| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The effect of this exemption is to extend the compliance date of the rule for those stationary sources from July 8th, 2027 to July 8th, 2029. | ||
| I am enclosing a copy of the proclamation I have issued to Annex I thereto. | ||
| Signed, sincerely, Donald J. Trump, the White House, April 10th, 2025. | ||
| Refer to the Committee on Energy and Commerce and ordered printed. | ||
| The chair announces the Speaker's appointment pursuant to 20 USC 2004B and the order of the House of January 3, 2025 of the following member on part of the House to the Board of Trustees of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Fund. | ||
| Ms. Stefanik of New York. | ||
| The chair announces the speaker's appointment pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 6913 and the order of the House of January 3rd, 2025 of the following members on the part of the House to the Congressional Executive Commission on the People's Republic of China. | ||
| Ms. Stephaniek of New York and Mr. Nunn of Iowa. | ||
| Pursuant to clause 13 of Rule 1, the House stands adjourned until 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, April 17th, 2025. | ||
| That's the conclusion of the Pro Forma session. | ||
| Again, it's open forum. | ||
| And if you want to call, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can make those calls. | ||
| You can also send us a text too. | ||
| Don't forget in about 20 minutes from now, it's that first all-female flight of the Blue Origin New Shepherd mission. | ||
| That's scheduled to take place at 9.30 this morning. | ||
| If you want to see live coverage of that, as we're showing you some of the pictures of the preparations that are about to take place, you can watch that on C-SPAN2 for a free mobile app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| While you're calling in for open forum, we're joined to get the week ahead in the White House with Francesca Chambers. | ||
| She covers the White House, a correspondent for USA Today. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Thanks for giving us your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| One of the things the president's doing today is talking with the head of with the president of El Salvador. | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about that meeting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, well, we expect him to arrive, President Bukelli, here at the White House at 11 this morning. | |
| And as you noted, all eyes will be on that meeting today at the White House after the Trump administration argued in court that while the court said it had to facilitate the return of a Maryland man that the court said was erroneously deported to El Salvador, that it's up to El Salvador to return him. | ||
| So at that meeting in the Oval Office today between the El Salvadorian president and President Trump, I would expect that they will get asked about that and what the United States is doing to help get his return And whether or not he'll be brought back to the United States. | ||
| Any indications that any resolve of that issue will come out of this meeting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, I would expect that it will be discussed. | |
| If not, because the leaders are discussing it, reporters will surely ask about that today and they'll be looking for an answer based on what the administration is arguing from the El Salvadorian president today. | ||
| One of the other matters of foreign policy, the president talking about the latest when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| Talk a little bit about that conversation. | ||
| I think it took place on Air Force One. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the president last night was asked about this, this again, this attack that happened from Russia, and he had previously said that it was getting close to the time where Russia may need to put up or shut up on a ceasefire agreement, which has now been more than a month since the Trump administration laid out what that would look like. | |
| Then, after that most recent attack last night, he said that he was told that it was a mistake. | ||
| Now, he did not elaborate on what it meant by it was a mistake. | ||
| Meanwhile, his Ukraine special envoy Keith Kellogg saying that they crossed the line. | ||
| You also had other leaders, including the incoming German chancellor, suggest that it was a quote war crime that may have taken place. | ||
| And so that will also be something that the president of the United States will most likely be pressed to say today is where that goes next from here. | ||
| On that front of where it goes next from here, Francesca Chambers, we saw last week about the back and forth when it comes to certain tariffs. | ||
| Even over the weekend, there was some clarification there. | ||
| Where do things stand tariff-wise today and what might we expect from the administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the administration is still in this 90-day pause period when it comes to those higher tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs. | |
| The 10% tariffs are still on most nations as they were before. | ||
| And of course, he has separate tariffs that are on China at this moment. | ||
| Now, what we heard from administration officials over the weekend is a clarification as it pertains to semiconductors and chips that are in smartphones and computers, with them explaining that those will be part of a later bucket that the president is yet to announce. | ||
| He has said that he will put them in place. | ||
| We don't yet know what that rate is. | ||
| Now, the president over the weekend, while speaking to reporters, said that he could announce that rate for semiconductors this week, but we would not expect them to go into effect immediately. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Because the Treasury Department is still conducting, or at least it was still conducting, it has not yet announced what the results of its investigation was into the semiconductors. | ||
| The same goes with pharmaceuticals, which is something that we're also expecting in the next month or two, based on what the administration said over the weekend. | ||
| They're leaning into the same authority that they used to put in steel and aluminum tariffs. | ||
| They also say that they're looking into copper tariffs, and those are expected to come soon as well. | ||
| Is there any indication from the administration in dealing with these tariffs and particularly the larger issue of dealing with China, how relations with that country will go forward in light of everything the president has said tariff-wise when it comes to that country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, U.S. officials stressed over the weekend that President Trump has had in the past a good relationship with President Xi Jinping and they're hoping that that can carry them forward through this dispute over the tariffs and what is an emerging trade war between the two countries. | |
| But we have not known yet China to actually be engaged in direct talks. | ||
| We heard, I believe it was the Treasury Secretary say over the weekend that it had been intermediaries, but there hadn't been direct talk shed with the Chinese over this issue. | ||
| Francesca Chamber, one more question on trade. | ||
| We talked to the president has said, members of his team have said they've got countries lined up to talk. | ||
| Is there a clarification of how many countries are lined up to do that and how they can achieve at least trade deals with a lot of countries within such a short period of time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
At the end of last week, the administration said that it was more than 75 countries that had reached out, but they also said that roughly 15 countries that they were in direct conversations with about those tariffs. | |
| Now, they also suggested there were several that they were close to even being able to announce a deal with. | ||
| We don't know exactly which those countries were, but we do know that they were deep into talks with Japan and South Korea. | ||
| Then we heard Peter Navarro say over the weekend that they were talking to India as well as Vietnam and a number of other countries as well. | ||
| So could be around 15 countries. | ||
| We haven't yet heard an update on that top-line number. | ||
| What else are we expecting from the White House this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in addition to those meetings we talked about today, the Italian prime minister is also expected to visit later this week on Thursday, Georgia Maloney. | |
| Now, she will most likely talk with the president about tariffs. | ||
| Now, the EU has paused its tariffs on the United States that were expected to kick in this week during this 90-day pause period. | ||
| We heard Ursula von der Leyen say that she hopes that there is still room for negotiation on that. | ||
| Now, how much Maloney speaks for the European Union when she comes, that's unclear. | ||
| But she has said that she doesn't want to see a trade war here. | ||
| She did not want to see those retaliatory tariffs from the EU side go into effect. | ||
| We would also expect that during that discussion, they'll talk about the NATO summit that's upcoming in June of this year. | ||
| The president says he wants to see a 5%, an increase to 5% GDP defense spending from every NATO nation, including the United States, and of course, that war between Russia and Ukraine most likely on the agenda, too. | ||
| Before we leave you, what is it like covering the White House these days compared to the first term? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as we just discussed, there's any number of issues taking place at any given time at the White House, and we always have to be prepared for anything to happen. | |
| Frank Jessica Chambers is with USAI Today. | ||
| She is their White House correspondent joining us from the White House. | ||
| We thank you for your time today. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| And we'll take your calls on Open Forum if you want to participate as well. | ||
| And here's how you can reach out to us. | ||
| Again, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and 202-748-8002 for Independents. | ||
| And you can text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| So you can start making those calls, and we will take them as they come in. | ||
| Such from Ken. | ||
| Ken is in New Jersey Democrats line. | ||
| Ken, hello, your first up. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| You know, I've been thinking a lot about all this talk about the national debt and trade and all this over the last couple weeks. | ||
| And I had a realization that what our national debt is is really irrelevant. | ||
| It's not that important. | ||
| It could be $36 trillion, $50 trillion, $100 trillion. | ||
| Well, what's really important is that that debt gets serviced. | ||
| You know, and as long as we have a central bank that can buy up federal treasuries and just digitally transfer money into a Federal Reserve Bank, we can never default on any of that debt. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And now I'm also thinking that, you know, if we stopped running up that debt, ultimately all that money goes out of this country all over the planet. | ||
| It actually fuels the economies of the rest of the world. | ||
| If we stopped overspending, running up debt, it would probably cause the planet to go into a giant global depression. | ||
| So I'm not really concerned about debt. | ||
| And as far as the trade war with China and all that goes, if Americans want to buy cheap Chinese goods, they should have the right to do it. | ||
| Want to protect their industries? | ||
| Great. | ||
| We can subsidize them like the Chinese are doing with theirs. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Canon New Jersey calling in. | ||
| This is Mike. | ||
| Mike in Michigan, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, sir. | |
| I got a question, not a question, a statement. | ||
| If we're paying, for instance, Europe on the tariffs, if we're paying Europe 25% to take our products into their country, and they're paying 2% to bring their products into this country, where is that fair trade? | ||
| God bless Trump. | ||
| God bless America. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| From Waldorf, Maryland, Jay, on our Line for Democrats, you are next. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I sort of agree with the idea that the national debt is an overreach sort of issue. | |
| It's not really that important. | ||
| We've had debt for a long time. | ||
| We had a surplus back when Democrats were in there. | ||
| So, anyway, and I also want to say the previous guest that you had on here about a half hour ago or something, saying that we all need to work together, that's true. | ||
| We need to compromise. | ||
| This needs to be a bipartisan congressional effort to do what's in the Constitution, not what Trump is going outside the Constitution on a lot of things, on this Doge thing and Musk and all these cuts. | ||
| And then later they had to reverse some of them, so it's very inefficient. | ||
| When Clinton was president and they cut some of the agencies and some of the people, it took place over many, many months. | ||
| I think it was 20-some months. | ||
| And it was a give and take between Democrats and Republicans in the Congress. | ||
| We needed to do that. | ||
| Now, the one thing people say, why are people hating on Trump so much? | ||
| Well, you know, you got to look at his history. | ||
| What's the famous quote about if you don't remember your history? | ||
| Those that repeat, you know, are condemned to repeat their history if they don't remember it. | ||
| So, and Trump, you know, discriminated against Jewish people, African Americans, Hispanics, and his housing policies, him and his father in the 70s. | ||
| They got fined for it in New York City. | ||
| And that's just the tip of the iceberg. | ||
| He's done a lot of things. | ||
| Read David K. Johnston's books. | ||
| He's a Republican, David K. Johnson. | ||
| Read his books about Trump. | ||
| I don't expect all American people should have read his books before the election, but they should have paid attention to the history of Donald Trump and why, you know, January 6th. | ||
| Okay, you're going to start with January 6th, maybe a different way. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| William is next in Florida, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That guy that just called in about not being worried about the debt. | ||
| I hate to live in his house. | ||
| He must be, he's going to bankrupt his own house. | ||
| I don't believe that. | ||
| They would say that. | ||
| You've got to worry about the debt because we're paying the interest on it that's so damn high. | ||
| We'll never get out of this hole. | ||
| And I don't mind my, I just had three granddaughters enlisted in the Navy. | ||
| And I'm so proud of them, but I don't want them to be saddled with debt either when they come out of this government, out of the Navy. | ||
| I'm so proud of them, kids. | ||
| One of the stories we're emerging from the weekend took place in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Fox News picking up the headline as others have picked it up as well about the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, Shapiro police arresting a suspect after the governor's mansion there was set on fire while the governor and his family slept, saying that it was at a press conference Sunday evening that authorities named 38-year-old Cody Ballmer as the suspect. | ||
| He will be charged with attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson, and aggravated assault against an enumerated person. | ||
| According to officials, Governor Shapiro took before reporter questions and talked about the incident yesterday. | ||
| Here's a portion of that press conference. | ||
| But we do know that this attack was targeted. | ||
| We don't know the person's specific motive yet, but we do know a few truths. | ||
| this type of violence is not okay. | ||
| This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society. | ||
| And I don't give a damn if it's coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another or one particular person or another. | ||
| It is not okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it has to stop. | |
| We have to be better than this. | ||
| And we have a responsibility to all be better. | ||
| Again, that was from yesterday from the front of the governor's mansion, the residence there in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Derek is in Texas. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How you doing? | |
| My thing is, okay, if we owe China so much money, and the thing is, I see, maybe we ought to start paying them people back. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| When I have a lot of things going on, I pay my bills of the old people. | ||
| If the United States old people pay them, you know, start making payments to them people, not just the interest. | ||
| You know, that's my whole key thing is you owe people, pay people. | ||
| You know, get out of people's pocket. | ||
| That's Derek in Waco, Texas, giving us a call. | ||
| One of the things that you may look out for today when it comes to Meta, the internet company, saying that it was soon after, this is reported by the New York Times, soon after Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm in 2004, the social network skyrocketed in popularity. | ||
| Roughly a decade later, the company experienced another round of explosive growth after buying its smaller rivals, Instagram and WhatsApp, cementing its place in social media. | ||
| On Monday, Judge James Boesberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will begin considering a landmark monopoly case involving the company now called Meta that hinges on a novel legal question. | ||
| Did it break the law to stay dominant by acquiring the startups that stood in its way? | ||
| The case, Federal Trade Commission versus Meta Platforms, for the first time, will try to stretch the theories of U.S. antitrust law and to include what regulators are calling a, quote, buy or bury strategy. | ||
| Meta broke the law by acquiring nascent competitors to maintain its monopoly in social networking. | ||
| So that's something to watch out for today. | ||
| Let's hear from Tommy. | ||
| Tommy in Kentucky, Democrats line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'm just wondering how as a man like Elon Musk that is not even a citizen has had him organization made up where he could go in, try to cut Social Security, try to cut everything when he is not even a citizen. | ||
| And also, I would like to know sometimes, I just wonder how many rich people call in and defend Trump because they think I get a big tax break from him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just wonder on that. | |
| And I thank you for your time. | ||
| Just a bit of clarification. | ||
| This was from the Times of India. | ||
| Despite having been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2002, discussions around Musk's nationality and immigration history have intensified, particularly due to his growing authority in Washington, D.C. as the head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. | ||
| Robert in Washington State, Independent line. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| I identify as an independent. | ||
| I voted Republican. | ||
| I'm 68 years old. | ||
| I could talk for an hour, but I wanted to point out today I'm going out to climb a tree to try to make money because I live on $1,000 a month Social Security after being self-employed for 37 years and paying into the system for 54 years. | ||
| I don't know how much longer our country can continue like this. | ||
| They talk about Trump cutting Social Security, but I see homeless people, people that haven't worked, paid into the system, get the same amount of money or close to what I get, and they've never put a dollar into the system. | ||
| I hope something gets straightened out under Trump. | ||
| The world doesn't look real secure at this point, in my view. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Robert there in Washington State. | ||
| Next up is Eddie. | ||
| Eddie's in Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to know how we can put somebody in the White House that have been convicted of more crimes than Al Capone ever even thought of doing and expecting for him to straighten out this country when he can't straighten out his own affairs. | ||
| And how can you charge somebody 125% of anything when 100% supposed to be all of it? | ||
| Now, I don't care how he defined that 125%. | ||
| That doesn't make sense to anybody that grew up. | ||
| And I mean the real addition of when it was called arithmetic, when you call it math, that just messed up the whole system. | ||
| So somebody, please tell me how you get 125% of anything. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| That was Eddie in Cincinnati. | ||
| Claude is in San Diego. | ||
| Independent Line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I was just calling because I agree with a lot of callers that things seem screwy with the math and everything as far as numbers, percentage, it includes the tariffs. | ||
| My question is just: how can we get out of this? | ||
| I mean, what is the deal as far as China is concerned? | ||
| I know he's mad at him because of COVID, but like, what else can he expect as far as the tariffs? | ||
| Does he expect them to cancel debt or is he expecting them to cancel contracts so corporations could come back or manufacturing to come back? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That is, again, we're in this open forum, by the way, just a few minutes from now. | ||
| It's the expected launch of that Blue Origin spacecraft, T-minus 135, if I read it correctly. | ||
| You can follow along that on C-SPAN 2 if you're interested in that. | ||
| Tony, Tony in Pennsylvania, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Good morning, America. | ||
| I was just calling to comment on the story about Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania, whose house was, I guess, vandalized and firebombed. | ||
| One thing that I was thinking about it is that Governor Shapiro often supports what's happening in Palestine and the terror that happens to the Palestinian people. | ||
| And there's a way in which his house being firebombed is a sort of karma for his support for an illegal war. | ||
| Okay, we will leave it there. | ||
| By the way, our next guest joining us is Politico senior writer Ankush Khadori. | ||
| He has written about President Trump's executive orders targeting law firms and why some of them are reaching agreements with that administration. | ||
| We're going to take that conversation next. | ||
| But first, we'll show you this flight of this Blue Origins rocket set to take place momentarily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
P-10, 9, 8, 7, 6, command engine start, 2, 1, ignition, liftoff, New Shepard has cleared the tower. | |
| Again, throttle down for Q limiting. | ||
| Engine response looks good. | ||
| Mach 1, vehicle is supersonic. | ||
| Engine backup. | ||
| Supersonic. | ||
| We have passed through Max Q, maximum dynamic pressure. | ||
| That's when the vehicle, the stresses between the atmosphere and 47 hours and speed are at their maximum. | ||
| So to punch through that is so important. | ||
| You see the BE3 engines. | ||
| It's firing beautifully. | ||
| You see the stream of steam behind it. | ||
| Those ladies right now are having an incredible view on their way to space. | ||
| Passing through 80,000 feet, 1,300 miles per hour. | ||
| They're going to peak at about 2,300 miles an hour over Mach 3, three times the speed of sound. | ||
| Shortly coming up. | ||
| That's the flight of the Bulu Origin spacecraft with an all-female crew. | ||
| You can continue on following that on our sister network, C-SPAN2, if you're interested in seeing the results of that flight and everything in that aftermath. | ||
| Joining us here in the studio right now is Angkush Khadori. | ||
| He's a political with political magazine, a senior writer, recently putting out a piece, the headline, I worked at a big law firm. | ||
| Here's what to know about the surrender to Trump. | ||
| Ankush Khadori, thanks for joining us. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Let's start with the law firm experience. | ||
| Talk about that. | ||
| What's your experience there? | ||
| Oh, so I actually worked at Paul Ice, which is the first of these law firms to enter into one of these agreements with the Trump White House for about eight or nine years, depending on how I do the math. | ||
| But that was quite some time ago, almost a decade ago. | ||
| So I happen to have quite a bit of familiarity with how the firms work. | ||
| I know some of the people involved, including the head of the firm who negotiated that deal. | ||
| So, you know, I have a pretty good handle on the nature of the work and the nature of the business. | ||
| But, you know, it's been a while, but I feel like I'm sort of clear-eyed about it. | ||
| What prompted you to write this piece in particular? | ||
| Well, you know, a lot of people, I think, were curious and interested and frustrated and angry about the settlements, if you want to call them that, between the law firms and the Trump White House. | ||
| And we had just a lot of questions from our readers and even internally about kind of like what to make of this. | ||
| How do we put it sort of in a broader context? | ||
| There are a lot of claims and concerns about the rule of law and democracy and whether these firms are impeding, you know, those sorts of civil society type efforts and what the impact would be. | ||
| So we wanted to just sort of get into that and sort of get into the nitty-gritty if we could. | ||
| Before we go too far, let's set it up, though. | ||
| Specifically, why is the president targeting these certain law firms and why are they responding as they are, some of them at least? | ||
| So it's a very good question, actually, how he's picking these firms, which I think is not entirely clear. | ||
| Initially, he seemed to be picking law firms where there had been, where they either had currently a partner or once had a partner who had been involved in one of the investigations or prosecutions of Trump. | ||
| So for instance, Wilmer Hale had Robert Mueller. | ||
| Paul Weiss had Mark Pomerant, who worked on the Manhattan DA's investigation. | ||
| Jenner and Block, Andrew Weissman, who worked on the Mueller investigation. | ||
| Since then, and particularly over the last week, there have been a series of additional settlements with like Kirkland and Ellis and A ⁇ O Sherman, I believe, where it's not exactly, it's not quite as pointed as that. | ||
| But it does seem to be the case that the Trump White House has a very broad anger, I guess, for lack of a better word, with this particular elite segment of the legal profession. | ||
| So exactly what is he doing? | ||
| If I understand it correctly, this is by executive order. | ||
| What is he trying to achieve specifically by these orders? | ||
| So his executive orders, the ones he issued, did several things. | ||
| One, they revoked the security clearances of any of the firms, excuse me, of any lawyers working at the firm. | ||
| They also prevented those lawyers, supposedly prevented, intended to prevent those firms from entering any federal property, which would include not just courthouses, but also the DOJ or the SEC, where sometimes defense lawyers have to meet with the government. | ||
| So that would be a serious impediment on a litigation practice in particular. | ||
| And then third, the executive orders suggested that the government might actually go after some of the contracts of clients that these firms have, contracts between their clients and the government. | ||
| So that was the threat. | ||
| It was implemented in several executive orders that went through. | ||
| And since then, there have been a series of law firms settling to get out ahead of an executive order like that that might target them. | ||
| Because if you cut off these avenues where you enter buildings or you have security clearances, ultimately that affects the bottom line. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| The security clearance part, I think, is a relatively minor part of it because these firms don't do that much work that requires security clearance. | ||
| It's a really small part of the work that they do. | ||
| But the prohibition on entering federal property, if that were really to be enforced, would severely impede any large law firm's litigation practice. | ||
| And is that the reason why they're responding as they are as far as getting out ahead of it? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| And I also think a lot of them just don't want to have a sort of a protracted kind of public back and forth with the White House. | ||
| I mean, several firms are now litigating this and winning so far. | ||
| But I think, unfortunately, Paul Weiss sort of set a template here, which was that, you know, you could either have these orders hanging over your head and challenge them in court, or you could go in quick and cut a deal. | ||
| And that is what Brad Karp, who is the head of Paul Weiss, did. | ||
| And then we've seen since then deals that have just been modeled off of that. | ||
| It's actually quite familiar, quite a familiar model if you're familiar with like white-collar defense work, which is, I think, frankly, how Carr came up with the idea. | ||
| Because anytime the government has like, and you see this in prosecutorial settings, the Justice Department will do like an industry-wide investigation, for instance, over price fixing and like interest rate benchmarks. | ||
| And they'll have a bunch of banks sort of on the chopping block, for lack of a better word, or in their crosshairs. | ||
| And you start to settle with one, the first person in gets the best deal, which Brad knows. | ||
| And then everybody else kind of intends to set a precedent. | ||
| And the numbers get worse for everyone who settles afterward, which is what we're seeing. | ||
| Is Brad, do you know him personally from your experience at the firm? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And when you're talking with him, did he say anything to you about why they're taking this approach? | ||
| I haven't spoken to him since this. | ||
| I mean, I know him well enough to know that this is not surprising to me at all. | ||
| These firms are businesses. | ||
| First and foremost, they're for-profit businesses. | ||
| They work for extremely wealthy interests. | ||
| And I'm talking about the largest companies and the wealthiest people in the country. | ||
| And that's how their business works. | ||
| I mean, that's what I did when I worked for them. | ||
| It's not nefarious or corrupt. | ||
| It's just the nature of the business. | ||
| They're not sort of vanguards of principle or bravery, to be honest. | ||
| I mean, I would think about them more as like large banks, right? | ||
| And so, like, if this had happened with like JP Morgan or Citibank, we would not be sitting around saying, oh, how I can't believe Citibank betrayed us, because our expectations for Citibank are very low. | ||
| And our expectations for these firms should also be very low, which is not to say that they should not be criticized. | ||
| They should. | ||
| But that is sort of how I try to put it into some context for people. | ||
| Our guest is going to be with us, and you can ask him questions about this situation with the president and certain law firms, the responses of these law firms and his experiences while writing this piece. | ||
| You can find it online. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text us those questions or comments if you want at 202-748-8003. | ||
| The president last week, when he was appearing with some coal workers, brought up this idea of the situation with the law firms. | ||
| I want to play a little bit of what he had to say, get your response to it. | ||
| In addition, I'm instructing the Department of Justice to identify and fight every single unconstitutional state or local regulation that's putting our coal miners out of business. | ||
| And we are withdrawing all of those objections from our government today. | ||
| It's all being withdrawn. | ||
| So all of you people that have been fighting for your lives, we are withdrawing all of that today. | ||
| We have excellent lawyers. | ||
| Excellent. | ||
| Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump? | ||
| $100 million, another $100 million for damages that they've done. | ||
| But they give you $100 million and then they announce that, but we have done nothing wrong. | ||
| And I agree, they've done nothing wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But what the hell? | |
| They give me a lot of money considering they've done nothing wrong. | ||
| And we'll use some of those people, some of those great firms. | ||
| They are great firms too. | ||
| They just had a bad moment. | ||
| But we're going to use some of those firms to work with you on your leasing and your other things. | ||
| And they'll do a great job. | ||
| I think they're going to do a fantastic job. | ||
| Mr. Kadori, to that last part, we'll use some of your firms. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
| Yeah, so as part of these deals, all of the firms who've settled agreed to commit tens of millions of dollars in value of pro bono work toward the administration's initiatives. | ||
| So Paul Weiss started off by committing $40 million worth of pro bono work toward administration initiatives concerning veterans and other things like that. | ||
| These commitments are very vague, which is why he's now able to exploit them. | ||
| And then after Paul Weiss, the numbers became close to like $100 million, I think and up for some of the other firms in terms of value. | ||
| So now what he is suggesting, which is fascinating, well, he's doing two things. | ||
| One is he's rubbing it in, right? | ||
| And this is what he does. | ||
| When he undermines someone, he likes to keep his foot on their neck, and that is what he's doing. | ||
| The second thing he's doing is that, I mean, he's really exposing the remarkable nature of the agreements that he entered into with them because it is unclear what kind of commitment they undertook with him. | ||
| And he seems to be serious about it. | ||
| This is not the only comment like this he made last week. | ||
| So it may be the case that Trump ends up going to them, insisting that they do some of this work, and that would be a remarkable turn of events. | ||
| You wrote that some of the firms have decided to make these deals. | ||
| Some of the firms have legally fought them, some of them winning. | ||
| What's the legal basis for fighting? | ||
| Well, what's the legal basis of the administration doing this in the first place, I suspect? | ||
| There is no real legal basis. | ||
| I mean, this is wholly unprecedented. | ||
| I've never seen anything like it in my lifetime. | ||
| The allegations against them do not warrant any type of prohibitions like this. | ||
| These are entirely novel, so far as I can tell. | ||
| And the defense is a very basic one, which is a First Amendment defense, which is that these firms have the right to associate corporations and pursue the work that they want to do. | ||
| And also, to some extent, a Sixth Amendment argument, which is that companies as well have a right to counsel, and this is impeding these companies' ability to get their lawyers because who would want to hire a lawyer who you think is on the wrong side of the administration that you're adverse to, right? | ||
| So those are the sort of principal arguments. | ||
| Have we seen, I guess, a reduction of the amount of firms that the president is targeting, or is this a consistent thing that he's doing? | ||
| It's consistent. | ||
| I mean, I actually thought a couple weeks ago they were almost done. | ||
| But late last week, they announced a handful of new ones. | ||
| And so I have the same question I had two weeks ago, which is, are they done now, or are we going to see more? | ||
| It's unclear. | ||
| Let's hear from Sam. | ||
| Sam joins us from Maryland on our line for independence. | ||
| Ankash Kadori is our guest from Political Magazine writing about this experience with the legal firms and their and President Trump. | ||
| Sam, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| You know, looking at this from both a lay person's perspective and from the light most favorable to even government, this is totally unprecedented and does not make sense that the public is not outraged that a president is targeting law firms that are for the, at the very least, | ||
| you know, their job is to defend clients in the courts of law. | ||
| And the courts of law actually make decisions based on whatever it is that being defended upon. | ||
| So how would the public just sit by and have a president just come down with a hammer and begin to do something like this? | ||
| Sam and Maryland, thanks. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I think it's a very sound observation. | ||
| I mean, this is an abuse of authority. | ||
| I don't think it's really hard to avoid that conclusion. | ||
| And, you know, the public's response has somewhat surprised me because I have to say, in general, the public does not really like lawyers. | ||
| It's painful for me to admit, but it's true. | ||
| And people seem to have been quite disappointed by this. | ||
| And, you know, one of the interesting things that Trump does in his life is he kind of exposes people for the hollowness of their principles. | ||
| And he's managed to do this with these folks, too. | ||
| I'm not surprised, but a lot of people are. | ||
| And what I would say is, you know, I think everyone involved here deserves to be criticized. | ||
| Not just Trump, but all of the firms that have settled with him. | ||
| It is really embarrassing. | ||
| People are rightly criticizing them. | ||
| I doubt, I mean, I don't know if there will be any significant business impact for them. | ||
| But the way I see it, if you give me a second to elaborate here, is, you know, if we saw this happening in any other country, right? | ||
| Could you just imagine if we had our foreign correspondents reporting on this happening in another country? | ||
| We would report it as state-sanctioned extortion and bribery, right? | ||
| We have the wealthiest lawyers in the country going to the White House, offering up these concessions affirmatively. | ||
| Under federal law, we would ordinarily call that extortion. | ||
| And we would ordinarily call the person who came up with that idea, Brad Carpet Paul Weiss, somebody who may have been engaged in conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding and abetting extortion. | ||
| These are very serious legal issues that have been sort of subsumed given the public discourse and the fact that they're dealing with Trump, the most senior government official possible, which means they will not get prosecuted or investigated over this. | ||
| And so everybody is sort of looking at this, and I think it's a mess, and people are frustrated. | ||
| Let's hear from Dory. | ||
| Dory's in Tampa for our guest, Democrats line. | ||
| Hi, you're up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just want to thank Mr. Kudori for this piece. | ||
| My family is from Central and South America, and he's exactly right. | ||
| It's incredible how here we seem to be lying down taking this, but in South and Central America, that would never be the case. | ||
| I just came back from visiting Guatemala, and I will tell you that even the media representation of everything Trump is doing there is so biased, you would think Fox News owns Central and South America. | ||
| So I do thank Mr. Khidori for standing up and making a report like this and doing it where hopefully young people can start to open up and realize that all of this is wrong and we cannot continue to allow this to happen or we will find ourselves in governments very similar to what supposedly we detest in Central and South America. | ||
| So thank you again for your reporting. | ||
| I so appreciate and please continue. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mr. Kudori, anything for that? | ||
| You know, I echo the sentiment, right? | ||
| Just to say that, you know, if we were seeing this in another country, we would be very clear-eyed about what's happening. | ||
| And we would criticize everyone involved. | ||
| You wrote, and I think you started to mention it, but you wrote in a piece that law firms exist to make money and they are not, quote, paragons of virtue, principles, or self-sacrifice. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, like I said, you know, the right way to think about them is, and your expectations for them should be the same that you have for large banks. | ||
| And that is for better or worse. | ||
| But if you adopt that model, really help you understand how they operate and what their principal motives are. | ||
| And really, you know, what you can choose to put upon them in the form of specific or moral obligations, for better or worse. | ||
| They exist to make money. | ||
| Their business model was threatened. | ||
| They have no excuse, particularly Paul Weiss, which is one of the most profitable law firms in the country. | ||
| Brad Karp makes tens of millions of dollars, and the average profit per partner at that firm is $6.5 million. | ||
| So the notion that these people couldn't have taken a bit of a financial hit is preposterous. | ||
| And again, quite humiliating for everyone involved. | ||
| Because the president's targeting these firms because of things they have done to him, could you describe these firms as large, big R Republicans or big R Democratic firms? | ||
| And does that matter in this case? | ||
| It doesn't really matter in this case. | ||
| People like to characterize them as largely Democratic, and they are. | ||
| But I'll give you just one example, even Paul Weiss, right? | ||
| Paul Weiss has the Attorney General from the Barack Obama's administration. | ||
| Larry Lynch works there. | ||
| But they also employed Joe Simons, who is the head of the FTC under the first Trump administration, and Andrew Finch, who is the deputy head of the antitrust division under the first Trump administration. | ||
| And there are business imperatives to make sure that at these large firms, you have people who have credibility across the political spectrum because administrations change and your clients need to be able to operate throughout those changes. | ||
| We got to call her talk about reaction, particularly what's been the reaction on Capitol Hill, or at least around Washington, to this action by the president. | ||
| You know, again, surprisingly more criticism than I would have expected. | ||
| I think on the right, it's sort of triumphant, celebratory, right, bringing these law firms that they think wronged Trump to sort of their knees. | ||
| On the left, again, somewhat to my surprise, like there have been a lot of Democrats, including prominent Democrats like Neera Tandon, who have publicly criticized these deals and said, you know, these law firms are shirking their civic and moral obligations and letting us down. | ||
| And I think that sentiment is fairly widespread, but that's on the left, in the center. | ||
| I think on the right, they're feeling sort of happy about it. | ||
| Again, if you want to ask our guests questions about these executive orders that target law firms by the Trump administration, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, Independents, 202748-80002. | ||
| Allen is from New York. | ||
| Democrats live for our guest. | ||
| Thank you for calling. | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, good morning. | |
| Just want to give a brief background. | ||
| My experiences as a civil service attorney for the city of New York. | ||
| So that's for one of the agencies, roughly from Edward Koch's last term through David Jenkins, Rudolph Giuliani through Mayor Bloomberg's first term. | ||
| So through all those transitions, but our rights were protected no matter what the changes were at the top. | ||
| But frankly, what's going on now is just ridiculous. | ||
| And as a Democratic insider, before during after that, Democrats say, well, we told you so. | ||
| Okay, all in. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, well, I think a lot of people are feeling disturbed by what's going on here and across this political spectrum, and I understand that. | ||
| Because the firms could suffer financially, you wrote about a doomsday scenario, so to speak, about a firm possibly closing to this. | ||
| Is that a possibility as far as a firm closing doors because of these acts? | ||
| A firm, like hypothetically, maybe. | ||
| But the claim that I was taking on directly was the claim by Paul Weiss that they needed to make this deal because otherwise the firm would have gone out of business. | ||
| I do not believe that. | ||
| I just don't believe that. | ||
| If they can't live on like $3 million a year rather than $6.5 million a year, I don't know what to tell them. | ||
| But they're one of the most profitable firms in the world. | ||
| There are like 95% of the firms in this country are less profitable than them, and they operate and they continue to operate. | ||
| And by the way, even if there had been some exodus of some partners in their business, which I think would have happened, a lot of people on the corporate side of the firm were planning to take large clients with them. | ||
| They still would have just been left with a smaller litigation firm operating at less profitability, which is not the worst thing in the world, despite what they seem to believe. | ||
| Here's John. | ||
| John joins us from New York. | ||
| A lot of New Yorkers today, Independent Line, John from New York. | ||
| Hi there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| This is an interesting conversation. | ||
| You know, people say that Trump is a threat to democracy. | ||
| I was just wondering what your guests might think of him being a threat to the rule of law. | ||
| You know, he did promise to go after people and retaliate, and I guess we can always take him at his word, but this seems so out of line. | ||
| Does your guest have any idea about, you know, just the respect for the rule of law with all of these executives, not just these executive orders, but the string of executive orders, and not just with Trump, but also with Biden and others. | ||
| And where's Congress in all of this? | ||
| I mean, they should play a role as well. | ||
| Thank you, Carla. | ||
| Well, there is a lot packed in there, and it's interesting. | ||
| First of all, where is Congress is a very, very good question. | ||
| I think what we're seeing is a really historic thing, which is the Republican majority in Congress ceding a lot of control to the executive branch in a way that I've not seen in my lifetime, and potentially engaging in what may turn out to be a durable kind of reordering of our constitutional system. | ||
| But let's just bracket that. | ||
| With respect to the rule of law, you know, let's just bracket that, what modest concern. | ||
| With respect to the rule of law, look, As for the law firms, this is bad, right? | ||
| We should not be in a country where law firms have to worry about whether they're on the right or the wrong side of the government before they pick clients. | ||
| And the clients should not have to worry about whether their lawyer is on the right or wrong side of the government. | ||
| This is just not a good thing for a civil society in any capacity, even despite the fact, as I said, the clients we're talking about are very, very well-heeled interests. | ||
| Nevertheless, with respect to sort of the broader sort of series of executive actions, we have seen a very aggressive effort to reshape the separation, the balance of powers in this country. | ||
| And in a variety of ways, I do think there have been some serious challenges in questions raised on this front concerning the rule of law. | ||
| I mean, just last week, Trump announced two investigations into two of his critics publicly and signed his orders directing them. | ||
| That would have been unthinkable in any other administration. | ||
| Trump has announced on several different occasions he's ignoring laws, the TikTok ban. | ||
| He's not just not enforcing it. | ||
| The FC Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. | ||
| They announced that they're no longer, effectively no longer enforcing it. | ||
| These are not consistent actions that are consistent with, I think, how we think about how law should operate in our country. | ||
| Greg joins us from South Carolina. | ||
| This is on our independent line for our guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the previous caller kind of stole my thunder. | |
| I mean, this is nothing more than a mob ball shakedown. | ||
| And the only people that can put Trump in check are Congress, and they just need to quit worrying about getting primary, put their big boy panties on, and put a check on Trump. | ||
| This is absolutely absurd. | ||
| And it's just going to get worse. | ||
| And Congress needs to start doing their job. | ||
| They've abdicated their whole job to Trump. | ||
| And it's scary. | ||
| It's just frightening. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Greg from South Carolina. | ||
| Let me help on the works of Congress. | ||
| It was last week at a hearing that the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal talked about these deals that were being made. | ||
| And he expressed outrage that you wrote about in the piece. | ||
| I want to play a little bit what he had to say and get your response to it. | ||
| Tim Snyder, my friend, a professor at Yale, has said the first rule of tyranny from the 20th century, the first lesson is do not obey in advance. | ||
| That is what Scatten Arps, Milbank, and Wilkie Farr have done. | ||
| They didn't even wait for the executive order. | ||
| They obeyed in advance. | ||
| And I just want to make really clear what is most offensive to me, they exceeded, in effect, to allow Donald Trump to tell them who their clients would be and who they would hire. | ||
| I've been United States Attorney in Connecticut. | ||
| I was attorney general for 20 years, but I've also been in private practice. | ||
| And if there's one thing that matters to me as a trial lawyer, and I still consider myself proudly a trial lawyer, it is nobody tells me what to do. | ||
| That's the senator's assessment. | ||
| Mr. Qadari, how do you think? | ||
| I think that is the widespread sentiment, I would say, in the legal profession, with the notable exception, I would say, of like the large, the 20 to 25 largest law firms, which is the universe that these settlements are coming from. | ||
| Those firms and the attorneys associated with them have largely hunkered down and seem to be weathering this storm. | ||
| But I think outside of that, I think most lawyers share the view of Senator Blumenthal, people who have practiced both in and outside of government, private, not private practice, and observers, I think, are for the most part largely critical. | ||
| There have been some people who have sort of excused them. | ||
| I can't get behind that notion. | ||
| You wrote this piece in response to questions you got from your colleagues there, but the last question, well, a couple of things. | ||
| The last one, a couple of ones, dealt with the idea of is this going to have a chilling effect on the practice of law. | ||
| How would you respond to that? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, I think the danger that I would be most concerned about is the one that Senator Blumenthal described, which is this is just very strange that the White House apparently gets to have some role in selecting their clients and potentially even their attorneys. | ||
| It's very bad. | ||
| So that part is problematic and could impede some efforts to fund pro bono litigation, oppose the administration's efforts. | ||
| However, what I would say is that most of these firms were not actually doing that much in this current administration to fund that pro bono work or appear in these cases. | ||
| I think Paul Weiss had done nothing, actually. | ||
| And there are still other organizations, I mean, there were mainly and still are, other organizations, the ACLU, Democracy Forward, that are litigating against the administration from the left, challenging the executive orders and that sort of thing. | ||
| So the one thing I would say to folks at home is, and this is true of any sort of legal issue where there's some advocacy actors in the area, is if you are disappointed by what you're seeing in the private sector, you're free to donate to any organization on the left or the right that might be engaged in this sort of work in the nonprofit space. | ||
| That's really what they need is funds, again, across the spectrum. | ||
| The final question you received in the piece where were you concerned about the threat to the rule of law? | ||
| Yeah, like I said, you know, it's not good for, you know, lawyers, again, people don't like us, and I don't blame them for the most part, but we are essential cogs in sort of a well-functioning civil society. | ||
| And people need to be able to trust that their lawyers are going to look out for their interests and take their cases for the right reasons and decline them for the right reasons. | ||
| And they shouldn't have to worry about whether their lawyers are somehow at odds with the government for totally unrelated reasons that may impact their own representation and lives. | ||
| You can find our guest work at politico.com. | ||
| Ankash Khadori joins us. | ||
| He's a senior writer for political magazine. | ||
| First time on this program. | ||
| Hope you come back. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Will do. | ||
| That's it for our program today. | ||
| Another edition of Washington Journal comes your way tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. | ||
| We'll see you then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll look now at some of our live coverage on C-SPAN today. | |
| At noon Eastern, California Democratic Congressman Roe Conna will outline his economic policy at the City Club of Cleveland. | ||
| Later in the afternoon at 4 o'clock, a conversation on campus free speech during the second Trump term that says the administration continues to detain international students, including Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, who's in the U.S. under an approved visa. | ||
| That's hosted by Georgetown University. | ||
| Again, that starts at 4 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| And then at 9 p.m., Democratic Representative Laura Friedman of California hosts a town hall with constituents. | ||
| All of this live here on C-SPAN, also C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
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