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|---|---|---|
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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, your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then we'll discuss the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and the rise of domestic and political terrorism with author Ben Fenwick and University of Oklahoma professor Samuel Perry and the National Parks Conservation Association's Kristen Brengel on the impact of Doge cuts to the National Park Service and related news. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal, first Saturday, April 19th. | ||
| This week, the struggle between the Trump administration, courts, and immigration advocates continued over a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. | ||
| Also, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. is ready to move on from Russia-Ukraine peace talks if a deal can't be reached soon. | ||
| And President Trump spoke about his desire to remove Jerome Powell as head of the Federal Reserve amid ongoing disagreements over how the central bank should respond to White House economic policies. | ||
| Those are just a few of the stories C-SPAN has been following. | ||
| And to start today's program, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us. | ||
| We'll get to your calls in just a few moments, but first want to start with one of those stories. | ||
| Just mentioned the headline from the Associated Press, U.S. Senator Returns from El Salvador trip says Abrego Garcia case is about far more than one man. | ||
| The article says the dispute over the wrongful deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Obrego-Garcia is not about only one man, but about Donald Trump's disregard of American judicial system as well. | ||
| Senator Chris Van Hollen said Friday as he returned from a three-day trip to El Salvador to press for the detained man's release. | ||
| The article says speaking to reporters just after landing in the United States, Van Hollen offered few answers about what will come next in Obrego Garcia's case, but the Maryland Democrat said he and others will keep speaking out after the Trump administration defied court orders to facilitate his return to the United States and insisted that he would stay in El Salvador, even as officials acknowledged an error in deporting him. | ||
| Yesterday, Senator Chris Van Holland spoke to reporters when landing back in Virginia. | ||
| Here are some of his remarks. | ||
| I want to say something about the Trump administration's efforts to change the conversation about what this case is about. | ||
| This case is about upholding constitutional rights for Obrego Garcia and for every American. | ||
| The president, President Trump, and the Trump administration wants to say that those who are fighting to stand up for our Constitution don't want to fight gang violence. | ||
| That is an outright lie. | ||
| That is a big, big lie. | ||
| I, for one, have been fighting against transnational gang violence, especially MS-13, for over 20 years, probably for longer than Donald Trump ever uttered those words, MS-13. | ||
| Over 20 years ago, I worked to establish an anti-gang task force, a regional anti-gang task force in the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia area. | ||
| I did it in a bipartisan way with then Congressman Frank Wolf and Tom Davis. | ||
| And we have made substantial progress in this region. | ||
| We have a long way still to go, but those efforts have resulted in progress. | ||
| So I say to the President and the Trump administration, if you want to make claims about Mr. Abrego Garcia and MS-13, you should present them in the court, not over social media. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right. | |
| That's right. | ||
| Not at press conferences where you just rattle stuff off. | ||
| Because here is what the federal district court judge said about exactly this issue. | ||
| This is Judge Zimmis. | ||
| So she is the federal district court judge in the District of Maryland where the case first appeared. | ||
| This is a quote from her opinion. | ||
| Defendants, and in this case, this is the Trump administration she's referring to, have offered no evidence, have offered no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any terrorist activity. | ||
| And vague allegations of gang association alone do not supersede the express protections offered under the INA, unquote. | ||
| She emphasized this point, and I'm quoting, no evidence before the court connects Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any other criminal organization, unquote. | ||
| In other words, put up in court or shut up. | ||
| Yesterday, President Trump posting this on his Truth Social website, this is the hand of the man that Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States because he is such a fine and innocent person. | ||
| They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he's got MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles. | ||
| And two highly respected courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc. | ||
| I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. | ||
| I must be allowed to do my job, make America great again. | ||
| This is the image right there that President Trump posted along with that statement. | ||
| Again, that is one of the stories that we have been following on C-SPAN this week. | ||
| We're asking you during this first hour what your top news story is. | ||
| The lines, Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We will start with Glenn in Corpus Christi, Texas, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Glenn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| It's been a long time since I've talked to you. | ||
| Well, I have some very serious information. | ||
| All of these so-called Democrats that have gone down to El Salvador and to get this MS-13 Garza out of prison, they're probably going to try to buy his way out. | ||
| And if they do that, these senators are in serious trouble when they come back to the United States because Homeland Security, FBI, and ICE can arrest them at the airport for buying human trafficking information for this Garza, MS-13 gang member back to the United States. | ||
| And Von Holland, he's going to be in serious trouble if this Garza is on his airplane coming back to the United States. | ||
| FBI, Homeland Security, and ICE can arrest him on the spot, put him in prison, put him in handcuffs in jail. | ||
| And if he is convicted, he is going to see a lot of federal prison time by the DOJ's office. | ||
| And all of these senators, so-called do-gooders, are going to be executed and are going to be, I'm going to say, they are going to be kicked out of the Senate. | ||
| They are going to lose their Senate seat because they will have a criminal record in court. | ||
| That was Clint and Texas. | ||
| Mike, St. Louis, Missouri, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well, Mike. | ||
| What I don't understand is they keep saying that these illegals are not receiving due process. | ||
| The only people that are eligible for due process under our constitutional laws are legal American citizens. | ||
| Mr. Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, not America. | ||
| He's not an American citizen. | ||
| And these senators are aiding and abetting illegal immigration. | ||
| And also, by not allowing and not wanting President Trump and ICE to kick them out of our country, that is a form of treason because they have been dedicated a terrorist organization. | ||
| They're aiding and abetting illegal immigration. | ||
| They're obstructing foreign affairs. | ||
| They're obstructing national security. | ||
| And they only want to keep these illegals in our country because they know they will commit voter fraud and election fraud and help them steal the elections. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Mike in Missouri. | ||
| James in Collins, Mississippi, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, ma'am. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| Happy Passover to everybody. | ||
| I pray for this country in Jesus' name. | ||
| Ma'am, let me say this. | ||
| Just let me know when you're going to cut me off because it's very important. | ||
| Ma'am, this is taking me back to 1950 and 1960 when African Americans was protesting and marching against racism and sexism and hate. | ||
| And now we're using these immigrants to try to establish America for what's right and what's wrong. | ||
| Ma'am, do you remember January 6th? | ||
| I remember January 6th. | ||
| I remember when those people had to go to court and they was found guilty of all the crime, but they're using immigrants to justify the things that legal people in this country can do, violence and hate. | ||
| But then President Trump pardoned all those people. | ||
| They was found guilty. | ||
| Why are we using immigrants to try to establish what's going on in America? | ||
| Because all of those people that's coming over here, that's immigrants. | ||
| They would have started with the people that supported these things, ma'am. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, all these people would have Doge and all of them. | ||
| If they would have gone in and start holding these businesses accountable for these people coming over here working, they didn't do no, they ain't doing no investigation on them. | ||
| They ain't doing no investigation. | ||
| All these companies that allow these people to come over, that's who made the trillions and trillions of dollars. | ||
| And to Doge and President Trump started investigating these companies that allowed these people to come over here and get jobs, they could have easily stopped all this stuff, but they didn't do it. | ||
| And now you got the states? | ||
| Are they investigating the states for corruption? | ||
| Each state should have a corruption, a fraud in them, but they go to the top of the government and start firing people that's at the top. | ||
| It's not just the top. | ||
| It's the states that the states need to do. | ||
| They need to do the same thing to each state, especially these states that are getting all this benefits from the federal government. | ||
| They ain't talking about that. | ||
| Look at Mississippi. | ||
| Over $100 million. | ||
| Listen to what I'm saying, ma'am. | ||
| Over $100 million. | ||
| We found out $100 million was taken from legal services. | ||
| They try to blame it on the football player for building a stadium for his daughter for $4 million. | ||
| We found out that it was over $100 million that these politicians was taking and kickbacks, and Dove ain't said nothing about that. | ||
| It's something going on, ma'am. | ||
| If you want to start finding out fraud and waste, you start from the bottom. | ||
| You go into these places. | ||
| They didn't go into none of these places. | ||
| They didn't go into the way I paid our office. | ||
| They didn't go into multi-family housing. | ||
| They didn't go into the veteran administration with all these frauds and things going on. | ||
| But they started with the government that should tell you something. | ||
| And then, like I said, what goes around comes around when somebody, another country decides to take an American, take an American and put them in another prison somewhere. | ||
| Let's just see what they do because it's coming. | ||
| At your point, James, we'll go to Daryl in Bristol, Tennessee, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Daryl. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| Hi, Daryl. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, hi. | |
| Go ahead, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, I'm sorry. | |
| Hey, I want to make this statement here. | ||
| We're talking about immigration. | ||
| We're talking about this country. | ||
| We're talking about what's going on. | ||
| I want to say something to every listener that's on the air and everywhere. | ||
| And I want to start by saying this: when we're all born in this country, when we get to the age of understanding we on solid ground, we in the country, this country is here. | ||
| When we die and we leave, this country is going to be here. | ||
| My thing that aggravates me more so is that this country, God put us all here, to be here. | ||
| This country is big enough for everybody. | ||
| This is not one race country. | ||
| This is all race country. | ||
| And God put us all here. | ||
| When we die, this country's going to be here. | ||
| So there's no such thing as our country. | ||
| This is God's country. | ||
| That's what everybody needs to understand. | ||
| When we are born, the dirt, the trees, the roads, the bridges, everything you see was created here by God. | ||
| When we leave, all of this is still going to be here. | ||
| And it just burns my skin to hear people say our country. | ||
| I want everybody to know this is not our country. | ||
| This is God's country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I got your point, Darrell. | ||
| A lot of callers talking about the immigration and Abrego Garcia's deportation case. | ||
| Another story that we have been following is the remarks yesterday made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. | ||
| The headline in Politico, Trump says U.S. could walk away from Russia war deal. | ||
| The article says that President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States could walk away from the negotiating table to end the Russia-Ukraine war, echoing warnings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a press conference from the Oval Office. | ||
| Trump repeated his desire to get the war in Ukraine resolved quickly, a deal his administration has been pushing to close since he took office. | ||
| The potential ceasefire between the two countries has largely fallen apart as Russia restarted its offensive in the war it started. | ||
| It says that Trump backed up Rubio, saying he's right that if either side continues to block the ceasefire process, the U.S. will step away from facilitating a peace deal without noting a distinction on if Russia or Ukraine who were hampering the talks. | ||
| The comments coming from Marco Rubio yesterday, here is what he said. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it's important to remind everybody that the Ukraine war is a terrible thing, but it's not our war. | |
| We didn't start it. | ||
| The United States has been helping Ukraine over the last three years, and we want it to end. | ||
| But it's not our war. | ||
| I want everyone to understand that. | ||
| And the reason why I make that point is the president has spent 87 days at the highest level of his government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. | ||
| We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not, which is why we're engaging both sides. | ||
| As you know, Ambassador Witkoff has had not one, not two, but three meetings with Vladimir Putin to determine the Russian perspective on this and understand what it would take for them to end it. | ||
|
unidentified
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We, General Kellogg, myself, and others have had repeated engagements with the Ukrainians. | |
| So we came here yesterday to sort of begin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end a war to try to figure out very soon. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I'm talking about a matter of days, not a matter of weeks, whether or not this is a war that can be ended. | |
| If it can, we're prepared to do whatever we can to facilitate that and make sure that it happens, that it ends in a durable and just way. | ||
|
unidentified
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If it's not possible, if we're so far apart that this is not going to happen, then I think the president's probably at a point where he's going to say, well, we're done. | |
| You know, we'll do what we can on the margins. | ||
| We'll be ready to help whenever you're ready to have peace. | ||
| But we're not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end. | ||
| So we need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about in a matter of days, whether or not this is doable over the next few weeks. | ||
|
unidentified
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If it is, we're in. | |
| If it's not, then we have other priorities to focus on as well. | ||
| Back to your calls, asking what your top news story of the week is. | ||
| We'll talk with Cindy in Norwalk, Connecticut, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Cindy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just want to say about the Von Holland situation going to help get this guy back. | ||
| Where is there proof that he is not MS-13? | ||
| I don't know if a lot of Americans saw Rachel Moore's mom in her description on how her daughter died. | ||
| And I urge everyone to watch it if their News channel of choice refused to show to show it. | ||
| This gentleman was caught trafficking in Tennessee. | ||
| He was stopped by a police officer. | ||
| He had eight migrants in his car. | ||
| He was driving a vehicle that was not his without a driver's license. | ||
| But under the Biden administration, we weren't allowed to touch these guys. | ||
| We had to just let them go, no matter what they did. | ||
| He was trafficking. | ||
| Anyway, two judges said he was MS-13. | ||
| El Salvador said he's MS-13. | ||
| And the police officers, and he was on a terror watch list. | ||
| Now, Democrats keep parroting this, we don't disappear people in this country, but I want everybody to think about the 325,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were disappeared at our border. | ||
| Does anybody care about these children? | ||
| This is Easter week, and these are children of God, but nobody seems to care about these children in order to support a narrative. | ||
| What lengths are we willing to go through because we hate Donald Trump and make it a politics? | ||
| That was Patty in Connecticut, and she mentioned a press conference at the White House briefing earlier this week where Patty Morin, whose daughter was killed by an undocumented immigrant in Maryland, joined and spoke at that press conference. | ||
| If you missed it, you can find it on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Let's hear from Nat in Pennysonkin, New Jersey, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Nat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi, Nat. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yep, you mentioned some headline stories that have taken place. | ||
| There's just a lot going on. | ||
| I do have a comment to make about the Garcia situation. | ||
| My concern is Trump said that MS-13 no longer exists, according to El Salvador. | ||
| And then he declares them a terrorist organization. | ||
| And then he deports people along the premises that they are a part of the organization. | ||
| So I'm not understanding which it is. | ||
| Are they still intact or not? | ||
| Or is he just using that MS-13 label now to illegally remove people from the country? | ||
| And I heard the previous caller and what she said about what they had on Garcia, but he was in the process of being adjudicated. | ||
| And there was a hold on any deportation that Trump just simply ignored. | ||
| He knows what it's like to go through the judicial system because he went through himself and he was adjudicated guilty. | ||
| So Garcia deserves the exact same thing. | ||
| I don't care who it is. | ||
| Everyone in the United States and the Supreme Court has said deserves to be adjudicated, innocent or guilty. | ||
| So what's happening is not right. | ||
| And all these people who assume they know what's happening without proof, without evidence, and is just wrong. | ||
| These are just reports that people have given. | ||
| He is alleged innocent until proven guilty. | ||
| That's how it works here. | ||
| That was Nat in New Jersey. | ||
| Stephen, Lexington, Kentucky, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Stephen, are you there? | |
| Yes, I am here. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Stephen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, thank you for your time. | |
| And thank you, Susan. | ||
| You're great. | ||
| Yeah, the caller. | ||
| Previous caller was kind of correct. | ||
| A lot of people are just spewing news out, and they're not even sure where it's coming from. | ||
| They're just repeating like that Republican lady. | ||
| They don't care about children. | ||
| They care about oppressing small groups of people. | ||
| If they wanted children in there and all the immigrants to come in and be all happy, they would have let it when they had a plan. | ||
| And Trump shot that down. | ||
| Anyway, my story for the week, I have two stories actually, that Trump has spent 89 days. | ||
| Out of 89 days in office, he spent 23 days playing golf. | ||
| That's 25% of his time at a golf course. | ||
| That's a huge story. | ||
| He did the same thing in his last term. | ||
| And for El Salvador to get $15 million from the Trump administration to collect individuals and deport them to another country, that's a real story right there. | ||
| The Trump administration is paying El Salvador with our money to send people to another prison in another country. | ||
| That is wrong. | ||
| Republicans, you just love dictators. | ||
| Stephen in Kentucky. | ||
| Rip in Fredericksburg, Virginia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rip. | ||
| What's your top story this week? | ||
|
unidentified
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For the last guy, look, what it costs us to house these individuals in a prison over the guys in San Salvador is 10 times that amount. | |
| So, you know, learn how to act. | ||
| But the problem is, and my opinions, my opinions, it doesn't mean they're right or wrong. | ||
| They're just my opinions. | ||
| But everybody needs to realize that the only reasons we're dealing with anything that we're dealing with is what Biden did this country, which was to create the largest migration in the history of mankind. | ||
| And we're inundated with people that can't even speak English. | ||
| You go into a school and know many teachers and they go, good grief, I can't believe. | ||
| I'm trying real hard, but there's so many languages in my room that the kids, I really can't, you know, one or two get it, but most of them, and they're talking on their cell phones. | ||
| And the problem is that our nation is extraordinarily confused. | ||
| And Donald Trump is taking the helm. | ||
| And for the first time in my life, there's a guy that has our interests at heart versus people like Pelosi and Schumer who were making $200,000 a year. | ||
| But I think what Pelosi's worth, $200 million something now. | ||
| That's what we really need to figure out is how can a person that makes $200,000 a year get in office and within a number of years become a multi-millionaire? | ||
| It's just an atrocity. | ||
| Anyway, listen, I've talked too long. | ||
| Thanks for your time. | ||
| Look, everybody, turn your miserable TV off while you're calling because nobody wants to sit and listen to you try to listen to yourself on the phone. | ||
| See ya. | ||
| That was Rip. | ||
| And Rip has some great advice. | ||
| If you're waiting on the line, you're going to call in. | ||
| Make sure that television is turned down in the background. | ||
| We'll go to Dennis, Toledo, Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| The top news item in Iowa is Trump is doing such a rotten job. | ||
| The Republican governor of Iowa decided not to run again because she can't defend that idiot Trump. | ||
| And I thought we should lead by example. | ||
| It's Trump who marries these foreign bimbos and bring them to this country. | ||
| It was a bison, you idiot Republicans. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Dennis in Iowa. | ||
| Don in Innerves, Florida, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| My top news story is the possible pullout of the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| It seems like somehow we got into an impasse. | ||
| We're trying to deal with Iran, while at the same time, we have to figure out who we're going to back. | ||
| If we back Russia, who is probably the most influence over Iran that we have, we're basically showing Iran that we're not going to live up to our deals when it comes to denuclearization. | ||
| And of course, like I said, if we back the Ukraine, we're kind of peeing off Russia, who has influence over Iran. | ||
| So I'm not sure how we got into this Mexican standoff, but that's my top news story. | ||
| Don, when it comes to what Secretary Rubio said this week and the U.S. potentially walking away from helping facilitate the peace deal talk, what do you think about that? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think we should. | |
| I think we should stay in there, push for peace as much as we can. | ||
| Like I said, we're also dealing with Iran, who is watching how we're handling this. | ||
| You know, we're trying to get them to get rid of their nuclear weapons. | ||
| We did that with the Ukraine and made a promise that we would always back them. | ||
| We're basically showing Iran we're only going to back so far and then back off if you give up your nuclear weapons. | ||
| That was Don in Florida talking about the U.S. potentially walking away from Ukraine and Russia peace talks, saying his thoughts is that it would be a mistake. | ||
| And that's the same opinion that the Washington Post editorial board shares the headline in today's paper, giving up on Ukraine, would be short-sighted. | ||
| It says, diplomacy is painstaking work, and achievements rarely come in a few weeks, as the administration discovered with Gaza and might soon learn as it begins new rounds of talks with Iran. | ||
| Trump's trademark bravado is no substitute for the long and difficult process of finding common ground between worrying combatants and calibrating the right combination of pressure and inducement to reach a deal. | ||
| Rather than shrugging their shoulders and giving up, Trump and his team should return to the approach the Biden administration and European allies continue to arm Ukraine so it can defend itself and raise the cost of the conflict for Russia. | ||
| That means supplying Ukraine with more lethal weaponry and allowing the country to stage defensive strikes against military positions inside Russian territory, something the Biden administration was too slow to approve. | ||
| It also means re-engaging with the European allies whom Trump and his team have needlessly offended. | ||
| Rubio's meeting in Paris are a good start. | ||
| The British and French have proposed a European military force to deploy to Ukraine as a deterrence against further Russian attacks, but the plan needs American logistics, intelligence, and air support. | ||
| Trump should provide it. | ||
| Further, he should now recognize that Putin is the aggressor in this war. | ||
| Ukraine is the victim, and Europeans are allies in countering Russian aggression. | ||
| Just under 30 minutes left in this first hour, asking what your top news story of the week is. | ||
| Let's talk with Maria in McMinnville, Tennessee, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Maria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| I hope everyone's having a good day today. | ||
| My mom once told me years ago, many years ago, that opinions are like belly buttons. | ||
| Everybody's got them. | ||
| So I've got two stories that I'm concerned with this week. | ||
| One is the deportation of this man from Maryland to El Salvador. | ||
| I am a believer in facts. | ||
| And so far, and I watch all sorts of television, like, you know, all perspectives, I am not seeing the pros to bring this man home. | ||
| I have not seen the facts, like actual court docs, anything like that being shown. | ||
| I am starting to see them on the cons for bringing him home, how, you know, those court docs. | ||
| So I wish we could see the court docs to be able to determine what is happening with this man. | ||
| Second of all, is Ukraine. | ||
| I do believe in the peace talks. | ||
| I don't believe that the U.S. should spend funding in this situation because we are so far in debt, I don't know how we're going to crawl out of it. | ||
| The concern about the peace talks are the rare minerals. | ||
| I don't know if this is true or this is false, and I'm having a hard time finding out. | ||
| But I heard on different channels that Pierre Starmer has already signed a rare earths mineral deal with Ukraine already before ours was even discussed or brought up. | ||
| Now, I don't know if the two deals can run, you know, coincide one another, or if this is like a bait and switch for us to sign something that really isn't valid, just to say that, well, if we're there, we're going to protect our people that are there, giving them the security backup that they need or that they keep asking us for that we won't give. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| That one is really murky. | ||
| I do believe in the peace talks, though, and I feel so badly for those Ukrainian people. | ||
| The civilians, they didn't ask for any of this. | ||
| So thank you very much for letting me have my say. | ||
| Have a good day, everybody. | ||
| That was Maria in Tennessee. | ||
| Let's hear from Bob in Illinois, line for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Bob. | |
| Hello there, C-SPAN. | ||
| Compliments to the questions you have on a regular basis. | ||
| It's wonderful. | ||
| Ukraine, the Middle East, you know, Netanyahu, and this guy, Sia, who they sent over to Venezuela, I think. | ||
| Those three stories are equal, and I don't know which one is, you know, my top news story of the week. | ||
| Bob, how do you Bob? | ||
| There's you're right. | ||
| There is a lot going on. | ||
| How do you keep up with the news? | ||
| What sources do you follow? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, I gotta admit, it's so difficult for me to look at Fox News because it's Biden, Biden, Biden. | |
| But I think Trump is in office. | ||
| That's what I think. | ||
| So I do follow MSNBC and CNN. | ||
| And I just want one question if you don't mind, and I'm gone. | ||
| What does AIDS have to do with Jesus rising in three days? | ||
| Baffles me. | ||
| Talk to you later, she stand. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That was Bob in Illinois. | ||
| Let's hear from Michael in Connecticut line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good to hear you. | ||
| Real quickly, the story of this week will be the same story every week for the next three and a half years of the Trump administration. | ||
| And that is ethnic and racial cleansing of the United States. | ||
| Look closely at the people who have been deported. | ||
| They're brownskin, and they speak Spanish largely, but they're brown skin, either Hispanic in nature or Muslim, but they're brown-skinned people. | ||
| When was the last time you saw a white person having his head shaved in shackles being let onto an airplane? | ||
| When was the last time you saw that video? | ||
| You haven't, and you won't. | ||
| Because the truth is, if you wanted to find illegal white aliens, as they like to call them, go to Boston. | ||
| That's where the Irish illegals live, hang out. | ||
| If you want to find illegal Russian aliens, go to Brooklyn. | ||
| That's where they live, and you can find them. | ||
| If you're white and you have an accent, that's cute. | ||
| If you're brown and you have accent, that's not American. | ||
| And that's how we live. | ||
| It's going on right now, and it's real clear. | ||
| It's very clear. | ||
| Got a white supremacist leader in the White House who is making America white again. | ||
| And that's the story of not only the week, but for the next three and a half years. | ||
| And hope America wakes up because these people in the 1930s, they led these people away on trains. | ||
| Now we lead them away in airplanes. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Michael in Connecticut. | ||
| Another story we've been following on C-SPAN is the President Trump's tariffs and the response to them. | ||
| This headline from Axios: Trump's tariffs highly likely to reignite inflation. | ||
| Fed Chair Powell says, the article says that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that President Trump's tariffs would likely lead to a faster rise in prices and weigh on economic growth. | ||
| It says that Trump campaigned on lower prices for inflation-wary consumers, but Powell is the latest to suggest Trump's trade war might do the opposite. | ||
| In a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, Powell said the Fed could face a tough scenario if inflation rises alongside teetering economic growth. | ||
| It says that Powell said how long tariff-related inflation persists depends on a slew of factors, including the time it takes for tariffs to pass through fully to prices. | ||
| From that speech in Chicago on Wednesday, here are some of Jerome Powell's comments. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| The clip we have is President Trump responding to those comments made by Jerome Powell. | ||
| Here is that clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Jerome Powell, you said that the termination of Jerome Powell cannot come fast enough. | |
| He says he won't leave it in, even if you ask him to. | ||
| Oh, he'll live. | ||
| If I ask him to, he'll be out of there. | ||
| But I don't think he's I don't think I don't think he's doing the job. | ||
| He's too late. | ||
| Always too late. | ||
| A little slow. | ||
| And I'm not happy with him. | ||
| I let him know it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me. | |
| We have a Federal Reserve Chairman that is playing politics. | ||
| Somebody that I've never been very fond of, actually. | ||
| But he's playing politics. | ||
| Interest rates should be down now. | ||
| They should be coming down. | ||
| In Europe, as you know, they reduced them, I guess, seven times. | ||
| It looks like they're going to reduce them again and again and again. | ||
| But our guy wants to play cute. | ||
| But interest rates are pretty much even. | ||
| Maybe they went up just a slight bit, but that's the only thing. | ||
| But that's because of the Federal Reserve because they're not very smart people. | ||
| Just about 20 minutes left in this first hour asking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Wanted to note that an anniversary today, that is the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| We will be talking with guests at 8 o'clock about the anniversary and the impact it has had. | ||
| And just a programming note, we will be ending Washington Journal a little bit earlier than normal. | ||
| We'll be ending at 9.30, so we can go to the anniversary services happening in Oklahoma City. | ||
| Again, you'll be able to watch that event live right here on C-SPAN at 9.30 a.m. | ||
| Let's talk with Bruce in Arlington, Virginia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Bruce. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My top story is that it's apparent, the news that the Attorney General of New York State might have committed fraud when she applied for a mortgage here in Virginia. | ||
| The story that I heard was that she claimed Virginia as her primary residence and was able to get a lower interest rate on her loan, even though she is the Attorney General of New York. | ||
| And for that position, she is required to be a resident of New York State. | ||
| So it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| That's Bruce in Virginia. | ||
| Mary in Fort Washington, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, C-SPAN, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| Let's start out with the genocide still going on in Gaza by the Zionist people. | ||
| Project 2025, we black people have been going through it since birth, and it's nothing but a measure of racism. | ||
| And if you support number 47, you are a racist, period. | ||
| And God made the earth for everybody to travel and live where they wanted to live. | ||
| People are coming from these countries because the United States disabled them. | ||
| And they have a right to come here. | ||
| And what's going on with the deportation? | ||
| He's trying to make America white again. | ||
| America's never been great. | ||
| When was it great? | ||
| And is he going to deport the Klan? | ||
| That's a terrorist organization. | ||
| Is he going to deport the Proud Boys and the Skinheads? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Because they are white. | ||
| This is a racist movement. | ||
| And like I said, if you support him, you have to be a racist. | ||
| You have to be evil in your mind to think that this is right. | ||
| It's absolutely wrong. | ||
| And would God support this? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| So like I said, my top story is get racism out of politics. | ||
| And by the way, little Marco Rubio voted over and over to keep the proxy war going. | ||
| All of a sudden, he's a robot now. | ||
| We must end. | ||
| Yes, we must end it to stop killing off generations of young people. | ||
| The Ukraine war is a proxy war. | ||
| Maybe you, C-SPAN, should have a story on the proxy wars of the United States and what they have done. | ||
| And when number 47 gets through bankrupting this country like he did all of his casinos, what's going to be left? | ||
| So I'm glad there's a movement to stop and block everything that he is trying to do. | ||
| And Elan Musrept needs to go. | ||
| And he's going to be gone because he's losing billions of dollars, not millions. | ||
| And he can take that space program and put it where the sun doesn't shine. | ||
| Have a good Passover, y'all. | ||
| That was Mary in Maryland. | ||
| Matt in Somerville, Massachusetts, line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My story here is kind of in relation to the two people who were calling in. | ||
| One was from Connecticut, the other was from Tennessee. | ||
| And I think they were mostly talking about the immigrant story with the guy who was deported to El Salvador and also talking about Ukraine. | ||
| And, you know, I said those two people, it always comes back to the same thing, which is my story here, that the conservatives, the baby boomers, the conservative Democrats, there's always a scapegoat. | ||
| And when I was growing up, it was always the welfare people. | ||
| They gave a derogatory term. | ||
| They called them welfare queens. | ||
| And I always heard that all the time. | ||
| You know, get a job. | ||
| If you're unemployment, it's not as good. | ||
| And the welfare queens are milking the system for everyone, making it harder for everyone. | ||
| Then we go to the immigrant story where, you know, the reason I actually called in was one of these people was saying, oh, the pros and the cons. | ||
| I've heard a lot of cons as to bringing this guy back, but I haven't heard the pros. | ||
| I said, wow, you know, these guys, these people almost believe anything as long as there's a scapegoat involved. | ||
| And to go off that, this guy, the administration admitted that it was an administrative error that they sent him to El Salvador. | ||
| And here we have these two people. | ||
| I think it was the person from Connecticut who was saying the pros and cons thing. | ||
| And it struck me as so amazing that we have an administration that admits that it was an administrative error to send this guy to El Salvador. | ||
| And then we have someone calling in on C-SPAN saying, well, I sure have heard a lot of cons as to bringing this guy back. | ||
| So maybe let's keep him there. | ||
| And it all goes back to this ability or this tactic or whatever. | ||
| But the end result is that there's always a scapegoat, whether it's the welfare people, the immigrants, or spending money on Ukraine, which relative to our spending is a drop in the bucket. | ||
| But it's so easy to convince these people who seem to be well-meaning. | ||
| You know, they go on about their research and the details, and it's almost like they get lost in the weeds on these little details, pat themselves on their back, and call it a day. | ||
| If you step back and look at the broad picture here, it's really just about scapegoating. | ||
| And I think your point, Matt. | ||
| We'll go to Susan in Seattle, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I feel sorry and sad for that guy from Maryland. | ||
| This is not a racist country. | ||
| I'm an immigrant. | ||
| I came here 48 years ago. | ||
| And I was invited. | ||
| Somebody has to sign for me that I will not become Somebody has learned I will not be getting money to take care of me while I'm here. | ||
| And I went into banking and I retired from the World Banking Division of a bank. | ||
| And I know about TARIF also. | ||
| Why are you so scared about TARIF? | ||
| It will be, don't be terrified. | ||
| It will be terrific. | ||
| President Trump is trying to set the trade imbalance of this country. | ||
| So this is a good thing. | ||
| People, other presidents were talking about it, but they never done anything. | ||
| And because it's President Trump, I will hold hatred for him. | ||
| It's so sad today is a Passover and also hatred has been the eo de toilette of the Democratic Party. | ||
| I feel so bad for this party. | ||
| And they are canonizing this evil people. | ||
| George Floyd, you know, they're kneeling in front of the Congress led by Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| Now, this guy from El Salvador who came here illegally and that he should, he has given a good trip back to his homeland. | ||
| He should keep it there. | ||
| And why are these Democrats really canonizing this evil people? | ||
| Look at that lady from Maryland. | ||
| I feel so bad her daughter died, and five children are now motherless. | ||
| And all this, you know, the Democratic Party is really doomed. | ||
| Not now, they cannot find a leader and use the win-gain votes like Kamala Harris using abortion and all this racist, racist business, okay? | ||
| This is not a race. | ||
| I got your point, Susan. | ||
| We'll go to another Susan in New York, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tammy. | |
| My top story, first of all, I echo what Michael in Connecticut said. | ||
| And to the gentleman from Massachusetts, not all baby boomers are conservatives, and I'm not. | ||
| So let's get that straight. | ||
| My top story is this Form F that Trump plans to implement that comes from Project 2025. | ||
| Now, he wants to fire nonpartisan federal workers and replace them with loyalists to him. | ||
| Now, if that is not, this is what autocracy looks like, folks. | ||
| So open up your eyes, please. | ||
| And, you know, it's outrageous. | ||
| It's outrageous. | ||
| And we have to fight this. | ||
| We have to go to our town halls and fight this, especially those in Republican areas, because in our Democratic areas here in New York, they are fighting it. | ||
| But the other thing that I just want to comment on from yesterday, Ann Coulter is an obnoxious racist, I have to say. | ||
| And my last question to C-SPAN is: when this becomes an autocracy, will your opening line now be autocracy on filters? | ||
| Thank you, Tammy. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| That was Susan in New York. | ||
| Let's talk with Peter in New Mexico, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I'm actually a landscaper here in New Mexico, so I do work with a lot of people that are from Mexico, both legal and not legal. | ||
| They're very hardworking people. | ||
| Some are good and some are bad, you know, just like any new group of people. | ||
| I have a question for you, though. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I was watching that Harlan news conference yesterday and I noticed that when he was taking calls that the family was escorted off the stage right away, or when he was taking questions, they escorted the the family off the stage right away. | ||
| Has anyone asked that the mom or the wife is that Gomez? | ||
| I think Gomez guy had ever been an MS-13 game has? | ||
| Has anyone ever asked the family themselves what his history is? | ||
| I know, but it just seems a little odd that they took the family off the stage uh, when he started taking questions. | ||
| That's really all I had to say thank you. | ||
| That's Peter in New Mexico. | ||
| Another story that has been developing over the week is President Trump. | ||
| In the Trump administration's request from Harvard University and this headline is one of the latest updates from the NEW YORK Times Trump officials blame mistake for setting off confrontation with Harvard. | ||
| It says, an official on the administration's Anti-semit, anti-semitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization. | ||
| The article says that Harvard received an email letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so erroneous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House. | ||
| University announced its intentions on Monday, setting off tectonic battle between one of the country's most prestigious universities and the U.S. President. | ||
| Then almost immediately came a frantic call from a Trump official. | ||
| Says that the April 11 letter from the White House task force on Anti-Semitism this official had told Harvard should not have sent and should not have been sent and was unauthorized, said two people familiar with the matter. | ||
| The letter sent by the acting counsel, general counsel of the Department OF Health AND Human Services, Sean Keveny, according to three people who were briefed on the matter, it says that it's unclear what prompted the letter to be sent. | ||
| It says its contents was authentic, said three people, but there are differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. | ||
| That was something that uh Carolyn, that press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, spoke to during one of the briefings this week. | ||
| Here is that clip comes to Harvard. | ||
| The president's position on this is grounded in common sense, in the basic principle that Jewish American students or students of any faith should not be illegally harassed and targeted on our nation's college campuses, and we unfortunately saw that illegal discrimination take place on the campus of Harvard. | ||
| There are countless examples to prove it, particularly with the stunning confession by then Harvard president Claudine Gay, who said that bullying and harassment depended on the context. | ||
| The president at that time made it clear to the American public He was not going to tolerate illegal harassment and Anti-Semitism taking place in violations of federal law. | ||
| So the president made it clear to Harvard: follow federal law, no longer break Title VI, which was passed by Congress to ensure no student can be discriminated against on the basis of race, and you will receive federal funding. | ||
| Unfortunately, Harvard has not taken the president or the administration's demands seriously. | ||
| All the president is asking: don't break federal law, and then you can have your federal funding. | ||
| I think the president is also begging a good question. | ||
| More than $2 billion out the door to Harvard when they have a more than $50 billion endowment. | ||
| Why are the American taxpayers subsidizing a university that has billions of dollars in the bank already? | ||
| And we certainly should not be funding a place where such grave anti-Semitism exists. | ||
| Time for just a few more calls in this first hour, asking your top news story. | ||
| Let's hear from Bill in New York, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I wanted to say that there is a good book out called The Invisible Doctrine: The History of Neoliberalism by George Manabach. | ||
| And they said that they train us from birth that relying on others is a sign of weakness. | ||
| We should all be self-made men and women. | ||
| But when we look at people's outcome, this cannot be true. | ||
| If wealth was accumulated through hard work and enterprise, every woman, man, and child and people, especially in Africa and certain countries, would be millionaires. | ||
| My story of the week would be what's going on in Texas with the self-defense case for these two students who were at a track meet. | ||
| But what I'm really concerned with is that black families and judges are receiving death threats. | ||
| But I don't understand how have we not implemented an anti-black hate crime bill when they are the ones who are hated and threatened the most. | ||
| Have a happy holiday weekend. | ||
| That was Bill in New York. | ||
| Frank, Savannah, Georgia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| I'd like to say once again, thank the universe for our C-SPAN. | ||
| It's the one essential news network. | ||
| I'd like to talk briefly about a story that isn't being talked about much this week, but it's been going on for several weeks. | ||
| The attack on Social Security, they are trying totally hollow it out so it will be unusable and useless. | ||
| The Republicans have wanted to get rid of it for years and years, but they could not. | ||
| Anybody who, politician who ran against it, would be voted out of office or not elected. | ||
| They have control of Supreme Court in a lot of the courts, but they don't control the courts completely. | ||
| So they can't go that way. | ||
| But what they're doing, they're just firing all the people who actually administer the Social Security program. | ||
| So you can't really use it. | ||
| It will be unusable. | ||
| It will be hollowed out. | ||
| Then it will be replaced, maybe replaced by a private thing or maybe nothing. | ||
| Also, one last thing: there's a huge budget bill right now, and it will take like hundreds of billions away from, I believe, Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| And I'm really curious to see if Republicans are really going to have the nerve to vote for this because if that happens, it will completely change the political landscape in this U.S. | ||
| And I believe the people will rise up because a lot of people are just fed up, you know, and they can't do anything. | ||
| They will not let them take away their Social Security, their Medicare. | ||
| It's the third rail. | ||
| It just won't happen. | ||
| Something terrible will happen if they try that. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| That was Frank in Georgia. | ||
| Let's talk with Volcker in Minnesota, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Volcker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, morning. | |
| Happy holidays, everybody. | ||
| Yeah, I have a question. | ||
| Those tariffs, they caused a major jump in the stock index. | ||
| And I was wondering if it's traceable to make profit out of that. | ||
| I mean, because it was drastic a couple of days, and I mean, if you knew what was going on, you could make quite a chunk of money. | ||
| And one person made those tariffs or implemented them. | ||
| So, yeah, curious about that. | ||
| Thanks, and happy holidays again. | ||
| And our last caller for this hour, James Akron, Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| A couple things concern me. | ||
| One is the Social Security, as a gentleman was talking about it. | ||
| It appears that since the beginning of Social Security, if you look, I looked at the thing last night on CNN all night about trying to, the Republican Party is trying to end Social Security from its inception. | ||
| And that's one thing that I don't get. | ||
| Every Republican president since the inception of Social Security has tried to end it. | ||
| Now, I don't understand these red states, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alabama, they receive the majority of the Social Security in the country. | ||
| Now, I'm not mad with a person about getting it because most seniors do need it. | ||
| But I don't understand how people are willing to sacrifice themselves and their family just to end Social Security. | ||
| I think that's a racist move, and I think that there's white people that believe all black people receive Social Security, and that is the only reason that they would want to get rid of it. | ||
| I can't see a reason other than that, and because we have been the most discriminated against people in the world. | ||
| Everybody that came to this country and had anything wrong done to them, they got reparations. | ||
| There have been no reparations for black people in America, none whatsoever. | ||
| And even right now, they're considering a form of reparations. | ||
| They're talking about what's going to be paid to these prisoners that were just deported that Trump sent out the country. | ||
| They're already talking about trying to give them some money because they were misused. | ||
| And yet, the black people have been misused in this country for hundreds of years, never received anything. | ||
| Hardly a job. | ||
| Last person hired, first, excuse me. | ||
| Yeah, last person hired and first person fired. | ||
| And that's been the way it's been for black people as long as I can remember. | ||
| I'm 77 years old, and I've watched this show for years and hasn't changed. | ||
| And every Republican president has been anti-black. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was James in Ohio. | ||
| Our last call for this first hour of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Next on the program, today is the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| We will be joined by University of Oklahoma Professor Samuel Perry to discuss that anniversary as well as the rise of domestic and political terrorism. | ||
| And later in the program, National Parks Conservation Association's Kristen Bringle will discuss the impact of Doge cuts to the National Park Service and related news. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In April of 1995, the nation's deadliest act of domestic terrorism took place when a bomb exploded outside a federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people. | |
| This morning, former President Bill Clinton gives remarks at a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| Watch it live starting at 9.30 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| Technology reporter Nicole Kobe, author of The Long History of the Future, talks about how technology evolves and discusses why many predicted technologies, including driverless and flying cars, smart cities, Hyperloops, and autonomous robots, haven't become a reality. | ||
| If you've ever tried to build anything, you know, whether it's like an IKEA cabinet or, you know, something a little bit more complicated than that that doesn't come with instructions, it's very difficult to build something. | ||
| So engineers who are working on these kinds of problems, you know, whether it's driverless cars or flying cars or I don't know, even sillier ideas like Hyperloop, they're taking science that we know works and they're applying it to the real world, to phys, you know, to a physical object. | ||
| And then they're trying to build that. | ||
| And it's kind of in the details where things start to fall down a bit. | ||
| It's kind of in, you know, how you actually make it happen, the materials you choose, the business model, all of that can just kind of take something that sort of works in the lab or works in an academic paper and just make it completely fall apart, even though people have spent maybe 80 years on an idea. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Technology reporter Nicole Kobe, Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | |
| You can listen to QA in all of our podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, or in our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Book TV. | ||
| Every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 7 p.m. Eastern, John Green examines the history of tuberculosis and his friendship with a tuberculosis patient in his book, Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. | ||
| Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, the Nation magazine's legal analyst Ellie Mistahl, author of Bad Law, looks at 10 laws he believes are ruining America and offers his thoughts on how to reform them. | ||
| At 9 p.m. Eastern, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt shares his book, Genesis, a collaboration with the late Henry Kissinger, on the promise and challenges posed by artificial intelligence. | ||
| Then at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Van Wen reflects on how society can build allegiances beyond racial identity and have more global solidarity in his book, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other. | ||
| He's interviewed by author Ijoma Aluwo. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the rise of domestic and political terrorism on this 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing is Samuel Perry. | ||
| He is a sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma. | ||
| Samuel, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for having me. | |
| Just wanted to let our audience know, I'm looking at an Associated Press article showing it on my screen. | ||
| I don't think you can see it, but the headline, Oklahoma City, to mark 30 years since the bombing that killed 168 people and shook America. | ||
| It says, a bomb with a force powerful enough to instantly destroy much of a nine-story building shattered a quiet Oklahoma City morning and sent a shockwave through America Saturday. | ||
| Today is the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest homegarn attack in United States history that exposed a dark undercurrent of anti-government extremist anger. | ||
| This is something that you focus on in your work. | ||
| Samuel, tell us about what specifically you look at and what you drew from this particular account. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Most of my expertise has to do with the rise of white Christian nationalism in the United States. | ||
| And so this is a form of an expression of white nationalism that uses religious rhetoric largely to justify a return to and an elevation of Anglo-Protestant supremacy in the United States. | ||
| And so this has ties to white nationalist movements. | ||
| This has ties to different forms of domestic violence and terrorism, the kinds of things that we saw on January 6th or even far earlier than that. | ||
| The day of the bombing 30 years ago, there was a White House press briefing. | ||
| During it, then Attorney General Janet Reno took questions from reporters. | ||
| Wanted to play this clip and get your reaction right after it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the importance of this event, are we crossing a new threshold of concern about security in this country when even Oklahoma City is not safe? | |
| I think that this has been a matter of concern for all Americans anytime you see acts like this around the world. | ||
| And I think it is a matter that has got to be pursued with all vigor. | ||
| I can't tell you whether it's a crossroads. | ||
| I can tell you that anytime something like this occurs, we have to do everything possible to ensure that the people who are responsible are held accountable and that we do everything we can to prevent a future recurrence. | ||
| Samuel, your response to that question and General Reno's response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think within the past few decades, we have shifted in our, I think, national attention from the idea that, and we still talk about Timothy McVeigh and we talk about the perpetrators of these acts of domestic terrorism, often with the impression or leaving the impression that they're lone wolf perpetrators, that they're not a part of a network of relationships and organizations, when in fact they do not do these things on their own. | |
| Timothy McVeigh didn't do these things on his own, but even when you move out beyond Terry Nichols or Michael Fortier, you have relationships that he was involved with, these various kinds of militia groups and people that he had intimate relationships with. | ||
| And expand that out to the last 30 years, you've got the rise of the internet and the exchanges that go on in these online spaces where young people are radicalized, young people are introduced to this ideology. | ||
| And so they may be on the fringes of this, but they can be recruited inwards. | ||
| And so within the last few decades, we have really have pursued the idea that this is really a constellation of organizations of white supremacist, white nationalist, anti-government, militia, militia organizing groups that will find young men like Timothy McVeigh that maybe have military experience, maybe with police force or some kind of armed services. | ||
| And they'll find those that are disenfranchised or marginalized and feel aggrieved about something, about whether that's white replacement or whether that is a sense that they are being culturally replaced by immigrants or a sense that there is government trying to take their guns. | ||
| There's all kinds of conspiracies going around. | ||
| And so they will be recruited from the fringes to the center. | ||
| And then it just takes the right recipe of events to set something off like this, where you have a young person who's willing to go that extra step to set up a bomb or to shoot up a grocery store or to shoot up a church or to shoot up a synagogue. | ||
| And so I think one of the things that we have done within the last few decades is really tried to focus beyond the lone wolf person to understand the organizations that give rise to this kind of thing. | ||
| Something else that I want to point out is when we think about people like Timothy McVeigh or the people who would shoot up a synagogue or a church or storm the Capitol, we often don't recognize how pervasive the conspiracies and ideologies that might motivate something like that are. | ||
| We have data from, say, Public Religion Research Institute, National Survey firm within the past few years that have asked Americans about how much they subscribe to QAnon conspiracies or stolen election conspiracies or belief in white replacement, that literally immigrants are coming and poisoning the blood. | ||
| And it's up between 20% of people who would subscribe to QAnon, 35% who agree to some degree that immigrants are replacing the blood of patriots, those kinds of things. | ||
| Or even 20% of Americans in general believe that things are becoming so bad that true patriots may have to resort to physical violence in order to save our country. | ||
| So just take that. | ||
| And that's millions of people. | ||
| And so imagine people who really believe that being recruited inward into these organizations where they're heavily armed, they're training one another, they're talking about, you know, what are we going to do? | ||
| How are we going to respond? | ||
| And they are able to, I think, leverage the power of these young men who feel like they have nothing left to lose. | ||
| And Samuel, when we hear the phrase domestic or political terrorism, explain exactly what it is that falls under those umbrellas and also what the, you mentioned some of them, but some of these more recent acts that we have that have happened since Oklahoma City. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So domestic terrorism would be examples of that would be any kind of act of violence, like a mass shooting or some kind of a symbolic theater of violence that is intended to strike fear and to send a message to the broader public that people like us are angry, that we are responding with violence or at least the threat of violence. | ||
| And this is to either rally support for this group and to like Timothy McVeigh, he thought he was going to start some kind of a war, some kind of rising or an uprising to respond to the government trying to take guns, trying to arrest patriots and trying to, you know, he thought it would spark a rise of vigilante uprising of people like him. | ||
| And I think others similarly want to want to instigate a race war or some kind of a cultural uprising in which people will say, yes, this is the kind of thing that we need. | ||
| We need more of this. | ||
| Or he's trying to send a message. | ||
| They're trying to send a message to the government that we are not going to allow this kind of thing, white people to be replaced, our culture to be replaced, our heritage, our guns to be taken away. | ||
| And so this is the kind of thing that you'd see. | ||
| One example of it that didn't necessarily have to end in violence or death would be like in Charlottesville, the 2017 Unite White, the Right rally. | ||
| So you've got these tiki torching, iiki torch-carrying white nationalist groups that are marching around shouting about Jews, not being replaced. | ||
| And this is an expression of anger. | ||
| Now, it resulted in death because you had somebody driving through a crowd, and this was a result of, I think, tensions provoked by anti-protesters. | ||
| Not by protesters causing that. | ||
| I certainly don't mean that, but I just mean this is a situation where you had an expression of white nationalist demonstration that didn't have to end up in a terrorist act. | ||
| But then you have others that are like, I think that could be perceived as lone wolf, but really are more a part of a broader movement. | ||
| Things like Dylan Wolfe, things like Ardelling Roof, things like the Buffalo shooter, things like the synagogue shooting, where these young men are radicalized into this white nationalist, anti-government response that they think actually taking lives is going to be the goal here so that they can send a message. | ||
| Our guest for the next 30 minutes or so is Samuel Perry. | ||
| He's a sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma, and we are talking about the rise of domestic and political terrorism on this day, which is the 30th anniversary since the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest domestic terrorism act in the U.S. If you have a question or comment for Samuel, you can start calling in now. | ||
| Our lines for the segment are broken down regionally. | ||
| If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, the number 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zone, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| Also, a special line set aside for those who are in the Oklahoma City area. | ||
| If you were in the area at the time of the bombing 30 years ago, maybe you lived there at some point in between, or you're there today. | ||
| We'd like to hear your thoughts on the anniversary and what you experienced. | ||
| Samuel, you talked a little bit about motivation and how these people can become radicalized. | ||
| Talk a little bit more about that. | ||
| Who are people who are typically involved or engaged in acts of terrorism? | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| I think you've got, well, let's just start with Timothy McVeigh. | ||
| So, Timothy McVeigh is an example of what many think is really an archetypal or a prototypical example of the kind of young men that might be recruited into this. | ||
| And it's not just men. | ||
| Women play a role in this as well. | ||
| But young men who have military experience and training. | ||
| They have far beyond an acquaintance with firearms and an appreciation for firearms. | ||
| In Timothy McVeigh's case, he was marginalized as a young man. | ||
| He was not somebody who had a lot of girlfriends or any girlfriends that were aware of. | ||
| He was not a popular kid, felt picked on, bullied. | ||
| The kind of person I think commentators have said this is the kind of person that you might suspect would or fear would end up being a school shooter in the future, somebody who was just not having a good time early on. | ||
| So he gets into the military. | ||
| He gets this military experience. | ||
| But in this time, he builds several relationships with other people who are really frustrated with the role of big government in potentially taking away guns, taking away freedoms. | ||
| He perceives targeting individuals who are just freedom-loving patriots. | ||
| And so he sees certain instances of this, like the violence at Ruby Ridge, which is a famous incidence in which the ATF gets into a gunfight with people who are at this home and results in the death of a child and a woman. | ||
| And also at Waco. | ||
| So in 1993, obviously, you've got this event at Waco where the Branch Davidians are in the standoff for 60 or so days. | ||
| And you've got Timothy McVeigh, who's actually physically there in Waco, who witnesses all of this and is a part of this. | ||
| And so you've got a young man who is already marginalized with military training, passion for guns, passion for freedom, and is swept into conspiracy theories. | ||
| There's also several other elements. | ||
| So Timothy McVeigh, and again, I'm using as an example. | ||
| He reads the Turner Diaries, which has to do with, you know, it's a novel, famous novel that actually plays a role in a lot of this radicalization around this time. | ||
| It's a novel that has to do with an uprising, an anti-government uprising of people who are very anti-Semitic, it's very racist, but it also has to do with violent acts of terrorism. | ||
| And they talk about truck bombs. | ||
| They talk about shooting up areas to be able to respond to the government. | ||
| And this is the idea that we are going to spark an uprising in this kind of violent theater. | ||
| So Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are the kind of young men at this time who might also find themselves within this organizational social geography of people who would be recruited into this and into this kind of violence. | ||
| Subsequently, we found in our research over the past few decades that this is a pretty common story, right? | ||
| So you've got these young men who feel marginalized. | ||
| And I think that is increasingly the case in the United States where young men, especially young white men, are feeling more and more marginalized on society. | ||
| They feel like society blames them for everything. | ||
| They feel like their opportunities have been taken away. | ||
| They feel like women have surpassed them. | ||
| They feel like minorities are cutting in line. | ||
| And they're angry. | ||
| They're outraged. | ||
| And so these are the kind of young men who are being recruited now online. | ||
| And they can do so through anonymous accounts and never be at risk of outing themselves. | ||
| But they learn, read this literature, they get radicalized, and they get exposure to guns or they get recruited into like, hey, you need to find an acquaintance with that or to militia groups or to these paramilitary organizations. | ||
| And they are potentially set off in some way. | ||
| Now, I don't want to give the impression that every young, angry white man who ventures online and starts to poke around these spaces is going to do this. | ||
| I think it actually takes a certain kind of individual and it is extreme in its outcome. | ||
| But as I shared earlier, it's not extreme in the sense that few Americans embrace this kind of view. | ||
| There are lots and lots of Americans, millions and millions of Americans who embrace really outlandish conspiracy theories and ideologies. | ||
| And if you get a group of those people angry enough and there's an event like, say, losing the 2020 election or something else, that could potentially set them off to respond with pretty clear acts of violence. | ||
| Samuel, we have callers waiting to talk with you about this topic. | ||
| We'll start with Kevin in Staten Island, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Professor Perry, I'm a retired New York City firefighter who responded to both World Trade Center attacks. | ||
| I have a question. | ||
| Am I correct? | ||
| My understanding is that the Oklahoma City victims were never compensated, but World Trade Center victims were compensated. | ||
| And do you have an opinion as to why that occurred, if I'm right with that? | ||
| I don't remember them, Oklahoma City victims being compensated. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm not aware of whether or not they were ever financially compensated. | ||
| So I think the destruction in the Oklahoma City building was so severe. | ||
| I mean, if you look at pictures, if you look at video footage of what happened there, it's a miracle that anybody survived that at all. | ||
| And we actually have very few instances of people who are in the building who survived the bombing itself. | ||
| Certainly lots of many hundreds of people around that were injured in some kind of way. | ||
| But it's remarkable that anybody would have been able to survive that. | ||
| But I'm just not, I don't know whether or not they were compensated. | ||
| So I can't speak to that. | ||
| We'll go to Barbara and Whitey in Vermont. | ||
| Good morning, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I can. | |
| I'm good. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So white nationalism. | ||
| I'm wondering if this fellow on TV is aware of what's happening in Europe, how the white population is being overtaken by mostly Muslim communities and others. | ||
| And yes, we do need to protect our like our heritage, and there's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| Keir Starmer, like, I don't know, this guy sounds almost like Keir Starmer, where it's Islamophobia. | ||
| It's all these things. | ||
| It's not real. | ||
| It is real. | ||
| And I think American white men in particular and women are called patriots. | ||
| They want to protect their heritage. | ||
| And there's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| But look at Europe. | ||
| All their cultures are being disseminated. | ||
| So I'd like to know what he thinks about that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Happy to talk about that. | ||
| Yeah, actually, this is an area of expertise. | ||
| So I think, thank you for your comment. | ||
| I think what you're suggesting is really an indication of how pervasive this kind of understanding is. | ||
| And I want to say that I don't think, I don't deny that demographic change is happening all over the world. | ||
| As a matter of fact, I think that is one of the reasons that we actually have a resurgence of reactionary politics around the world. | ||
| So what we're seeing in the United States with the rise of, say, like white Christian nationalist ideology and rhetoric is really one instance of something that is taking place around the world. | ||
| And it is a response to rapid demographic transitions due to immigration and declining fertility rates in some populations. | ||
| So in Europe, that's a great example. | ||
| In Europe, you've had declining fertility rates among those largely white European populations for decades. | ||
| And they also need workers to come in to work their economy for their economies to grow. | ||
| And so that is largely taking place by it is being like those populations are experiencing high levels of Muslim immigration. | ||
| And I understand that that is likely a huge source of tension in those nations because they feel like our fertility rates are low. | ||
| We're not replacing our own populations. | ||
| And the people who are coming in are people who are brown-skinned, people who don't share our heritage or religious values. | ||
| And that can be scary. | ||
| That is one of the tensions that we live in now in the world. | ||
| So this is not something that is unique to the United States. | ||
| It's taking place around the world is how do we live within liberal democracies where there is difference and how do we make difference happen? | ||
| Do we live in that tension of culture inevitably changing to some degree because our populations are changing, while at the same time uh, having that say, national values that we think unite us as, as people. | ||
| So let's go to America. | ||
| Uh, I think it's a legitimate question to ask um, if we are not united as Americans by some kind of Anglo-european identity uh, if it's not by being white Christians or white people, which increasingly can't be the case because America is becoming less Christian and less white. | ||
| So if that is not what unites us, what does unite us? | ||
| Well, we have to. | ||
| I, I think uh, it has to be a common creed, a common set of common commitments to uh liberty, to justice, to fairness and to equality and to the degree that people coming into our country share those kinds of values that that makes them American right, like that makes them a part of what it means to be an American. | ||
| Now I, I I don't understand the argument. | ||
| Um, I do understand it, but I I can't say I agree with the argument that uh, white people have some kind of unified heritage that they've got to defend and that, and they are patriots for say, being angry that brown-skinned people have their own cultures that they also feel like represents what it means to be American. | ||
| Uh, people of color uh, Black Americans who have lived here for a long, long time, Asian Americans who have lived here for a long, long time and Hispanic Americans who have lived here for a long, long time, also have subcultural values that they feel like. | ||
| That's what it means to be an American. | ||
| So we have to live in this tension. | ||
| So i'm still responding to this caller. | ||
| I think we have to, as Americans, figure out what it means to live in this tension between uh our, our demography changing. | ||
| Which is is happening. | ||
| It's happening. | ||
| Uh our, our religious, our religious, uh identities are changing. | ||
| Our, our ethnic identities are changing. | ||
| And how do we, as Americans uh, who are patriots, who love our country and want to be good neighbors and want to be good citizens, how do we live in that tension between ensuring liberty and justice for all uh, while at the same time, keeping some kind of values that we feel like unite us as Americans? | ||
| It can't be ethnic, it can't be religious. | ||
| It's got to be some kind of a principle, an idea what it means to be an American. | ||
| Uh, we'll have you talk with Al in Minnesota. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning Al, hi Al, good morning um hey um, I remember this. | |
| When this happened um, it was as the news broke, exactly when it happened. | ||
| I saw it on tv and I just couldn't believe it. | ||
| And but anyway uh, when I went to work, I was telling the people at work and it was all like they couldn't believe it what was what happened. | ||
| But the point I wanted to make is, I kind of think Timmy Mcvey would have fallen in line with the January Sixers. | ||
| Today um, and even back then um, when Janarian was there uh, they had the militia groups back on their heels and that. | ||
| But that didn't last very long, just for several years. | ||
| But a lot of those militia groups they changed their uh names, Names in their groups, to like Conservation Clubs and LLC and stuff like that. | ||
| But the thing is that I would think that Timothy Vic Vey would been today's standard would probably have voted for Trump. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, so let me comment on that briefly. | ||
| So I think, you know, look at the groups that were present at January 6th. | ||
| And so I want to point to two of them. | ||
| So think about Oath Keepers. | ||
| You can look these people up, oath keepers and three percenters. | ||
| And their MO is almost identical to the kinds of ideological commitments that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and these guys really had. | ||
| These are ex-law enforcement, ex-military, people who swear to uphold the Constitution. | ||
| So they're saying, like, hey, we're the ones who are sticking up for the Constitution. | ||
| We're the ones who want to fight against the government taking away our guns and our rights. | ||
| They are anti-government. | ||
| They are militia organized. | ||
| They are decentralized leadership so that you can't come after one and cause a falling down of the entire organizational structure. | ||
| And they're not groups that foreground, like, say, white supremacy. | ||
| So they're not ones that say, like, hey, we're white nationalists or something. | ||
| They would say, we're patriots. | ||
| We're sticking up for freedoms and rights and constitutional rights. | ||
| We're the ones who defend the Constitution and we're the ones who organize citizens to be able to rise up against a government that is overreaching a federal government. | ||
| That is distinct from, and they should, they, like, you know, they're both at January 6th. | ||
| So that was at January 6th. | ||
| But you've also got groups like Boogaloo Movement and Proud Boys who are more likely to foreground the white replacement idea and the white nationalism. | ||
| And so, you know, Timothy McVeigh, I think when you look at his MO and you look at him up against these organizations that exist today and are still active, I think he fits right in with Oath Keepers. | ||
| I think he fits right in with 3%. | ||
| Maybe not so much overtly with things like Proud Boys or Boogaloo Movement or others, but I would agree that I think if you were to look at Timothy McVeigh and people like him in the 90s to folks today, I think he would fit right in with several of these groups that are not. | ||
| Let me just clarify, I don't think these people are lining up to set bombs anywhere, but they have been a part of violent expressions of nationalism, right? | ||
| Like this, you know, January 6th being a really prominent example and the intimidation and all of these other times they've shown up. | ||
| So, yeah, I see the parallels for sure. | ||
| Frank in Ogden, Utah. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I was in Oklahoma City at the time of the bombing. | ||
| I was fairly close to that downtown region. | ||
| I was at Tinker Air Force Base on an assignment. | ||
| And the base went on immediate lockdown. | ||
| All the protocol was followed. | ||
| And some of the locals there gave us direction to get into town because all the off-ramps into the city were blocked off immediately. | ||
| The response was incredible. | ||
| And so we found our way into town and we got right next to the building. | ||
| I mean, the dust was just settling. | ||
| And the first responders were incredible. | ||
| They had equipment that the base had sent over. | ||
| They had floodlights, generators. | ||
| They were doing everything they could as fast as they could. | ||
| And I even noticed that medical people still in scrubs were walking to the building trying to assist in any way they could. | ||
| If they could find any survivors at all, they were there to help immediately. | ||
| And the destruction of the building that you're showing right there on the screen, I've never seen anything that like that in my life. | ||
| I mean, and across the street, the other buildings, the windows were all blown out. | ||
| I mean, that was just a tremendous explosion. | ||
| And I got to give credit to the first responders. | ||
| They had like the mounted posse on horses guarding the off-ramps to keep the public away so the first responders could get in there and do what they could. | ||
| And then after that, we went back to our hotel and turned on the TV and we seen it in real time, just like the rest of the nation. | ||
| And so I was getting the, even though I was right very close to work there when it happened, I was getting the same news everybody else in the rest of the country was getting to this event. | ||
| And it was just incredible. | ||
| I'll never forget it. | ||
| It's been 30 years already. | ||
| Yeah, I can imagine. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I think your comment just gives me an occasion to brag on Oklahomans a little bit. | ||
| Like, I think, you know, Oklahoma today attracts a lot of negative heat for what's going on here politically. | ||
| And in many ways, rightly so. | ||
| I think Oklahoma leadership, you know, and our political leadership is a clown show of Christian nationalism and backwards in so many unfortunate ways. | ||
| But Oklahomans as a group in the aggregate, and I think their response to, say, the Oklahoma City bombing, even today, is something that brings community together. | ||
| It's always heavier around here. | ||
| I think the vibe is always heavier here on April 19th. | ||
| I participate in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon every year and have been since I was at OU. | ||
| And we spend a moment of silence. | ||
| We talk about it. | ||
| We remember the people who died and lost their lives. | ||
| And Oklahomans really came together, not just those days. | ||
| They certainly did. | ||
| There were lines just everywhere to be able to donate blood and people came and donated in all of these kind of, in so many ways, and people served. | ||
| And so Oklahomans really came together. | ||
| And it was such a pervasive statewide response to this. | ||
| Studies have shown that in the subsequent years following the Oklahoma City bombing, divorce rates went down in Oklahoma and birth rates went up. | ||
| Like there really was this kind of like outpouring of, hey, we're just thankful to be alive and let's remember the things that are valuable to us. | ||
| And so I always will respect Oklahomans and Oklahoma for the way they responded to that. | ||
| And first responders, certainly, but also just average Oklahoma citizens who said, you know what, this is something that is going to unite us forever, that we were a part of this. | ||
| And just like your comment says, this is something that nobody here who was ever a part of this ever forgets. | ||
| And so, you know, we can all appreciate the things that it brought out in us. | ||
| The 30th anniversary remembrance ceremony is happening today. | ||
| C-SPAN will be covering that live right here on C-SPAN at 9.30 a.m. | ||
| It is former President Bill Clinton will give remarks at this ceremony. | ||
| And again, you can watch that live here at 9.30 a.m. | ||
| We will hear from Phil in Alabama. | ||
| Good morning, Phil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Phil. | |
| Hey, morning, Tammy. | ||
| Morning, Sam. | ||
| How y'all doing? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And good morning, C-SPAN Universe. | ||
| Sam, have you ever heard about this? | ||
| I got two questions. | ||
| One is about this accelerationist movement. | ||
| Apparently, they got to that kid. | ||
| I don't know if you heard about him. | ||
| They said he killed his parents because he wanted to use their money to go assassinate President Trump. | ||
| And he was supposedly radicalized by this Nine Angels organization. | ||
| And they take all their philosophy from, believe it or not, Charles Manson, who wanted to start a race war and the revelation from the Bible. | ||
| And there was a guy named Scott Payne who wrote a book called Code Name Pale Horse. | ||
| And his last assignment was infiltrating their movements. | ||
| Very weird. | ||
| I was wondering if you heard of them. | ||
| And also, you talk about people being radicalized to do crazy stuff. | ||
| What about these people that are carving swastikas into electric cars and burning down dealerships? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who do you think is radicalizing them? | |
| And I'll take the answer off the phone. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, I think this is important to recognize that there is radicalization potentially happening from the left as well as the right. | ||
| And so people can be radicalized when they are angry, aggrieved, when they feel like they are isolated and they don't have a community of people to say, you know, hey, this isn't what normal people do, and this isn't how to solve our problems. | ||
| And vigilanti-violence is not the solution. | ||
| So I don't ever want to give the impression that this is exclusively a right-wing problem. | ||
| That you do see examples of, say, vigilante-violence of people carving swastikas into Teslas or committing acts or trying to shoot a political leader. | ||
| And so I think that needs to be acknowledged that this can be when you combine things like access to firearms, mental illness, an online space where young men in particular can be radicalized, either left or right. | ||
| I do think this is more of a prominent phenomenon among the right. | ||
| So statistically speaking, I think that happens. | ||
| Now, if you want to bring in non-domestic terrorism in there, I think you have another conversation. | ||
| But I think when you're talking about domestic acts of terrorism, I think it's, statistically speaking, more prominent among the right. | ||
| And yet I want to acknowledge that that also happens, radicalization on the left. | ||
| And nor do I also, I don't want to excuse, say, riot behavior or any kind of violence that is about political threat or response to some kind of political outrage. | ||
| These are not the channels that we, certainly there is room for protest. | ||
| There's room to make your voice heard and even extreme expressions of making your voice heard. | ||
| We have the right to demonstration. | ||
| We have the right to even say things that a lot of people disagree with. | ||
| Yet at the same time, resorting to violence is not the prescribed channel that we have for causing political change. | ||
| Let's hear from Rachel in Magnolia, Texas. | ||
| Good morning, Rachel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Rachel. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Nice to speak to you. | ||
| I'm glad to hear that you are acknowledging that left-wing violence is a real thing, because it is. | ||
| And for one, I keep hearing you bring up the Christian nationalism. | ||
| That is not real, and that just seems to be an attack on people who happen to be Christian and happen to love their country. | ||
| It's just wrong to do that. | ||
| Happy Easter to everybody else who agrees with that. | ||
| But also, the left-wing violence is prominent right now, obviously, with the Teslas, et cetera. | ||
| And, you know, we do need to point that out. | ||
| And where are you getting your statistics that most of the violence comes from the right? | ||
| I'd like to know what study you're looking at because there was a flawed study. | ||
| So which one is it? | ||
| Where are you getting your statistics? | ||
| So I can read it as well. | ||
| Sure, that's a great point. | ||
| So let's talk about the first question. | ||
| So you're not really a question, really, an assertion. | ||
| It's unfortunately a really incorrect assertion. | ||
| So you talked about how Christian nationalism is not a thing. | ||
| I'm not sure where you would get that. | ||
| So Christian nationalism is absolutely an ideology. | ||
| It is a set of views that the nation rightfully belongs to Christians, that Christian values made America great, and that should be institutionalized in our policies and our laws. | ||
| There are significant percentages of Americans, and we can see this across multiple surveys over the last 10 years, where Americans believe that the Bible should be the foundation of our legal system or that America, that the federal government should declare us a Christian nation explicitly. | ||
| As a matter of fact, in Oklahoma, just recently, the House passed a resolution to declare that Christ is king. | ||
| Christ is king, right? | ||
| A resolution in the House, in Oklahoma, like that is a violation of the First Amendment. | ||
| That is the government establishing a religion. | ||
| That is, you know, we have prominent or plenty of examples all over the place about people saying that Christianity ought to be the center of our culture and our politics and to be the foundation. | ||
| And Christians really ought to have supremacy for that reason. | ||
| So Christian nationalism is absolutely a thing. | ||
| You've got a, and I don't mean to say, and we've written several books on this, I don't mean to say that all Christians who are patriots are Christian nationalists. | ||
| That's not the same thing. | ||
| So there is a thing as, I think, Christian patriotism. | ||
| And that is, I am a Christian and I am a patriot. | ||
| I love my country. | ||
| I want to be a good neighbor. | ||
| I want to be a good citizen. | ||
| That is Christian patriotism. | ||
| That is different from Christian nationalism. | ||
| Secondly, I think you can look at, I think you can look at examples of, say, people carving swastikas into Teslas and say, that is absolutely unacceptable instances of extremism. | ||
| Those aren't necessarily violence. | ||
| They're not assaulting people who are driving Teslas or blowing up Teslas with people in them. | ||
| Like you see people, say, you know, these instances of domestic terrorism where people are shooting up churches or shooting up synagogue. | ||
| I don't mean to, again, absolutely, it's an important point to acknowledge that violence on the left happens and that people can be recruited into that. | ||
| And that it is unacceptable. | ||
| If you want to talk about acts of domestic terrorism and who is more likely to commit those acts of domestic terrorism, that is actually a pretty quick Google search. | ||
| You can look at organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or you can look at any of these institutions. | ||
| Actually, let's bracket Southern Poverty Law Center for a second. | ||
| So you can, Southern Poverty Law Center certainly keeps track of acts of, say, hate crimes and those kinds of things. | ||
| But you also have independent institutions that you can find within 30 seconds of Google searching that keep track of what kind of they categorize violence. | ||
| They categorize violent acts of terrorism and hate crimes and who's most likely to commit those. | ||
| And they will acknowledge whether those things are religious, related to Islam, related to white nationalism. | ||
| And so you can search these. | ||
| I don't have a URL off the top of my head, but these things are not hard to find if you are just willing to do a little bit of homework. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| And do you want to share for our guests from your bio on the University of Oklahoma's website? | ||
| It does note that you are among the nation's leading experts on conservative Christianity and American politics. | ||
| We will go to Mike. | ||
| We have one last call. | ||
| Mike in Heartland, Wisconsin. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Mike. | |
| Morning. | ||
| I just wanted to bring up in your entire monologue, you didn't want to mention any of the radical left's insaneness until the man from Alabama brought it up. | ||
| And I'm from the area that that young man is from who was plotting to kill the president. | ||
| So, I mean, what I want to get is there was also in Tennessee, the trans woman who went into a private Catholic church or school and shot up kids. | ||
| So your whole thing, you've brought up, you know, the conservative, the radical conservative, and all this stuff. | ||
| But the media, the media is a huge factor in this when they don't report. | ||
| They don't want to tell us about a manifesto that was found. | ||
| They don't, you know, the media you brought up too that people find this, you know, the young kids, they find this stuff online. | ||
| That's a little harder to, you know, for us to control. | ||
| But the university professors, the high school teachers, the middle school teachers that are also radicalizing these kids to do insane things, when you have university professors actively protesting on campus with the Palestinians asking for, you know, from the river to the seas, I'm sure you know what that means. | ||
| That's asking for the complete genocide of the Jewish people. | ||
| Those professors need to be completely taken away. | ||
| You're fired. | ||
| You don't get your pension. | ||
| But when you're a 10-year professor, you feel invincible and you can say whatever you want. | ||
| Yeah, so I. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| Were you finished? | ||
| I didn't want to interrupt you. | ||
| You can go ahead, Samuel, and respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So I do want to acknowledge the point. | ||
| Again, I think violence can take place on the left. | ||
| People can be radicalized on the left, and it's inappropriate in any situation like that. | ||
| The topic of the discussion today is Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing and subsequent domestic terrorism and acts of violence that we have seen of that kind within the last 30 years. | ||
| And so I'm talking about Timothy McVeigh and his style and the ideological influences in his life and the kinds of things that we see subsequently that follow that same pattern. | ||
| So I think the constraints of the conversation a little bit guided what I am discussing in terms of domestic terrorism and acts of violence. | ||
| And, you know, and yet, you know, I think you, even though you certainly see acts of violence from, say, a transgender person or somebody who tried to shoot Donald Trump while he was this past summer, you know, I think those are examples that need to be looked into to understand how those people were radicalized, what kind of influences they had. | ||
| I think those can be understood in a broad way. | ||
| I think protests on college campuses, certainly hugely controversial, and yet they are a good example of how do we draw the line about free speech and how do we draw the line between acts of violence and where we see those emerging, and Anti-Semitism, and what can result and what is legitimate free speech and people being able to say that they side with Palestine in some kind of conflict, | ||
| that they understand and how it's going on. | ||
| And so, you know, those are all things worth discussing. | ||
| And I don't want to give the impression that there is only one side to all of these discussions, but I think the topic of conversation has guided the slant of the research surveyed and the conversation. | ||
| Samuel Perry, sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma. | ||
| You can find his work and research online at ou.edu. | ||
| Samuel, thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
| We appreciate you joining us for the discussion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for having me. | |
| And these were all great questions. | ||
| I appreciate everybody calling in. | ||
| Today, or next on Washington Journal, today marks the start of National Parks Park Week. | ||
| It's an annual celebration of America's national parks. | ||
| And National Park Conservation Association's Kristen Bringle will join us to discuss the current state and future of the national park system amid changes by the Trump administration, including Doge cuts to the National Park Service. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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In April of 1995, the nation's deadliest act of domestic terrorism took place when a bomb exploded outside a federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people. | |
| This morning, former President Bill Clinton gives remarks at a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| Watch it live starting at 9.30 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org. | ||
| High schoolers, are you planning to take the Advanced Placement U.S. History exam on May 9th? | ||
| Then join American History TV today at 7 p.m. Eastern as high school history teacher Matthew Ellington and Southern Illinois University History Professor Jason Stacey, co-authors of Fabric of a Nation, a history with skills and sources for the AP U.S. History course, talk about the exam. | ||
| They'll explain how this year's exam is structured and provide strategies for answering questions and analyzing historical documents. | ||
| Listen in on our discussion and be sure to take notes on the high school advanced placement U.S. History Exam 2025 today at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| British writer Phil Tenline has written a book titled Ghosts of Iron Mountain. | ||
| The publisher Scribner calls it an investigative masterpiece for readers curious about the surprising connection between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, QAnon, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump. | ||
| In his introduction, author Tinline says the book is the true story of a hoax, a hoax that shocked the nation in the late 1960s and that once created seemed impossible to extinguish. | ||
| Those involved in the hoax include Victor Navaski, D.L. Doctorow, John Kenneth Galbraith, and the author, the writer, Leonard Lewin. | ||
|
unidentified
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Author Phil Tinline with his book, Ghosts of Iron Mountain, The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today. | |
| On this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you. | ||
| Listen to best-selling nonfiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on Q ⁇ A. Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen. | ||
| And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. | ||
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the impact of Doge Cuts to the National Park Service is Kristen Bringle. | ||
| She's the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. | ||
| Kristen, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| You've been on the program before, but remind our audience what your organization does, the mission, and who you work with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| We are 1.5 million members and supporters large, and we are the largest national advocacy group for national parks. | ||
| So we work to preserve and protect these wonderful, iconic places. | ||
| You just talked about the number of members you have. | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are funded through membership, so people paying dues and also some foundation money. | |
| We're going to be talking about national parks. | ||
| Wanted to show our audience some statistics about that. | ||
| The national park system, people may think of the major parks, but there's actually 433 units, including monuments, battlefield, military parks, historical parks and sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers and trails, and the White House. | ||
| They manage more than 85 million acres across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, plus U.S. territories. | ||
| They, until earlier this year, had about 20,000 permanent, temporary, and seasonal employees. | ||
| And in 2024, they also had about 138,000 volunteers helping them across the board. | ||
| When we talk about the Doge cuts, tell us what staffing and funding has looked like in the past year or so. | ||
| Did they have what they needed to operate those sites and locations? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, actually, for the last 15 years, the Park Service has been down about 20% on staffing. | |
| And so we've already seen sort of a lack of staff in the parks and Park Service staff stretched pretty thin. | ||
| So these additional cuts are really harmful. | ||
| And the way that the cuts were made in this indiscriminate way, it means that everyone from a superintendent who leads the park staff to a custodial worker, all of them have been a subject of these cuts. | ||
| And remind us, because there has been back and forth when it comes to staffing, there were cuts and then callbacks and then there will now be temporary hires. | ||
| What is the Park Service, what is their staffing level at currently? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wish I could tell you the precise number. | |
| A lot of this information is being withheld from the public right now, but there was a hiring freeze instituted right away with the new administration and there were already vacancies in our national parks. | ||
| So what ended up happening was they rescinded some positions early on. | ||
| Then they fired probationary staff people to the tune of about a thousand. | ||
| Then they exempted seasonal staff. | ||
| So that was great that they could actually hire the seasonal staff that they needed for the busy summer months. | ||
| And then there have been a series of early retirements and buyouts. | ||
| So we're projecting, we think about 2,400 to 2,500 Park Service staff have been sort of forced out over the last two months, but I would bet that that number is actually probably higher. | ||
| That's the best we can get from the Park Service with our conversations. | ||
| And we have been having a spring break period where summer is coming upon us and parks are being told that they still need to operate despite having smaller staffs. | ||
| Talk about the impact and strain that it puts on those areas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just visited a couple of national parks myself with my children and these places are bustling right now. | |
| They are extremely active. | ||
| There are lots of folks and they just simply don't have enough seasonal staff hired yet and their normal sort of everyday staff there in place to handle the influx of visitors. | ||
| So we're just worried that this is going to be a tough spring break and summer and that the parks aren't going to be able to handle this influx. | ||
| And with this policy that was put in place recently by the Secretary of Interior to keep all facilities open, it really puts pressure on the Park Service staff to have as many visitor services possible, even though they have stretched their staff so thin. | ||
| And so we're just worried that we're going to have really tired, overworked Park Service staff and not enough people to sort of keep up with the volume of visitors. | ||
| And we wanted to let our audience know that Kristen will be with us for about the next 30 minutes or so. | ||
| If you have a question or comment, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines are broken down regionally. | ||
| So if you are in the eastern or central time zone, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're in the Mountain North Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| And also, a special line for those who have recently visited a national park. | ||
| You can call in at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Kristen, I had shown a headline. | ||
| It was in yesterday's USA Today, National Park hit with staff shortages. | ||
| It says, visitors may struggle to find open restrooms. | ||
| That's maybe a minor reason or minor issue when it comes to other things like safety and the parks. | ||
| Talk about specifically some of the areas that people who have been cut, the work that they did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So most interpretive staff are the people who do that sort of preventative safety, who say to you, you might want to change your shoes. | ||
| You should bring more water. | ||
| So there's sort of that first line of park rangers that you see when you enter the park who advise you. | ||
| I have seen plenty of people try to do hikes and flip-flops. | ||
| So they really try to make sure that you have the gear that you need for the day to do the activities that you want to do. | ||
| What we're also concerned about, though, is that when those probationary staff were fired, we learned that search and rescue folks were fired. | ||
| Parks, we love our parks, but parks don't have handrails and guardrails everywhere. | ||
| And so sometimes people get themselves into trouble. | ||
| And our concern is that when we hear that search and rescue staff were let go, we don't even know how many people are Able to do that type of work right now in parks, and we don't know what the safety issue is going to be for some parks going into the summer. | ||
| So, we're really worried that people may find themselves in a position of not being able to get help when they need it. | ||
| So, we're advising visitors this year to really take it easy. | ||
| Don't stretch yourself too far out there in terms of what your capabilities are because we just don't know if there's going to be enough staff to help you get back if you get lost, if you get hurt. | ||
| Another article in USA Today, staffers urge visitors to take part in National Park Week. | ||
| We mentioned that today is the start of National Park Week, and the article is talking about the staff and puts it in perspective, talking about those roughly 20,000 employees. | ||
| It says for perspective, he compared that to Walt Disney World, which has roughly 80,000 cast members. | ||
| It says, But the responsibilities of the National Park Service go well beyond an organization like Disney World. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Parks are complicated. | ||
| You have the Grand Canyon, Canyon Country, people get dehydrated, people have accidents there walking on the trails. | ||
| They don't have the capability to actually do the hikes. | ||
| But you also have battlefields and you have historic sites, and people need different kinds of help when they're in parks or direction. | ||
| And so, there are so few staff people in the most parks right now that we're just worried that folks aren't going to have the same experience that they're used to and be able to turn to someone and ask for help if they need to. | ||
| So, it's not even close to that 80,000 number. | ||
| So, it's not going to be the same type of services that people might expect when they travel somewhere. | ||
| Our topic is the state of national parks and impact of Doge cuts. | ||
| We will start with Tom in San Jose, California. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just have like three points. | ||
| First of all, you listen, and there's going to be some Trump followers who will call in and say, We don't need no stinking parks, you know, we need to cut back and all this. | ||
| You watch, just like I heard the other day somebody say about Social Security, I don't need my Social Security track checked because I trust Trump. | ||
| Now, I live in San Jose and I use Yosemite quite a bit, and I can't even get a reservation. | ||
| They're not even doing reservations now. | ||
| And I remember going up there before when there aren't reservations, and you get backed up in these long lines. | ||
| You don't even know if you're going to get into the park, you can't get reservations, and you don't know what's going to go on. | ||
| I don't have any faith in going up there and using these parks now the way it is. | ||
| And I think it's just because of these followers of Trump's, they're letting this happen. | ||
| The Republicans set back, and they don't care and do anything. | ||
| And the people are responsible that voted for Trump are responsible for this, and they don't care until it affects them. | ||
| So, maybe somebody will call in and go, Yeah, okay, I'm going to miss my park. | ||
| But you watch. | ||
| People that follow Trump will call in and say, We don't need no stinking parks. | ||
| I don't care about those parks. | ||
| We need to cut back because there's waste in everything because I watch only Fox News. | ||
| That's what I want to say. | ||
| Is that Thanks, Tom? | ||
| Yosemite does need a reservation system. | ||
| I completely agree with you, and it has worked in the past. | ||
| We've seen the lines diminish and people be able to park and have a great experience in the park. | ||
| So, we've been really endorsing those reservation systems so people know when they can get into the park and that they can find parking and then enjoy their day. | ||
| Look, our parks are definitely in a state of desperate need right now, and we are really concerned about their ability to be managed well. | ||
| People love these places, though, and we know Americans love visiting our national parks. | ||
| 332 million people visited our parks last year alone. | ||
| That's historically such a high for the national parks. | ||
| So we know people love these places. | ||
| We know it doesn't matter what political persuasion you are. | ||
| People are going there in droves. | ||
| I was just in two park units this past week. | ||
| Lots of people loving the parks. | ||
| Not sure what political party they're in, but we know that there's this desire to want to keep these places in great condition for future generations. | ||
| And we really hope that there's both the public support and political support for maintaining these parks well and not letting them deteriorate or be understaffed. | ||
| Your work includes talking with members of Congress. | ||
| What have you been hearing from them about these Trump cuts and what are you asking them to do? | ||
| What actions are you asking them to take? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we are asking Congress to do a couple of things right now. | |
| We are in appropriation season, even though we haven't seen any bills yet. | ||
| So we're still asking them for more money for the parks and we do every year. | ||
| So we already know that parks are underfunded. | ||
| So we're lobbying them on that. | ||
| But we're also saying to them, call the White House, call the Interior Secretary, get the hiring freeze lifted, and also stop the cuts. | ||
| The parks can't take it anymore. | ||
| So we're really trying to get Congress to think about the effects this is having on the individual parks, especially the ones they care about, and calling those parks and finding out how understaffed they are right now. | ||
| But we are asking Congress to step in here and to make sure our parks are taken care of. | ||
| Let's hear from Mary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to make a comment. | ||
| You know, I live in Center City, Philadelphia, and I walk around the city all the time. | ||
| So I'm walking through a national park on a regular basis. | ||
| And the day after the election, I went down to Independence Mall and Independence Hall to kind of regroup. | ||
| And it's very concerning to me about all these cutbacks because we're supposed to be celebrating the beginning, you know, 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year within a few months. | ||
| And with all these cutbacks, it's very upsetting to think that these people are going to be inundated and damage may happen to the park, you know, because let's face it, a lot of people are disrespectful of other people's property and stuff. | ||
| So they have to constantly be vigilant about people not touching things. | ||
| And they keep the parks beautiful here. | ||
| But at the same time, I think the occupant of our Oval Office right now, his only concern about a national park, whether he's ever been in one or not, is how to extract money out of it instead of the greater good for all of us, all of us. | ||
| And, you know, having been to the Grand Canyon, seeing how majestic it is, but also how dangerous it could be, you know, having walked down those trails, and this was 40 years ago. | ||
| So, you know, I can only imagine the inundation of Instagrammers there now. | ||
| But 40 years ago, it was busy. | ||
| But I can't even, I'm glad I went when I did. | ||
| Let's just say that. | ||
| So I commend the park people for working diligently, and thank you. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Thanks, Mary. | ||
| You sound like an amazing park visitor that has seen many places and lives with one in your backyard. | ||
| Independence Hall, like you said, we're about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country's independence. | ||
| Actually, yesterday was the anniversary of Paul Revere's ride. | ||
| If you remember the great poem about that, we are worried about whether or not we're going to be able to celebrate the 250th anniversary. | ||
| And let me tell you something that's going on right now that's really important to that celebration. | ||
| One of the things that Doge has decided to focus on are leases. | ||
| These are for buildings and facilities throughout the Park Service. | ||
| There's a woodwork shop in Lowell, Massachusetts, and their facility has been put up for possible lease cancellation. | ||
| Those are the people who are working to restore Independence Hall right now. | ||
| So this very specialized group of woodworkers in Lowell, Massachusetts do their work and then bring it down to Philadelphia to restore Independence Hall. | ||
| And we're worried that their facility could get shut down very quickly and they won't be able to work on that restoration anymore. | ||
| And Independence Hall won't be up to par for the 250th anniversary. | ||
| So there are some decisions being made by Doge right now that really don't make any sense and they don't really fit the Park Service's needs. | ||
| And because the Park Service manages all of these incredible places and they all have different needs, we're worried that even a priority like the 250th anniversary will be hurt by these cuts. | ||
| We've been talking about the impact people could see in the coming weeks, coming months, but it could extend farther than that. | ||
| What are your concerns about potential long-term impacts of parks and not having enough funding and staff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We were already worried about the Park Service a year or two years ago seeing that their fixed costs weren't getting covered. | |
| So we're even more worried now knowing that about 2,500 staff are gone and that there's a hiring freeze that was just extended yesterday by the president. | ||
| So will they ever be able to fill these vacancies? | ||
| There are probably about 100 park superintendent vacancies right now out of the 433 units. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| You need leaders, you need managers who can take care of these places. | ||
| So if this persists, if these cuts, these policies persist, our parks will be sort of left and not cared for properly. | ||
| And just like the previous caller said, the whole purpose of our national parks is to protect nature, protect conservation, but also historic preservation. | ||
| And if you don't have people who are actively doing that, things can sort of start to fall apart. | ||
| And you mentioned a fixed list, what was the phrase that you used for the number of projects for projects that need to be done? | ||
| For the national parks, it's basically a to-do list of projects and fixes that need to be made. | ||
| What kind of projects do those entail, and how many are there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there are a couple of different lists. | |
| With the Independence Hall, that's sort of regular maintenance of that particular facility. | ||
| What we have worked on for the past few years is deferred maintenance. | ||
| These are projects that get pushed off because they can't afford them. | ||
| And because Congress hasn't consistently funded parks well, the deferred maintenance backlog has grown to $22 billion. | ||
| So Congress passed a law in 2020 and President Trump signed it called the Great American Outdoors Act. | ||
| And that bill funds billions of dollars of projects and many of those projects are still underway. | ||
| So so many places are getting fixed right now within our national park system. | ||
| And it's kind of incredible. | ||
| A lot of these places where the facilities are from the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 30s and 40s or Mission 66 in the 50s. | ||
| So imagine 80, 50 years have gone by before we've fully repaired some of these places. | ||
| But when you look at the projects that the Park Service is doing right now, it's really amazing. | ||
| And they're making so much progress. | ||
| Trails are getting fixed, roads are getting fixed, visitor centers are getting new roofs and new walls and an upgrade. | ||
| So this initiative back in 2020 is working. | ||
| But can you imagine where we're going to be if they don't have enough staff to keep maintaining these? | ||
| So we're going to fix them, but then not maintain them very well. | ||
| And that's what we're worried about. | ||
| Let's hear from Joe in St. Clair, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think that we're moving this blame to the administration. | ||
| What people need to realize is there's a severe shortage of young people in this country willing to do certain jobs. | ||
| And I don't care if it's a golf course that can't get waitresses in the summer or greenskeepers, kids to work on the golf course or cooks in the kitchen. | ||
| The baby boomers retired and there's not enough young people to take their place and it's causing a shortage in this country. | ||
| Now we've overcome that to a point by the H-2A program and the H-B program where places like Mackin Island, Michigan, which are extremely heavy tourist areas, are bringing in people from Jamaica or other countries to work. | ||
| But there is a shortage of young people in this country willing to work. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| I'm glad you mentioned that because what we're worried about are all of the young people who were fired as probationary staff people. | ||
| So these are people who took a job, were working it successfully, had gotten great remarks from their supervisors about what a fantastic job they were doing. | ||
| They were likely promoted, which is why they were in a probationary period, and then they were fired. | ||
| And this was over a thousand staff people. | ||
| And one of the things that first occurred to us was this is terrible for this young generation who might have wanted to make their career in the National Park Service, but now they are contending with maybe not having housing, being able to pay their bills, and they now don't have a job. | ||
| Now, those positions were reinstated, but those young people have to weigh whether or not they're going to continue working for the Park Service and risk being fired again. | ||
| You know, so we really want to make sure that this next generation feels like the Park Service wants them, the federal government wants them, and that they can have a career in the Park Service. | ||
| But these continuing threats to people's employment means that the Park Service may not be a secure place to work. | ||
| And we do not want that to happen. | ||
| We want that generation to come in and take care of these places and love them as much as all of us do. | ||
| So absolutely worried about young people, but worried about young people feeling like this can't be a career for them. | ||
| Let's hear from Joel in Texas. | ||
| Good morning, Joel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello there. | |
| Danny, the year since March 1979. | ||
| And I appreciate you. | ||
| I think you did as good a job as anybody I've ever seen. | ||
| To guess, do you? | ||
| What is the federal deficit? | ||
| What is the number? | ||
| I think it's around $3 trillion. | ||
| $3 trillion? | ||
| Is that what you said? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or is that $37 trillion? | ||
| Sorry, I don't know the number off the top of my head. | ||
| Well, you certainly don't. | ||
| You said we had 332 million visit tours to these parks, of which I have been to many. | ||
| How about we get 1% of the people that visit to come contribute their efforts voluntarily and not be paid? | ||
| I don't know how you found yourself on this program today. | ||
| Perhaps you invited yourself or you were invited. | ||
| I'd be interested to know that. | ||
| But what have you done to actually go clean up a park or clean a trail or tint out the underbrush? | ||
| What have you done other than just talk about it? | ||
| Thanks for your call. | ||
| I work very hard to lobby for more money for the Park Service. | ||
| And the bill that I just spoke of before, the Great American Outdoors Act, I actually lobbied very hard to get multiple billions of dollars to fund the repair of our national parks. | ||
| And I do volunteer in parks, and I do help to take care of them on the ground. | ||
| Parks have a lot of needs, and there are hundreds of thousands of volunteers who go into our parks and spend their time helping out. | ||
| But that's just not enough. | ||
| These are historic sites that require an incredible amount of money to maintain and to keep up. | ||
| Parks have bridges in them, roads, all sorts of facilities that they need to take care of. | ||
| So as much as volunteering is amazing and as many people who can do it should do it, they need the funding from Congress, and that's what we help to do. | ||
| Let's hear from Sharon in Hanover, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Sharon. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Having visited some of the parks, I know they are the crown jewels of America. | ||
| And this administration, if you look, you can see the interlocking ideas alienate other countries. | ||
| So those people do not come to America anymore to visit. | ||
| Money lost there. | ||
| Privatization is a huge goal of this administration. | ||
| They may decide to reduce the size of parks, especially for lumber, minerals, whatever is out there. | ||
| And it's a red alert. | ||
| So may I ask if your organization has, it's terribly expensive, but any legal activity initiatives that could be used to help push against the possible horror in the future. | ||
| Vandalism may increase. | ||
| The attitude of this administration is hateful. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for your call. | ||
| Yes, we absolutely do take legal action, especially when a resource is not being protected well or there is damage to a national park. | ||
| So we are very active with our work to protect natural and cultural resources. | ||
| So when those problems do happen, we do take a stand and we do make sure they're protected. | ||
| Regardless of which administration it is, we absolutely are there to defend our parks. | ||
| Wanted to ask you about another issue. | ||
| Funding cuts, staff cuts are one issue, something else the Trump administration has done. | ||
| This headline from the New York Times, Trump administration opens more public lands to drilling and mining. | ||
| Not all national parks fall on public lands, or they're public lands, but they're separate than national parks. | ||
| Talk about the impact that could have. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Oil and gas drilling, mining, there are many claims right outside of national parks, and actually some are inside some national park units. | ||
| And so with this idea of needing to lease and mine in more areas and ramping that up, we're absolutely worried about the park landscapes, about pollution, about the kind of destruction that certain types of mining could have on our national parks. | ||
| And so we are worried about escalating oil and gas and mining, especially with oil and gas. | ||
| There are so many leases that have not been sort of used at this point in time. | ||
| So we have thousands upon thousands of unused oil and gas leases. | ||
| And there are so many mining claims all peppered around national parks that the sort of protection that we see right now around our national parks, especially with wildlife connectivity, water quality, water quantity through all the rivers that go in and out of public lands in national parks. | ||
| We're just worried that the sort of desire to want to increase the extraction of these minerals or oil and gas is going to potentially do harm to the entire landscape around national parks. | ||
| Let's hear from Carolyn in Denver, Colorado. | ||
| Good morning, Carolyn. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you, Christine, for being on. | ||
| I have some friends that are coming from Europe next month to travel and tour the Grand Canyon. | ||
| I was told by some friends that the hours may be cut as well as the services. | ||
| How can they find out and what information is out there for them before they travel to the Grand Canyon? | ||
| Yeah, thanks so much for the question. | ||
| The best thing to do right now would be to go onto the website for the Grand Canyon and find out what the hours are and what's open and available for folks. | ||
| Also, make sure that you're looking at the weather when you're going out there and really packing the right shoes and attire to wear in the Grand Canyon. | ||
| I was just there last May rafting down the Colorado River and the temperature can change pretty rapidly while you're in the park. | ||
| So just make sure you have the right clothes and attire and bring lots and lots of water because it can get very, very hot there even in May. | ||
| Bill in Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'm certainly not calling in to think that the cutting to the National Park Service is a good idea. | ||
| But I would just want to add this to the conversation. | ||
| The financial situation of our country is in really desperate straits. | ||
| And I don't think the Trump administration, obviously they're well aware of it, but they're not articulating it well. | ||
| But I just, a couple of facts. | ||
| Not only the $37 trillion of debt, but we've got, we take in about $4.5 trillion in revenue. | ||
| We spent last year $6.5 trillion. | ||
| Our budget this year is $7 or $7.2 trillion. | ||
| And in the first three months of the fiscal year, October, November, December, we went through $4 trillion. | ||
| Now, the big money is in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. | ||
| And I certainly don't think the park should be cut. | ||
| But basically, because it's not because it's small potatoes, but I would just say anybody that's listening, we got to think about how are we going to dig ourselves out of this mess that we're in. | ||
| That's my only comment. | ||
| I think the National Park Service should be supported and funded, but we are in a big mess. | ||
| Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying. | ||
| And I know so many folks are concerned about how deep our debt is. | ||
| The National Park Service, in order to operate it, it's 115th of 1% of the entire federal budget. | ||
| Like you said, it's small potatoes. | ||
| And so for all the great protection and historic preservation that we get for 433 park units, it costs so little to keep our national parks up and functioning, which is why, you know, when we're looking for bigger ticket items to reduce the deficit, the parks just aren't one of those big ticket items. | ||
| It's so small. | ||
| And yet we appreciate them so much and love to have them in our lives. | ||
| And so many people go to visit them. | ||
| So totally appreciate your comment and agree that parks are pretty small potatoes when we look at the entire federal budget. | ||
| Parks do get federal funding, but they also generate revenue. | ||
| How do those two balance? | ||
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unidentified
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So parks, some parks, about a third of them have entrance fees. | |
| And it's actually, it generates about $350 million per year, which is a significant amount of money, but not enough to keep all of the parks running. | ||
| So we can't purely rely on entrance fees. | ||
| We need the appropriations from Congress. | ||
| Let's talk with Lorraine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Lorraine. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I was just concerned because I'm watching this on my C-SPAN here in Philadelphia. | ||
| And I just want to know, I wanted you to know that it is a haven for my son, who is a special needs person. | ||
| And all of the years since he's been in special needs programs, the one outing he looks for is our parks travels and being able to be free without a world of traffic and fear. | ||
| Because a lot of special needs people don't exactly fit into the malls and the different departments that are made for people who are well. | ||
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unidentified
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I just look forward to the parks, and I hate to see this funding being cut for people that really enjoy the parks. | |
| In addition to bringing a little lunch and we sit down and we can enjoy each other like a family. | ||
| A lot of this is going to be cut and we're not going to be able to do that. | ||
| So I am very much in favor of funding as much as possible to keep our parks and our national treasures running smoothly. | ||
| Any response to Lorraine? | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks. | |
| That's a great point that you're making and one that we have been concerned about in terms of making sure that the newer projects that are being done, the newer construction projects are ADA compliant. | ||
| So there are a couple of trail systems throughout the Park Service that are getting fixed right now. | ||
| I'm off the top of my head thinking about Saratoga Battlefield where the trails are being improved greatly, especially for folks who use a wheelchair. | ||
| And new waysides are being put in place as well, really improving the park experience up there. | ||
| And I agree with you. | ||
| We need to continue to make those investments and make sure that we are improving the accessibility of these places as we fix them. | ||
| I'll try to get in a couple more calls. | ||
| Julie, West Virginia. | ||
| Good morning, Julie. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you, ladies? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Good. | ||
| I just have a comment, please. | ||
| A couple callers ago, a gentleman, sorry I'm a little nervous. | ||
| A gentleman said to Kristen, what are you doing specifically for the parks? | ||
| And I just wanted to say, Kristen, you were so professional, pardon me, and so gracious to him when you responded back. | ||
| So I applaud you and thank you, Tammy, for what you're doing, listening to all these folk give their opinions. | ||
| That was Julie in West Virginia. | ||
| We are just a few months into President Trump's second administration. | ||
| What are you going to be keeping your eye on in the coming months and years? | ||
|
unidentified
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So I think we want to continue to look at the staffing issue in parks and make sure that we're continuing to push and lobby to get the necessary staff that the parks need. | |
| We're also concerned about potential damage to national parks and undermining certain policies. | ||
| And so one concern is not just the energy development, but the infrastructure that is needed for the energy development and roads and pipelines that could be put in or near national parks if the administration really wanted to push forward on that. | ||
| But we're just worried because some of the decisions that have been made have not been careful. | ||
| They haven't been thoughtful, and we're already seeing... | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| And we're already seeing policies come out where they're not promoting public comment. | ||
| And so we're worried that some of these energy dominance policies could move forward without the science or the public input that's necessary to make the best decisions possible. | ||
| So we'll continue to watch carefully. | ||
| We'll continue to see what they do. | ||
| But we're going to continue to maintain the advocacy that we're doing because we know the public cares deeply about these places. | ||
| And like folks have been saying this morning in their calls, this is a sacrifice that just isn't worth it. | ||
| In the end, we want to protect these places. | ||
| We love them. | ||
| We travel to them. | ||
| Hundreds of millions of people enjoy them every year. | ||
| And so we want to maintain them for the future. | ||
| And we want to leave something behind for our kids and grandkids. | ||
| We don't want to be that generation that ruined the national parks. | ||
| Our guest, Kristen Bringle, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. | ||
| You can find them online at npca.org. | ||
| Kristen, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| And we are ending Washington Journal a little bit early today at 9.30. | ||
| In just a few moments, we will be going to the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the remembrance ceremony. | ||
| We are showing you a live shot of the room now on your screen that the bombing was the deadliest homegrown attack in United States history. | ||
| The ceremony will include the reading of the names of the 168 people killed, remarks by the victim's family members and survivors, as well as a keynote address from former President Bill Clinton. | ||
| A few more details about the Oklahoma City bombing. | ||
| The dead ranged in age from three months to 73 years old. | ||
| 19 of them were children and hundreds more were injured. | ||
| The building that was bombed, that was the Alfred P. Murrow Federal Complex. | ||
| It included regional offices for several agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and a credit union. |