CSPAN - Washington Journal 03/22/2025

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March 22, 2025 07:00-10:07 - CSPAN

03:06:51

Washington Journal 03/22/2025

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benji backer

26:56

tammy thueringer

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unidentified		Because it works.
		We're Sparklight and we're always working for you.
		Sparklight supports C-SPAN as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
		Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		And then the president of Social Security Works, Nancy Altman, will discuss potential changes to the program.
		Also, the founder and chair of the American Conservation Coalition, Benji Backer, will talk about efforts to make environmentalism a nonpartisan issue.
		Washington Journal starts now.
		Join the conversation.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Washington Journal for Saturday, March 22nd.
		Heated town halls, protests, and boycotts have been making headlines across the country as Americans react to recent actions taken by Congress and the Trump administration.
		To start today's program, we're asking, are you politically active?
		Here are the lines, Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		You can text your comments to 202-748-8003.
		Be sure to include your name and city.
		You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Good morning, and thank you for being with us today.
		We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few minutes, but want to give you a better idea of some of the issues that we are looking to talk about this morning when we ask, are you politically active?
		Here are some of the activities.
		If you've attended a town hall or are planning to attend a town hall, you've contacted your member of Congress.
		If you've taken part in a protest or plan to or a boycott, or maybe you've supported a brand or company, instead, if you have participated, if you participate in a political group, either online or in person,
		or if you've made a political contribution to your group, organization, or candidate, or plan to, those are some of the things we are looking to hear from our callers this morning asking, are you politically active?
		Town halls are one of the events where constituents and voters are showing up to have their voices be heard.
		This article from The Hill, the headline, Democrats face frustrated voters at raucous town halls says Republicans are not the only lawmakers facing confrontational town halls over the congressional recess.
		Democratic lawmakers are increasingly facing the ire of the party's liberal base over their response to the Trump administration.
		Representative Sean Kasten, Democrat of Illinois, clashed with pro-Palestinian attendees at a town hall Wednesday, leading police to shut down the forum.
		That followed Representative Glenn Ivey, Democrat of Maryland, Town Hall Tuesday, where he faced criticism for being too calm in the face of the Trump administration.
		And in California, Democratic rep Gil Cesnero faced constituents angry about Social Security, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, potential cuts to Medicaid, and fired federal workers.
		And it's not just House Democrats and safe districts taking heat from liberal constituents.
		Senator Elisa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, responded to frustrated constituents at a town hall Wednesday by saying that her job is to be, quote, more than just an activist and that yelling from progressives has not stopped President Trump.
		The raucous events come as Democrats have sought to use town halls to target GOP lawmakers in their own districts.
		The town halls have Republicans and Democrats on edge as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are put on the defense on home turf.
		It was last night at a rally in Denver with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke about political activism.
unidentified		We're all here together because we share in the frustration and heartache that comes from watching those in power actively tear down or refuse to fight for working Americans like us.
		We're here together because an extreme concentration of power and corruption is taking over this country like never before.
		And we are here, most importantly, because we know that a better world is possible.
		But to get there, we need to be honest about where we are.
		We are witnessing an oligarchy in America when those with the most economic, political, and technological power destroy the public good to enrich themselves while millions of Americans pay the price.
		And our political system is ill-prepared for this kind of abuse of power.
		In fact, much of our political system enables it, starting with the role of money in politics.
		But I'm here to remind you today, Denver, that we are not powerless in this moment.
		People are starting to put the pieces together.
		And ironically, some of the most divisive forces in our country are actually bringing more of us together than ever before.
		And that's important.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our question to start today's program: Are you politically active?
		We'll start with Anne in Bar Harbor, Mainline for Democrats.
		Good morning, Anne.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
		Yes, I'm an activist.
		I was born in the shadow of the Holocaust, and I have been haunted during my long life with the question: what would I do?
		I am now looking at my people in Israel and my country, America, committing genocide in Gaza.
		I'm a retired federal employee, and I have been through shutdowns, but I've never been through anything like what Elon Musk is doing.
		I'm looking at somebody like Stephen Miller, who looks to me, you know, he's the deportation expert.
		Well, Ada Feichman was the deportation expert.
		I am seeing a rift.
		I am seeing my country hang over a rift in a disagreement between the Charles Koch Federalist Society that wants the judiciary to take over all the parts of government and the Heritage Society, which wants the executive branch to take over, I mean, all of government.
		And I'm looking at a legislature dominated by Republicans who are fine with that, who are supine, who are worse.
		They're the marching band for MAGA.
		And I'm looking right here in Maine.
		My representative, Jared Golden, was the only Democrat in the House to vote for the CR.
		And shockingly, my Senator Angus King voted for it.
		So you believe I am activist, and right now I'm painting signs for a town hall.
		It's going to be held in Bangor, Maine.
		And it's going to be an empty chair town hall because Jared Golden doesn't sue camp wolves.
		So that's where I'm at.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Anne and Maine.
		Let's hear from Paul in Portsmouth, Connecticut line for Independence.
		Hi, Paul.
unidentified		Well, good morning.
		Number one activism for me is calling call-in talk shows like this.
		I didn't hear that on your list.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What impact do you think that has?
unidentified		A lot.
		Through my years, 25 years of calling AM Radio in Connecticut, Paul from Plymouth, I have also attended two major rallies.
		One was from the indivisible folks regarding Musk's and Trump's takeover of government.
		The other one was a pro-life rally just Wednesday in Hartford, Connecticut.
		I also called my two senators' offices asking for them to not send any more weapons over to our key ally who is using those weapons to kill women and children.
		So that was some of the things that I do.
		I did at that pro-life rally, I did get in the face of our bishop coin because he was taping a PR PR campaign without even coming out and speaking to the participants, the Catholic participants there.
		The other thing I did was I got to shake the hand of Patrick Kelly, the Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight.
		Of course, they're based in Connecticut.
		So these things just find me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Paul, let me ask you this.
		You said that you've reached out to your members of Congress.
		Have you gotten a response from them?
unidentified		Not a response, but I was calling really with a specific issue and asking them to react on it, not really to get back to me.
		They have been willing to engage with me.
		However, on the issues of the VA and veterans' medical care, I've been an activist with that.
		But that type of activism comes with a risk.
		And the risk is that you're going to be on the S list within the clinic and you are not going to get the care because you are known as a troublemaker.
		So it comes with risk.
		Whatever.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Paul and Connecticut.
		Otis, Orange Park, Florida, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Otis.
unidentified		Well, good morning.
		Good morning.
		Yes, I'm an activist, but I like to donate to the parties, to the Democratic Party, not to no one else.
		But being an activist, there's a lot of ways you could do it.
		So we have to realize something, that Democrats, this is all the above approach.
		You just can't say, well, we need to do this and we'll solve the problem.
		It takes more than politicians to go ahead and make a stance.
		Politicians are only going to be as effective as the people on the street that decide to get out there and protest and find other ways to do it.
		So we can't be upset when one politician decides not to do what we want to do.
		Now, I was actually rooting for Chuck Schuman to let the governor shut down, period.
		And I understand why he did not do it.
		But I think people want to see action.
		And so when you have the people behind you saying they're willing to take the fall, let's do it.
		Because I know all the mega supporters, Donald Trump, 30 to 40 percent of them, makes under $100,000 a year.
		So if you make under $100,000 a year, some of them, Social Security is what keeps them afloat.
		If we would say everybody would be punished, Donald Trump and the Republican Party would eventually come in and undo everything they did.
		Democrats just need to hold firm and say, no, we won't everything put back the way it originally was.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Otis in Florida.
		William in Ohio, line for independence.
		Hi, William.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Good morning.
		I'm not very politically active, but I sure follow politics a lot.
		And, you know, the thing gives to me, Trump has a he has that Napoleon complex anymore.
		And he likes to give nicknames out, so I'd like to give him one.
		I think we are calling Donald Short Johnson Trump.
		And that's what he deserves.
		You know, he's tearing this country apart with his political actions.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		William, you said that you weren't.
		William, you said that you weren't politically active.
		Why aren't you involved?
unidentified		Well, number one, I live in Indian country.
		I mean, I'm surrounded by Republicans in Ohio so gerrymandered that they'll destroy me if they get a chance.
		And I was Republican until 2017 when they had that riot, when he said there was good people on both sides in Charlottesville, Charlottetown, whatever it is.
		And I'll never vote Republican again because of that fool.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was William in Ohio.
		Betty, South Carolina, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Betty.
unidentified		Yeah, whatever Trump's doing, the Democrats is the one that's destroying this world.
		I mean, they're the ones that's doing it.
		It's not Trump.
		Everything he's doing is right.
		And people keep on.
		This world's going in because Jesus is coming back.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Betty, we're asking folks, are you politically active?
		It sounds like you support President Trump.
		Are you doing anything to show that support?
unidentified		Yeah, I try to call in and, you know, and support him that way.
		And anybody else that I can talk to, I support him all the way because what he's doing, things has changed since he came in there.
		And anybody can't see that.
		They're blind or they fall in the devil.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Betty in South Carolina.
		It was Thursday night during a town hall held by Republican Representative Harriet Hagman of Wyoming that voters challenged her over Elon Musk's role in the government spending cuts.
		Here's a clip from that.
unidentified		All he is doing is going in and looking at every single agency and how the money is being spent.
		So I have a question.
		I have a question to see.
		that you are entitled to know how your money is being spent.
		What USAID has been doing over the last 40 years.
		The Veterans Administration has been spending its money on the Department of Defense.
		The Department of Defense is pushing one trillion dollars in annual budget.
		They have not passed an audit in eight years.
		In eight years.
		That is unacceptable.
		And there is not, and they also Doge will be going through their budget.
		And what we did with that money is we specified how it is to be spent.
		That's why we're talking about raises specifically for the enlisted men and women, as an example.
		But that's your job.
		That is our job.
		That's what we did.
		That's what we did.
		That was our span.
		That's what we did.
		So, next question, right over here.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		C-SPAN has been covering several of the congressional town halls in the recent days.
		You can watch them on our homepage, c-span.org.
		And a programming note that after today's program at 10 a.m. today, C-SPAN will be airing a congressional town hall marathon.
		It will start with a live event with Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat of New Jersey.
		He's going to be doing a town hall in Brick Township.
		Again, you can watch that live at 10 a.m. right here on C-SPAN.
		You can also find it on our app, C-SPANNO, or online at c-span.org.
		Back to your calls asking, Are you politically active?
		Let's talk with Robert in Pennsylvania, Line for Independence.
		Hi, Robert.
unidentified		How are you doing, young lady?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Doing well, Robert.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, I am politically involved.
		I do go to town halls.
		I'm not a Democrat or a Republican.
		I actually want the right person for the right job.
		And, you know, people I hear on your show, they kind of make me laugh because if you don't want to know where your money's going, that's a problem.
		I mean, and why wouldn't you want to know where your money's going?
		And spending waste, you know, is kind of ridiculous to me that people would want to not know where their money's being spent, especially seniors.
		My wife is a senior.
		She's 73 years old.
		And why wouldn't she, you know, they're talking about on television that senior citizens, you know, SSI or SSD is being cut.
		She just got a $13 raise this month for, you know, for the next 12 months.
		So whatever the government's doing right now, smaller government is better than bigger government.
		I've always believed that.
		And if I've owned multiple businesses, and if you don't do your job, you're fired.
		It's very simple.
		It's not a very, you know, and what Donald Trump is talking about, President Donald Trump is talking about, is helping teachers out to teach our children.
		We don't have children.
		We have dogs.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Robert, you have children.
unidentified		Robert, you said that you've attended town halls.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Have you been to one recently?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And who's what type of town halls for members of Congress of which party?
unidentified		Yes, it was in Milford, Pennsylvania, and it was a Democratic party that was, I can't think of his last name, but he was holding a hall.
		I guess he's a congressman.
		And he was just speaking about how better life's going to be when the Democrat Party's going to be back in power.
		Once again, we're just average people.
		We're 300 million people plus.
		And we just want our eggs to be lower.
		We want our milk to be lower.
		We want our gas to be lower.
		Got your point, Robert.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Nick in Brick, New Jersey, line for Democrats.
unidentified		Good morning, Nick.
		Yes.
		Hello.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Your question about being politically active, yes, I'm going to a town hall today that's being held by Senator Andy Kim, who's doing a great job in New Jersey, and I hope he continues to fight for us.
		These are radical times, and they call for radical ideas.
		When I was young, I was always taught in school history lessons, there's taxation without representation.
		And that's exactly what's happening.
		I tried to contact Congressman Chris Smith.
		No response after three times.
		It's a radical idea.
		But April 15th, maybe people should not pay their taxes because our representatives are not doing their jobs.
		At least the Republican ones seem not to be doing their jobs.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Nick, you said that you're going to be attending Senator Andy Kim's town hall.
		C-SPAN's going to be covering that event.
		We just promoted it.
		It sounds like you are in support of him.
		What are you hoping to get out of the event by attending?
unidentified		Well, I'm hoping that he's going to outline the measures that he intends to take in response to what's happening to the country for all of us.
		I want to hear what his plans are.
		And I think he's done an excellent job so far.
		And I'm very pleased that he's having this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Nick in New Jersey.
		Let's talk with Mary in Wisconsin, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Mary.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes.
		Yes, I've been politically active just this past week.
		On state level, I met with five Republican legislators and three Democrat legislators in lobbying, volunteer.
		I'm a nurse, but advocating for private duty nurses.
		I'm a nurse in independent practice that helps with disabled kids in their homes.
		And just it's covered through Medicaid.
		Support on both sides.
		And just spoke with them with a mother and her disabled child that attended with us, and both were well received.
		And just getting the information from Department of Human Service or Health Services and the numbers and everything like that that the legislators want for budget purposes.
		I've also attended rallies.
		I've seen rallies.
		I am pro-life and have crossed the picket line, so to speak, and talked to people on the other side and explained my point of view of why I am because I worked in the high-risk OB area and I saw babies that were, you know, it was a large hospital that did mid-later term abortions.
		I've seen babies that were dismembered and onboard because they weren't wanted.
		And at the same gestation, babies where the NICU came rushing in and helped save the baby because it was wanted.
		And also, just the advertising talking about women bleeding out in the parking lot.
		I thought, you know what?
		Those are malpractice doctors.
		You should sue the doctor because that is not how the health industry works.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Mary, let me ask you about you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You said that you met with lawmakers.
unidentified		It sounded like they were local lawmakers this week.
unidentified		They were state throughout the state of Wisconsin, yes.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How easy is it to engage with those people and be able to connect with them and meet with them and express what you hope they are going to accomplish?
unidentified		I found it very easy.
		And we did, I emailed set up appointments.
		We did it.
		We had nine appointments all in one day.
		So we went from office to office, explaining, like I said, it was five Republicans and three Democrats that we met with.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And what kind of response did you get from them?
unidentified		They were very receptive.
		And following up with, you know, further data and things like that, and how it can work with their offices.
		That was Mary in Wisconsin.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from John in Dearborn, Michigan, line for independence.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		Good morning.
		I have been to quite a few town halls with some of our representatives here in Metro Detroit, like Debbie Dingell and Rashida Talib and Sri Tanadar.
		And my impression of them is that they're just very fake and scripted.
		You know, sometimes they have you write down the questions so their staff can screen participants.
		And how about when they did those teletown halls during COVID?
		They were definitely, they didn't take any questions that weren't pre-screened.
		And it's a shame, you know, they represent over 700,000 people apiece.
		So there's no way they can really hear from a decent selection of people.
		And then when they do these town halls, oh, we only have 30 minutes an hour, and then they got to go to the pancake breakfast with the ladies VFW.
		It's like, how many pancake breakfast ceremonies can you attend?
		And even the emails that they respond to from you, they're formed responses.
		They just look for a key word, and it doesn't matter what you wrote about that.
		They're just going to send their pre-typed response about that.
		So our democracy is in a sad state of affairs because, well, you just don't have any agency in the Democratic or Republican parties.
		You're just a cog in the machine if that's your political participation through those vehicles.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was John in Michigan.
		This headline from the Daily Press, a local newspaper out of a news site out of Virginia, the headline, group forms in James City County to encourage political engagement.
		The article says that residents of the Historic Triangles Northwestern Reaches gathered at the James City County Library on Wednesday night to discuss ways to encourage more citizens to take part in the electoral process and to mobilize resistance to the current political leadership.
		The Voters Coalition of Upper James City held its inaugural meeting at the library on Croker Road, inviting citizens to share their concerns about the present state of politics and how the decisions of policymakers are affecting the lives of citizens.
		Organizers build the event as an opportunity to meet with neighbors, facilitate informed discussions, provide access to local candidates, and encourage political engagement.
		We have been showing you clips of town hall events that members of Congress have been holding this week.
		They have been out of, they haven't been in session here in D.C.
		They have been back in their districts for a district work period.
		That's why so many of them are being held this week.
		Here is a clip.
		It is of Representative Mike Flood of Oklahoma.
		He was asked this week about Veterans Affairs funding and Doge cuts.
unidentified		I am a constituent.
		I'm not a paid operative.
		I came here from Lincoln.
		And my issue today is veterans.
		My father, Norbert Arnoldi, served in the Marines during World War II.
		He survived Iwo Jima to return to the family homestead and help feed the nation and help my mother raise six unruly kids.
		When he needed a hip replacement and later in treatment for epilepsy, he relied on the Veterans Hospital in Grand Island.
		Now, millions of dollars in veterans services have been cut by an unelected billionaire and his Wiz kids.
		None of them have shown the bravery that my father did or that the greatest generation has done.
		Meanwhile, veterans who continue to serve veterans in the federal services have been unceremoniously fired.
		And I want to hear your comments on providing our veterans with the services that they've earned and that they deserve.
		Thank you.
		Something a lot of people don't know is that every day, members of Congress like me work with veterans to make sure they get the care they were promised and that they are owed.
		And when you serve in the military, we owe you and we want to provide the very best care that we can provide because your father, your relatives, they earned it with their bravery, with their service, and with their citizenship.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		So at the end of the day, we will keep our promises.
unidentified		Congressman Mike Bost is the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee.
		He is about seven doors down the hall from me.
		I walk to the House of Representatives floor with him several times a month.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		I know, he knows, that committee knows, your members of Congress know that that is a sacred obligation that we must follow through on.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		That does not mean there are not places to find efficiencies in the system.
unidentified		There has been no decree officially about what kind of cuts the veterans system could experience, but I do know that we have seen a significant increase of staffing in the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2019.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		It may be that we see staffing from 2019 levels.
unidentified		I don't know.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		But ultimately, any cuts that are made in our government have to keep the promises that we have made.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Mike Flood of Oklahoma at a town hall this week, just about 30 minutes left in this first hour of today's program, asking, are you politically active?
		Town halls are one of the activities that we are looking to hear about from you.
		If you have attended a town hall or if you're planning to attend a town hall, if you've contacted your member of Congress, if you've taken part in a protest or a boycott or you're planning to, or maybe you're supporting a product or brand instead, if you participate in a political group, either online or in person, if you've made a political contribution or maybe something else.
		Again, just about 30 minutes left of hearing from you from calls and also on social media.
		A few messages coming in.
		This from Trish Thomas on Facebook.
		She says, all of the above, except attend a town hall.
		I live in a very blue district in Georgia.
		When my representative does not have an in-person town hall, I will attend.
		When my does have an in-person, does have an in-person town hall, I will attend.
		Republicans are not having very many town halls in Georgia.
		Senator John Osseff has a rally today, though, and I am trying to make it.
		This from Lois Ann on Facebook.
		Yes, to all the above, except for attend town halls.
		And that's only because our reps refuse to hold any.
		Otherwise, I'd go to those as well.
		And this coming in from Robert Douglas on X, he says, This is my activism, watching political shows like this, calling in whenever possible, commenting on social media the rest of the time.
		I've even discovered Discord and the power of internet memes.
		Let's hear from Billy in Carrier Mills, Illinois, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Billy.
unidentified		How are you doing?
		I just wanted to say, I think they shouldn't kill Social Security because if you live on a fixed income and you pay your rent, you buy gas for your car, you buy groceries, you can't buy, you buy clothes and stuff, and by the time you get through, you don't have hardly no money left at the end of the month.
		And he was talking about his mother would just say, Hey, I'll just wait the next month.
		You can't wait the next month when you don't fix income.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Billy, are you being politically active in any way to show to tell your members of Congress to let them know that you don't want them to make cuts to Social Security?
unidentified		I try to call, but I can't hardly get through.
		I got COPD.
		I'm in bad health.
		And I try to do the best that I can, you know.
		But if them congressmen and senators and all them, if they would live off of the income that I get a month, they wouldn't be, they would be hollering too, you know?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Billy in Illinois.
		We'll hear from Nelson, San Diego, California, line for independence.
		Hi, Nelson.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm very similar.
		Like, even though I agree with the first lady who called, I guess she has a George background through the Holocaust.
		I agree with everything she said.
		But I kind of grew up like a guy from Connecticut.
		From the day I turned nine years old, I grew up on the Connecticut-Massachusetts border, originally from Boston.
		But I was a Republican for four decades.
		I gave to the Lincoln Project to beat Trump in 2020.
		And like a couple of callers said, I went to the pro-life rally.
		I got some strange look from this one big barebelly guy, like I shouldn't be there.
		So I'm pro-life, not just in the womb, but the people who are pro-life just for somebody until they're born, I think it's ridiculous.
		Like when, you know, at this church shoot meeting in South Carolina, Fox News, Rick Centaur, Bishop Jackson, Elizabeth Hasselback, they all deny that it's racism.
		It's the most disgusting thing I ever saw on TV.
		But I did call the, even though I'm living here in San Diego, Buffer Robert City, California, I called the representative of Utah who made it illegal to have the rainbow flag, but it was okay to have the Nazi flag in Confederate flag.
		I actually called his number on a Sunday, and the chances are he's a Mormon.
		And he answered the phone.
		And I told them how sickening that decision was because he wrote that provision that you could have the Confederate flag in the Nazi flag.
		And I told him what my favorite YouTuber, who's someone marine like myself, who happens to be white, he said the Republican Party is now the largest white supremacist party.
		I told him that, but I had an extended dialogue with him on email, and I gave him examples like 50% of the Republican Party now who believe that Derek Soban should not have been guilty, and how Republican judges give harsher sentences for the same crime, same level of crime history.
		They give harsher sentences for black defendants, convicted people, than they do for white convicted people.
		But Republican black judges give the same verdict for both blacks and whites.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So I think that's the thing.
		Nelson, you said that you were able to reach that Utah lawmaker.
		Were you surprised that you were able to reach them so easily and that you were able to have that dialogue with them?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
		The honest with you, he answered the phone.
		And I was surprised, but I said what I said, and then I hung up.
		But then I had an extended conversation with him on an email.
		And he said it was ridiculous that I quoted certain YouTubers.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I got your point, Nelson.
		We'll go to Virginia and Maryland line for the Republicans.
		Hi, Virginia.
unidentified		Hello.
		How are you?
		I am an activist.
		I was with Greenpeace and Resist.
		And I've kind of given up.
		I do contact Stenny Hoyer frequently via email.
		I do follow the politics that are going out socially.
		But as far as the government, I'm so disgusted with the Republican Party not pushing back on Donald Trump.
		He's violated so many laws.
		So I kind of just given up.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Virginia, have you said that you've reached out to Stenny Hoyer?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You've never been able to get a hold of them or you haven't got a response?
unidentified		No, no, I do get responses.
		I contact Stenny via emails.
		So I don't really know if he is responding or one of his aides are responding, but I always do get a response.
		He does hold meetings in the summer.
		He'll do like picnics and stuff.
		It's more fundraising, I think, than it is informative.
		But I don't have any faith in the government anymore.
		I mean, anybody that can get away with what Trump is getting away with is just not America as I know it.
		And I'm 73.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Virginia in Maryland.
		It was on Tuesday night that Maryland Democrat Glenn Ivey, congressman, there held a town hall.
		And one of the questions he got was asking how Democrats plan to fight the Republican budget cuts.
		Here's that clip.
unidentified		So what I'm asking of you now, don't talk to me about the courts.
		Don't talk to me about the next election.
		Talk to me about how you are working with your Democratic colleagues, with our regional colleagues in the Congress and in the Senate to oppose and make it difficult between now and September to do the kinds of things that we're all complaining about.
		I love to talk bad about Donald Trump and Chuck Schumer with my friends.
		I came here to understand what my congressman is specifically doing.
		Okay.
glenn ivey ▲ ● ▼		Well, before we get to September, actually, we've got the budget resolution coming up.
		And so, and the budget resolution, as I mentioned, was the Medicaid vote.
		So, and I know you don't want to talk about 2026, but the only way we can win that vote is if we've got Republicans who are paying attention to 2026.
		And the only way they will pay attention to 2026 is if we create a situation where they think it could help them lose if they vote for it.
		So, for example, in my view, one of the things Democrats should do is have an alternative tax bill.
		Because the budget resolution is really about Trump doing the $4 trillion tax cut, right?
		And the $4 trillion, as you know, most of that's going to go to Elon and his buddies.
		We've got to make sure we explain to regular folks in red districts, blue districts apparently, too, where some of these senators came from.
		So they understand that that's where that money is going to go.
		But the Democrats have a different approach.
		We're going to make sure that if there are going to be tax cuts, it's going to go to regular people.
		And to the extent there are cuts that go to businesses, it's not going to be Exxon and the offshore guys.
		It'll be small businesses in our neighborhoods that hire people locally.
		And I think that makes sense because it's really better for regular folks.
		To the extent we had trouble and we lost in 2024, in part, it was because we lost a lot of working class voters, mostly white voters, especially white males.
		But we started losing young black males and young Latino males too.
		Many of them voted for Trump in numbers we've never seen before.
		Now, it may be that that's just they like Trump and there aren't going to be coattails for other elections, but we've got to make sure we start reaching out to them too.
		We can't just assume that black voters are always going to turn up and save the Democratic Party in every election cycle.
		We've got to earn them too.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Back to your calls asking, are you politically active?
		We'll hear from Harold in Illinois Line for Democrats.
		Hi, Harold.
unidentified		Hello, America.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I've got to admit, I've never been politically active.
		I'm a 61-year-old man.
		I've never voted until Trump ran the first time.
		And I was so astounded that he was able to run just because of the way he acts.
		But I think I have a solution to this whole problem.
		There's too much money in government, and hopefully they're going to find this out with Elon Musk up there that you can't buy a politician.
		It used to be that that was bribery, and they would actually go out and persecute the person that bribed them and the person that got bribed.
		My idea of lobbyists is you go out and collect a whole bunch of signatures from your district and you take it to your representative and it makes him know that if he doesn't do what you're wanting him to do, he's probably not going to get elected.
		If you've noticed, most of these politicians up there are Ivy League college educated people that could go out and make lots more money than $175,000 a year.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Harold Lemon, Harold, let me ask you this.
		You said that you weren't politically active, but you had an idea for gathering signatures and delivering to your member.
		Have you thought about actually doing that?
unidentified		Yes, I am.
		I'm actually in that process now.
		Now that I am active because I see what's going on, I am concerned, and I think that if we don't get the money out of the government and we let them buy this out, then we are completely done.
		I think the only reason— Got your point, Harold.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Steve in Greenwich, New Jersey, Line for Independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Steve.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I've been much more politically active in the past with organizations and contacting my s uh representatives, but the one thing I never stopped doing was doing my own research and sorting through what the media says to try to get to the truth.
		And in that regard, one of the things that just drives me out of my mind is the whole find people's hoax from Charlottesville.
		If you let that clip run, Trump condemns the neo-Nazis totally and completely if you just let it run another 30 seconds.
		Yet that hoax has persisted for what, almost 10 years now.
		Snopes debunked it about a year ago.
		And yet when that was brought up just a moment ago, you guys let it go like it was something real or some debatable thing.
		And it's not.
		What it is, is just something to promote racial tensions.
		And it couldn't exist without C-SPAN and other media outlets allowing it to go on because people know that's a hoax.
		So that's pretty much all I have to say this morning.
		Do your own research, people.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Steve in New Jersey, Eddie, New York line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Eddie.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
		I haven't been politically active up until now because the other day I watched Chuck Schumer on TV say that he is going to have people go to these meetings and convince the Republicans to either change their vote or pay a severe price.
		I'd like to know, number one, what the severe price is.
		And number two, there's a group called Indivisible.
		If you Google them, they're paying people to go to these meetings.
		They're paying people to go.
		They'll give you $200 if you make a big scene.
		And if you actually get on TV, you get extra money.
		Now, how is that anything?
		And as far as the Democrat Party, they're never going to win again because it's not people, it's what they believe in.
		They believe in transgender people and all that.
		Nobody believes in nothing.
		They mutilate little kids.
		Nobody is into that.
		Until they change their stance on a lot of things, they're going to keep on losing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		It's Eddie in New York.
unidentified		Alex in South Beach, Florida, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Alex.
		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I'm a 44-year-old black male.
		First time I became politically active was when Obama ran for office.
		And since then, I became politically active again when Trump ran because I thought it was a joke.
		I thought we were being punked.
		I didn't think this was serious.
		Then he won, and everything that he, things that come out of his mouth, the things he says, and just the way he carries himself, it's entertaining, even though I feel like it hurts our country, hurts our political standing across the world.
		I hate to say it, but he's the reason I'm politically active right now because some of the things I just can't believe is that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Alex, you say that you're politically active.
		What does that mean to you?
		What kind of things are you doing?
unidentified		I mean, I just try to speak to people.
		I try to understand the people that vote for him and support him.
		I try to understand why.
		I don't think he's good for this country.
		I don't think he's good.
		I don't think he represents everyone.
		He's the most divisive person I've ever seen.
		Got your point, Alex.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Charles in New York, line for independence.
unidentified		Hi, Charles.
		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Being independent, I tend to be as objective as I can, but I can't help but look in dismay at what Donald Trump has brought to America.
		My type of activism, I usually just put signs up on a telephone poll here and there.
		I keep some in my car.
		I change them frequently to address the issues that are current.
		I work in a pretty red area of New York State.
		And as much as you try to debate or talk to the MAGA people, it's almost impossible.
		Because anytime you try to catch them in an untruth or, for example, the reversal of our alliances with free countries versus dictatorships, they just get loud and they won't let you talk and they don't want to believe facts.
		And if I could just kind of relate that to the Zelensky incident that happened in the White House, when Trump really lost control of himself, it was only because Zelensky had kind of caught him defending Putin's actions that are horrific.
		And if you notice right away, Trump went to the Russia, Russia, Russia, and shifty shift and Hillary.
		That's nothing to do with Zelensky and Russia at the moment.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Charles, let me ask you.
		You said that you put up signs on telephone polls here and there.
		Tell me about these signs.
		What are you, who are you targeting?
		What are you trying to accomplish?
		Is there a call to action?
unidentified		Yeah, the one I have right now is just, I stand with Ukraine, stand for freedom.
		Sometimes I put them up, why is Trump so against veterans?
		And it's not just a question of gutting the VA now, but he's defrauded them through his charity when he was trying to raise money, quote, for veterans.
		So whatever the issue is that's kind of current is usually the sign I make.
		But the one that stays in my car most of the time is when did the GOP lose its sanity?
		That seems to be what's happened.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Charles in New York.
		This headline from The Guardian, the article is a little over a month old, but it says, a quarter of U.S. shoppers have dumped favorite stores over political stance.
		It says that Americans are changing their shopping habits and even dumping their favorite stores in a backlash against corporations that had shifted their public policies to align with the Trump administration.
		According to a poll exclusively shared with The Guardian, four out of 10 Americans have shifted their spending over the past few months to align with their moral views.
		Just about 10 minutes left in this first hour.
		Let's talk with Jim in Florida, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Jim.
unidentified		Yes, I'm politically active.
		I stomp for Trump.
		I've contacted my House Representative, and again, you get the same cammed emails back from or text, whatever.
		But I really feel sorry for the Democrats.
		Again, go right to the 10th Amendment.
		The federal government, I lived up there outside of D.C., the wealthiest counties in the nation everywhere in the top five or six all surround D.C.
		The money there is just, I loved it when we lived there.
		I used to tell all my friends, what suckers.
		And I'll say, I'm a white male veteran, and I know friends, been around a lot of military that, you know, closed their funeral in a hatch, you know, 15 years ago in their Navy, and they're still getting like 4% or 6% disability.
		It's ridiculous.
		They're totally healthy.
		So there's some ways for you.
		I know veterans that have PTSD, served in combat, and I watch all these illegal aliens come into the country and New York putting them up in hotels.
		They're just paying for everything.
		Veterans deserve it.
		Jim, let me ask you this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		When we were talking about being politically active, you listed a couple of things when you started talking, including stumping for President Trump.
		It sounds like you are in support of some of the actions that have been taken.
		Have you done anything recently to show your support?
unidentified		Yeah, I've attended an online phone.
		I guess it would be a bunch of people talking to Mr. Webster, a Republican in the House here for Florida.
		And again, I can just go on and on.
		The government is not supposed to be this big, people.
		I really feel sorry for all the Democrats that just depend on the government.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We've got your point, Jim.
		We want to stay on topic.
		We'll go to Charles, also in Florida, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Charles.
unidentified		Yes, please.
		Yes, good morning.
		Hi, Charles.
		Can you turn your TV down in the back?
		Yes.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just had a comment.
		I listened to a news program last night, and they were talking about Mr. Lutnick and how he called all people that were complaining about Social Security and their checks and that fraudsters.
		Well, I just wanted America to know that we have billionaire fraudsters supposedly cleaning up fraud, using fraud to defraud the American people.
		Wake up, America.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to David in North Carolina, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, David.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I was, we just saw your topic.
		Am I politically active?
		I'm going to say yes, I'm politically active.
		I talk to a lot of people in the profession that I'm in.
		And, of course, we get off topic sometimes and talk politics.
		And all the ones I talk to are supporters of Trump.
		And I talk to quite a few people.
		I talked to one yesterday, and he couldn't understand exactly what he said, the tariffs, the prices, tariffs.
		And we got on the topic of NAFTA and what happened, the reason why tariffs are needed, and also why we have been charged tariffs all these years, but yet we have not had tariff charges on other countries after all these years, even Canada, even Mexico.
		And now we're all dependent on foreign companies to supply our needs, even our medicine from China above all, from all places, China.
		Medicine's from China.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		David, let's talk about those conversations you were having.
		Is that your type of political activism?
		Is that what you're doing is reaching out to people who maybe have different views?
unidentified		Oh, yeah, we talk.
		Yeah, I reach out to different people and you can kind of tell.
		And then, of course, people, you know, they'll have a conversation.
		They'll reach out.
		And you can kind of feel where they're coming from.
		And then you try to explain things.
		I try to explain things common sense.
		But I think that the hatred that Trump drums up is just overpowering to some people.
		They hate him that bad.
		And some of the things they listen to, you know, instead of using their own judgment, instead of doing their own research.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was David in North Carolina.
		Also hearing from people on social media, this coming in from Jan in Freeport, Maine says, I am becoming politically active at age 78.
		I have recently tried to contact my congressional representatives and the president to express my opposition and distress over the abuse of power and disregard for the rule of law that is being perpetrated 24-7 by the Trump administration.
		Just a few minutes left.
		Let's talk with Kelly in North Carolina, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Kelly.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm not very politically active at the moment because I have chronic Lyme disease and I'm homebound and I've been sick for 21 years.
		So what I do is I call in to C-SPAN and I also talk to just friends and different people.
		And my husband has his own business and talks to people that he meets.
		But I sure wish I could.
		And I just wanted to say something to put some people at ease, especially anyone who collects Social Security.
		Okay, he has said it a hundred times if he said it once that there will be no cuts to Social Security or to Medicaid or to Medicare.
		And this is all being put out, even by C-SPAN, because they don't correct you just to make you feel better.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Kelly, we're going to leave it there.
		We're going to stay on topic, but you may want to stay tuned because our guest coming up at 8 o'clock will be discussing some changes, upcoming changes to Social Security as well as potential changes down the road.
		Let's hear from Byron in Baltimore, Maryland, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Byron.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I want to say that for a majority part of my life, I haven't been politically active, but I think that what we need now is that we need our friends over in Europe, namely Britain, France,
		Germany, who still adhere to democratic principles to enforce the international rules of law and stop the illegal imprisonment being done in El Salvador and to actually go and wage war on them if they don't release those political hostages.
		And that would help us a lot because that would stop, well, that would show the world that there's still some rules governing law-abiding citizens.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Byron in Maryland.
		And our last call in this first hour, William in Tennessee, line for Republicans.
		Hi, William.
unidentified		Hi, I'm a lifelong Republican.
		I started reading the Constitution when I was a little kid.
		And I understand what a great country that we have because of the Constitution.
		Democrats are about mob rule and about taking something for nothing.
		Republicans want everybody to succeed, but we have to all get together and figure out how to tax the rich that are not productive.
		Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		William, the question, our topic is: are you politically active?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you want to comment on that?
unidentified		Yes, I'm very, I'm trying to be politically active right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		If we.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is your way of being politically active.
unidentified		Yes.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was William in Tennessee.
		Our last call for this first hour next on Washington Journal.
		Social Security Works Nancy Altman will be with us to discuss upcoming and potential changes to Social Security.
		And later, American Conservation Coalition founder and executive chair Benji Backer will discuss efforts to make environmentalism a nonpartisan issue.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days.
		We explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians and authors and through the C-SPAN archives.
		We learn about accomplishments and setbacks and how events impacted presidential terms and the nation up to present day.
		Today, the first 100 days of Jimmy Carter's presidency in 1977.
		After defeating President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election, he promised to move the country forward after the Watergate period.
		President Carter offered proposals on energy, taxes, welfare, and reform of government.
		Jimmy Carter passed away in December 2024 at the age of 100.
		Watch our American History TV series, First 100 Days, today at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2.
		Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest non-fiction books.
		Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
		At 6:45 p.m. Eastern, Pakistani British author and activist Tariq Ali discusses his memoirs, You Can't Please All, which covers the years 1980 to 2024.
		He also talks about the war in Gaza and student protests in the United States.
		Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzig, with his book Golden State: The Making of California, looks at the history of California from the 1840s gold rush era to the current tech boom.
		At 9 p.m. Eastern, Grove City College political science professor Paul Kengore, author of The Devil and Karl Marx, talks about the role of communists in the creation of International Women's Day and other progressive celebrations.
		And at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, best-selling author Michael Lewis poses the question: who works for the government and why does their work matter?
		He's interviewed by Harvard Kennedy School of Government Public Policy and Management professor Elizabeth Lenos.
		watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Stephen M. Gillen was a scholar in residence at the History Channel for more than 20 years.
		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.
unidentified		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.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss upcoming and potential changes to Social Security is Nancy Altman.
		She's the president of Social Security Works.
		Nancy, thank you so much for being with us.
unidentified		Thank you so much for having me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I know you've been on the program before, but remind our audience about your organization, the mission, who you work with.
unidentified		Yes, we're a nonprofit organization, and we are have been, our mission is to defend and in fact expand Social Security.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And you've worked in this area for a while.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Tell us about your background.
unidentified		Yes, actually, the program's been around 90 years, 50 of those years I've worked for it.
		I started it in the 1970s and I've worked in all areas.
		I've taught at Harvard University at the Kennedy School of Government.
		I was Alan Greenspan's assistant on the so-called Greenspan Commission that resulted in the 1983 amendments.
		So I've seen it from a variety of sides and now I'm, I joke, I joined the barricades.
		I'm now an advocate working to expand Social Security.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		A deep knowledge of Social Security and the administration.
		Remind our audience about the role of the Social Security Administration and their responsibilities.
		A lot of people think they are just sending out retirement checks, but it's more than that.
unidentified		Much more than that.
		It is really a key organization.
		It began as soon as Social Security was enacted.
		The first field office was created in 1937.
		There are 1,200 field offices across the country with regional offices and headquarters in Baltimore.
		They do a lot of things.
		First of all, all the, every time you have a deduction, a FICA contribution to Social Security, the number gets sent into the Social Security Administration.
		They keep all of our earnings records.
		They also, when you reach retirement age and are ready to retire, or if you have the misfortune, you die prematurely leaving young children, or you become so disabled you can't work.
		Social Security is there for you.
		And it's the Social Security Administration that calculates your benefits, makes sure you have them, direct deposits them to your bank, and so forth, and answers all your questions.
		They also, from the beginning, have done important research to assure that we're looking ahead and really meeting the needs of the American people.
		And finally, another very important mission they have, they have about 40 actuaries.
		It's really insurance.
		Social Security is insurance against the loss of wages.
		And so, like any insurance company, it has about 40 actuaries who are working all day long, ensuring those benefits will always be paid in full and on time.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And when we talk about paying those benefits, how many people are receiving Social Security benefits and who?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Who's receiving them?
unidentified		So there are about 69 million Americans who are currently receiving Social Security.
		There's a Supplemental Security Income Program, which is a companion program, and there's several million more who are receiving that.
		Some are so-called dual eligible, so about 6 million.
		And they, as I say, they are, most people don't realize this, it's the largest children's program because about 8% of America's children receive benefits either directly because their parent has died or become disabled, or because they may be living in what are called grandfamilies, grandparents caring for grandchildren and so forth.
		It's also about seven, eight million people with disabilities, and the rest are seniors, widows, and widowed, and so forth.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Social Security is always a popular topic for us.
		A lot of headlines on a regular basis, but something that has been in the news this week is that the Social Security Administration announced it's going to require in-person identity checks for both new and existing recipients.
		How is an identity check currently done and who's going to be impacted by this change?
unidentified		This is a terrible change, and it really is part, it really should be seen in a larger context.
		For the last six weeks, there has been absolute chaos at the Social Security Administration, really because the Trump administration has been every day coming out with something new, something different, and this is one of those changes.
		So, one thing that's really important to understand is that Social Security has vanishingly small amounts of fraud.
		It's improper payment, 99.7% of its payments.
		It's very audited constantly.
		And what the experts have found is 99.7% of the payments are completely accurate to the right people, right amount, on time.
		And that 0.3%, most of that's not fraud.
		Most of that is delays in getting the information in and so forth and making the change.
		So from the beginning, Social Security Administration, our government, has said we should contact the Social Security Administration, have a choice about it.
		So as I say, we have field offices in all communities, so people can go in person.
		You can also call on the phone.
		And of course, more recently, you can do your work online.
		And you have your choice.
		Now, we're talking about people who are disabled, people who are elderly.
		They often have mobility problems.
		They may live in rural areas very far from the field office.
		And so the telephone is the way to contact them.
		They do it.
		It's been done.
		They check your identity.
		They make sure it's you.
		If they have any questions, you do have to go into a field office.
		But what this new ruling is saying is: okay, forget doing it on the phone.
		You're going to have to go in person online.
		And they're expecting it's going to be millions of Americans every year that are going to have to make this unnecessary trip to field offices.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		They are saying that there may still be a way to do it on the phone.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		It would be a verification app, which other organizations, maybe not government, use, but there could still be challenges to that.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		And so the point is, why fix something that's not broken?
		As I say, there's no evidence that there's been any problem with the kinds of identification that have gone on on the phone.
		And as I say, this is part of a larger context.
		It is literally every day, it seems every day at 5 o'clock, sometimes on Saturdays, they're hollowing out the agency and they are changing the ways business has been done, even though it's been done.
		Social Security is extremely efficient.
		Less than half a penny of every dollar spent is spent on administration.
		More than 99 cents goes for benefits.
		That's an efficiency rate you would not find in the private sector.
		But what the, and it's all Elon Musk and the Department of Government efficiency, it really should be inefficiency because it's creating a lot of inefficiency and waste with just this every day something new our hardworking civil servants have to deal with.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest, Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, she'll be with us for the next 35 minutes or so.
		If you have a question or comment for her, you can start calling in now.
		I wanted to let you know the phone lines for this segment are a little bit different.
		If you are 40 and under, the line 202748 8,000.
		If you are age 41 to 64, it's 202-748-8001.
		And if you're 65 and over, it's 202-748-8002.
		Nancy, I want to go back to Doge's efforts and the amount that they are saying is in fraudulent claims, improper payments.
		It is less, the figure is it's less than 1% of what they paid out in 2015, between 2015 and 2022.
		But when you look at the total, the dollar totaled $72 billion, that's still a lot of money.
		It's not on the dollar amount.
		It's like dollar to cent.
		It may not seem like a lot, but it's still a large dollar figure.
		Is there anything that Doge can do?
		Is there any way to reduce that amount, that $72 billion?
unidentified		Now, whenever you're talking about Social Security, the dollar amounts are going to be huge.
		The amount of money going in and out is $1.6 trillion.
		So what you're talking about is like a thousandth of a percent, or I think it was 00.625.
		It's a tiny percentage of the money that goes out.
		And the question is, we want to make, you always want to balance.
		Of course, you don't want any waste.
		You don't want fraud, but you also want accessibility.
		You want people to be able to access their benefits.
		And it's always a trade-off.
		You know, you're not going to spend $10 to save a dollar.
		And that's really what we're getting at.
		And the other thing is it's a misunderstanding to think that nothing's being done now.
		It's a very high priority of the Social Security Administration to make sure that there's no improper payments.
		In fact, this idea that has been in the news that President Trump talked about in his address to Congress that somehow dead people are getting benefits, that does not happen.
		Social Security spends millions of dollars every year so that states will have electronic, when they're filling out their, getting the information for their death certificates, that information is also automatically transferred to the Social Security Administration.
		As soon as that comes through, benefits are stopped immediately.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned Social Security, popular topic for us.
		Our phone lines have lit up.
		We'll start with Lillian in New York on the line for 65 and over.
		Hi, Lillian.
unidentified		Hi.
		I was calling because I didn't understand what the lady meant about checking in to prove something that you are collecting and in New York on the line for 65 and over.
		Yes.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go ahead and have Nancy explain Lillian.
unidentified		So thank you for that question.
		So there are times when people contact the Social Security Administration, for example, to change their bank routing number.
		Generally, your benefits are directly deposited into your bank account.
		And if you change your bank account, you have to have another routing number.
		Obviously, it's very important for the Social Security Administration to know you are who you are, that you're not a fraudster trying to claim, you know, get someone else's money deposited in your account.
		Now, that has been done very well, very efficiently, very carefully over the phones.
		But the Trump administration is saying, okay, from now on, you can't change that over the phone.
		You have to go into a field office.
		This is at a time when they're terminating field offices, when the field offices are already understaffed and overworked, and we're talking about getting millions of more people to go in, and there's no reason for it because there's no evidence at all that there's been a problem.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Karen in Wisconsin on the line for 40 and under.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Karen.
unidentified		Hello.
		My question is, in May of 2025, you will have to have a real ID to even cross the threshold of a federal establishment, Social Security office.
		Where in the media are people being informed that you're being pushed to go into in-person establishments, federal, to the Social Security offices, but the media is not letting people know you won't be able to go in without a real ID as of May of 2025.
		How is that being addressed?
		You know, that's, I guess that's sort of a question.
		Part of what is going on right now is there are just so many changes to Social Security.
		Literally, it is every day.
		You know, this idea that you have to go into an office for bank routing, or if you file a claim online, you have to go in for verification.
		Those just happened in the last few days.
		The amount of overpayment just shifted.
		So there is, this is a little bit, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm very concerned about what is going on.
		This is, you know, Steve Bannon talked about flooding the zone, and we see it over, you know, it's Ukraine and it's Gaza and it's EPA and it's AIDS and it's Social Security and all of these different things.
		But even within Social Security, every day there's a change and it's hard.
		I follow it extremely closely and I keep seeing changes and I think the media feels overwhelmed by all the changes.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And something you mentioned is the closure of some offices.
		At the beginning of the interview, you said that there were about 1,200 field offices currently.
		They're planning to close just under 50.
		What impact will that have?
unidentified		I actually think there may be more.
		Elon Musk instructed the General Services Administration, which is the agency that handles the leases for all our government buildings, post offices, Social Security, and so forth.
		He instructed them to terminate every lease.
		That's all the field offices.
		And he has on his website savings from closing offices.
		And the amounts keep changing, but it's at least over 40.
		And I think there will be more.
		And it will be devastating.
		Field offices are extremely important.
		From the beginning, they've been an important way.
		Some people don't want to go online.
		Some people don't have broadband and are can't.
		Some people don't have laptops.
		They only have cell phones.
		They may not, and now they're limiting what you can do on the phone.
		So field offices are essential, but they're making it impossible.
		They're already, Social Security staffing is at a 50-year low.
		Just in 2010, there were 67,000 employees.
		Now they're 57,000.
		And the Trump administration has said they want to bring it down to 50,000.
		That's a huge cut at a time when we have 12,000 baby boomers turning 65 every single year.
		So the workload is going up, the staffing is going down, and when you close the field offices, it's going to make the ones that remain just that much more crowded and that much more harder to get the work done that you want to get done.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		The staffing cuts that you talked about, some of the numbers that we've seen is about 12, there's about 7,000 employees, which would be about 12% of the current employees.
		Something you pointed out is that there are maybe some little-known departments or people who are working in these offices like actuaries.
		Do we know anything about the function of those people who will be cut?
unidentified		Well, first of all, let me say what's already happened in just the last since January 20th, and that is the most senior people have left.
		They've been forced out.
		And it's not an exaggeration to say it's almost a thousand years of institutional knowledge and expertise.
		It's people who had worked at the agency for 30, 35, 40 years.
		It's important to know that Social Security is an agency that historically people love to work there.
		You see generations, parents, grandparents worked at the agency and now their children and grandchildren are working there.
		But lately it's been listed as the worst place in the federal government to work.
		The morale is extremely low.
		People are very overworked and it's been hollowed out.
		And now there's a carrot and a stick that was just ended March 14th, but the administration said, we'll pay you money if you just decide you leave.
		Or if you're not ready for retirement yet, we're going to have what's called an early out.
		We'll sort of make the rules a little bit easier so you can retire.
		And that was the carrot.
		And the stick was, and if you don't go, we may fire you.
		And so the agency is, as I say, it was just 10 years ago, it was 67,000 workers.
		It's at a 50-year low.
		And now it's 57,000.
		It's going to go down to 50,000.
		And it's not clear yet who will go, but people are essential.
		People who have already left are the top cybersecurity people.
		If we're concerned about maintaining and making sure that there's not fraud, that's who you want there.
		And also the head of operations, the acting commissioner, who would not allow Doge to look at all of our personal data, which is another issue that I think is going on very important, that Elon Musk Doge has all of our most personal income information.
		And I'm not sure what they want to do with that.
		But it's definitely going to be much harder to get all of our work done because the agency is being hollowed out.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Will in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the line for 41 to 64.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Will.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Yesterday or day before, there was a Republican congressman district somewhere in New York who held a press conference bemoaning the closure of his Social Security office, saying it was a slap in the face all New Yorkers.
		So I guess my question is, is there any rhyme or reason to how these field offices are being closed?
		Are they in Democratic districts?
		Are they in Republican districts?
		Have they shown a pattern here?
		That's a very, very good question.
		And I'm so glad you mentioned the Republicans concerned because this is bipartisan.
		The whole program is bipartisan, as polarized as the American people are.
		We are not polarized over Social Security.
		Maga-Republicans, most progressive Democrats all agree that we should not be cutting benefits, and in fact, we should be expanding them.
		And they feel the same way about, you know, cutting, ending a field office, to my mind, is cutting benefits because it makes it that much harder for you to access them.
		And so we've got to wait and see.
		But so far, we're actually working as you speak.
		And I think there will be some information coming out about where those office closings are.
		But at this point, the information is very vague.
		There have been some offices, there's one in White Plains, New York, a hearings office, that the employees were told that the office was closed on May 31st, but they weren't told that where are they supposed to work?
		The next closest office, Albany, was like 100 miles away.
		The other was New York City.
		So there's a lot of confusion, a lot of chaos that's been created, and we're trying to understand exactly where these offices are.
		But it's very vague on the Doge website, and we're trying to pin it down.
		But that's an ongoing story, I think.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Wanted to point out it was the Associated Press.
		Just a day or two ago, it is happening.
		As you mentioned, updates are coming out quickly.
		They have an article on 47 of the administration offices listed for closure.
		Some have anticipated dates for when they will be closed.
		It does list the 26 states where those are happening, and it included Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Mississippi, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, etc.
		But you can find that article on the Associated Press's website.
		Let's hear from Stephen in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on the line for 65 and over.
		Hi, Stephanie.
		Or Stephen?
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Stephen.
		Although it's hard to say good morning in the state of our country today in this morning, and I just cannot help say, as being a Jew, and I'm also a recipient of Social Security retirement, and I live on it.
		Without it, I'd be on the streets.
		But my grandmother and grandfather, who escaped from Nazi Germany, and I used to talk to her all the time about how did that happen?
		What was the point?
		And all that she kept always saying to me, and I'll never forget, she said it was all about cruelty.
		It was all about cruelty.
		And I have to tell you, it is so reminiscent of the stories that she used to tell me of what this government is turning out under Mr. Trump.
		It is a cult.
		It is dangerous.
		And I am so sad.
		It makes me sick to my stomach to see our country being destroyed in such a terrible, terrible way.
		It is almost like a murder.
		It is absolutely vile.
		And I hope, I pray to God every day that the American people wake up and see the wrong that they have wronged and make this country right again.
		It is just so sad.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Any response for?
unidentified		Well, unfortunately, I think there's a lot to what the caller is saying.
		I mean, again, the value and the beauty of Social Security is that the concept of the program is that we're all in it together.
		We pull our risk, we all contribute, and we all qualify for benefits and draw out.
		And I think, and we are the United States of America.
		And I think this is a program that unites us.
		Unfortunately, at this moment, there's so much controversy.
		You have the Secretary of Commerce, Donald Trump's Secretary of Commerce, talking about, oh, well, my mother-in-law wouldn't complain.
		You know, he's worth something like $2 billion.
		He said, my mother-in-law wouldn't complain if I don't get Social Security.
		If I miss a payment, it's the fraudsters.
		Well, that's not true.
		One out of three seniors rely on Social Security for virtually all of their money.
		And two-thirds of seniors rely on it for most.
		So it is a matter of really dignity, but more than that, in many cases, they'd be homeless on the streets without Social Security.
		So again, it's important for all of us to be vigilant and to make sure that it's there, not just for us, but for our children and our grandchildren.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Eric in Pennsylvania, line for 41 to 64.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Eric.
unidentified		Hi, how are you doing?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We're doing well, Eric.
unidentified		Oh, my question is basically, it seems like Social Security is failing miserably, and it doesn't seem like she thinks the change is necessary.
		So it makes no sense.
		And I don't understand why she's opposed to fixing it the way, I mean, obviously Elon is doing things she doesn't like, but something has to be done, otherwise it's going to fail anyway.
		Actually, thank you for that question, because actually, Social Security has not missed a payment in its 90-year history, and I don't foresee that it will unless we muck it up.
		It is there, it's there for us, it works extremely well, it is extremely closely watched.
		As I say, there are about 40 actuaries who work on it every day, issue a report every year, which you can see online, which projects out the income and the outgo of the program, not just 20 years, which is what private pensions usually do, 25 years, what Germany does for its counterpart Social Security program.
		Our Social Security system, we project out every year 75 years.
		It's only been around 90 years.
		But the reason for that 75 years is to make sure that it will always be there for us.
		The benefits that we've earned will always be paid in full and on time.
		When you project out that far, sometimes you see an unintended surplus, sometimes an unintended shortfall.
		But that's why we project.
		There's a shortfall in about 10 years, plenty of ways to resolve it.
		The American people are united about it.
		It's very manageable, and there's no reason that Social Security won't be there for 75 years and beyond.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		To the caller's point, the trustee report that is put out, the most recent one, the one in 2024, says that the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be able to pay out 100% of total scheduled benefits until 2033, about 10 years, as you mentioned.
		At that time, the funds reserved will become depleted and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 79% of the scheduled benefits.
		The caller asking about your concerns about what Doge is trying to do.
		Changes will have to be made, whether it's raising the age, increasing taxes.
		What changes do your organization support?
unidentified		Again, this is a very heavily polled area, and there's a lot of unanimity among the American people.
		Actually, the Democratic Party, there are several bills pending in Congress that have been there that expand benefits and restore Social Security to long-range balance so it can pay those benefits for the foreseeable future.
		Those bills, actually one of them in the House of Representatives, has virtually 90%, I think it's 90% of the House Democrats are on there.
		And if the House becomes Democratic in the next election, 2026, I understand that then Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, who is a co-sponsor, will bring it up for a vote.
		So what the bills do and what our organization emphasizes is that, first of all, funding, as important as it is, is a means to an end.
		So what's important is what level of benefits should there be.
		And most Americans believe, if anything, the benefits are too low.
		You don't find very many people saying they're too high.
		So, and we think that they are too low and should be expanded, especially given what's happened with private sector pension plans and so forth.
		And how do we pay for it?
		We ask the wealthiest among us, Elon Musk, Secretary Luttnick, and other billionaires, but also to pay their fair share, as these bills do.
		You can see them.
		They've been analyzed by the actuary.
		Anyone can find them online.
		One that is HR is the 2100 Act.
		The Social Security Expansion Act is one that was in the Senate.
		People can find them online, read the actuary's reports.
		But what they all say is that first bill, no one earning under $400,000 pays a penny more, and yet benefits are expanded, and the program can continue to pay benefits for their foreseeable future.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from James in Wake Forest, North Carolina, line for 41 to 64.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, James.
unidentified		Morning.
		With all due respect, ma'am, I've got to say you are such a fear monger.
		The only people talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and whatever else are the Democrats.
		And you're lying about it, and you know you're lying about it.
		Why do you get so defensive when the topic comes up of somebody like Elon Musk and Doge going in and cutting out the waste?
		People have been waiting decades, generations, for somebody to go in and clean up government.
		And when people like you get defensive about even speaking about it, it tells us, most people that have their eyes open, that you are the problem.
		Not.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is something you've already addressed, but if you want to.
unidentified		No, no, let me say a few more things, because I really appreciate the caller, because I actually struggle.
		My goal is not to create fear.
		So many people are, this is their only source of income.
		And I don't want people to feel fear, but I do want people to be alert and vigilant because there are things happening that I see as very destructive.
		Now it is true.
		President Trump, all through the campaign, said he was not going to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
		He said that prior to that in his 2016 campaign.
		But if you go and look, every single one of his budgets in his first term included cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
		Before ever running for president, Elon Musk is not the only one who has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme.
		And in fact, Donald Trump called it a Ponzi scheme back in 2000 in a book called The America We Deserve.
		You can again check it out and see what he said.
		But he understands the politics.
		He understands that the American people, including Maga Republicans, do not want to see cuts.
		And so unfortunately, I worry that they've learned a lesson.
		They're not going to go to the legislature and try to get Congress to cut because Congress said no in his first term.
		And what they're doing is they're making it impossible.
		They are going to cause such destabilization.
		I worry the program is going to collapse because the people who maintain it are being forced out.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Essie in Texas, on the line for 65 and over.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Essie.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning.
		My comment, and I want to thank the lady for talking about this.
		I sent to I retired years ago, paid into Social Security.
		My husband is a disabled vet.
		He's 68 years old.
		He's buffed on Social Security.
		So my thing is, how can Elon Musk, who's someone who's not even a citizen of this country, and they have this Department of Government, whatever, Doge, which I think stands for Department of Government Eagle, come into this country, cut things, because they're not showing us really any proof where all this waste and fraud is.
		Where is it?
		I mean, Social Security has been around long enough.
		I would say everything could be improved, but to cut it and slice it, the people who take their money into it are their checks, their hardworking checks.
		I mean, what gives them the right?
		I think that is such a good point.
		And normally we have checks and balances in our system of government.
		Congress should have Elon Musk in front of the committee, the appropriate committees, and ask him, what is he doing with all of our data?
		The Doge people, it's always been kept very securely, very only for the mission that the American people are willing to let the government collect the money for.
		Now it's in the hands of Doge being held very insecurely.
		It is very concerning.
		And they are doing all of this behind closed doors without any transparency, again, hollowing out the agency.
		And I think you're right.
		You've got these people who are completely out of touch.
		You've got Secretary of Commerce who says, oh, well, the only people who complain if the benefits are missed are fraudsters.
		That is so out of touch with the American people.
		Elon Musk saying that he said one honest thing.
		He said, well, the big ones are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
		Those are the ones we are going to go after.
		But calling our Social Security system a Ponzi scheme, that is such a slander and so out of touch with what the American people want and believe and deserve and have earned.
		These are earned benefits.
		They're your money.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Something you mentioned or the changes are happening quickly.
		It's the end of the month, March 31st, that people will no longer be able to verify their identity over the phone and will have to go into an office.
		And according to the Associated Press of closures, leases will start running out at locations starting toward the end of next month.
		How are these changes being communicated?
		Where can people go to make sure that They have the information that they need.
unidentified		The crazy thing is that these changes are not even being communicated to the people who work in the agency and have to implement them.
		I've talked to people who work in the field offices, a number of them are colleagues and friends.
		And what they tell me is, first of all, the supervisors, these come out of the blue, usually at five o'clock at night, usually on a Thursday or Friday night, I think because of less media attention.
		And the employees get it at the same moment the supervisors get it.
		So the employees turn to their supervisors and say, well, you know, what about this?
		What about that?
		They have questions about the implementation of it.
		And the supervisors say, well, we don't know either.
		There's usually any of these changes, they've been making so many changes, reorganization.
		They've changed their regional offices.
		They've gone from 10 regional offices to four regional offices without telling workers, well, where are they now supposed to report?
		Are they still have a job if we're combining human resources and so forth?
		It's chaos.
		Any one of the changes that are being made, you can debate it.
		You can debate whether it's better to have, it's okay to do it over the phone or not.
		But generally, responsibly, and how it's always been done, it's very thoughtfully thought through.
		There's discussion, there's the advantages, there's the disadvantages, there's training so employees know what to do.
		There is the public informed over time.
		There's a whole plan to inform the public.
		None of that is happening.
		It's like, okay, today we're doing this, tomorrow we're doing that.
		And sometimes it shifts and they say, okay, we're doing this.
		Oh, never mind.
		Now we're not doing this.
		I'd love to talk about what's happening in Maine because that's an interesting story of weaponizing the Social Security Administration.
		But I think the caller's point is very well taken.
		You know, try to go on the website, although the people who maintain the Social Security Administration website have all been fired.
		So I'm not sure who's maintaining it now.
		But there is so much chaos, so much confusion.
		And I understand the earlier caller's point about not wanting to scare people, but it is something to be aware of.
		Timothy in California, line for under 40.
		Hi, Timothy.
		Hi.
		How are you doing?
		I think the caller just a couple of times ago, he's very rude.
		But I'd like to know if it's going to be around when I'm 60 years old.
		That is such a good question.
		And until six weeks ago, or actually, I would have said 100%.
		I guarantee you that it will be there for you.
		And I still believe that and hope that is true.
		But what I really see, and again, now I'm just speculating, so I should be very clear about that.
		This is just my own opinion, observing what I'm observing.
		And that is there's a lot of talk now.
		The acting commissioner is talking about outsourcing different things.
		There's a nominated commissioner who ran payment centers on the private sector.
		There are venture capitalists who are now at the Social Security Administration.
		And what I really fear is that they want to collapse the agency, say, see, government doesn't work.
		We're going to have to outsource this.
		As I said before, less than half a penny of every dollar spent is spent on administration, where the 99 cents goes out in benefits.
		If you compare that to 401ks, it's often 10, 15, 20%.
		There are a lot of hidden fees.
		Life insurance, disability insurance, same thing, very high administrative costs.
		There's about $1.6 trillion of money that goes in and out of Social Security every year.
		You know how much Wall Street gets?
		Zero.
		But I think I'm concerned that the people who are now in charge of our government would like to have some of that money in their own pockets.
		More upward redistribution, taking money from us and giving it to the billionaires.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk with Jim in Crystal River, Florida, on the line for 41 to 64.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Jim.
unidentified		Hi, good morning, all.
		Folks, America, Doge and Elon Musk is not the boogeyman.
		Let's get that clear right now.
		You know, he had a company called PayPal, which there was over 300 million accounts worldwide, and there was never a security breach ever.
		So if he has your information, United States, he will not harm you.
		He's trying to save government waste and fraud.
		And we all know there's tons of it.
		Right now, the government has been taking care of us cradle to grave.
		At $36 trillion, that's got to stop immediately, immediately, because you're going to take that cut in Social Security regardless in 34.
		It's going to happen.
		Musk is trying to extend that for you.
		So please keep that in mind, Nancy.
		That man from North Carolina was spot on.
		He wasn't rude.
		He was spot on.
		Cuts have to be made.
		Waste has to be cut.
		Let's go on with it.
		In my area, you know, we're baby boomers.
		If I need that $4,000 a month check, I would be a failure.
		You know, Jim, we'll get a response.
		So, again, Social Security has been run very well, very efficiently.
		And the question of whether benefits should be increased or should be cut is a political question in the best sense of the word.
		It's what we all collectively, how we want to, how much of our resources we want to keep in private accounts, and how much we want to use through Social Security.
		And the American people are quite united about this.
		They want to see benefits expanded, not cut.
		Again, there's been so much auditing of this program, and it's a very heavily audited program, and it has found that only 0.3% of payments are improper.
		And those aren't even fraud.
		Let me give you an example of an improper payment.
		That if when you get your benefit, that is for the month before.
		You have to be alive every single day of that month.
		Now, I think that's wrong.
		I think benefits should be prorated.
		But if you die on the last day of the month, you're not entitled to a benefit the next month.
		Say you die the last day of the month and your benefit is due on the third of the following month and it hasn't communicated yet that you've died and the money gets put into your account.
		That's an overpayment.
		But it doesn't just sit there.
		As soon as the government knows that you've died, which they know within a week, they will draw that money out.
		They will go to the grieving family, in fact, and claw it back.
		So just because a payment was made improperly and there are underpayments as well as overpayments isn't the end of the story.
		Fraud is vanishingly small.
		And of course we should keep on track of that.
		You know the way to catch fraudsters?
		First of all, we have an inspector general, but what did Donald Trump do?
		He fired the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration.
		So it's hard to believe fraud is really top concern.
		The other way fraud has been caught historically is through our frontline workers at field offices because they can detect suspicion and so forth, not through AI, which is what Mr. Musk says he wants to do with this program.
		So if you really are concerned about fraud, you'd be expanding opening field offices and training the people who serve us in those offices, but that's not what's happening right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		The caller also mentioned, suggested that people shouldn't need their retirement benefits.
		Something you mentioned is that there are a lot of people who rely on Social Security.
		Do we know how many people live solely on Social Security?
unidentified		Well, let me, yeah, it's about one of three seniors.
		But the important point to remember is this is an earned benefit.
		This is not a government handout.
		It's like saying you don't need your salary.
		Well, you've earned your salary.
		You've got current compensation and you have deferred compensation, and that's what Social Security is.
		So it's not a question of need.
		It's a question of earning it.
		Now, to pay, everybody should pay their fair share.
		And at this point, the very wealthy are not paying their fair share, most of us think.
		And the American people agree that the wealthy should pay more, and then we'll be able to increase benefits, not just maintain them.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		One last call for you is Linda in Vineland, New Jersey, on the line for 65 and over.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Linda.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, I'm 65 and over.
		I'm 76.
		I want to understand why we can't, as Social Security recipients, start a class action suit against Musk for a breach of our personal property.
		And that personal property would be our identification and our Social Security numbers.
		And why can't we go after his pocketbook?
		He wants to go after ours.
		So Social Security people, recipients, a class action suit.
		Let's get it started.
		And we can start talking about it on April 5th.
		I am so glad you asked that question because just Thursday, just two days ago, well, first of all, there is a lawsuit that was brought against the Social Security Administration and the Doge, Elon Musk, for exactly what you're saying, because these are our most sensitive information.
		If you've applied for disability benefits, your medical records, it's your, all of our Social Security numbers, our bank records, all kinds of things, our spouses, our ex-spouses, our immigration status, all kinds of things.
		So a lawsuit was filed.
		And on Thursday, the district court issued what's called a temporary restraining order saying, okay, no more access to this information.
		And in fact, you have to disgorge it.
		The Doge people have to delete anything that has our personal information in it.
		And you know how the Trump administration responded?
		The immediate response was, okay, well, then we're not going to comply.
		We're going to shut down the Social Security Administration.
		That, of course, got a lot of media attention, a lot of concern, and they backed away.
		The acting commissioner was claiming, who was a Doge guy, was claiming that the order was vague, which it wasn't, but there was a standoff.
		The judge issued an order basically saying, it's not vague, here's what I mean.
		And they backed off.
		So, but it is so concerning to me that we have the Trump administration talking about, okay, well, we're going to shut down benefits.
		And we have the Secretary of Commerce, who also, I believe, was just yesterday, said, well, if you miss a payment, you miss a payment, you're only going to complain if you're a fraudster.
		Why all this talk about missing payments?
		And I think my concern is that, again, they're hollowing out the agency.
		They're firing people who maintain the systems that make sure that we always get our payments informed on time.
		We have for 90 years, and we've got to make sure that those continue for our children and grandchildren.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Nancy Altman is president of Social Security Works.
		You can find the organization online at socialsecurityworks.org.
		Nancy, thank you so much for being with us.
unidentified		Thank you so much for having me.
unidentified		And thank you for all those great questions from your questions than I do.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Next on Washington Journal, founder and CEO of Nature is nonpartisan Benji Backer.
		We'll discuss efforts to make environmentalism a nonprofit issue.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
		This weekend, 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.
		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.
		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.
		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 every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
		Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session.
		The House will consider legislation to tighten foreign gift reporting requirements for colleges and universities.
		The Senate will continue voting on President Trump's nominations, including Dr. Jay Batticheria to be director of the NIH and Dr. Martin McCary to head the FDA.
		On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears consolidated oral argument in the case of Louisiana versus Calais and Robinson versus Calais on whether Louisiana's congressional maps are an illegal racial gerrymander.
		The directors of five intelligence agencies will also appear before two committee hearings for the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment.
		First, on Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee.
		Also, Wednesday, Catherine Marr, CEO and president of National Public Radio, and Paula Kerger, CEO and president of the Public Broadcasting Service, testify before the Doge Subcommittee on concerns about alleged bias in news coverage by their federally funded organizations.
		And on Thursday, a Senate Aviation Subcommittee will go over the National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report on the mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport in late January.
		Live next week on the C-SPAN networks and on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
		Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime.
		C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now is Benji Backer.
		He is the founder and CEO of Nature is Nonpartisan, a new organization that is trying to take the partisanship out of environmentalism.
		Benji, thank you so much for being with us.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		It's great to be here this morning.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll get to that organization in just a few minutes, but want to start.
		You have a history in conservation.
		You founded the American Conservation Coalition while you were in college.
		Tell us about that organization, the mission.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, the heart of this country, in my opinion.
		And also just grew up, you know, really close to the lakes of northern Wisconsin and the beauty that Northern Wisconsin has to offer.
		And whenever I spent time in those places, I never thought about what political identity my sisters or parents or friends or other family members had.
		And so when I saw the national dialogue of like Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, which is when I was a freshman in college, it really frustrated me because to me, the environment is one of those few issues that should transcend partisan politics.
		So when I was a freshman, I had actually moved out to the University of Washington so I could go skiing and hiking more often.
		And during that freshman year of college, I tweeted out, hey, I'm starting a conservative environmental organization, which is what ACC was designed to be.
		And does anyone want to join me?
		And so, you know, you look at us eight years from now, or eight years from then, and we've got, you know, 65,000 activists across the country, you know, chapters all across this country trying to show conservatives that the environment is important, not just to liberals, but also to their own side.
		And so, you know, ACC is a really important voice because for years there was no conservative voice on the environment.
		And so if you were on the right of center, you felt left behind.
		You felt like you were being told what to do by traditional environmentalists.
		And as we'll get to, it didn't used to always be that way.
		And so we were really happy to build a home for conservatives who care about this issue.
		And eight years later, it's more successful than ever.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And you just launched Nature is Nonpartisan this week.
		Congratulations.
		Thank you.
		You did that in Bellefourche.
		I think I said that right.
		South Dakota.
		Tell us why you created this new organization and the significance of launching it in that location.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Well, the people of Bellefourche will be incredibly happy that you pronounced that right.
		You must have taken French at some point, but it's a great place to launch an organization.
		It might not, you know, for most people, they might have never heard of Belfouch, South Dakota, but it's actually the geographic center of the United States.
		And so we launched there to meet in the middle of the country, the heart of the country, the true middle, literal middle of the country, to launch a movement that is representative of all of America.
		You know, we've teamed up with high-profile liberal people and conservative people.
		If you're liberal, you're going to look at our board of advisors and board of directors, and you're going to be mad.
		And if you're on the right, you're going to have the same reaction because we evenly split our entire team, board, and staff with left-of-center and right-of-center people.
		We've teamed up with left-of-center environmental organizations and right-of-center groups.
		And we've worked already with Democrats and Republicans because at the end of the day, environmental issues should not be polarized and they should be a shared American value.
		There's not a single environmental advocacy organization in this country that truly spans the political spectrum.
		And the reason why that's different from ACC or different from the Sierra Club or different from the Nature Conservancy or any of these groups is that we used to have a truly nonpartisan environmental organization in this country where you could, no matter who won an election, you would expect to hear from your own side and the other side on the environment.
		But today it's either here or there.
		And if a Republican wins the election, then most environmental groups don't have any access, any impact, any ability to make change.
		And if a Democrat wins the election, then Republicans are completely left off the table.
		We want to represent America regardless of who wins.
		We're calling on 1 million Americans to tell their politicians across the spectrum they want and demand action regardless of who wins.
		Because the majority of Americans want clean rivers.
		They want clean lakes.
		They want our oceans to be protected.
		They want our forests to be protected.
		They want wildlife and biodiversity to be protected.
		And they're sick of those issues being caught up in a political warfare where it's a Green New Deal or doing nothing and just undoing everything that the political left has done.
		This political back and forth doesn't serve the environment and it doesn't serve America.
		And that's why we started the future of the environmental movement in the heart of America, which represents every single person that cares about this issue, wants action regardless of who wins, and wants to put this issue above the partisan politics that is plaguing our nation right now.
		And if there's one issue that could take us out of this back and forth, this visceral back and forth, it's the environment.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Benji, you mentioned that it hasn't always been like this.
		This used to be an issue that people agreed on.
		When and why did it become a partisan issue?
		How did we get here?
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, people will be like, Benji, you're just starting some kumbaya, you know, BS thing.
		And it's like, no, this actually used to exist in this country.
		In 1990, 80% of Americans self-identified as environmentalists.
		Today, that number is less than 40%, even though Gen Z and millennials care deeply about this issue.
		And it's because that term and the entire movement got hijacked by partisan politics.
		On one side, it got hijacked by people who are saying, you know, you need to drive this sort of car, you need to have this source of energy.
		We're taking away your livelihoods.
		And if you don't, you know, live the life that we tell you to live, you're a bad person.
		On the other side, it's basically just undoing everything that the other side has done.
		The conservatives have been focused on that and not proposing their own ideas.
		And so we don't get sensible reforms for those who, like, if you think about America, there's kind of two types of people in terms of why they care about the environment.
		There's the Cabela shopper and there's the REI shopper, right?
		The Cabela shopper cares about it because they love to hunt, you know, and they like to fish, they like to camp.
		And then there's the REI shopper, which is, you know, they like to hike, they like to ski, and they like to spend time outdoors, maybe with more expensive hobbies.
		But, you know, there's a conservative and liberal trend in both of those directions.
		Both of them care about the exact same thing.
		They want a cleaner planet for future generations.
		They want to recreate in the outdoors.
		That used to be resembled in the environmental movement.
		And the reason why it stopped being represented in that way, well, there's a few reasons.
		But the main reason is that politics has just become so broken in this country that absolutely nothing is unable from being politicized anymore.
		There's no issue that is above that fray.
		And it's breaking down our country.
		I mean, we can't get anything done.
		We've let the inmates run the asylum in Washington, D.C. We're letting radical voices carry this conversation on every issue, and we don't get any of the solutions that we need.
		And then Americans are so sick and tired of whatever radical voice is the most prominent in that moment in time, and then we just keep flip-flopping back and forth.
		This is not healthy for our country.
		It's not healthy for democracy, and it's not healthy for our environment.
		So I can't change every issue.
		Americans can't change every issue from the get-go.
		We have to start building a movement to getting towards a brighter future.
		What better way to do that on an issue that we all have a stake in?
		We all have a reason for caring about.
		That's nature, that's conservation, that's the environment.
		There's nothing more American than that, and there's nothing more unifying than that issue in a time where I know that that seems unlikely.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest for the next 35 minutes or so is Benji Backer, founder and CEO of Nature is nonpartisan.
		If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
		The Lions, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Benji wanted to ask you about a Pew tracking chart that they do.
		It is on environmental protection versus economic growth.
		You can't see it, but I will talk about some of the numbers.
		It's looking at which of the statements do you agree with.
		Protect the environment should be given priority even at the risk of curbing economic growth, or economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.
		The breakdown there is 52% of people in the most recent tracking poll say that protection should be given to the environment.
		38% say that it should be about economic growth.
		When we see an issue like this, economics versus environment, is there a way to find a balance between those two?
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a great question.
		And I think, first of all, the main point that people have to realize is that without a healthy environment, we don't have a healthy economy.
		You can make short-term progress economically without the environment being protected, but at the end of the day, you have to have both.
		But you also can't have a healthy environment without a healthy economy.
		So on one side, they've been prioritizing the environment over the economy to the nth degree.
		And on the other side, they've been prioritizing the economy over the environment to the nth degree.
		And there should be this middle ground that you're alluding to.
		I was just launching this organization in Belle Foo, South Dakota.
		The majority of their dollars, tax dollars, come in from tourism, from the Black Hills and Custer State Park and the Badlands and other natural beauty in that part of the country.
		If you look at Florida, if you look at Arizona, where I live and where I'm at right now, so much of the money comes in from tourism because of how beautiful these places are.
		We have to protect them if that economic driving force is going to continue.
		However, if you look, I toured this amazing tribal community in the Pacific Northwest, and they actually single-handedly helped save the salmon population in that area.
		And I asked them, you know, why did you prioritize this?
		And tribal communities are struggling across this country.
		You know, why did you focus on this in your community?
		And they said, well, we're the most prosperous tribal community in this state.
		And so we had the dollars to allocate towards environmental protection.
		So they go hand in hand.
		A healthy environment brings a healthy economy, and a healthy economy brings a healthy environment.
		And our politicians are so focused on this kind of mandates, regulation, command and control approach, which is so anti-economy and so anti-human and so anti-community.
		Or they're just focused on undoing all that and prioritizing the economy over the environment.
		And as Americans want, they want a balance on this issue that hasn't happened.
		And without a balance on this issue, it's actually worse for the economy and worse for the environment.
		And we can't afford to keep going down that path.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll let callers ask you some questions.
		We'll start with Timothy and Beaver Falls, New York, Line for Independence.
		Hi, Timothy.
unidentified		Hi, how's it going?
		I don't even know how to respond to that because he just spoke it perfectly.
		With a balanced economy, you need a balanced environment.
		And if you can't actually come to a part bipartisan solution to any of this issues, it's not going to end well.
		It's just everything is going to keep getting worse.
		And you need to have bipartisanship when it comes to that.
		And he hit it spot on with what he said.
		I was a previous caller once before when you were asking me about the grade of Donald Trump in the beginning of his administration.
		And I didn't know how to answer that.
		And I'm still going to give him a D.
		The last time I called, that's what I gave him.
		And that's all he's going to get.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Timothy, I appreciate that a lot.
		And first of all, your town sounds amazing.
		Beaver Falls, New York sounds like a place I'd want to go.
		So I'd love to go out there sometime.
		But no, I mean, look, we can't solve this problem without bipartisanship.
		And I know, again, for some people who are so frustrated by what's going on in D.C., it sounds like so far out there and maybe some kumbaya thing.
		But the reality is our national parks are $24 billion in debt.
		Our forests are contributing almost a trillion dollars of taxpayer dollars every single year to fix the damage of after every summer.
		I mean, it's absolutely incredible what these environmental issues are causing our country.
		And we rely on the land for all the resources that we use on a day-to-day basis.
		We rely on the forests not only for our health and air quality and a place to go recreate, but also for our economy and the resources from those places.
		Our grasslands, wetlands, prairies, we've lost about 80% of all of those combined in this country.
		And things aren't getting better environmentally anymore.
		For a while, they were.
		I mean, for a while, we were actually making a ton of progress because our politicians actually put the environment above partisanship.
		You look at what Teddy Roosevelt started in the early 1900s.
		He cared about conservation and talked about how common sense it was.
		And he worked with both sides to get it done.
		Ronald Reagan was doing that.
		For all the people who are critical of him, and even Bill Clinton was working on it in a nonpartisan way.
		Richard Nixon created the EPA and the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
		All those things have lasted decades, even though I would argue that they might need some modernizing.
		All those things have lasted decades because they were passed 95 to 5 in the Senate and Republicans and Democrats worked together on it.
		When does that happen anymore?
		And how can we afford to continue allowing our environment to be degraded as our politicians like AOC and Ted Cruz just want to prop up their names and prop up each other in a weird roundabout way by fighting each other over things that don't matter when we have these real problems that we need to tackle that Americans want to tackle and that we will never tackle without both sides actually working together because both sides have important points of view that need to be represented in the dialogue.
		I lived in Seattle for six years and that left-leaning city had an important view on the environment that somebody in Wisconsin, where I grew up in rural Wisconsin, didn't have.
		But someone in rural Wisconsin also had a really important view on the environment that somebody in Seattle didn't have.
		And we've lost the ability as Americans to actually work together on issues, and that's hurting our country and it's hurting our environment.
		Today, with Nature is Nonpartisan, the launch of Nature is Nonpartisan this week.
unidentified		We're putting an end to that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I want to ask you, Benji, about your efforts in that.
		It's one of those where you had an opinion piece in Fox News, and something you just mentioned is that public opinion hasn't changed in the last three decades.
		Its leaders have become politically too politically stubborn.
		So you're not trying to change the minds of individuals and voters.
		You're trying to change the mind of those in elected office.
		How do you do that?
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think, first of all, we have to leverage Americans' voices on this issue.
		And that's why we're calling on a million Americans to sign the Nature's Nonpartisan Pledge.
		And then, you know, our goal is to help raise those voices and leverage those voices.
		So we're going to represent them in DC and in state legislatures, but we're also going to help them leverage their voices individually.
		Because again, the only group that goes to a politician and talks about the environment anymore is somebody on the far left or tends to be.
		I'm not saying everybody who advocates for the environment is.
		I'm just saying on average, the perception is if you're coming to the office of an elected official to talk about the environment, you are probably towards the farther left side of the aisle.
		We need to mobilize the majority of Americans who want action on this, not just the far left.
		We need to mobilize also the right and the center left to activate for the issues that they care about because politicians don't hear that at all anymore.
		And so many people don't want to engage in the environmental community because it's become so radicalized by both sides.
		And so we're trying to also create a home for people who just want to fight for common sense solutions for whatever they care about most.
		You know, if you care about forest fires in the West, somebody in the Southeast might not care about that as much.
		And so they care more about ocean resiliency and like conservation of the Everglades and funding for the Everglades.
		I mean, you look at how much that's needed.
		You know, different regions of the country care about different things.
		And so we plan on mobilizing people in a way that's really easy for them, that makes it really easy to advocate and show politicians the data, right?
		The data only speaks for itself on paper right now.
		And when I go into a politician's office and I have for the last eight years, they look at the data and they're like, okay, cool.
		You know, 95% of Americans agree on this.
		I don't hear from them.
		And so we're trying to change that and we're going to change that.
		And this radical versus radical approach that's dominated by politicians.
		I mean, to be honest, our leaders kind of suck right now, if I'm being quite honest.
		And they don't really care about serving America.
		They care about serving themselves and they don't care about serving the environment.
		They care about serving themselves.
		And I hate to be negative about that, but it's kind of true.
		And there's actually a lot of good people in Congress and in other places around the country, good governors and good people, but they don't get enough attention.
		And the way that that's how I feel Americans are right now, too.
		If you're a political activist, you're on one side or you're on the complete other.
		But in reality, there's also a lot of great people in America, the 80%, I would call the rational 80% of Americans who want a voice on a topic like the environment that just want to get things done.
		They don't care about who's winning and who's getting credit and all those things.
		They just care about having their communities healthy.
		They care about having their country strong and they care about having a place that they can raise kids and grandkids to have a brighter future.
		We don't have a clean environment in a sensible way, not in a radical way, but in a sensible way, we don't have that.
		And mobilizing Americans across the spectrum hasn't happened in decades.
		It's going to happen now.
		And politicians are going to see that data that Americans want the same things in the environment, but they're going to see it backed up with real voices asking for positive change and building a better future for our country.
unidentified		Let's hear from Richard in Maryland, Line for Democrats.
		Hi, Richard.
		Hi.
		Thanks so much, Benji, for your contribution to this effort.
		I have an experience.
		I'm retired now, but I had worked for about 45 years in the environmental field, a quarter of which was as a regulator and about the other three quarters in private engineering and consulting work.
		And I will tell you that my experience has been that we made a lot of progress in 50 years.
		And we had a lot of back and forth between conservative and liberal forces in the effort to make that progress.
		I'm talking about air and water and solid waste, hazardous waste, all those programs that came along to protect the environment in different ways.
		And I feel like we're at risk now because of this stagnation of the political system.
		We're at risk of losing a lot of that.
		And, you know, I think people are tired of the fighting and want to get things done.
		So your voice is very welcome on this issue.
		And I think that we have a lot of examples that can be brought to bear in the history of the organizations, state regulations, state regulatory agencies, both on the conservation side and the environmental regulatory side, that can point to the fact that when we work together, we accomplish a lot.
		And the water's cleaner, the air's cleaner, but we're in danger of losing that and sliding backwards, I think, in many areas because we are so torn apart by the politics.
		I think that what you're doing is terrific.
		I will point out one thing that Richard Nixon didn't want the EPA.
		But when he saw 20 million people show up for Earth Day, the first Earth Day, he changed his mind and he saw the wisdom of doing something.
		And, you know, I think that Bill Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator, did something very wise.
		He photographed, he sent photographers around the country to photograph what the condition of the environment was back then.
		And it's very useful to go to the National Archives now and look at those photographs and see what the condition was.
		Because there was a lot to take pictures of.
		And I'm afraid that we will find many of those issues recurring.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Richard, we'll get a response from Benji.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Richard, I really appreciate that.
		And I appreciate your service to the environment as well over the last few decades.
		And you're right.
		I mean, we are at a risk for taking steps back.
		I actually think we are on the track to doing that in this country.
		You look at kind of the numbers of air quality levels, of forest fires, of ocean pollution, all these things.
		They were headed in the right direction for a very long time, at least in the United States, maybe not around the world, but in the United States.
		And now we're kind of slipping backwards.
		And it all tracks with the timeline of this becoming a partisan issue.
		So the reality is the stream that runs through your community doesn't care about who you voted for.
		The reality is the wildlife in your community doesn't care about who you voted for.
		The reality is the air quality doesn't care about who you voted for.
		The forest fires don't care who you voted for.
		The mountains don't care who you voted for.
		The oceans don't care who you voted for.
		The prairies don't care who you voted for.
		Farmers and ranchers don't care who you voted for.
		The future of the environment doesn't care who you voted for.
		It wants solutions.
		And for so long, our politicians have prioritized their own partisan politics above that.
		And it's because, again, like you said, I mean, the Richard Nixon story is great.
		I'll give him credit for doing it because he did it.
		And that's, I don't really care why someone does it.
		If they cared about it, you know, before they had a million people marching on Washington or they didn't, they did it.
		And but that story is exactly what needs to happen, right?
		Richard Nixon, you know, looked at America and was like, wow, these people really care about this thing.
		I should probably do something about it and worked across the aisle to do it.
		That's how American democracy is supposed to work.
		And on the environment, it's completely missed the boat for the last few decades.
		And that doesn't have to be that way.
		So again, I have a lot of optimism that we're going to get back to that sort of heritage in this country.
		I've seen that.
		I've traveled around the country, been to almost every state five or six times, trying to understand where people are at on this issue.
		The most frustrating part of my job is that every day I go around the country and meet with people, they're saying the same things as the person that they think they hate is saying on the environment.
		And it's actually kind of sad and funny as well when you go to DC and you talk to Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate and they're saying the same things.
		And then I'm like, have you talked, you know, have you thought about talking to your colleague on the opposite side about this?
		Like, no, no, no, they, you know, they do not see eye to eye with me on this.
		I'm like, well, actually, I talked to them yesterday and they actually do.
		So, you know, I think we've manufactured this ability to, or this inability to work together on this issue.
		And again, you know, you don't have to take my word for it.
		Just take the word of Richard, which, you know, this was possible decades ago.
		We put pressure on politicians to do the right thing across the spectrum and stand up for the places that surround our communities.
		I mean, I'm looking out the window right now at a beautiful, you know, beautiful bunch of cacti, and none of those care about who I voted for.
		And the neighbor in this community doesn't care either.
		And what we care about is prioritizing the environment.
		And it's so important to everything that we do as Americans.
		We don't have the resources that we need to build homes and to power our homes without the environment being healthy.
		We don't have the resources to put food on our tables and feed our families if our environment isn't healthy.
		So when you think about all the issues, Doge is the top of everyone's minds.
		Immigration is at the top of people's minds.
		Health and safety in people's communities at the top of people's minds.
		All of that is connected to whether or not we can actually save and have a healthy environment.
		All of our lives are intertwined with that.
		And so we might have disagreements on how to solve these other very complex issues.
		But on this, there's a lot of common sense that can prevail and should prevail.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Leo in New Jersey, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Leo.
unidentified		Hi, how are you today?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We're doing well, Leo.
unidentified		Very good.
		One thing I wanted to say that I'm enjoying the program, I'm glad that Benji is bringing this to the forefront of people's minds is predominantly that you can't get away from the politics of it.
		You know, the Department of Public Works and Landfills were closed all over this country with no solutions.
		And really, at the bottom of every issue is legislation and money.
		And I really do think that it takes a non-partisan effort like Benji's trying to accomplish to meet the middle and make sure that from one administration to the other administration's policies aren't thrown out the door and start all over.
		We need career people that truly are invested in the future of our environment.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Leo, really, really appreciate that point.
		And that durability of policy is actually what is the biggest problem, or the lack of durability on policies is the biggest problem right now.
		Because you have something like, and you might support the Inflation Reduction Act, or you might support some of the other environmental policies that have been passed in the last couple of decades.
		What it's done in such a partisan way, every time the other side wins, it has risk of being undone.
		You look at the biggest long-lasting initiative on the environment over the past couple of decades, and it's probably the Great American Outdoors Act, which was signed under President Trump, passed the Senate with far over 90 votes.
		Republicans and Democrats voted for it, and that will never go away.
		The support for the Great American Outdoors Act and the implementation of it will never go away because it was done in a bipartisan way.
		It's durable when both sides are at the table, and it's really hard to do that work.
		But our politicians are supposed to do that hard work, right?
		They're supposed to figure out where the alignment is.
		They're supposed to figure out how to get these things done.
		And they're not willing to have those uncomfortable conversations anymore.
		And that's leading to policies that have no durability and no ability to last administrations.
		So, you know, like you said, it is a political issue.
		The environment is inherently a political issue.
		It has to be solved via politics in many ways.
		But it also doesn't need to be a partisan issue.
		You know, we need to take the partisan politics out of the politics because if we want to have durable policy, we're going to have to pass things under, you know, President Trump administration that will last into a future administration.
		And that's actually what I worry about this current administration doing right now, is that they're just focused on undoing what the left has been doing on the environment.
		And they're not proposing any of their own agenda.
		They're not looking at the politics of this and saying, okay, what do Americans actually want?
		If we're so critical of what the left has been doing on the environment, why not propose our own agenda that also works with the left to come up with a better solution that is more representative of all Americans?
		I understand the desire to undo things that the other side has done that don't represent the other half of the country, but then rebuild it with something that is good for the other half of the country and the half of the country that was at the table in the first place.
		That's what this administration should be doing because that will allow these policies to last administrations onward and actually benefit America.
		There's nothing more America first than working with each other to solve problems.
		And unfortunately, our politicians have forgotten that.
		And right now we're seeing that happen on the Trump administration side of the aisle.
		And it's definitely happened in recent years on the left side of the aisle as well.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Pete in Chicago, Illinois, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Pete.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Pete.
unidentified		Oh, I could, oh, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, what I'm concerned about, I'm 82 years old, and I'm concerned mainly about what I call, I'm not talking politics.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Pete, are you still there?
unidentified		Can you hear me?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I can hear you now.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
		I'm concerned about the unregulated expansion of cities, airports, highways.
		If you take 100 acres of prime farmland and put a shopping center on it, it will never grow crops again.
		And some of the places here, I'm from Chicago, some places here in Illinois have the best farmland in the world.
		And I'm seeing this unregulated expansion of housing developments.
		And I watched a movie recently called Losing the West, not winning the West, Losing the West.
		And they talk about this occurring out west now.
		Prime land for growing cattle and crops is getting covered over with concrete.
		There seems to be no regulation of this at all.
		It's just higgledy biggledy everywhere you go.
		Pete, we'll get a response from Benji.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Whatever that last word was, I loved it.
		And I appreciate the question, Pete.
		You know, as someone who grew up in the Midwest, I've seen that firsthand as well.
		And I am worried about kind of how much land we have left that is beautiful and pristine that we're continuing to destroy.
		I think we need to take better care of our public land.
		I think we need to manage it better.
		But I also think from a private land perspective, when you look at farmers and ranchers, they are often vilified as anti-environment, as being anti-environment when they're the closest to the land and care about the environment more than anybody else.
		And the worst thing you could do is take away the important resources that they provide America and just build on that property and then pretend that that's good for the environment somehow.
		I mean, we do need to have affordable housing and we do need to make sure that people can live lives and not have to pay as much as they're paying to live in these communities.
		But at the same time, I'm not sure just sprawling every city into oblivion is really the right solution.
		I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and you can see that sprawl happening firsthand.
		And at some point, we have to say, look, let's be more efficient in the way that we're building our communities.
		Let's be smarter about how we're building our communities.
		Building up instead of out is a term that used to be talked about a lot in Seattle because they were dealing with that when I was living there.
		And building communities up and allowing people to live closer together is actually good for the community.
		And so this is a really tough conversation that you're alluding to, but we have to be smarter about how we're building our communities.
		We can't just sprawl them into oblivion.
		And we do need to protect our public spaces and our wild spaces because there's not a lot left, to your point.
		And we are losing a lot of the West.
		There's nothing more important than preserving the crown jewel of America, which is our beauty and our national parks.
		And we have to do that.
		And then also match that with the importance of development for communities.
		And that's something, again, that our politicians aren't prioritizing because it's either development or a hands-off preservation approach.
		And neither one of those are going to work.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Stan in Grants Pass, Oregon, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Stan.
unidentified		Yeah, trying to shut my TV off.
		I want to delay.
		Benji, I had the opportunity to wait for the Interior Secretary in 1972.
		And I delay with you.
		I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it.
		Yeah, go ahead.
		Turn your television down, Stan.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		There is a delay.
unidentified		I had the opportunity to wait.
		Oh, dang damn it.
		Interior Secretary in 1972.
		I'm still messing up with you.
		I'm not sure if I'm well.
		Turn your television down, Stan.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Stan, don't listen to your television.
unidentified		There's a delay.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You got to just listen through the phone.
unidentified		Well, Benji, I had to wait for this Interior Secretary because I wasn't sure he had a key.
		And they were cutting back back then on the ONC lands.
		They took away all that and it's gone.
		And oh, shoot.
		Now the delays getting me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Stan, we'll leave it there.
		We'll go on to Linda in Orange, Connecticut, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Linda.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning, Benji.
		I'm much older than you, and I remember when the environmental problems were first introduced, you know, via the Clean Air and Water Act.
		And I'll tell you what motivated Americans then.
		It was because we all loved our country.
		And even back then, we did have very differing political views.
		But the love of the country for all of us had to be the thing that superseded the political ideologies.
		And that's what we need to get back to.
		Americans understand pollution.
		Americans understand they don't want dirty air and dirty water.
		They don't understand climate change, but they know what they don't want.
		So I think that we should make that our unifying cry, what we love, not what we disagree on.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Well, that speaks to me at a very emotional, deep level.
		And as I travel around the country, people are yearning for that.
		And they're yearning for our country to find a way to create common ground that unifies us.
		I mean, it's really sad when you talk about this country and when our last great moment was in history.
		And people actually bring up 9-11 and how we came together after that.
		It shouldn't take a 9-11 for us to start working together.
		It could just be about the river in our backyard that brings us together.
		It could be about the beauty of America's natural wonder that brings us together.
		And maybe it doesn't have to be something bad and something that we're against.
		Maybe it's something that we're for.
		And maybe something that we're for is the environment that we share and the environment that we cherish and the environment that's brought our country to such prosperity.
		Maybe that's what Americans can unite around.
		And maybe we can actually start forging a future that actually represents Americans rather than divides us.
		Because I don't know about you, Linda, as a Democrat, but I'm a conservative and I'm sick of the back and forth that's happening in this country.
		We all know deep down it's not good for us.
		We all are part of the culture wars.
		We all click on that link of the most divisive thing that someone says in our newsfeed.
		But at the end of the day, none of that is bringing the better future for our country that we all share.
		If you fail, I fail.
		That's how Americans used to feel.
		And we used to understand that if your river or your community got destroyed, mine ended up getting hurt as well.
		We are so interconnected in so many ways.
		Our country has so much to offer the world, and we're completely failing each other by being involved in this back and forth that pits each other against each other and ends up actually hurting ourselves more than we even realize.
		And our politicians are complicit in it, but so are we.
		And what better issue to start working together again in this country to start forging the future for the country that we all love, that we all want to be better and that we all rely on to be better than the environment.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		One last call for you, Benji.
		We'll talk with John in Naples, Florida, Line for Independence.
		Hi, John.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
		Benji, and MSNBC have all kinds of people on saying that they're right-wing and they're conservatives and all this.
		I looked at your website.
		You got Van Jones on your board of directors.
		You got the guy from the Sierra Club.
		Two far left, left-wing people.
		I don't believe that you're a conservative.
		I think that you're a left-wing front group.
		You're an activist.
		Federal money, putting it around other left-wing activists.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		John, you're breaking up, but we'll give Benji a chance to respond.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Well, John, I appreciate the question.
		And I think Naples, Florida is one of the most beautiful parts of this country.
		So I'll just say that.
		Your question and the way that it was framed is exactly the problem.
		And I hate to say that, but it is.
		I mean, you can look at our website and find Van Jones and Michael Bruh, the former head of the Sierra Club, liberals who I put on that board on purpose, wonderful individuals.
		I also have put on some of those conservative people, including Trump's former Department of Interior Secretary and two of the largest conservative influencers and spokespeople in this country, Brett Cooper and Isabel Brown.
		You can find something that you're going to disagree with on our website in terms of who we're associating with, and that is the whole point.
		We've brought on a conservative for every liberal.
		We are not a front group for liberals.
		We're also not a front group for conservatives.
		We're a front group to protect the environment in a common sense way, which is what Americans want.
		And if you get hung up on the fact that someone who you disagree with is involved with something that you could potentially agree with, and that's what you're going to get hung up on, then you are part of the problem.
		I'm sorry, but you really are.
		Partisan politics has warped your brain to think that somebody who you disagree with on other issues being involved with a group like this diminishes the importance of the group.
		That's exactly why we exist.
		We brought Van Jones, Michael Bruh, Brett Cooper, Isabel Brown, Dave Bernhardt, all to the same table.
		That is inspiring and optimistic and wonderful for our country.
		And I'm getting attacked from the left as being a conservative front group, and I'm getting attacked from the right for being a liberal front group.
		I don't care.
		I have one goal, and that's to protect the environment in a common sense way that puts Americans first and also puts the environment first.
		And you can be liberal or you can be conservative.
		I don't care what your political identity is.
		If you share that end goal, I'm with you.
		And Americans share that end goal, and I'm with them.
		And that's why Nature is Nonpartisan exists.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Benji Backer is founder and CEO of Nature is Nonpartisan.
		You can find the organization as well as more about their pledge.
		Their pledge online at natureisnonpartisan.org.
		Benji, thank you so much for being with us.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for joining me this morning.
benji backer ▲ ● ▼		Thank you so much.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We are wrapping up today's Washington Journal with more of your calls during open form.
		You can start calling in now.
		Here are the lines.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Hankton, South Dakota.
unidentified		Hello.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Come on, C-SPAN.
unidentified		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.
susan swain ▲ ● ▼		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 Collin 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.
		Sunday, on C-SPAN's Q&A, Loretta Ross, author of Calling In, critiques cancel culture's excesses and advocates for a more inclusive way to hold others accountable.
		Drawing on her past experiences working with rapists and white supremacists and her own history as a survivor of sexual abuse, she supports a more nuanced approach to addressing harm in the social media age.
		Whenever we think we are irritated or have a beef with somebody, we want to publicly shame and humiliate them.
		And the reason we do it that way so publicly is that we want others to see us holding somebody else accountable.
		We call that virtue signaling.
		Let me show you how woke I am, and I'm going to put this other person down for not being as woke.
		Loretta Ross with her book, Calling In, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
		You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back up until 10 o'clock this morning.
		We are in open form.
		A programming note.
		C-SPAN's been covering congressional town halls this week, and you can watch all of them right now on our homepage at c-span.org.
		And right after the program at 10 o'clock, we will begin a congressional town hall marathon.
		Kicks off with New Jersey Senator Andy Kim.
		He is hosting a town hall in Brick Township.
		You can watch it live.
		Again, that's 10 a.m. Eastern right here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app or online at c-span.org.
		We will start with Sydney in Florida, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Sydney.
unidentified		Hey, how you doing?
		I really enjoyed the last segment.
		One of the things that I realized is that I remember when COVID hit and the world got really still, and it made it so that everything,
		when I watched the weather channel, every place was clear and people could see the beauty of mountain ranges and different things that they couldn't see before because of the pollution and stuff and how people were moving.
		And it just reminded me of even with Marvin Gaye.
		He put a thing in his song.
		He said, you know, who's to blame because we can't stop living in this chaos that we're living in.
		But then at the same time, I remember reading in the Bible and Romans 8, it talked about that even creation that is waiting for us to start to live like we're like we have some sovereignty over the land that has been entrusted to us, you know, as humans.
		And it just hit me when he was talking.
		And it's not, it's a nonpartisan thing.
		It's just doing right.
		It's like what you would do just to take care of your family.
		You know, you don't want, you want to live the best you can, and you don't want to let anybody suffer.
		And you don't want money to get in the way of that.
		Profit is what it is.
		It says profit over people today.
		But anyway, so that was my thought.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sydney in Florida, Doris in Ohio, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Doris.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, my name's Doris.
		The reason I'm calling, didn't Joe Biden go to Brazil to the rainforest and offered billions of dollars to save it?
		And then just a few days ago, I thought I saw in the news the people of Brazil's cutting down thousands of acres of trees to have a UN summit for the environment.
		Is that true?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jim in Dubuque, Iowa, lying for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Jim.
unidentified		Hi.
		I agree that nature is nonpartisan.
		I think that the partisan aspect of this is a divide and conquer diversion from real science, which unfortunately the American population is near the bottom of the barrel in understanding.
		And if we look at pollution, that's certainly an issue, but carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
		Carbon dioxide.
		If we look at the historical record going back millennia, we'll see that we're at virtually a record low level of carbon dioxide.
		Carbon dioxide is essential for all life on this planet.
		We add carbon dioxide to greenhouses to get or to improve plant life.
		And we need that for food and animals.
		I think that the underlying forces are trying to direct us toward a economic control mechanism of carbon credits and the ignorance of the American and global population about basic sciences being taken advantage of as they use their or take advantage of their concern about actual pollution.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Jim in Iowa.
		Carolyn and Vincent, Ohio, lying for Democrats.
		Hi, Carolyn.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just wanted to, well, I'd like to have said it to Benji himself, but he was so eloquent, and I wanted to thank him for all he had to say.
		I'm a senior citizen, and to hear such a young gentleman talk so eloquently just made my day.
		And I really appreciate him and what he had to say to the last caller because my family was Republican.
		I was a Republican most of my life.
		And I think we all can work together.
		I call in all the time and say the very same thing that I think more young people need to be asked to be involved.
		And it seems like it's going that way because I noticed that Mr. Hogg is now on the Democratic, I think it's the National Committee or something as second in line or something like that.
		And he's a young person and you've had a lot of young people from the Republican Party on and I appreciate that too.
		But I believe like Benji does that we can all work together and I don't think he should have to defend his board and who he has on his board.
		I think we can all work together and make things happen and be better world for it.
		So that's all I had to say this morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Carolyn in Ohio.
		This headline from the Washington Post this morning, Judge calls Trump's use of Alien Enemies Act a problematic act, problematic and concerning.
		It says a Justice Department attorney was grilled at a court hearing about whether the government willfully defied the order in order to return deportation flights to the U.S.
		It was yesterday at the White House President Trump was asked about his involvement in invoking the Alien Enemies Act that led to those deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants.
		Here's a clip from that.
unidentified		It doesn't sound like this judge who the DOJ is arguing with today about the deportation plates.
unidentified		He wants to know why the proclamation was signed in the dark, his words, and why people were rushed onto planes.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Because we want to get criminals out of our country, number one.
unidentified		And I don't know when it was signed because I didn't sign it.
unidentified		Other people handled it.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		But Marco Rubio has done a great job, and he wanted them out, and we go along with that.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		We want to get criminals out of our country.
unidentified		If there was a flight like tonight with these guys, even though it's still being litigated, if there was a flight tonight full of accused gang members and somebody called and said, Mr. President, I know that this is still being adjudicated, but we can get these guys down to El Salvador right now.
		Would you say that that's okay?
		I would say that I'd have the Secretary of State handle it because I'm not really involved in that.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		But the concept of getting bad people, murderers, rapists, drug dealers, all of the, these are really some bad people out of our country.
		I ran on that.
		I won on that.
		I got a margin.
		Like, you know, you reported it very well.
		Everybody did.
unidentified		We won all seven swing states.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		We won the popular vote.
		We won everything.
		And a big part of that was exactly this, getting bad people that shouldn't have been allowed into our country.
		Biden allowed them in.
unidentified		What they should be asking, this judge, this radical left judge, he should be saying, why did Biden allow these criminals in our country?
unidentified		That's what he should be doing.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		I'll see you next time.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Back to your calls.
		David in Flemington, New Jersey, line for independence.
		Good morning, David.
unidentified		Good morning, and thank you.
		One of the things the most discerning New Jersey legislators are looking at now are the abuses by homeowners associations and property management companies in central New Jersey of the environment.
		And one of the things the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is looking at here in the Flemington area is a riparian area, an overflow of a river, that is deeded to, or the deed is owned by a property management company.
		And the New Jersey legislator is looking at why, in heaven's name, private entities are ever allowed to have the deed to environmentally fragile areas.
		This HOA coats everything in pesticides, and we are above, uphill from a riparian area where animal populations have disappeared, and the abuse of this area is just unconscionable.
		And the New Jersey legislature and NJ Department of Environmental Protection are looking at why a private entity could have the deed to a state-regulated environmental area.
		And I do thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		David in New Jersey, we'll go to Joyce in Greenville, North Carolina, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Joyce.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes, my name is Joyce.
		I am so excited to be listening at the Washington General this morning, no seat span.
		The information that is being given is just uplifting.
		I was telling the gentleman before, yesterday I went to Physicians East to have an echogram.
		And the young lady that did my echogram, and the recently, I think she said she was two years out of college, but the information and the things that she was doing on that computer really gave me tear bumps.
		And I just hugged her neck and thanked her for her brain and her education and her willingness to go and help people in critical situations.
		Our environment, you know, the fires, the airplanes falling.
		We are destroying this world.
		We need more love in this world.
		God made this earth for all mankind.
		There is no separation of power in God's name.
		You understand?
		And we need to come together to protect Mother Earth because elements are getting angry.
		We can see that with the things that are occurring, all the fires.
		Look at all the bad weathers we are having.
		God is speaking.
		People need to fear God and what He can do.
		His son made the heavens, and God took the day and separated them.
		We need to respect what our holy Bible says about this earth.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Joyce in North Carolina, Scott in Illinois, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Scott.
unidentified		Hi, thank you for taking my call.
		And as a decorated, I have two questions, quick questions.
		As a decorated Vietnam veteran, I'm an old, old guy, and I'm going on the honor flight to Washington, D.C. in June.
		What an honor that'll be with fellow GIs.
		Anyways, I have to get a real ID.
		And here I had top secret clearance.
		I paid taxes for 70-some years.
		I've been arrested for misdemeanors, usually drunk stuff, you know, in my younger days.
		And, you know, they know who I am.
		I don't hide from anybody.
		But I got to get this real ID.
		And it's because I'm going to flight.
		As I understand, May 15th or something, it goes into effect.
		It's been on hold for two, three years.
		But I'm just like, here we go, asking me more questions.
		Who am I?
		You know, and I just don't understand.
		If anybody could tell me why you have to get a real ID, and then we fly migrants around the country for nothing.
		We don't even know who they are.
		And the second question is: yesterday I had a water pipe break in my house underneath and it flooded the bathroom, the carpet, down in the basement.
		I'm like, oh, I can't get a plumber until Monday.
		But anyways, you know what I'm thinking about?
		And I'm without water and we have to fill the toilet and do it.
		And we just, it's hard with no water.
		But the thing is, what about the people in North Carolina?
		They're living in tents.
		They're drinking butter.
		I'm like, these are the people that got the real problems.
		Don't put migrants in $500 a night motels.
		Take care of the American people.
		With that, I thank you, and God bless the United States.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Now, Scott in Illinois.
		Mark in Cloverdale, Indiana, line for independence.
		Hi, Mark.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'm calling up with regards to Social Security.
		My grandfather paid in for one year, and he took out funds for 36 years.
		And so that doesn't add up.
		The second thing is that the problem with the Social Security is that it started out at 3%, and now it's up to 16 or 18%.
		I don't even know it's so high.
		And the reason is because we do not have the young people to pay into it.
		We're missing approximately 70 million babies that were killed and all their offspring.
		So we would have 100 million more people paying into Social Security, and it would be totally solvent.
		But now we're facing what choices we as a nation have made.
		But that's all I have to say.
		Thank you for your program.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Mark in Indiana.
		And for our caller who asked about Real ID from the Department of Homeland Security's website, it says frequently asked questions and answers regarding the implementation.
		It says the Real ID Act.
		It was passed by Congress in 2005.
		It was enacted.
		It enacted the 9-11 Commission's recommendation that the federal government set standards for the issuance of sources of identification such as driver's licenses.
		It says the act established a minimum security standard for licenses issued and production and prohibits certain federal agencies from accepting for certain purposes driver's license and identification cards from states not meeting these acts, the acts minimum standards.
		Just a few minutes left.
		Let's talk with Marshall in Nashville, Tennessee, line for Republicans.
		Hi, Marshall.
unidentified		Good morning, Debbie.
		How are you today?
		Excuse me.
		I'd like to read a poem.
		It's going to take about a minute long.
		I got this off of Facebook.
		It's not ugly per se, but we're talking about people getting along and how people are starting to see things in America across the board, regardless of your political party.
		I don't have a name ascribed to it, so I'm just going to go ahead and read it.
		And this is what I want to say to the public today.
		It mentions the word they, and they is basically talking about Democrats or politicians, the news media.
		It goes like this: they tried to censor us.
		They tried to cancel us.
		We lost jobs.
		We lost friends.
		We lost family.
		We were called lunatics, Nazis, cult members, conspiracy theorists.
		And there, I want to say conspiracy theorists are up probably about 25 to zent, whether it's Joe Biden's cognitive state or 100 volumes laptop.
		Then we realized we weren't alone.
		Others were seeing what we were seeing.
		So we started to speak up.
		One by one, we showed others it was okay to speak the truth.
		We stopped being afraid.
		We found new friends and purpose.
		Many of us realized that what was happening was bigger than just us.
		Many of us went through our own darkness in soul for the last 12 years, but realized it existed to help shed the false parts of ourselves.
		Many have gone through a rebirth lately, and America has also, along with other countries, all things have a purpose, and it is always darkest before the dawn.
		And instead of the great reset, we're having a great awakening.
		It is time the American people know that our government has been raping us and robbing us of our wealth for at least the last 60 years.
		And this is probably the best opportunity we have as American citizens to stand up and say, No more.
		We want total accountability of what you're using our hard-earned money for in the U.S. government.
		I love y'all, and I wish peace to everyone.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Marshall in Nashville, Tennessee.
		Let's talk with Alan in Minnesota, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Alan.
unidentified		Good morning.
		That guy was pretty good.
		I just want to talk about, I remember back when Lake Erie was declared a dead lake, and there was a river that caught on fire in Cleveland, all through the Appalachian.
		The coal mines, people getting trapped in the coal mines in the Ohio River, having barges break loose with piles of coals on it, dead fish in the rivers, gas and oil wells blowing up down around Houston.
		And now they want to just unrestrict all this environment stuff.
		And the thing to watch for is all these mines going up around federal land in federal lands.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Alan, are you still there?
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		Do you hear me?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You got cut off after federal lands.
unidentified		Oh, sorry about that.
		The federal lands that they are unrestricting for now new mining for gold, every mineral you could think of, copper, all this stuff.
		And I thought these federal lands are the people's land of the United States that pay for, you know, are a gift to the United States.
		It's the people's land.
		It's not the government land that just do what they want and rip it apart.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Alan in Minnesota.
		Don in Alabama, line for independence.
		Good morning, Don.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		I just wanted to know the difference between they keep saying 13,000 baby boomers get out of Social Security every day or every month, whatever it is.
		I'd like to know how many of us old birds died that month and get off the Social Security so I know the difference.
		And that's it.
		So I'll unmute you and let you go.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's Don in Alabama.
		Bill and Mart, Texas, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Bill.
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
		I was just wondering a couple of little old things.
		You know, there wasn't one word from the Democrats for four years or even longer when the killers and the rapists and the child molesters were coming into the country.
		Not one word from them.
		They tried to cover it up, not include C-SPAN.
		Y'all didn't send a crew down there to cover that border when them murders and killers were coming across.
		Everybody tried to cover it up in the liberal media.
		They tried to cover it up.
		But now, all of a sudden, they're upset because some murderers and killers and child molesters got shipped back for punishment or get out of this country.
		And another little old thing I'd like to bring up, this doe stuff that the Democrats keep bringing up, why are they so upset about Elon Musk and Trump and them trying to find the waste and fraud because it keeps tracking back to Democrat corruption?
		And, you know, and I'm just wondering why C-SPAN didn't send no crews down there to cover the border when they knew the murder and killers were.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jared, you said that, Bill, we'll go to Kenny and Wilson, North Carolina, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Kenny.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, C-SPAN.
		And thank you for taking my call.
		You know, y'all have been talking about the environment.
		And I've been noticing on TV one of the baddest, worst environmental contesties that I've seen.
		And that's that bombing in Gaza.
		They have practically bombed every building.
		The place is just dark.
		All that pollution that's going over there.
		And no one is saying anything about that.
		Yet we're coming around saying how much we care about the environment.
		And we are giving them the bombs to do it with.
		And C-SPAN has not discussed this.
		I had it.
		When I seen it, it was on a foreign news station because our media won't let anyone know.
		Our media, and I hope C-SPAN is not, seems like it's influenced by foreign countries, especially CPAC.
		Certain things you can't say, discuss, and have a true conversation.
		And if we're ever going to get to the bottom of these problems, we've got to be truthful and to everyone.
		This is not good for America because we are looking like hypocrites big time.
		And I just hope C-SPAN don't have any kind of influence in there.
		I know that y'all are not owned by anyone, but you do have donations privately from Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and all of them.
		So I hope they're not sneaking in the back door because when Brian Lamb was there, things was different, it seemed like.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joe, in Brooksville, Florida, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Joe.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I have two things to mention.
		The VA budget.
		Only 30% of the VA budget goes for doctors and nurses.
		70% goes to administration, managers, assistant managers, assistant to the assistant.
		Trump wants to make it where they can hire more doctors, hire more nurses, build more hospitals.
		It should be in the reverse.
		It should be 30% for administration and 70% for hospitals, doctors, and nurses.
		And as far as the Department of Education goes, one of the first buildings that Musk went into was 300 employees for the Department of Education.
		They had the whole cafeteria staff cooking every day.
		The lights were on every day.
		The janitorial staff came in every day.
		Only 49 employees ever showed up.
		No more than 49.
		This is such a waste of taxpayer money.
		And people are criticizing Musk and Trump.
		We're trying to save this country.
		If we don't do something, this country will be bankrupt in 15 years.
		We'll have no Social Security.
		We'll have no Medicare.
		Don't these people understand?
		We're trying to save this country, and no one else ever had the guts to do this.
		Thank you.
		Diane, in Burberton, Ohio, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Diane.
		Good morning, Kimberly.
		Okay, we're going to talk about the migrants.
		Only 1% of the migrants have done something illegal.
		So all those little lies that you want to think that Trump is not telling is true.
		60 Minutes has done it.
		This has been on this show several times.
		And even News Nation has reported it.
		Also, 95% of the fentanyl coming into the United States has been by Americans, not the migrants.
		So get that story straight, too, because if you think that Trump is telling the truth, he never will.
		He never has.
		What are you doing now?
		It's ridiculous.
		Hoseane in Ohio.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Norris in Orange County, California, line for independence.
unidentified		Good morning, Norris.
		Hey, good morning.
		Good morning.
		Hey, I just wanted to make a comment concerning some of the earlier callers about Doge.
		You know, some of the people are saying Doge is, you know, cutting this and cutting that.
		In my opinion, and some of the evidence I've seen, Doge is just giving people red meat in order to make them angry.
		If you look at the piece that the New York Times did on Doge, it came out that they were just making things up.
		If you look on their website, they're just literally making things up.
		They had people in place that accounted for every dime nickel of almost every agency.
		And guess what?
		Trump decided to fire these people.
		It's all fake.
		If he was like the gentleman I called earlier that said he's looking to balance the budget and this country will be bankrupt in 15 years, that is all not true, and that's just scare tactics.
		But if he was really trying to balance the budget and do anything for people, why does he ask for an increase on the debt ceiling?
		And what's the point in having a $4 trillion tax cut?
		It's all smoking mirrors, people.
		And I really wish you guys would do some research instead of just blurting off things that you have no idea, no idea what it's about.
		And one thing I'd like to, one more thing I'd like to say, hey, in regards to the Hunter-Biton laptop, has anybody ever seen the Hunter-Biton laptop or have you just heard about the laptop?
		That's Norris in California.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jim, West Virginia, line for Democrats.
unidentified		Hi, Jim.
		Good morning.
		Yeah, I'd like to second that motion of the guy that just spoke.
		You know, and I don't mean to be cruel, but, you know, everybody says they want truth.
		You know, that guy was reading that poem, the heart-rending poem, and talking about a great awakening.
		You know, I try to see things from a Republican side, and I definitely have become more of a Democrat in recent years, since about 2009 or 10, seeing what happened with the economy.
		And it feels like, sorry to say it, Republicans, you all don't want to hear truth.
		You certainly don't want to hear it from the other side.
		That's unfair.
		You know, you speak about you're going to have all this truth from Trump.
		You know, how many people realize that Trump signed a treaty with the Taliban that released 5,000 dangerous Taliban prisoners?
		Yet when things went bad in Afghanistan, the withdrawal, you blame Biden.
		How many of these people realize that Trump got a $2 billion contract from the Saudi government for the Live Golf League?
		That Kushner, his son-in-law, got $2 billion for his real estate company from the Saudi government.

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