when the Canadian fires last year made our air sooty and dense. | ||
| It was an eye-opener that these things do matter, and that's why pollution controls matter. | ||
| Lastly, on nuclear, they are an important part of a cleaner future, and we should be talking about it. | ||
| And Darren Bucks, this is for you, a text from Eric in New Haven, Connecticut. | ||
| How come we haven't heard voices surrounding the beneficial things happened during COVID, like air quality, that expanded because of automobiles at a standstill? | ||
| That gives overwhelming proof to invest in mass transit. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, let me take a step back, actually, first. | |
| As Joe mentioned that he wants people to be able to choose whether or not to buy EVs, but the Biden administration policies, the rule, actually is an effort to try to force people, in effect, to force people into EVs. | ||
| It's literally designed to reduce the amount of internal combustion engine vehicles on the road. | ||
| That's what they intend to do. | ||
| They expressly state that. | ||
| And then California developed standards for their cars where it is literally a ban on new motor vehicle sales for gas-powered cars, and that's by 2035. | ||
| Biden administration gave them approval to move forward with that. | ||
| As a result, if that moved forward, what California does, it might effectively set a national standard, which basically means the end of gas-powered cars, very possibly. | ||
| I think that there's nothing wrong with EVs. | ||
| People should be able to make that choice. | ||
| They're not doing very well. | ||
| And I just want to clarify that. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| We'll see what happens. | ||
| And then I didn't quite understand, to be honest with you, the question about COVID and mass transit. | ||
| Obviously, if we don't have an if we don't have an economy and we're not doing anything and we're not producing anything, then yeah, it's a way to kind of reduce emissions. | ||
| But I don't think we want people not productive. | ||
| I think the point he was trying to make was that when we were forced to not drive our cars anymore, air quality improved dramatically. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, I mean, we can step down and live in our lives. | |
| We can live in our homes and not go out and live lives. | ||
| But I think that's kind of the point. | ||
| You know, I want a clean environment just like Joe does, and I appreciate everything he's saying. | ||
| But we also want to be able to drive cars. | ||
| We want to be able to go to jobs. | ||
| We want to be productive. | ||
| We want to improve the standard of living. | ||
| We want people, lower-income Americans, to be able to move out of being lower-income and move into higher levels of income. | ||
| That doesn't happen if we just ignore all the different trade-offs and costs that are involved. | ||
| We can't sit down and live in lockdown mode the whole time. | ||
| I kind of think that the policies that are being pushed by the Biden administration almost pretends like we should be living in lockdown mode. | ||
| That's not the way people live, and that's not the way people want to live their lives, the future or now. | ||
| Joe Bonfilio, a lot of these actions proposed by the EPA are not immediate. | ||
| There's going to be a pretty lengthy public comment period. | ||
| Can you explain what that means and how long this process is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to take the administration quite a long time to move through 31 different rule changes. | |
| So you're right. | ||
| And in each and every one of those, there could be a year to 16 months to 18 months of comment, revisions, and final posting. | ||
| That basically means if you care about these issues, you have right now to get engaged and get involved and make sure that this administration and lawmakers are hearing that this is important to you. | ||
| And this is how our process works. | ||
| And again, this is an open way for us to be talking about where we want to go and not where we don't want to go. | ||
| So what's the role of Congress in that process? | ||
| Congress can and will be megaphones for their constituents if they choose to. | ||
| We may see that. | ||
| We may see that through their individual leadership or through various ways of legislating. | ||
| But for the most part, this is on us. | ||
| This is on the citizenry to make sure that this administration hears us and knows where we want to go and pushes them to do right and do better. | ||
| Here's Ellen in Coco, Florida. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I truly believe that what this administration is doing to the EPA is actually the opposite of what the EPA is supposed to do. | ||
| It's supposed to protect us. | ||
| And I just hear that one gentleman, Darren, basically he's saying it should protect corporations and allow them to do whatever they want to do. | ||
| You know, here in Florida, the governor has said we can't even have climate change in any of the official state documents. | ||
| But yet I see our local energy companies like FPL actually putting up solar farms. | ||
| I think America needs to stay innovative and look at, you know, us being ahead of the world in changing. | ||
| And one of my big concerns is all of the plastics they're finding in our drinking water. | ||
| You know, this is going to be a big concern for families and children down the road. | ||
| I mean, I don't even think they want science to look at it. | ||
| It's scary to me what the Trump administration is doing. | ||
| Capitalism is not going to help us if we're all dead. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's get Darren Becks to respond to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I completely agree that we need to be innovative. | |
| That's absolutely right. | ||
| And the best way to be innovative is through limited government, not having the government spend taxpayer dollars, hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and trying to centrally play on the economy in inefficient ways. | ||
| We want people like the caller and others to kind of make freely made choices and to have built wealth for themselves, for their families. | ||
| And when we have wealth, we have more innovation and we can develop solutions to environmental challenges that we're all concerned about. | ||
| Look, there's a reason why the wealthiest countries in the world have the best environmental records. | ||
| We don't want to become an unwealthy country and not be able to address these environmental problems. | ||
| And so long as it's government control, that's exactly where we're headed. | ||
| So we do want to free things up. | ||
| And I think the Trump administration is trying to do that. | ||
| Joe Bonfilo, your reaction to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I appreciated the reference to the EPA and what it's doing for our lives. | |
| I'm going to pair that question with a conversation that we had earlier about Doge cuts. | ||
| What we're seeing now, especially with the EPA, again, we don't have to wait for any of these things to start happening to begin to see what's happening right now in our government, is you're going to see an EPA that already had too few inspectors, too few enforcement officers, have even less, which means companies are going to be able to get away with just a little bit more. | ||
| I like to think about what my reaction is if I'm sort of pretty sure that there is not a state trooper on the highway. | ||
| I'm going to go a little faster. | ||
| And I think that is where we are heading, especially right now with what we are seeing out of this administration today. | ||
| Let's talk to Kathy in Cayuga Falls, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I am sorry. | ||
| I'm upset and sweaty and shaking about this show today. | ||
| I have been watching and calling in on C-SPAN since NAFTA, and I have never been more upset about what I'm hearing. | ||
| I do not accept anything of these cuts, proposed cuts to the EPA. | ||
| I strongly feel that protecting the environment for us and everything on the planet is our greatest responsibility, and that we as Americans are responsible for setting a good example for the rest of the world. | ||
| This is not a competition. | ||
| This is doing the right thing in the right manner so that we achieve our goals. | ||
| And to me, it seems like everything that Trump is doing, including this, is motivated by greed and not protection of the environment or caring for the environment. | ||
| And I don't accept any of the things that this gentleman on the right is saying because he seems like he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. | ||
| Nothing, none of these cuts make any sense for the environment, and I'm going to help fight it every step of the way. | ||
| You can count on that. | ||
| Darren Baxter, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think the focus of the EPA right now is on doing the Biden administration rules. | |
| I don't call those cuts. | ||
| I don't think of them as cuts. | ||
| Well, they're not. | ||
| When the Biden administration promulgates rules, they finalize rules that are not respecting the will of Congress, that might trample on property rights, that ignore science, I don't know how that's hurting Americans. | ||
| When there's not a single dollar benefits from addressing mercury and then having a mercury rule, what's the point of that? | ||
| Creating a new PM 2.5 standard that's more stringent when the science experts just decided that that shouldn't happen when we already have some of the cleanest PM 2.5 in the world on the cars, controlling what people drive. | ||
| That's not what the EPA's role is. | ||
| The role isn't to become the grid manager of the country. | ||
| That doesn't help in terms of pollution. | ||
| That's just the EPA going way beyond what it's supposed to be doing. | ||
| If it focuses on its core obligations, which is protecting air and water, not getting diverted into these major, massive things that Congress never wanted, it will do a better job. | ||
| And sometimes having cuts for certain staff, it might, yeah, it might reduce the scope of the bureaucracy. | ||
| But if the agency is going into areas that have absolutely nothing to do with this mission, that's hardly going to hurt its efforts to protect those things. | ||
| I should just point out that like the EPA, we didn't talk about water issues at all, but like with Waters in the United States, that's the waters that the EPA can regulate along with the Army Corps. | ||
| You know, a lot of farmers would kind of argue with you, and basically the EPA tries to regulate puddles, in effect. | ||
| There's just a constant attack on property owners. | ||
| So I'll leave it there. | ||
| What do you think of that, the attack on property owners, as Darren Bach said? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I understand the point. | |
| It is one of those things that sort of sounds right. | ||
| We shouldn't be regulating puddles. | ||
| But in actuality, we're talking about rules that impact farmers downstream, fishermen, recreational users. | ||
| We live in a connected world. | ||
| As I said earlier on air pollution, you can't simply just have air pollution stay in one place. | ||
| Water pollution, too. | ||
| So we're simplifying these things with these political triggering words, regulating puddles, in ways that I think really sort of cheapen the debate. | ||
| And I think we can be sensible as we move forward with how we want to regulate anything in this country and do so in a way that ensures that the economy remains strong. | ||
| Could I jump in real quick? | ||
| Sure, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll just point out that the EPA and the Army Corps, who also regulate water, they've been shot down in the Supreme Court maybe four times, five times in how they interpret the Clean Water Act and what waters are regulated. | |
| And they just got shot down a couple of years ago again. | ||
| And we finally have some clarity as to what waters are supposed to be regulated. | ||
| You know, tell property owners who can't build their house that I'm talking about in talking points here. | ||
| When they have a property that's next to a ditch that then is connected to some other drain that's connected to a lake, therefore they're somehow adjacent to a wetland and therefore they can't build their house that they've been, their dream home that they've been, well, dreaming about for a long time, can't build it. | ||
| And we're not talking about pollution in terms of dumping toxic waste. | ||
| They're just trying to build a house. | ||
| What's called a dredge and fill permit, which is that all that means is dirt-moving activities. | ||
| It's nothing like what people think of when it comes to pollution. | ||
| It's basically an attack on people's property rights. | ||
| There are attacks on farmers, the ability to even farm their land. | ||
| So these are practical things that the EPA is doing. | ||
| And fortunately, the Trump administration will ensure that the EPA will develop a new water rule that's consistent with the Supreme Court's opinion. | ||
| Here's Carl in Riverside, California. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good to hear you. | ||
| My comment is for the guy on the right, Mr. I don't know how to put that in. | ||
| Faxed, faxed. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He is the guy from the 60s and the 50s that were telling people cigarettes were okay. | |
| Okay? | ||
| He's on here telling people that people want to drive gas-powered cars. | ||
| In the meantime, his boss, Trump, is hawking electric cars on the White House lawn. | ||
| You know, these people are deceitful. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| He can't sit still. | ||
| He looks unhealthy. | ||
| Well, come on, Carl. | ||
| Let's just talk about the policies. | ||
| Are you saying that you think that rolling back these regulations is going to make air quality worse, water quality worse? | ||
| Is that the issue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is the issue. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He knows that everything the guy on the left over there is saying is correct. | |
| All right. | ||
| Well, we'll give him a chance to respond to that. | ||
| What do you think, Darren? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, first of all, my primary interest is the interests of American people, making sure consumers are not hurt, making sure that just the American people don't, and lower-income Americans don't have higher prices for no justifiable reason. | |
| That when we say we're going to protect the environment, we're doing it based on sound science. | ||
| I'm not really sure what the problem is with that. | ||
| And quite honestly, I hope if people want to buy EVs, they should buy EVs. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Trump is certainly not my boss. | ||
| My boss is CEI. | ||
| We're a nonpartisan organization. | ||
| And our goal is simply to advance freedom, sure that the regulations make sense, and definitely to push back against the administrative state when there's trampling on property rights and other issues, freedoms. | ||
| Let's talk to Kim in Independence, Ohio, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Kim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The comment is safe. | ||
| The lady from Florida didn't worry about being safe. | ||
| How safe did she feel with all these illegal criminals, rapists, and murderers in our country? | ||
| So, Kim, we're talking about environmental regulations. | ||
| Do you have a comment about that? | ||
| No? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What about the other safety? | |
| Joe Bonfilio, the Office of Environmental Justice at the EPA has been shut down. | ||
| Can you explain what that means and what impact you think that might have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it means that the EPA and the administration broadly is going to sort of take their eye off of underserved communities, communities that have had long-standing issues and troubles with fence line pollution. | |
| And it means that for a lot of people, regardless of race, regardless of where they live, that the issues that they have dealt with their entire lives are not going to get the attention or the resources that they need to move past them. | ||
| We were talking earlier about property rights and property and how important property is. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Where you live is important. | ||
| And for many people, they do not have the power to change what's happening just outside of their property line or their community. | ||
| And a lot of times those things directly impact their lives, their property values, and their health. | ||
| Darren Bax, what do you think of that? | ||
| Were you in favor of the Office of Environmental Justice being shut down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the objective should be, when it comes to environmental justice, is making sure that the protections take into account the interests of everybody and all Americans. | |
| I think, unfortunately, the environmental justice concept is very malleable and it's basically been able to kind of be abused for all kinds of different purposes. | ||
| I think it's good to be, we should always be considering the interests of these lower-income communities, disadvantaged communities. | ||
| So just because they're getting rid of the Office of Environmental Justice, they're moving things around, doesn't mean there's not going to be focus on those interests. | ||
| We have a question for you on X from America Inc., Darren, who says, based on the fact that 196 countries are part of an international treaty on climate change and we pulled out of it, does this mean our products will most likely not meet treaty regulations internationally, thereby reducing our GDP in the long run? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think so. | |
| I don't think that that's how it will play out. | ||
| And quite honestly, other countries themselves are not too thrilled with Paris. | ||
| I think that that kind of gets us into a different area with trade laws. | ||
| I don't think that the, first of all, I don't think that conflating environmental issues with trade is actually a good thing. | ||
| That's a whole other issue altogether. | ||
| But we should be developing the products and doing so in a way that makes sense for our country. | ||
| We shouldn't be shooting ourselves in the foot with bad public policy and pushing for net zero. | ||
| If other countries want to hurt themselves, that's fine. | ||
| We shouldn't be in the business of doing that. | ||
| Here's Elisa, an independent in North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| And to the panelists as well. | ||
| First, I would like to say thank you for having this open panel the way you have it, representing both the conservative side and the side of common sense. | ||
| My question is to Mr. Bakus. | ||
| It appeared when he first started his dialogue this morning that he tried to disenvow or show that he was not part of the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| But everything that he's speaking of in terms of the deregulation is outlined with that within that project. | ||
| So how are you not part of the Heritage Foundation, thus promoting Project 2025? | ||
| I'm not employed by the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| He used to be. | ||
| He's no longer employed by the Heritage Foundation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the conservatives, the views that he has with the deregulation, he really believes that deregulating the waters and things of that nature is going to help the American people. | |
| Darren Bax, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, actually, on the water issue, it's really not deregulation so much as making sure that the water rule actually is consistent with the Supreme Court's opinion. | |
| So that's it on that. | ||
| We've got a text, Joe Bonfilio, from Ann and Live Oak, Florida. | ||
| Solar panels, especially the thousands found in the huge solar farms that are popping up in our rural communities, do not last forever. | ||
| What is the plan to dispose of these when their useful life expires? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hear a lot about the disposal of clean tech generally as a deterrent for installing them in the first place. | |
| But I want to underline something in that question that you are seeing renewables popping up, if you will, across rural America, across America, because they are net net and incredible benefit to those communities, for those landowners that are mixing solar and wind with agriculture, for those communities that are now getting a different revenue stream to support their schools. | ||
| I think we have a lot of things to worry about, but I want to really urge that we consider how the choices we're making now impact the current and future environment we have, and we will figure out what we do with the waste of which this country wastes a lot of things that is far beyond solar panels. | ||
| Here's Frank in Honin's Homesdale, Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question for the gentleman on the right, he keeps avoiding questions. | ||
| There was a text earlier that the young lady had a question about when COVID hit and how we weren't driving our vehicles, that the air was getting cleaner. | ||
| And you, matter of fact, tried to make him answer it a second time, and he still avoided it. | ||
| He's missing the point that we need to get away from burning fossil fuels. | ||
| He keeps talking about backing science. | ||
| 98% of all environmental scientists around the world, the consensus is this is horrible and we need to get away from it. | ||
| And he keeps avoiding it and keeps talking about the money, the economy. | ||
| EPA is about protecting humans from environmental hazards. | ||
| And his new EPA is to protect the companies that want to violate us. | ||
| And he keeps avoiding every question that's brought to him and he keeps going back to the economy. | ||
| Economy is another story. | ||
| This conversation is about protecting human life. | ||
| So Frank, ask him a specific question and then we'll have him answer it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, I just want him to respond to my comments. | |
| There's so many questions. | ||
| What does he think of? | ||
| I mean, this is like this is just like JFK Jr. running out health department talking about the science that these people are talking about is all bogus and it's blatantly bogus. | ||
| So he needs to address everything. | ||
| He needs to address the go back to that text earlier and discuss how when we weren't driving cars, the air got cleaner. | ||
| He needs to discuss everything that the EPA is there to help us and he is blatantly, blatantly protecting the companies to do their drilling. | ||
| I mean, he keeps saying not his boss and his boss is this boss. | ||
| His boss runs under Trump. | ||
| He was part of that heritage. | ||
| He knows what he is doing. | ||
| Okay, Frank, let's get a response. | ||
| Darren Back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't mentioned companies at all. | |
| I haven't mentioned drilling at all. | ||
| I've been talking about the effect on people. | ||
| Any choice we make in our lives, our own personal lives, are always figuring out what are the costs, what are the benefits. | ||
| The EPA's role is to protect human health, but to ask that it also consider the trade-offs, other factors, is not really, that's all I'm asking. | ||
| That's all we're saying here. | ||
| I think that makes perfect sense. | ||
| I did answer the question about the cars. | ||
| I mean, you're going to have reduced emissions if you're not driving. | ||
| I mean, that's self-evident. | ||
| So I don't really know how to respond to that other than to say, yes, you're right. | ||
| There will be less emissions if you drive less because there won't be any driving. | ||
| Does that necessarily mean that the air is somehow worse if you start driving and concentration levels would be bad? | ||
| No, it doesn't mean that because we already have very clean air in the United States. | ||
| It's very hard to even figure out how to improve the air quality when it comes to actual criteria pollutants. | ||
| I'm not talking about, and then let's just talk about carbon dioxide a second. | ||
| If the U.S. got rid of all emissions from greenhouse gas emissions, by 2100, you'd have no effect or very basically meaningless effect on global temperature. | ||
| So the question is, why are you going to get rid of all these emissions? | ||
| I mean, the question is, is it all costs and no trade-offs? | ||
| So yes, you do have to think about these things. | ||
| Do we want to actually ban people from driving their cars? | ||
| Do we want to have unreliable electricity? | ||
| Do we want to make it difficult for poor people to get around and be able to go to their doctor? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| So we do have to think about these things. | ||
| That has nothing to do with companies. | ||
| It has to do with Americans. | ||
| Joe Bonfilio, your thoughts on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm going to sort of pick up right at the end of that. | |
| I think that there are a lot of people that believe we should be addressing climate change. | ||
| That simply moving forward in advancing our technologies that allow us to reduce climate emissions is important. | ||
| There are a lot of folks that believe that, myself included. | ||
| But if you don't, if you don't believe that is a thing we should care about, we should recognize that these issues are global, that China is moving in the direction of clean faster than we are. | ||
| If you worry about where the American businesses are going to be, where American companies are going to be 10, 20, 30 years, American car companies will be in 10, 20, 30 years. | ||
| We have to recognize that we live in a big global community and an economy that is moving in this direction. | ||
| So even if you don't care about addressing climate change, even if you don't believe the science is driving storms to get worse, if you don't believe that, believe that this transition will help the American economy, will help the American worker, especially if we can do a lot of things here on our shores. | ||
| And I think that strengthens communities both now in the long run. | ||
| All right, one more call. | ||
| This is Fernando Galveston, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Yeah, about the EPA or is it about the Trump GOP that you asked? | ||
| No, this is about the EPA, Fernando. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What I was going to say is where I live, I ain't got no complaints. | ||
| It's very nice here. | ||
| Maybe in other parts of the world it could be bad. | ||
| But then again, I was going to say just let nature take its course. | ||
| I mean, what the hell? | ||
| You know? | ||
| What's wrong with nature just taking its course? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Fernando. | |
| I want to come visit you if it's nice there. | ||
| Nature can be grumpy. | ||
| And we are doing things that impact both nature and our neighbors. | ||
| I would just leave you with that. | ||
| That again, we are a big community. | ||
| We are deeply connected. | ||
| And if we follow science and we just follow what it means to be nice humans, that we are thinking about what it is that we do and where we are going in ways that push us to make sure that our environment gets a little cleaner and we get a little healthier. | ||
| And Darren Bykstead, last comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I do think that we can't really let nature take its course. | |
| I mean, because there is human involvement and we do need to have regulations that make sense. | ||
| But we also, when we make these decisions, we don't make them in a vacuum. | ||
| The EPA doesn't. | ||
| It needs to understand what Congress wanted them to do. | ||
| We want these decisions to be thoughtful and not to simply just be focused on at all costs. | ||
| We don't do things at all costs, no matter what, to address some pollutant. | ||
| We shouldn't be, or to address greenhouse gas emissions because we also have other factors. | ||
| It's not just the economy. | ||
| It's people's health beyond simply just the, as it relates to air emissions. | ||
| It's driving up because the lower income you have, it can have health effects. | ||
| So, well, you may not go to the doctor if you don't have as much money. | ||
| We don't want the government to kind of control our lives and try to change the entire economy. | ||
| If the foreign governments and others want to pursue these clean technology or whatever, they can do so. | ||
| And if it makes sense to the U.S., free market will ensure that we push in that direction. | ||
| But clearly, that's not happening because the government's trying to spend trillions of dollars to force this onto us. | ||
| So let's just kind of believe in the American people. | ||
| That's Darren Baxt. | ||
| He's a senior fellow and Center for Energy and Environment Director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. | ||
| You can find them at CEI.org and also John Joe Bonfilio, U.S. Region Executive Director for the Environmental Defense Fund there at EDF.org. | ||
| Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| In about 30 minutes, a conversation with cybersecurity reporter Martin Madyshak at the news site The Record about his reporting on the Trump administration's suspension of U.S. offensive cyber operations against Russia. | ||
| But first, it's open forum. | ||
| You can start calling in now Democrats 202748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back. | |
| We have Yankton, South Dakota. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Come on, C-SPAN. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Celebrate C-SPAN's 46th anniversary with a conversation on the beginnings of Cable's gift to America. | ||
| Tonight at 8 Eastern, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb joins C-SPAN's new CEO Sam Feist and former co-CEO Susan Swain to talk about his quest to bring live gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress to every American home. | ||
| A lot of people are surprised that C-SPAN doesn't receive any government funding. | ||
| They just assume it's a public service, it's a nonprofit, must get some government funding. | ||
| Never thought about it? | ||
| Not only never thought about it, I would have never been involved in it. | ||
| I think it's a very bad idea to have a government institution fund media in any way. | ||
| From the very, very beginning, viewers who were part of this and understood that it was important to them to preserve and expand what we were doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think that's so true today, even with the work that we're doing here with participants in the Colleen program, how active our social media channels are. | |
| For those people that get it, it matters. | ||
| Hear stories of C-SPAN's earliest days. | ||
| Learn about the people and work that went into bringing live coverage of the House of Representatives and eventually the Senate, White House, Supreme Court, and more to televisions across the country. | ||
| They'll also reflect on the network's five decades of coverage, including many of its signature projects and C-SPAN's continued role in delivering democracy unfiltered in the years to come. | ||
| Watch the C-SPAN story tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in open forum. | ||
| And before we take your calls, a few things for your schedule. | ||
| Today, a discussion on the impacts of artificial intelligence on the workforce and what AI could mean for the future of work. | ||
| That's at the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
| That starts at 10.30 a.m. here on C-SPAN. | ||
| And at 2.30 here on C-SPAN, we'll have Fed Chair Jerome Powell. | ||
| He holds a news conference on the U.S. economy, inflation, and interest rates following his meeting with other Federal Reserve officials. | ||
| Again, that's at 2.30 here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Both those programs you can see on our app, C-SPANNOW, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| In the news, here's the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Putin agrees to partial ceasefire in Ukraine. | ||
| It says that the Russian leader tells Trump he will pause attacks on energy infrastructure. | ||
| That was during a phone call that happened yesterday. | ||
| It says that he remained resistant to a longer-lasting peace plan pushed by the U.S. President since his election. | ||
| The ceasefire is the first tangible concession from Russia won by Trump in his campaign for a peace deal in which he has mainly pressured Kyiv for concessions. | ||
| We are hearing also reporting that President Trump is set to speak to Ukrainian President Zelensky today. | ||
| We'll keep you updated on that. | ||
| Here is also news from overseas. | ||
| Israel threatens more strikes. | ||
| Attacks in Gaza killed more than 400 are, quote, just the beginning, according to the Israeli leader, and we have a portion of him speaking. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hamas refused offer after offer to release our hostages. | |
| In the past two weeks, Israel did not initiate any military action in the hope that Hamas would change course. | ||
| Well, that didn't happen. | ||
| While Israel accepted the offer of President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Hamas flatly refused to do so. | ||
| This is why I authorized yesterday the renewal of military action against Hamas. | ||
| Israel does not target Palestinian civilians. | ||
| We target Hamas terrorists. | ||
| And when these terrorists embed themselves in civilian areas, when they use civilians as human shields, they're the ones who are responsible for all unintended casualties. | ||
| Palestinian civilians should avoid any contact with Hamas terrorists. | ||
| And I call on the people of Gaza, get out of harm's way, move to safer areas, because every civilian casualty is a tragedy. | ||
| And every civilian casualty is the fault of Hamas. | ||
| I thank President Trump for his unwavering support for Israel. | ||
| Our alliance with the United States has never been stronger. | ||
| To those who criticize Israel, I ask, what would you do if terrorists murdered and kidnapped your children? | ||
| You would do what we are doing. | ||
| In the face of pure evil, free societies have no choice but to fight. | ||
| That was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday in an address to his nation. | ||
| And we will go to the calls now to Christine in Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Christine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I tried to get on earlier with what you were talking about, and I didn't get it. | |
| But I'll just say what I needed to say then. | ||
| I just had comments like, we need more research and development, help with solar and electric, instead of stopping it and starting it. | ||
| Jimmy Carter started it, and Reagan took it off, and it's back on. | ||
| We should just stay with it. | ||
| Number two, where I live in the valley that changed the world, that's the Titusville Oil City, Pennsylvania area. | ||
| It has been mostly run by Republicans, and since I lived in Venango County, oil and gas, in 2004, my neighbor dumped his brine from his oil holding tanks into the ditch by his house. | ||
| It was a new oil and gas, which ran into the creek in our area. | ||
| In doing so, they left the oil go because they didn't stop it when it was just the brine. | ||
| So it went onto our property that had a beaver dam. | ||
| And then the neighbor or his helper knocked down the beaver dam that was on our property. | ||
| It went further down into Sandy Creek. | ||
| The local paper, which is called the Derrick, would not publish anything about it. | ||
| Fish were killed, and we never found out what happened to the beaver. | ||
| They also used the Kevin, go out to the other room. | ||
| So, Christine, do you think that this should be handled on the federal level by the EPA or at the local level? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the local level didn't do anything to help. | |
| And I went to representatives, they gave me one little piece of paper to find out. | ||
| I did get the oil well shut down by spending several thousand dollars, having my water tested. | ||
| We need to have regulation that really works. | ||
| And there's one other thing that I want to say. | ||
| Fast forward to the 2020s, our local area, we had another oil dump because it seems to be standard operating precision that they just dumped the brine off of these oil wells. | ||
| In Reno, Pennsylvania, it just ruined the water for the people there. | ||
| And now they brought in another company that's running the water system. | ||
| And it's going to cost a lot of money to fix this. | ||
| And you know who's going to get stuck with it? | ||
| It's not the people that made the money from the oil wells. | ||
| It's the taxpayers. | ||
| They're going to, in the long run, get stuck with it. | ||
| All right, Christine. | ||
| And staying in Pennsylvania, this is Barry, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was just, I concur with a previous caller, but getting back to the two gentlemen you had on earlier, I think they're both good guys. | ||
| And I just wanted to say it. | ||
| I think there has to be a balance with all this. | ||
| Of course, I don't think there's anybody, President Trump, President Biden, or anybody that isn't concerned with clean air drinking water. | ||
| We love our families. | ||
| We love our country. | ||
| But, you know, you can be over-regulated, too. | ||
| So I think both gentlemen are correct in the things they were, the point of view they were making. | ||
| And I just wanted to say there has to be a balance no matter what it is for our country. | ||
| And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that if you care to comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Barry. | ||
| And this is Chris, Huntsville, Alabama, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This is Chris in Huntsville. | ||
| And I wanted to talk about the last two gentlemen that were discussing CO2. | ||
| The CO2 concentration is tracked and is listed in a curve called the Keeling Curve. | ||
| It's been acquired over the last 40 years. | ||
| And the heat in the atmosphere essentially compounds. | ||
| In other words, the more CO2 you put in, it's like your savings account. | ||
| It just keeps getting greater and greater and greater with the interest. | ||
| But with more and more CO2, you keep trapping more and more heat. | ||
| And if we just ignore it, as they suggested, don't worry about the change, it's just going to keep getting hotter and hotter and hotter unless we interdict to slow down the increase of the CO2 in the atmosphere. | ||
| By the way, that data is recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory, which is one of the things that Elon Musk is trying to destroy right now. | ||
| Get rid of that observatory. | ||
| We'll get rid of the healing curve. | ||
| Thank you for listening. | ||
| Here's Catherine in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| I wanted to talk about the Donald Trump's negotiations only with Putin and leaving out Zelensky. | ||
| And I think the American people are not aware. | ||
| Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban, the Afghan withdrawal. | ||
| He negotiated only with the Taliban. | ||
| He left out Afghanistan. | ||
| He released 5,000 prisoners. | ||
| He reduced the soldiers from 13,000 to 2,500, making it less safe. | ||
| He closed one of the airports, agreed. | ||
| He agreed to all of these terms. | ||
| He agreed to closing the airports in northern Afghanistan. | ||
| And that is why it was very difficult to get the people out of the one airport that was open. | ||
| And my concern is the same thing would happen again with not including Zelensky in these. | ||
| He gives all of these concessions to who I would call the aggressor in this and doesn't consider Zelensky or the people. | ||
| And for anyone who says that Donald Trump is a great negotiator, it seems like he is if you're on the side of the tyrant or the aggressor rather than Zelensky. | ||
| And I'm concerned of what will happen to Europe, what will happen to NATO, and what will happen to the freedom of other independent countries in Europe if there are no checks put on these agreements with just Donald Trump and Putin. | ||
| And maybe there is someone out there because I don't think the news ever covered the fact that Donald Trump negotiated only with the Taliban for that withdrawal. | ||
| I don't ever remember hearing anything about it. | ||
| I looked it up on my own. | ||
| But of those 5,000 Taliban troops, maybe two of them were the people that killed the American soldiers that died over there. | ||
| Then he blamed Biden for everything, the chaotic withdrawal. | ||
| Well, it was because he set the deadline for being out of Afghanistan. | ||
| And I'd love to find out if you could do a survey. | ||
| Did the American people ever hear of any of this? | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| Sorry, Catherine. | ||
| And Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, was on the view yesterday, and he was talking about his handling of the GOP spending bill vote last week. | ||
| Governor Pritzker's chief of staff, Ann Caprara, has said the following: The fight going on in the Democratic Party right now is not between hard left, right, and moderate. | ||
| It's between those who want to fight and those who want to cave. | ||
| And it gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends, but I think you caved. | ||
| I think you and nine other Democrats caved. | ||
| I don't think you showed the fight that this party needs right now because you're playing by a rule book where the other party has thrown that rule book away. | ||
| True. | ||
| And so, in my view, what you did really was in supporting that GOP partisan bill that Democrats had no input in, you cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, to gut Medicare, to gut Medicaid. | ||
| Why did you lead Democratic senators to play by that book that the Republicans are not playing by? | ||
| Okay, first, I'd say, Sonny, no one wants to fight more than me, and no one fights more than me. | ||
| You've got to fight smart. | ||
| It is not true. | ||
| That bill had far less dam. | ||
| It was bad. | ||
| I hated it. | ||
| But it does far less damage to Social Security. | ||
| Medicare, Medicaid are far more susceptible to being eliminated, which is what that horrible Musk. | ||
| Can you imagine this guy, Musk, a billionaire, saying $1,100 for a senior citizen is not necessary for the Ponzi scheme? | ||
| There are many fewer cuts in that bill than that would be in a shutdown. | ||
| It was a bad choice. | ||
| So we got to fight. | ||
| Yes, they exist. | ||
| If you have two choices, one bad, the other devastating. | ||
| One chops off one of your fingers, the other chops off your arm. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| So I want to fight, and we are fighting. | ||
| We're going to fight every day on this, every day. | ||
| Today, we're fighting them on Medicaid. | ||
| Tomorrow, we're going to fight them on, you know, the next few days on tariffs. | ||
| We're going to fight them on Social Security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I want to win and fight smart. | |
| Not just, I understand, we want to stick it to them. | ||
| Okay, you're going to be. | ||
| And that was Senator Chuck Schumer on the View. | ||
| This is Open Forum. | ||
| And here is Harold, a Republican in Kansas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hey, I'm just worried about your Democratic callers and the Democratic Party as a whole. | ||
| You had a caller earlier that said she couldn't breathe. | ||
| She was sweaty and she was scared. | ||
| Relax, folks. | ||
| You have three and a half more years with Donald Pretty with Donald Trump as your president. | ||
| Just slow down. | ||
| Don't give yourself a stroke. | ||
| You all have a nice day. | ||
| And here is Harvey in Santa Monica, California, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm Harvey from Santa Monica. | ||
| Let fellows comments about this woman that was upset. | ||
| I was trying to call in for the environmental discussion. | ||
| I'm an old time, I'm 75. | ||
| I've been an independent for four years, eight years, haven't voted in eight years. | ||
| And I was the first environmental studies student in the UC system in 1970 when they and we've got a living tree in the White House with Ruckel's house, which is the information's been purged now. | ||
| Okay, we've been going to we've got the Public Solar Power Coalition for 40, 50 years. | ||
| We've been going to the air district here and been litigating and whatnot. | ||
| And Obama in Ken started the Sunshot program. | ||
| It was based after Moonshot. | ||
| That's how we got to the moon. | ||
| Musk wouldn't be talking this stuff about unless we did. | ||
| Okay, they've made solar cost effective, and it's taken over the market. | ||
| But fossil fuel companies and whatnot are controlling and building this stuff and owning it. | ||
| The issue is ownership and control. | ||
| So these fires we have here, this is climate. | ||
| We also study political economics. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So the cost, externalities in economics is stuff that is not included in cost benefit. | ||
| And these costs are deaths and sickness and stuff. | ||
| All right. | ||
| This is the real. | ||
| And the state of California says there's 7,000 deaths from air pollution a year. | ||
| We go to the South Coast District and CARB, the Air Resources Board. | ||
| And there was a report at Lancet, 200 years out of London in 18, based on 10 million deaths a year from air pollution, 50 million for the whole world, deaths a year, 20% of the deaths. | ||
| And they said there was one to one and a half million premature deaths in the United States per year. | ||
| California's 12% of the population. | ||
| That's like 150,000 to 200,000 deaths. | ||
| We had 300,000 people die. | ||
| This is the real. | ||
| They've purged this. | ||
| We brought the Solar New Deal and 100 exhibits in the 16 plan, and it was never evaluated by CARB or EPA or these are captured agencies. | ||
| There's a guy, Stigler, got a no-bill in 81 out of Chicago. | ||
| Your point, Harvey, and ABC News reporting SpaceX Dragon successfully splashes down returning NASA astronauts back to Earth. | ||
| Sunita or Sunny Williams and Barry Butch Wilmore left the ISS early Tuesday. | ||
| It's yesterday. | ||
| We have some footage there on your screen if you'd like to see that splashdown happening. | ||
| And we'll continue with your calls to Ann in Akron, New York, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We, the people, have just one chance left to save our democracy. | ||
| There are two special elections in Florida districts one and six on April 1st this year. | ||
| Early voting is March 22nd through 29th. | ||
| Florida District 1 is the counties Escambia, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and parts of Walton. | ||
| The candidate is Gay Vallemort. | ||
| In District 6, it is St. John's, Putnam, Flagler, Marion, and Volugia counties. | ||
| We need to elect Josh Well. | ||
| If you are in one of these counties, please get active, talk to your neighbors, call your relatives. | ||
| We must do this. | ||
| There's also two more coming up: one hopefully in New York and one in Texas. | ||
| We need to do the same thing. | ||
| We have enough to flip the house and at least slow everything down before it's too late. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And Gary Sterling, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mimi. | |
| I have two questions and one statement. | ||
| My first question is: can you have your research department look up February 29th, 1980 NOAA press release in the Washington Post? | ||
| And then I have a comment about that. | ||
| And my second question is: you're going to be around a lot of tax experts. | ||
| Can you ask them, because they said frozen embryos and life forms, can we get tax write-offs for that? | ||
| And my comment is, I feel like because of the gentlemen that say they're unapologetically pro-life, that my childhood took a hard, sharp, oblique turn. | ||
| I became a fearless child. | ||
| It went like this. | ||
| My mother was an RN in the ER of Florida's highlight general. | ||
| Once a week, she'd get a botched abortion. | ||
| Once a month, one of those women would die. | ||
| Usually sepsis, miserable way to die. | ||
| Anyway, my mother came home one day, and I didn't know what the word she passed, but this one lady that held on for 17 weeks told my mother bedtime stories. | ||
| She told me I went to sleep. | ||
| Anyway, Tina, she told me Tina had passed, and I said, that's nice. | ||
| The dog got and caught. | ||
| I got a meat hook upside the head, left my ear all red and ringing the side of my head, felt like I was on a hot griddle, had mucus run out of my nose, had this metallic taste in my mouth. | ||
| It was blood. | ||
| And she stormed on inside, and I heard something break, and then the old man came out, and he hadn't seen the old lady cold cock me. | ||
| But that completely changed my life. | ||
| And in fact, when I went to the induction center and got out of the audio hut, the E6 audiologist said, boy, if we didn't have a road going on, I'd pull F you. | ||
| So, you know, like these pro-life people, they better get their heads on, right, because they're causing a lot of dysfunctional families. | ||
| All right, Gary. | ||
| We'll move on to Max in California, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for the time, and hope everybody is well. | ||
| I had a couple comments. | ||
| One regarding EPA regulations and such that are being rolled back. | ||
| And my first comment on that is regulations in America are put in place for reasons. | ||
| They're just not randomly picked things to regulate. | ||
| There's a reason why regulations come about. | ||
| And it's usually for the safety of citizens of this country. | ||
| So I believe that the people who think removing regulations is a good thing, number one, caused me to pause because regulations are put in place for reasons. | ||
| Now, the thing about EPA that I want to say is living in California, we used to have a lot of smog when I was a child. | ||
| I'm 56 now. | ||
| There were days when schools were closed. | ||
| They were called smog days, similar to rain or snow days in different states or wherever. | ||
| But the smog was so bad that we weren't even allowed to go to school. | ||
| Schools were closed, and we were warned to stay inside and don't be outdoors in the bad smog. | ||
| Not only were there smog days, you could see a cloud of smog over the Los Angeles skyline all the time, and you could smell it. | ||
| Now, in 1996 or 1990s, leaded fuel was regulated, and it's only used now or illegal to use in special occasions like farm equipment and race cars and such and aircraft. | ||
| It wasn't banned totally. | ||
| The industries that still needed it are able to use it. | ||
| But since those regulations regarding the leaded fuel, we haven't had, we don't have smog days anymore. | ||
| We can't see that cloud of smog. | ||
| We can't smell. | ||
| Our air quality is much cleaner. | ||
| So I'm speaking from not facts that I've read on the internet. | ||
| I'm speaking from my life, what I've witnessed, and that is there used to be smog days. | ||
| Now it's much better. | ||
| So that's something that I think everyone needs to think about when we're talking about removing regulations because they are put in place for reasons. | ||
| And then my last comment is, please, America, realize what's going on. | ||
| Donald Trump and his crew are trying to claim and put us into martial law. | ||
| I guarantee you that. | ||
| I can't say it because I'm not psychic, but I believe that 100%. | ||
| That is the goal. | ||
| When we are under martial law, a president, we will not have elections. | ||
| A president will not be made to leave office. | ||
| That was his goal in his last term, in my opinion. | ||
| That is also his goal in this term. | ||
| We are going to be put under martial law unless this person is regulated and reeled in. | ||
| So America. | ||
| Ray in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, you got it absolutely correct. | |
| These people on the right, they sat around all day and watched stuff like Fox and these other networks that don't tell the truth. | ||
| Donald Trump has lost just about every one of these cases with the judges. | ||
| You know, these regulations that he find people, they don't know that because they don't tell them that. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And he's losing my thought. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can call us back in 30 days, Ray. | |
| I mean, that's one of the things. | ||
| You know, like several people called in and said they don't read. | ||
| They don't read nothing. | ||
| It takes 67 votes in the Senate to impeach a judge. | ||
| They don't know that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And here's Velvet in Suffolk, Virginia. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| It's about this astronaut thing. | ||
| They can't get things straight in my way of thinking. | ||
| They say they've been up there nine months from September to there is only six months. | ||
| Thought of that, it was four, then it was three, then it was two, but to bring four home, they've been up there for nine months. | ||
| Waiting to get the food from. | ||
| That's what I'd like to know. | ||
| Where'd they get what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Their food. | |
| The food? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They had to eat. | |
| I mean, you can't go nine months without eating. | ||
| I'm pretty sure they had enough food, Velvet. | ||
| So, yes, they did eat. | ||
| Here's Tony in Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I'd like to thank the President, President Trump, for bringing home those astronauts. | ||
| If it wasn't for him getting them off the coals, they would have never come home. | ||
| Also, I'm calling about that EPA. | ||
| If people would just watch the weather channel, they would see the way the wind blows. | ||
| They worry about things that were contaminating in our air. | ||
| How about all the fires that are drifting our way from Canada and from other parts of space? | ||
| You know, it's a much more deeper subject than gas emissions from cars. | ||
| How about all the holes that they're punching in the atmosphere? | ||
| Do you think maybe the sun's getting hotter because those rays are getting through those holes they punch through the atmosphere with all the satellites that they in the past have put in space? | ||
| And also, are you saying that satellites punch holes in the atmosphere? | ||
| I believe that's what I heard on one of the news channels that they say this is what it could be false news. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, you know, this is what you hear on these news channels. | ||
| Yeah, so a satellite launch won't actually puncture the atmosphere, Tony. | ||
| But I get your point. | ||
| Did you have anything to add before I interrupted you? | ||
| Sorry, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quit. | |
| Hello? | ||
| Yes, yes, you're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wish people would quit trying to aggravate white people and black people. | |
| You know, we get along in our area. | ||
| There's a lot of nice black people. | ||
| There's a lot of nice white people. | ||
| But it seems like these people in Congress, especially the Democrats, keep trying to make it like it's a white and black issue. | ||
| And I think that's what's making a lot of people nervous in this country because we're getting along fine. | ||
| But when you watch these television programs and these news people, they try to antagonize one side or the other. | ||
| And it's not right because we're all good Americans. | ||
| And this is about the astronauts. | ||
| The Washington Post, this is Below the Fold, saying astronauts back home after nine months in space. | ||
| The eight-day mission was marred by glitches, then became mired in politics. | ||
| It says that it splashed down Tuesday evening off the coast of Florida after a 286-day odyssey that started with a harrowing technical problem that forced NASA to swap vehicles and extend the mission from about eight days to nine months. | ||
| And Governor J.D. Pritzker was asked about Senator Schumer's handling of the GOP spending fight at the Center for American Progress event. | ||
| This was yesterday. | ||
| Here's part of that exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Given the dissatisfaction with how Democrats handled the funding fight last week, what did you think of that? | |
| And how would you advise them to act for the next crisis, let's say the debt ceiling, which is expiring later this year? | ||
| Well, I put out a statement that morning before the vote encouraging the Senate to vote down the CR. | ||
| I mean, we have to take any opportunity when we're not in the majority. | ||
| We have to take any opportunity where we have leverage in order to stand up and fight. | ||
| Now, it's not fight to no end. | ||
| What do you use that fight for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's to get compromise from this ridiculously, you know, quiet Congress that goes along with whatever Donald Trump and Elon Musk are telling them. | |
| And so we've got to use those opportunities whenever they come about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And there was a prime one. | |
| It's probably the first that I can think of where there was a real opportunity for us to stand up and speak out and to protect the people who we stand up for. | ||
| I mean, I'm disappointed about what happened. | ||
| And here's Jim in Key West, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing today? | |
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to mention a couple of things. | |
| I'm down here in Key West. | ||
| And yesterday on the Main Street, Duvall Street, it was quite a celebration of the Irish. | ||
| Happy St. Patrick's Day to everybody out there. | ||
| But at one point, one of Elon's cars was driving by, the whole place was cheering, go get him, Elon, go get him, Elon. | ||
| People got to start appreciating this guy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| All the money he's saving us. | ||
| And I don't know, man. | ||
| Ever since I could pay taxes, I didn't trust the government. | ||
| So I am so thrilled that they got this Doge going. | ||
| And I actually wish they'd put it in local places. | ||
| I live in the city of Quincy in the summer, Quincy, Massachusetts. | ||
| And they just found the guy in charge of seniors stealing like crazy. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy. | ||
| And the other, I had a comment I wanted to make about Elizabeth Warren. | ||
| I've texted her a million times. | ||
| Hunter Biden had like 175 SARS reports, suspicious account reports, and she never investigated one. | ||
| And I want to know why they're not on our side. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And then the guy about the regulations, he was saying how helpful they are. | ||
| And I agree with him 100%. | ||
| Those regulations are very helpful. | ||
| But the problem is about 10% of the money goes to the problem and 90% goes to the administration. | ||
| And to me, it's sinful. | ||
| And what Doge is doing, if you have a problem with what Doge is doing, you're probably on the take. | ||
| Otherwise. | ||
| All right, Jim. | ||
| We got to run. | ||
| Up next, we'll be joined by cybersecurity reporter Martin Madyshak of the news site, The Record. | ||
| We'll talk about his reporting on the Trump administration's suspension of U.S. offensive cyber operations against Russia. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
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unidentified
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Your gift today preserves open access to government and ensures the public stays informed. | |
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| He has written 12 books on subjects including a history of the United States, the Kerner Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the life of John F. Kennedy, Jr. | ||
| His latest book is titled Presidents at War, How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents from Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. | ||
| Steve Gillen closes his book saying, quote, ironically, the threats facing America in the third decade of the 21st century are very real and in many ways similar to the challenges the nation confronted in the 1930s. | ||
|
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Author Stephen Gillen with his book Presidents at War, How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents from Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and Bush on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, at 5.45 p.m. Eastern, Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker gives the annual reading of George Washington's 1796 farewell address in observance of the first president's birthday. | ||
| The Senate tradition began on Washington's birthday in 1896. | ||
| Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, watch American History TV series First 100 Days as we look at the start of presidential terms. | ||
| This week, we focus on the early months of President Jimmy Carter's term in 1977, including inflation, energy policy, and the pardoning of Vietnam War draft evaders. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, University of Texas history professor Bruce Hunt on the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and the role of the Army Corps of Engineers General Leslie Groves. | ||
| And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, author John Shaw, with his book Rising Star, Setting Sun, recounts the presidential transition from World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy's new frontier in 1960 and 61, focusing on the 10-week period between the two administrations. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Martin Mataszak. | ||
| He's a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. | ||
| Martin, welcome to the program. | ||
|
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Thank you for having me. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
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You broke the story for the record. | |
| Heckseth orders Cyber Command to stand down on Russia planning. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| How big of a deal is this? | ||
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It's a very big deal. | |
| Russia is one of the top four, I would say, adversaries to the U.S. in cyberspace. | ||
| It is a bastion for criminal cyber activity, state cyber activity, threat actors that are either backed by the state or blessed by the state. | ||
| And to say, for the command to be told, you will no longer go after them. | ||
| And to be clear, when I say we're talking about offensive cyber operations, we're not talking about open warfare. | ||
| The example people always like to go to is, oh, well, Moscow can turn off the lights in DC and vice versa. | ||
| And oh my gosh, we're talking about things like driving people off of networks. | ||
| We're talking about taking away access to other networks. | ||
| But for Cyber Command to stop doing that altogether is a very big deal because now Russia sort of has free reign, if you will, and they're not expecting to be pushed back in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| But explain this a little bit more. | ||
| Offensive operations against Russia. | ||
| Are we in their networks? | ||
| Are we doing things? | ||
| Are we doing cyber attacks against Russia? | ||
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I mean, it depends on what you mean by attacks, I guess. | |
| Like I said, we're not talking about open warfare here. | ||
| It doesn't rise to the level of warfare, like bombing a building, right? | ||
| Very clearly, that's an act of war. | ||
| But if we're talking about driving them off a network or taking away their access or let's say cutting off one of their capabilities online, that could be perceived as an offensive action, that we're actually going out there and say, severing something that they're doing or stopping them from doing something. | ||
| Now, if we're not doing that, that's sort of what we're talking about. | ||
| We're not talking about, we're talking about cyber effects, really. | ||
| Maybe not attacks, maybe effects is a better word for it in terms of just preventing what they're doing online or messing with what they're doing online. | ||
| And why would the Defense Department do that? | ||
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According to people that I've talked to and others have reported, it seems to be a bargaining chip in the talks between the U.S. and Moscow about Ukraine. | |
| Essentially, the administration has said, we're going to take this, to use an analogy, we're going to take this finger out of your eye for a little while. | ||
| And if you come to the table and negotiate in good faith, this is not going to happen. | ||
| This aspect of our relationship, of our adversarial relationship, is not going to happen for the time being. | ||
| After the talks that were in Riyadh last week, where some intelligence sharing and military support was turned back on for Ukraine, I asked my sources, like, is now Cyber Command off the leash again? | ||
| Are they now doing this? | ||
| And people that I talk to say, no, they're still being told to hold their fire, if you will. | ||
| So well, this is interesting because this is what DOD Rapid Response says on X. In all caps, to be clear, the SACDEF has neither canceled nor delayed any cyber operations directed against malicious Russian targets, and there has been no stand down order whatsoever from that priority. | ||
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I'm glad you brought that up because my story that came out, I believe that came out on Tuesday, my story came out the Friday before, I have a comment from a defense official talking about my story. | |
| So this came out on this anonymous account several days later after several publications followed my reporting, confirmed my reporting, including the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times. | ||
| What you're looking at there is, according to my sources, classic Pentagon wordplay. | ||
| You'll notice the word canceled or delayed. | ||
| Well, you can't cancel or delay something if there's nothing to cancel or delay. | ||
| So if you're not telling, if the command is not being given an order, go do this, go do XYZ, you can't really cancel or delay it then because there's nothing to do. | ||
| So something is not happening, you can't cancel or delay it. | ||
| And all respect to DOD from this anonymous account that they now run, it's wrong. | ||
| What did we get in response for standing down offensive operations against Russia? | ||
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That is very unclear right now. | |
| Russia, like I said, is a hub, an oasis for malicious cyber actors. | ||
| And let's be clear, like, it's not simply like they have this, you know, this threat actor, this organization is doing it. | ||
| Sometimes it is a state-connected actor. | ||
| Sometimes it is a criminal organization that has the blessing or the blind eye of the government there. | ||
| Sometimes it's one and the same, where a hacker who might work at, say, like the FSB or the GRU in Russia has a nighttime job where they're a ransomware actor hitting a public school system in Seattle, say, or Oklahoma or in D.C. and earning extra cash that way or stealing cryptocurrency that way. | ||
| So in terms of what we got in response, that part is completely unclear. | ||
| It's unclear. | ||
| I mean, we haven't heard of any major ransomware attacks recently, but Russia is, like I said, a top four adversary in cyberspace, the United States, on a host of front from insolence operations to ransomware to other ways. | ||
| And what we're getting in response, it's unclear. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation, Martin Mataszak of the record will be with us until the end of the program in about 20 minutes. | ||
| You can give us a call. | ||
| The numbers are 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and 202748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| These cyber operations are run out of U.S. Cyber Command. | ||
| Can you explain what that command does, when it was stood up, and about how big it is? | ||
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Sure, sure. | |
| So U.S. Cyber Command is the U.S. military's premier cyber operations, cyber operators. | ||
| They are the tip of the spear, if you will, in terms of getting things done online, in terms of the online battle space. | ||
| It was established in 2010-ish after a series of devastating breaches at the Pentagon, including, I think, also their super secret network. | ||
| So it was stood up then because it was like, this is a new domain of warfare to us. | ||
| It remained, it grew and grew under U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the U.S. nuclear forces. | ||
| And in 2018, under the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, it was boosted to a combatant command, I believe the 10th at the time. | ||
| It is located at Fort Meade, Maryland, which it shares a campus with NSA. | ||
| The leader of Cyber Command is also the leader of the National Security Agency, which is the country's largest spy agency and is the top electronics spy agency possibly in the world. | ||
| And it's around exact numbers are always classified and depends on what sort of you're talking about, but we're talking about thousands of people who are at Cyber Command. | ||
| And how does this fit into the larger cyber strategy of the United States? | ||
| So you have the NSA that you just mentioned. | ||
| You also have CISA, which is a cybersecurity infrastructure security administration component of Department of Homeland Security. | ||
| So how does Cyber Command fit in that? | ||
| How do they play in that space? | ||
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They're a central player in it because they do both offensive and defensive operations. | |
| You think about CISA, you just mentioned CISA, they do the homeland. | ||
| That is their remit. | ||
| NSA is signals intelligence. | ||
| They are forward-facing. | ||
| They do nothing inside the United States. | ||
| Cyber Command also doesn't do anything inside the United States, but because of their defensive and on-face of nature, they're always sharing information, performing operations, and sharing what they've learned with places like CISA, like the FBI, like Department of Justice. | ||
| Cyber Command and its cyber national mission force do something, they do something called hunt forward missions per se. | ||
| And that's when a foreign country, let's say Ukraine, invites U.S. operators to come in and say, look at our networks. | ||
| And you can look at our networks and see what you see. | ||
| They can observe tactics and techniques and procedures that way. | ||
| They might find new malware or ransomware or other sort of malicious code that way. | ||
| Cyber command operators then come back to the United States with it. | ||
| They spread it not only to government agencies, but also the private sector to help guerr against that for future attacks. | ||
| So in terms of, they underpin most everything the U.S. does in cyberspace these days. | ||
| There's a report by the New York Times with the headline, Russia escalated sabotage to pressure U.S. and allies on Ukraine. | ||
| Studies say, now this isn't necessarily cyber, but it certainly includes that. | ||
| The study they're referring to is CSIS. | ||
| How big of an issue is Russia's cyber attacks on allies, specifically on our allies in Europe? | ||
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It's a huge deal, especially in Ukraine. | |
| Ukraine has been, even prior to the invasion a couple years ago, has been a hotbed of cyber activity, malicious cyber activity by Russia, targeting their infrastructure, targeting their communications, their state agencies. | ||
| The U.S. has learned a great deal prior and since the invasion in terms of how to guird against such attacks. | ||
| You know, Ukraine moved a lot of their infrastructure to the cloud, so that way if something was turned out, they still had access to it. | ||
| But the U.S. has watched very closely what Russia has been doing in cyberspace via Ukraine, just to see how they use it for intelligence, what kind of attacks they're using, what kind of malware they're using, what kind of data theft they're conducting. | ||
| So it is, it's been, it's been a very lively zone, and that's spilled out into other activities. | ||
| I mean, we've seen in recent years that Britain and Germany have said that Russia's been behind hacks of their governments as well. | ||
| And I think that then all the information sharing with the U.S. is happening that way in terms of how are they doing this? | ||
| How are they gaining access? | ||
| How can we prevent future attacks? | ||
| And then how do we potentially impose costs on Russia, be it cyber warfare, cyber effects like we were talking about, cyber attacks, whether it be indictments by DOJ, whether it be arrests by the FBI, extraditions by the FBI. | ||
| So Europe has been, especially Ukraine, has been a hotbutted activity for years now and continues to be, which is why this stand down order has some of the command very worried, because if we're not engaging, if we're not going after Russia, they might feel like they have free reign inside of Ukraine to do as they will. | ||
| Let's talk to callers and start with Barbara in Tennessee, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Barbara, are you there? | ||
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
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Okay, I was wondering on this attack that, well, on our information that we were helping Ukraine with and we cut off everything, how much did that set them back and how much did that hurt them? | |
| And during that time, is there any way Russia could hack in and get information that Ukraine had? | ||
| And that's all I want to know. | ||
| Thank you for the question. | ||
| In terms of hacking Ukraine, Russia is always looking to hack Ukraine. | ||
| We actually have a colleague who's based in Ukraine who's done terrific reporting on this. | ||
| Everything is always a target from ATMs to state registries to satellite networks. | ||
| Ukraine is always a target for Russia in terms of cyberspace, has been since before the invasion a few years ago. | ||
| In terms of how much it set them back, I think that's still unclear. | ||
| I know that some of the military support and intelligence sharing was turned off for a few weeks, and President Zelensky has talked about even losing a few hours has been detrimental. | ||
| So in terms of the full effect of that shutoff, that switch off, and now it's back on, that still remains to be seen. | ||
| Here is Anthony in Arizona, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
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Thanks, teammates. | |
| Thanks to all who are on the show this morning. | ||
| We have to always realize that someone is looking at what we're doing. | ||
| You cannot catch anyone in any violation unless you have the ability to know who's on your network, who's doing what. | ||
| One key aspect of that is you do not always want to stop them. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because you need to know where they are going. | ||
| In other words, if they're in this device, if they're looking at this part of the industry or country, they have an intent behind that. | ||
| So therefore, when you stop surveilling them, you don't have the ability to bring them to a table and say, we know what you are doing. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| They can never have plausible deniability if they know we know they're on the network, what they're doing, and where they're going. | ||
| I'd like the author to address that. | ||
| Thank you for the question. | ||
| I think what you're talking about is sort of the inherent tension that's always in cyber operations, especially at Cyber Command and NSA, which, as I said, share a campus at Fort Meade, Maryland. | ||
| You know, it's about do you want to turn off their access? | ||
| Let's say someone, let's say Russia or another actor is on a network. | ||
| We know they're in there. | ||
| Do we want to turn off their access or do we want to see what they're doing? | ||
| Because if we then let them know that we know, then we can never use potentially that tool that found them out. | ||
| They might try a different tactic. | ||
| They might avoid, they might go someplace else. | ||
| So that's sort of an inherent tension that's always there. | ||
| I think something that is interesting about this standdown order from Secretary Hegseth is that in the first Trump administration, they adapted a cyber strategy of DefendFord, which is instead of being on the back foot and reactive, the United States is going to be proactive, and we're going to go after malicious activity as close to, if not on, our adversaries' network. | ||
| And they do that. | ||
| Cyber Command does that through a strategy called persistent engagement, where they're just engaged 24-7, 365 with their adversaries. | ||
| But if you're not engaging them and effects or attacks or what have you, whatever nomenclature you're comfortable with, then you're not learning what they're doing. | ||
| Then you may not be seeing what they're doing. | ||
| And it does give Russia more free reign to operate online. | ||
| Jim Bo in Bakersfield, California, asks you if you have reason to believe that our adversaries already have the ability to disable our energy grids and are just waiting for hostilities to erupt to activate a cyber attack. | ||
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Thank you for the question. | |
| I think what you're referring to there might be China in this instance. | ||
| According to reporting and reporting that I've done and others have done, that we don't believe that Russia has this kind of access. | ||
| However, China might, through the SALT typhoon and Volt typhoon actors that have been identified by the previous administration and by various private organizations, they might still be in networks of critical infrastructure, including energy, including things like water. | ||
| The last administration was doing its best in terms of trying to keep the public updated as best they could. | ||
| But in terms of, could they ever give an answer about these people are out of our networks, they're out of the critical infrastructure networks, they're out of our telecom networks? | ||
| They could not. | ||
| And that's something that remains to be seen. | ||
| There was actually a letter this week sent by the House Homeland Security Committee to the administration saying we want all the data you have, all the stuff you have, on China's access for critical infrastructure. | ||
| It's unclear if Russia might be also going to be included in that request or if the administration might throw that in, but that I think gets to the heart of your question. | ||
| Here's Patricia in Naples, Florida. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
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Oh, good morning. | |
| Mr. Matuszak, I have a question about, number one, how much information do we really have about the nature of this suspension, temporary suspension of our cyber activities against these bad actors? | ||
| And does this suspension mean that there is some sort of danger for a dangerous penetration of our systems? | ||
| It seems to me that I think if based on what you said yourself, how much we've learned through the aggression of Russia into Ukraine and how much Europe and Ukraine and we have been able to gather information about how these actors operate, | ||
| why can't we just wait and see who ventures out into this new cyber attack free space and discover some more things about the way that they operate? | ||
| All right, Patricia. | ||
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Thank you for the questions, especially the first one, because I think it's important. | |
| So your question was how much information do we have about this pause, about this freeze or stand down, whatever you're comfortable saying? | ||
| The truth is no one from the administration has spoken publicly about this. | ||
| Not the National Security Advisor, not Secretary Hegseth, not the President. | ||
| No one has said it. | ||
| So there's still a gray area in terms of the duration of this, what else might be included in it, and what it might take to turn cyber command, to take cyber command back off the leash. | ||
| That is still, there are still many questions about that. | ||
| And that's why I'm going back to my sources with every development that's happening in negotiations between the U.S. and Moscow about priesting Ukraine. | ||
| Like, okay, does this mean it's still off or still back on? | ||
| Does this mean it's still back off or still on? | ||
| Now, I don't know. | ||
| There was a call yesterday between President Trump and President Zelensky. | ||
| It's possible that it still remains off. | ||
| I haven't checked my sources yet. | ||
| Or it's possible that it's back on. | ||
| But there's some murkiness to this order, to this direction, instruction from Secretary Hegseth, because no one from the administration has talked publicly about it. | ||
| In terms of what else we might learn, as I made clear in my story and others have as well, this pertained to Cyber Command. | ||
| The National Security Agency, our preeminent electronic spying agency, is still surveilling Russia, is still watching what they're doing. | ||
| Now, there is also a concern there in that agency in terms of if we're not engaging, because NSA is a combat support agency. | ||
| They are to support combat. | ||
| So intelligence gleaned by NSA is then fed to Cyber Command, others, for operations in real life, in meat space, if you will. | ||
| But there is concern at NSA that if we're not going after them in any way, shape, or form, kicking them off of networks, severing their access, maybe mucking with their networks a little bit, then what's the point of us surveilling them? | ||
| So I think that intelligence gathering is still happening and what's going to be used during this, what might be gleaned during this time where the stand down is in effect remains to be seen. | ||
| But that work is still ongoing, though there are concerns about to what end, how the information is going to be used. | ||
| I'll just read a portion of that CSIS report on Russia's covert efforts. | ||
| It says that Russian agencies utilized electronic attack and cyber operations with physical effects against transportation targets. | ||
| Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, and Poland all reported a specific incidence of deliberate GPS signal jamming from Russia, which led to navigation errors, flight deviations, and communication breakdowns, endangering the lives of those on board. | ||
| Several countries, such as Poland, also reported cyber attacks against transportation targets, such as rail lines. | ||
| More broadly, Russian-linked actors conducted hundreds of cyber attacks against targets in Europe, the U.S., and other regions to collect intelligence, deface websites, orchestrate a denial of service, and occasionally conduct sabotage. | ||
| So, Martin, what's, I mean, beyond this cyber command, are there other changes to the Trump administration's policies regarding cybersecurity and misinformation coming out of Russia? | ||
|
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I think there have been. | |
| Specifically, I'm talking about CISA, which is in the Department of Homeland Security and has been involved in not only defending networks, but also calling out misinformation, disinformation when we see it. | ||
| Also, DOJ, there's been an issue there in terms of election security and election influence operations. | ||
| Both those missions at those agencies have seemingly been eradicated for the time being. | ||
| Now, CISA doesn't even have a confirmed chief right now, so that it's possible that it comes back in some way, shape, or form. | ||
| But in terms of those missions, those missions have been taken apart. | ||
| So it's all, you know, you could see it across the government. | ||
| And I mean, we're even talking about, we're talking about specifically the Pentagon and cyber. | ||
| You know, we're talking about, you know, the intelligence community and intelligence sharing was also turned off with Ukraine for a while. | ||
| It's been turned back on after the talks from Rihad. | ||
| But I think what you're seeing is across the government, there's been kind of a lessening, a kind of taking the foot off the pedal in terms of keeping pressure on Russia, especially as the war in Ukraine rages on. | ||
| There's definitely been a pumping of the brakes by the administration in terms of taking Russia on these various fronts, misinformation, disinformation, cybersecurity, and even real-life sabotage. | ||
| This is Patty in Connecticut, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I want to ask, why are we catering to Putin? | ||
| He's the culprit. | ||
| He went in and killed women and children, and we're catering to him. | ||
| He's from the KGB. | ||
| He was a murderer. | ||
| He doesn't care about anybody but himself. | ||
| He doesn't even care about the Russian people. | ||
| They don't want war. | ||
| The Russians are peaceful people, but he stirs people up to do what he wants to do. | ||
| And he's causing havoc in the world. | ||
| And I met Russian people, and they told me they have to keep their mouths shut. | ||
| If they say a word, either them or their families will be killed. | ||
| They're afraid. | ||
| It's a sad, sad country. | ||
| All right, Patty. | ||
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In terms of, you know, to use your phrase, cozying up to Putin, I think that the administration sees this as a bargaining chip, that we will take this pressure off of your government, essentially your government, your infrastructure there in Russia, if you play ball with us on Ukraine. | |
| Now, it's possible that if talks fall apart or if Something else happens, you know, that impacts the talks that are going on between the two sides. | ||
| It's possible that Cyber Commander gets taken off a leash again and they go back to what they were doing and they might go back to what they're doing, you know, X to X amount, you know, tenfold, if you will. | ||
| But for right now, it's definitely a bargaining chip, as people have told to me that the administration sees that by taking this off the table, by taking offensive cyber operations against Russia off the table, it might make Russia more susceptible to coming to the negotiating table and giving up things in return. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Martin Mataszak is the senior cybersecurity reporter at The Record. | ||
| You can find his work at the record.media. | ||
| Martin, thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you for having me. | |
| And that's it for today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Thanks for joining us. | ||
| Don't forget about that special we've got for Founders Day starting tonight. | ||
| That's going to be airing tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern, right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Thanks for watching, everybody. | ||
| a great day. | ||
|
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Here's a look at our live coverage today on C-SPAN. | |
| This morning at 10:30 Eastern, a discussion on AI and its potential impact on the workforce. | ||
| That's being hosted by the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And then at 1 p.m. Eastern, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt will brief reporters and respond to questions on the Trump administration's policy agenda. | ||
| And finally, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will hold a news conference after the central bank's two-day policy meeting. | ||
| We have Yankton, South Dakota. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Come on, C-SPAN. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Celebrate C-SPAN's 46th anniversary with a conversation on the beginnings of Cable's gift to America. | ||
| Tonight at 8 Eastern, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb joined C-SPAN's new CEO Sam Feist and former co-CEO Susan Swain to talk about his quest to bring live gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress to every American home. | ||
| A lot of people are surprised that C-SPAN doesn't receive any government funding. | ||
| They just assume it's a public service, it's a nonprofit, must get some government funding. | ||
| Never thought about it? | ||
| Not only never thought about it, I would have never been involved in it. | ||
| I think it's a very bad idea to have a government institution fund media in any way. | ||
| From the very, very beginning, viewers who were part of this and understood that it was important to them to preserve and expand what we were doing. | ||
|
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And I think that's so true today, even with the work that we're doing here with participants in the call-in program, how active our social media channels are. | |
| For those people that get it, it matters. | ||
| Hear stories of C-SPAN's earliest days. | ||
| Learn about the people and work that went into bringing live coverage of the House of Representatives and eventually the Senate, White House, Supreme Court, and more to televisions across the country. | ||
| They'll also reflect on the network's five decades of coverage, including many of its signature projects, and C-SPAN's continued role in delivering democracy unfiltered in the years to come. | ||
| Watch the C-SPAN story tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN or online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| c-span bringing you democracy unfiltered this 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 tonight | ||
| Tonight at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include New York Democrat Josh Riley, an attorney who worked as an appeals court law clerk and on Capitol Hill. | ||
| It's his first time in elective office. | ||
| My very first vote on the rules package, I brought my four-year-old and my one-year-old to vote. | ||
| And as you know, the way you vote is you put a card in the machine and you push the button. | ||
| And so I let them do it and they were just, you know, smashing all the buttons and everything. | ||
| And I was caught up in the moment of seeing them do that and sharing that with them. | ||
| And I left the floor. | ||
| And when I did, my chief of staff said, did you vote the right way? |